In this monologue, businessman and birth‑rate researcher Jim Penman argues that the commonly cited reasons for declining fertility—economic hardship, environmental concerns, and global instability—are largely rationalizations. He contends the core driver is a shift in priorities among younger adults, who now place greater value on travel, career advancement, and personal lifestyle choices and simply do not want children. Penman emphasizes that having children is fundamentally a desire, not a response to external conditions, citing his own experience of fathering ten children out of love. He warns that this underlying preference is intensifying, meaning birth rates will continue to fall rather than level off, and predicts an accelerating decline in future fertility trends.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Jim Penman. I'm a businessman who's funded a research institute into, amongst other things, the birth rate crisis. Why are birth rates dropping? I've written previous books including Epigenetics and Character and Biohistory, about to release Birth Rate Crisis. These are the reasons why people are not having children. Now, the interesting thing is people mostly say it's about economics, but when you ask them, there's quite different things. Environmental concerns come up, but they're one of the least ones. I believe it's just a rationalization. Can't afford to raise a child, 36%. Yeah, okay, that is the reason people often say. Concerns about the state of the world, yes, I think it's a rationalization because the world's always been insecure. Want to focus on other things, yes, very, very much so. People have much higher priority these days to things like travel, career expenditure, those kind of things. And just do not want to. And that's really the core of the reason. Most of the rest of it's just a rationalization. People have children because they want to have children, not because of anything about the state of the world or anything else. You have kids because you want them. I've got 10 kids because I love kids. Why do younger adults not want children? Basically, the biggest, biggest change is the focus on other things. And what's really striking is it's so much more the case with younger adults. It's almost twice as important in terms of the reason. And that indicates the real problem. People look at the birth rate crisis as something that's happened. We haven't seen the worst of it. You're going to see the birth rate drop further and further and further. And if you look back in the past, you'll always see projections, no matter where it was, oh, it's gone down, but it's going to level out. But it keeps on going down. Let me tell you, it will keep on going down because the basic reason is getting worse and worse.
