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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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All of this is so silly to me. The answer is women's education reduces women's fertility, and there's no real way around this problem.

Incorrect. Israel is interesting opposite case. They have large urban population, educated women and everything. And even secular population has TFR above 2. Education is important, but there are other things as well. Also there are logical things, for instance education may work indirectly - not indoctrination or that it educates women not to have children. In fact fertility has famous U shape as low income uneducated women have more children than middle class women, but upper class women rebound in around $100k and cross toward 2.1 TFR at income of around $200k. So there may be a different issue and indirect effects. As women spend the most fertile years at school and then they work to wipe out debt, they are not reproducing until after late 20ies early 30ies. Then they usually have smaller families as they spent 10 fertile years on school and work. Who knows, maybe there can be a system where women have children first and they will have something like GI bill when they will get free education if they have two or three children or some such. Like KaiserBauch mentioned, it is a complex problem.

Incorrect. Israel is interesting opposite case. They have large urban population, educated women and everything. And even secular population has TFR above 2.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

The Byzantine Catholic belt in Europe has mostly replacement-ish fertility with generally educated women and high female LFPR- and some of the lowest fertility rates in the world on their borders. Conservative social norms and high importance of religion work, even when it isn't Jews.

I really wish this stupid, vapid phrase would die. At the very least, I would have hoped no one would use it here, let alone as a standalone, low-effort response.

Incorrect. Israel is interesting opposite case.

In theory I agree, but I think one needs to ask how Israel got around the problem. Because I'm not so sure it's that easy for other groups to copy, at least right away.

Here's my hypothesis: Lots of factors cause TFR to drop, but the main factors are modernity and urbanization. Certainly it's easy to see why these would be expected to be significant factors. Before the industrial revolution, most people worked in agriculture and lived in rural areas. In such areas, arguably there was a direct financial incentive to reproduce: More children meant more free help on the farm. So arguably cultures developed which put a high value on fertility.

When industrialization comes in and people start moving to cities, there is significantly less incentive to reproduce and thus with modernity fertility predictably falls.

Arguably, modernity and urbanization are analogous to putting antibiotics in the Petri dish. Yes, it will have an effect for a while but eventually the effect wears off as you select for resistance to the antibiotic.

Arguably, Jewish people were one of the first, and perhaps the first, population to get hit with the antibiotic effects of urbanization. Even in pre-industrial Europe and the Middle East, Jews were heavily concentrated in cities. So it's reasonable to think that Jews have a head start on developing cultural and/or genetic resistance to the fertility-depressing effects of urbanization compared to other groups.

Which is why it may not be so easy for other groups to just copy Israel. Possibly those other groups are 100 years behind.

I think the example of Jews here is complicated because of events last century: "there are fewer Jews than there should be" is a sentiment that I've heard expressed multiple times even as an outsider, and seems broadly believed in the community (willing to hear closer accounts, if anyone wants to offer). That's a hugely pronatalist meme that probably outweighs things like urbanism and education.

It's unclear that there would be such a consensus on the issue without that shared generational trauma.

Both you and @omw_68 are wrong, for the simple reason that non-Israeli Jews have very low fertility. On the other hand, the nonzionism hypothesis- that Israeli society is set up so that everyone is trying to imitate a higher fertility group, even if indirectly- passes the immediate smell test.

The answer is women's education reduces women's fertility, and there's no real way around this problem.

Incorrect. Israel is interesting opposite case.

The best data I could find is a decade and a half out of date, so I'd be happy to be corrected by something newer, but the data there is not showing any opposite effect, just weaker and more restricted effects. TFR of older (40-44) Israeli women who have graduated college is about the same as those who only graduated high school, but both are significantly less than that of those who didn't finish high school.

Your one counterexample is not going to disprove all the overwhelming other evidence of the trend. It's one outlier amid a sea of data points all pointing the same direction.

for instance education may work indirectly - not indoctrination or that it educates women not to have children

I suppose you could combine education with indoctrination so that you don't lose the fertility drop of educating women, but I doubt it, and certainly no one is trying.

In fact fertility has famous U shape as low income uneducated women have more children than middle class women

Yes, I know, that's the problem in itself: education reduces fertility. There's never going to be enough rich women to make up the decreases at the lower ends, so the phantom right side of the U is just that: a ghost. If you scaled the graph by people, and not fertility per capita, then the U would disappear.

As women spend the most fertile years at school and then they work to wipe out debt,

Isn't that a distinctly Anglo problem? I suppose continental Europe also has private schools, but that's not what everyone is aiming for, and I've never heard of public-university-educated women being more fertile.

Not necessarily. There is often implicit understanding that after school you have to develop your carrier. Why study law or medicine when you then go straight toward part-time work and childcare? You will have gap in your CV and your opportunity may be lost forever as your social network moves on. It is a trap of school, carrier, maybe some real estate and material security. It is not only after 30 where some women feel secure to search for relationships, while others select to be childless to pursue their career more - it is not as if the treadmill stops after 5 or 10 years.

This is inherently male behavior, with huge caveat that men historically did that in families. Men could work 12 hours a day while their wife was at home with kids even when husband was 20. For women it is possible only if childless or with immense pressure and/or external help. The reverse situation where high powered attorney returns to work at 26 with her toddlers at home with her husband is exceptionally rare. It is not how things work, men and women are not interchangeable.

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