WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Aidan Grogan: Pro-Natal Policies Fail Because People Don’t Want Kids

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Governments around the world have implemented generous pro-natal policies to reverse declining birth rates—but these efforts have largely failed. Why? Because, as Washington Examiner and American Spectator contributor Aidan Grogan argues, people simply don’t want children.In his latest op-ed, Grogan challenges the mainstream narrative that affordability is the primary obstacle to child-rearing and instead explores the deeper cultural shifts behind global population decline. He joins WRFH to discuss.From 02/12/25.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Verini, and I'm here interviewing Aidan Grogan, a young voices contributor who currently is working for the American Institute for Economic Research. And he has written this article called Pronatal Policies Fail because people don't want kids. So why don't you tell me a little bit about this article, Aiden? Yes, there's a common narrative worldwide that low birth rates are caused by market failure or a lack of affordability. This claim has justified pro-natal policies implemented by various governments, which are efforts to boost fertility by making the costs of child rearing much more affordable. But these policies have only led to marginal increases in fertility. In some cases, they haven't produced any increases in fertility, which begs the question, can we really attribute low birth rates to financial constraints? I think based on the polls and the serious analyses of demographers and economists who have studied this issue, the problem is much deeper. There's rising antinatal sentiment worldwide.

people are simply not prioritizing having children in the way that previous generations did. And an increasing amount of people simply say that they do not want to have kids at all. And so if you could say in maybe one to two, maybe even three reasons, why do you think that people just are not motivated to have kids? Well, first and foremost, there are a lot of other opportunities for people to enjoy their lives, particularly in developed countries. Of course, women are spending more time pursuing education and career opportunities. And I think the literature is pretty clear that that can lower birth rates a little bit. Also, accessibility of contraception and the legality of abortion can bring birth rates down a bit. But that doesn't explain the sudden dive into sub-replacement fertility, which has occurred in recent decades, even in just the past few years in some countries.

This is a problem that's happening in both rich and poor countries alike. So we can't attribute it all to industrialization, urbanization, or gender equality. I think we need to really look into this post-war global effort on behalf of large institutions, governments, and NGOs to lower birth rates and to fundamentally reshape people's attitudes toward marriage, family, and child rearing. So people's stated preference for how many children they think the ideal family would consist of has drastically changed in recent decades. And I think that's the result of deliberate antinatal propaganda. And when you say post-war, what exactly do you mean? Essentially, 1945 to present. Shortly after World War II, the old eugenics movement underwent significant

reforms after the Nuremberg trials in the Holocaust. Certainly, eugenics lost its moral and scientific credibility, but the population establishment who were concerned about rising fertility and its potential impact on the Earth's ecology and the availability of resources to feed, the world's population, they still advanced sort of that worldview that we need to restrict human population and founded various institutions such as the Population Council or the International Planned Parenthood Federation to carry that out. Do you think that there are a lot of people or a significant amount of people who are choosing not to have kids because they believe in this sort of Malthusian outlook that we need to

restrict population growth? Or do you think that that's just something that has spiraled into what we're seeing now? Certainly there's an alarming number of young people who are afraid to have kids because of concerns over climate change. I cited one such poll in my piece in the federalists. About 40% of young people worldwide say they are hesitant to have kids because they're afraid of the ecological future of the planet and the ability of young people to live a decent luck. A striking number of people also believe that the world is overpopulated, even as birth rates decline everywhere, and we're facing not the specter of overpopulation, but rather depopulation in the coming decades.

So you say that because the total fertility rate in most countries or many countries is reaching a below replacement level, that one of the major solutions ultimately lies in a revival of pro-natal societal norms and a culture that celebrates and cherishes life. How is that going to happen? How do you think that we're going to be able to bring back that mindset to people? I think raising awareness about the problems of depopulation, particularly as it affects the older generation, you need a fairly large tax base to provide health care pensions and other services to to your retirement age population. So as awareness is spread about that, I think people might start to consider having a bit more children. And after all, it's their own future that they're taking

into account. I also think that natalism is largely affiliated with religious belief and people's attitudes toward eternity and what type of legacy they want to leave behind. So I personally think that nothing short of a religious revival is going to significantly change people's attitudes toward marriage and child rearing. And so there seem to be two sort of sides of this argument. On the one hand, there are people who see the ecological issues with the earth getting crowded. And I mean, certainly the earth is more crowded than it used to be even like 200 years ago. And then there are the people who see the demographic implications. of underpopulation.

For example, there are just not enough young people to support the older generation. So how do we sort of reconcile those two ideas? Because they're both sort of correct, but the solutions to both of them seem to be the opposite, if that makes sense. Well, I would certainly contest the claim that the world is overpopulated.

I think the economic data shows that population growth is strongly correlated with economic growth and abundance of resources. Julian Simon wrote a book in 1980 called The Ultimate Resource, in which he argued that the ultimate resource is people. In the long run, with more people, there's more innovation, more brain power because of more people, and thus the planet's resources actually increases and allows us to provide for everyone. So I think the world can handle far more people than we presently have. But as for depopulation, I think opinions will start to change once we sort of reach the cliff of population growth,

the peak of the cliff, and start descending because it's going to happen quite precipitously. It's not going to be a gradual decline. People are really going to start to notice it in a few decades when there is a significantly larger working age population than retirement age population. They're going to feel it in their wallets, especially because there's going to be a pressure to raise taxes to provide resources to the elderly population with a smaller tax base. Right. Do you think that other countries who are sort of further down this demographic trend, such as Norway or Sweden or even Japan have handled it well? Do you think that we could look to them for an example, or do you think we have to do something much different? I think the change in

