Hayek Program Podcast · Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Women and Policy — Why are Fertility Rates so Low?

·1 hr 23 min·4 clips

Pakaluk says the women she interviewed could name clear reasons for five-child families that were not simple anti-contraception stories.

1. Hayek Program Podcast centers on Women and Policy — Why are Fertility Rates so Low? 2. Katherine Pakaluk, Director of Political Economy and Associate Professor at Catholic University of America, joins the conversation because her book Hannah's Children examines women with five or more children. 3. The episode asks why the “birth dearth” matters and what women’s choices reveal about fertility decline. 4. Pakaluk describes the historical drop in expected births from about eight around 1800 to about four by 1900 and about two by 2000. 5. She says the term “birth dearth” comes from Ben Wattenberg’s 1987 book Birth Dearth at the American Enterprise Institute. 6. Pakaluk argues that sub-replacement fertility means a population does not replace itself and can eventually shrink. 7. She says shrinking population can make sustained economic growth harder and can produce political instability. 8. She adds that shrinking nations may develop more hostility toward strangers and may later compete for immigrants. 9. Pakaluk also says smaller families can mean fewer brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins in daily life. 10. She links that family-size change to a weaker sense of social connection in some settings. 11. Pakaluk explains that her own six children in graduate school pushed her to think differently about long-run human action. 12. She says twelve years in graduate school let her watch trends in economic research come and go. 13. She contrasts local causal inference work with the longer-term questions raised by history and narrative. 14. She says quantitative methods are useful for local effects but weaker for explaining lasting changes in family form. 15. Pakaluk defends theory by arguing that economics needs rules and principles about purposeful human action. 16. She compares that view to the claim that people are not like trees or rocks and cannot be studied without assumptions about nature. 17. The interview style is conversational and cumulative, with the host asking follow-up questions on methods, Austrian economics, and religion. 18. Pakaluk’s tone is reflective and explanatory, with frequent references to Harvard, Catholic University, Hayek, Mises, Buchanan, and Julian Simon. 19. Listeners interested in fertility, economics, religion, and family decisions will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a short, purely data-driven demographics summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A careful look at low births that favors agency and nuance over flat stereotypes.

The episode treats low births as a global pattern and uses Dr. Katherine Pakalik's research to unsettle the usual stories about women, religion, and family pressure.

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Why you'd press play

A slow, sharp look at lower-birth narratives and the women who complicate them.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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