Podcast episode in which Jim Penman argues that Israel is the only wealthy/OECD country maintaining above-replacement fertility (around 3 children per woman) and attributes this to communal, religious, and cultural factors—especially high fertility in ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and some Arab communities, strong community institutions (youth groups, universal service, religious rituals), and policies that permit cultural separateness (religious schools, exemptions). He contrasts this with low-fertility societies (OECD average ~1.6; Japan ~1.1; Korea ~0.7) and discusses how supporting cultural/religious minorities and enabling close-knit, separate communities can preserve higher birth rates.
Questions this episode answers
About 3 children per woman.
2.1
About 1.6
Japan ~1.1; Korea ~0.7
Around six to eight children per family (compared to secular norms).
Chapters
So welcome to another episode of Conversations with Jim Penman. And the question today for Jim is about. We've talked about all the countries that are getting it wrong, and what's not working. Is there any country that's actually getting it right when it comes to addressing the birth rate crisis?
There is only one country, one wealthy country that's doing the right thing, and that's Israel. Israel. Whereas replacement fertility 2.1 countries, like most of the Western world is about 1.6. You've got the real downtime, like 1.1 in Japan, 0.7 in Korea. Israel's fertility rate is about 3 on average. Every Israeli woman is having three kids, and this is the only OECD country.
Above replacement.
Yeah, above replacement. And it's like double the OECD average. So they've done it. Right. Now, if you have a look at Israeli society, there's a few peculiar things about it. First of all, there's a very, very high birth rate amongst the ultra Orthodox, the haredi, okay? They've got average of, like, Amish. They have like six and eight children per family. It's quite normal. Very insular lifestyle. Very, very protected, very. They've got a lot of privileges. They don't have to do army service, for example. So there particularly, also Israeli Arabs have a relatively high birth rate as well. But even in the general community, even among secular Jews, the birth rate is significantly higher. Even my secular Jews, it's not far off replacement level, which is quite extraordinary because secular people in other societies don't. Now, there are. There are very. Some very different things about Israeli society, and it comes down to the character of the people. Jews, Israelis are very communitarian. They're very communal. They actually. They have very strong associations. They have strong youth associations, for example. Like, there's equivalent to the scouting movement there, which is basically run by the kids themselves. They have this army service too, which is. Which is universal for most Israelis, where they actually form groups. They have a very strong sense of community. They're very patriotic on the whole. They need to be with the problems they're going through. But they're loyal to their work groups, they're loyal to each other. Strong sense of community. Religious rituals are quite strong. Even the rest of the society, like Sabbath gatherings and so forth. Strong, very strong family and situations. It's not competitive in the same way as East Asia. People cooperate a lot more people work together. It's not me against everybody else, it's us together. They actually have systems where classes actually help each other to improve and they have this group thing. So it's a completely different kind of attitude. Those are the kinds of attitudes, those are sort of character that that will help. And the great thing about it is when you have groups like the ultra Orthodox who have more kids, it becomes more normal to have larger families. Families are just, you know, for a woman to sort of working with, have, you know, two or three or four children, it's been considered bizarre in our society. It would be so, again, public opinion. And then the more large families you have in an area, the more likely other people are going to have large families too. So it's. It's a sort of a virtuous circle. Even in Israel, it's not really going in the right direction. They're to a certain extent faced with the same problem. But one lesson that you can learn from this is it's very important to look after the religious minorities. And I think in a way, even though the way that the ultra Orthodox excused from military service is a big problem, especially as they become more and more the population, in a way, anything that helps them to stay inside their culture and keep these, these very communal sort of religious values is actually helpful.
To the birth rate because it's sort of replicated across the world, isn't it? A lot of countries have Jewish areas. You know, in Melbourne, we have it, you know, balaclava and stuff, and it's sort of a similar thing there. You've got large families, six, seven, eight people that do the church all the time.
Secular Jews actually don't have any more children than anybody else. But those who are in these communities, they definitely do. They're one of the groups I look at, along with the Amish. They have a strong separation from the wider society because the wider society is very. It's like addictive. It draws people away. It's the technology and the drugs and the freedom and the individualism stuff, which is very, very attract, and so does 10. So to have a successful community, they need to have very strong systems to hold people within, cutting themselves from outsiders, not being able to share food with them, needing to walk to the synagogue, for example, because you can't drive a car. Those kinds of practices are very, very powerful.
So that cultural technology, I know you've referred to religion as a cultural technology. So that cultural technology, you think, has been one of the main reasons why this might be an issue for those communities?
Yes. And as the ultra Orthodox community in Israel grows, there's no reason why the birth rate can't continue at least reasonably high, though I would think amongst the. Amongst the secular, it's going to go down.
This may be a silly question, but how does non. How do other people integrate that or take inspiration from that in their own stuff?
It's very difficult. But in a sense, the only practical thing you can ever do in a non Western society is to allow people of that nature to be separate. For example, one of the things that Americans done which is very positive is they've allowed the Amish to run their own schools. Because if you force the Amish to go to secular schools, you will undermine their society, but by allowing them to be educated themselves. So I think we do that here.