attitudes has to come from the culture and the revitalization of social norms that prize, marriage, and family. Norway, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Hungary, etc., have tried to reverse the birth, dearth through government incentives. And as I've indicated, these policies really haven't worked. Fertility continues to decline in most of these countries. So people don't respond very well to economic incentives as far as their reproductive choices. It ultimately comes down to culture and social norms, as well as people's attitude toward life. I think this gets deeply metaphysical. I'm Emma Verini. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. It's interesting that you cite Poland and Hungary, considering the fact that they're both very religious, at least comparatively,

and particularly Poland, is a very, very Catholic country. So what are they doing wrong? Well, even despite those two countries being more conservative by modern standards, I think clearly people's attitudes are perhaps not sufficiently conservative as far as family and child rearing because otherwise their birth rate would perhaps be higher. So across the world, whether countries lean more conservative or they lean more liberal, there just seems to be a much lower emphasis placed on marriage and child rearing. Do you also think the fact that fewer people are getting married or that they're getting married later is a huge problem? Or do you think it's mostly just attitudes toward childbearing?

I think it's both. Certainly there has been a decline in the institution of marriage, especially across the Western world. people are prioritizing higher education, career, and other leisurely activities over finding a partner. In the 1960s, the average age of marriage in the United States was basically the early 20s, and now it's late 20s or even early 30s in some cases. So that's going to have a significant effect on fertility. Some studies have indicated that women lose about 90% of their eggs by the time that they reach age 30. You also have to think that if people wait until their late 20s to try to find a long-term partner with whom to settle down and have children, and then they fail to get in a relationship within a couple years, then they're facing the dilemma of perhaps never being able to have kids because you have to think about it. By the time you get into a relationship, you're probably going to date for about a year, and then you're going to have a year-long engagement.

and then even if you become pregnant within the first few months of marriage, then you've got another nine months until you give birth to that child. So that's about a three-year time frame between meeting someone and starting to date and having your first child together. So if you're already into your early 30s and you're still single, the prospect of ever having children starts to really decline. Right. And how can people start to prioritize marriage? It seems like a lot of young people are focused on just getting a career, getting settled down first, and then finding their partner, as opposed to what it used to be, which was, you know, I'm going to find a partner and we're going to get settled down together. If people understand marriage and family as to be the main

purpose of life and something which they should work toward as their top priority, then I think people would start to emphasize this earlier on. And I think we need to have a change in culture and a change in the way that we educate young people to make them understand that maybe living a very atomized, lonely lifestyle throughout their 20s, just chasing mindless pleasures or only chasing career success is not going to lead to long-term fulfillment. They have to consider sort of the time span of their entire lives and really put things into perspective to comprehend what's going to matter most by the time they're in their later 30s, 40s, and 50s. Right. Yes, that definitely makes sense. So just to shift gears a little bit, you say

somewhere toward the middle of the article that you've written that humanity is woefully unprepared for the specter of depopulation later this century, especially central European and Asian countries that refuse migrants to temporarily offset low birth rates. Do you think that migration is a sustainable solution to depopulation, or do you think it should be something that, you know, happens up front, but, you know, after a while migration is cut off? How do you see that playing out? Migration is not a long-term solution to this problem. If countries wanted to solely rely on immigration, they would have to completely open up the borders and bring in endless amounts of migrants to make up for the precipitous decline in populations that is going to happen in the

coming decades. A country like the United States, through its generous immigration policy, has been able to avoid population decline. Other countries so far have been able to avoid population decline because of immigration policies. But this isn't a long-term solution. That makes sense. Yeah. And for an example that you use you use the example of Israel, which has managed to maintain a fertility rate of almost three children per women, 2.9 fertility rate in Israel. And you say that this is a result of their Orthodox Jewish values. Could you speak to that a little bit? Yes, Israel's unusually high fertility rate,

especially for a developed country, seems to be driven by, in part, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women have about five kids on average in Israel. But also in the U.S., the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fertility rate is about 5.0. So this seems to be a result of Jewish cultural values, which really prized marriage and child-rearing in a way that other developed countries do not. some people say that that's a result of Israel's intense national security situation. They understand that they need to keep their birth rate up. But as we've seen, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fertility rate outside of Israel mirrors that of Israel. So I think this is really a condition of their cultural values. That's super interesting. Yeah. That's definitely interesting that it's that high.

That is impressive, especially given the fact that other countries are not really keeping in line with Israel. But I thought that was definitely an interesting addition to this article, especially considering you also mentioned in this same sort of section, Myanmar and Nepal, which have sub replacement fertility rates. So I think that's definitely something interesting that you've included in there. Yes, this dive into sub replacement fertility is even happening in. UN-designated least developed countries such as Myanmar, Nepal, and also Bangladesh is at sub-replacement fertility. So we can't explain at all as prosperity, industrialization, and urbanization, and so forth. Something else is going on here, something deeper. Something has shifted in people's fundamental attitudes toward family and having children. Yeah. That's about all we have time for

today. Is there anything else you want to add? Well, people, I think, should just really start paying attention to declining birth rates, and we need to start considering how we're going to plan for our future, including at the level of public policy, but also in how we conduct ourselves in our personal lives. I think this especially applies to young people in how we make our financial decisions and how we plan for a future in which there will be fewer people than the are today. That's all we have time for today. Where can where can folks find you if they want to read your articles or follow you? You can follow me on X at Aidan Grogan. It's A-I-D-A-N-G-R-O-G-A-N.

You can also find several of my articles at the American Institute for Economic Research. That's A-I-E-R-D-org or daily economy.org. Thank you for coming on today, A-D-D-N. Thank you for having me. I'm Emma Verini. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.