Jim Penman explains Israel's high birth rate through dopamine sensitivity. Ultra-Orthodox women average over six children versus two for secular Jews, a gap he attributes to religious practices that preserve dopamine responsiveness and make family life intrinsically rewarding.
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. Okay, Israel is a country which has overall very high birth rate. It's the highest by far in the OECD. But within Israel, there's some very important differences. The Haredi Jews, for example, the ultra-Orthodox, got a very, very high birth rate. They're having like 6 children, more than 6 children per woman. Then you've got religious Jews in general, which have also got above average, but they're about 4. And then you've got the secular Jews, which are down there about 2. And Christians, very similar. So the more religious, the more strict religious, the more children. There is a reason for this. The basic reason that people have— want large families It's because they have got very sensitive dopamine reaction systems, which means if you're very sensitive to dopamine, family, children, work are very attractive. It gives you all the dopamine you really need, just these little trickles of dopamine. If you are insensitive to dopamine, then you need excitement, you need travel, you need career, you need all the— enthusiasm, engagement with the wider society, gambling, all these things become very, very attractive. So what we need to have children is a sensitive dopamine system. Now what religion does, and particularly the strictest form of religion, is that it has all kinds of practices that make us more sensitive, make people more sensitive to dopamine. And one of them is very strictly controlling sexual activity because sexual activity causes a big burst of dopamine, especially with strangers, with different people, and therefore desensitizes the brain. So what we've got to do, what these faiths do, is they very strictly limit the dopamine surges that are causing the problems. And that's why these people have a character that makes them want to have more children, that want to get married early.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