Sort of as well. We have. There's Jewish schools obviously in certain areas and. Yes, yes. So we sort of allow this as well.
Well, that's. That, that's a positive thing.
Yeah.
Religious education is very important. One of the problems we have is that, is that so much of it in modern society acts against it. For example, there's these people who like to shut down religious schools because they want to become part of the community. But the religious schools are very, very important in maintaining that cultural separateness which you actually need if you're going to maintain the birth rate. At least some groups.
That's a great point because I think we always want to preach about equality. And a lot of the, let's say the typical average person might be going, well, why are they special? Or why are they separate to us? Or why do I think they're better than us? Or why don't they assimilate? So you're saying it's actually in the best interest of the birth rate for societies, say, like ours to leave communities like that. Okay.
Allow them, encourage them, help them to form communities that are cohesive, where they can live close together and encourage and support religious education. Allow people to set up religious schools, like public schools, but very strongly religious, allow them to have teachers that abide by their values. One of the problems you've got in, say, Christian schools, I know in Melbourne is that they try and force them to have, say, openly gay teachers. Yeah. Now, I don't mind at all if somebody's in a public school is gay, who cares? All right. But if you're in a Christian community and you want to teach the values to children, to hold on to that, making them actually have people who go in and preach these anti Christian values is very harmful.
Yeah, yeah, sort of. You sort of changed my mind a bit because my typical sort of thing is why are they getting exemptions and all that? Sort of stuff. And why are they anything different? But I think the point that you're making is, as you said, it's really, really important to them and we've got to let them do their thing and as they let us do. Non religious people that did.
That's right. I think, I think trying to force religious people to integrate with the larger society is a problem. When the larger society has attitudes that are really undermining fertility. It's one of the few things the governments could actually usefully do is allow people who are more fertile to be separate from the rest of society so they don't get corrupted by their values.
It's interesting because I don't think they originally think that, but they don't think that way. But I think they allow that in a way. Obviously you have the schools here of different faiths in Australia and you have all these different things as well. But as you're right, there is a sentiment from, let's say the outside population where they want to sort of bring them away from that and bring them in to be like everyone else, I guess, which will obviously affect it.
If there was a way of actually helping people to live closer together too, that would be very, very helpful. I know they do it to a certain extent in Jewish communities by doing business to the synagogue.
Yeah, they do. So let's say Balaclava. Balaclava and Rip and Lee is a known Jewish area there and there's a lot of apartments there and you see the families always walking to the synagogue and they all live around there and there's a heap of people in that area and they're all the Hasidic Jews, obviously.
But anything you can do to help people to live closer together and to be culturally separate in this particular area, which goes against this idea that so many secular. You must force everyone to be the. You must indoctrinate, you must teach them. You know, you've got to teach children, for example, that there's no difference between men and women. If you, if you want to change sex, you can. And this kind of stuff that I don't think people think that. But trying to force people who have different views, trying to indoctrinate their children in mainstream views is very harmful.
You mentioned something I want to pick up on. I thought was interesting that the East Asian difference towards and against, you know, the difference with the, the community of, let's say Israeli or the Jewish people. You said there's a difference there. One competes. I want to compete with my family, with your family. Whereas the Other ones are different. They're together, yes. Is that from religious values you believe, or why is that?
Yeah, it's very strong. If you look at the attitudes of people in these ultra orthodox religious communities, the Amish, the Haranim, those kind of people, they, most of their, most of their indoctrination, the training of children is in terms of cooperative, in terms of group values, in terms of being a good member of the community, not just individual success. But are you pious, are you observant? So you value people by things like how observant are they, how do they keep the Sabbath? If you say Latter Day Saints, Mormons, another example, things like not having tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, keeping people close together. If you could, if you could get close communities that were physically and culturally close and separate, you'd have a lot better chance of maintaining fertility in these groups. The interesting thing about people like the Amish is this, that if you. The Amish population is relatively small. It's only a few hundred thousand people, but it's doubling every generation because about 85% of them are continuing. 15%. Don't they go off into the wider community, which they're allowed to do. Yeah, it's not stopped. In 200 years, Amoshu will have 300 million Americans. If you keep to that, keep to that level. So in a sense, if you, if you encourage these minorities, these cultural, religious minorities to become, allow them to become separate, you actually have the potential just from that alone to increase fertility.
It's quite ironic, isn't it? Like with all the technology and the AI, you know, sort of booming, so the States and then if the Amish keep going the way they're going, and obviously they're averse to sort of maybe using the technology and all that sort of stuff, it'd be quite ironic to see the Amish take over and be the majority people in America. Which will happen based on the prediction, is what you're saying.
Well, if nothing gets in the way, yes. I think the wider society is going to collapse quicker than that.
There we go. But thanks for that, Jim. Very interesting insights. If you want to check out, stay up to date with what Jim's doing with birth rate Crisis. Check out JimPeman.com There's a mailing list there which Jim sends every month as well. And also there's a pre sign up for the book as well for when it comes out. But thank you very much for your time today, Jim.
