Demographic Collapse is Inevitable—Population Growth Will Slow

When a society develops, its birth rates plummet. As more nations tap into the modern economy, birth rates will inevitably decline. Because the premise of most governments and economies relies on steady population growth, this demographic transition can cause serious damage.

A Hard Landing on Demographic Collapse Isn't Inevitable

While population growth will slow and populations will level off—and even maybe decrease—demographic transition need not pose an existential threat to national security, prosperity, reproductive autonomy, education, gender rights, and the future of low-birth-rate cultures.

Meaningful Intervention Now Makes All the Difference

Will social programs and cities collapse while entire cultures disappear? Or will our future be pluralistic, prosperous, and sustainable? Actions taken by key players—be they individual families or nations' governments—will determine the outcome.

We Fight for a Soft Landing on Demographic Collapse

As nations develop (when citizens earn an average of over $5,000 a year) birth rates fall below replacement rate. This is exacerbated by gender equality, education, and technology. Fertility rates are falling much faster than dominant social narratives imply. For example, at its current fertility rate (0.78), for every hundred South Koreans there will be 5.9 great grandchildren (the average fertility rate in the developed world is currently 1.56). In addition, the regions we use to supplement collapsing birth rates in countries like the US are themselves undergoing fertility collapse (with South America, Central America, and the Caribbean collectively falling below repopulation rate in 2019). 

Our Goal

The Pronatalist Foundation is working to find a way for prosperity, gender equality, education, and technology to coexist with stable populations. 

Population Ecology

If we view social ecosystems like ecological ecosystems, prosperity, gender equality, access to education, and technology (P.G.E.T.) are akin to exogenous pollutants, sterilizing the majority of cultures that are exposed to them. As is not the case with typical pollutants, we want to maintain and expand P.G.E.T., as we believe they contribute significantly to human flourishing. We must therefore foster a diverse array of cultures that can survive in the presence of these factors.
Just as an ecologist's goal is not to maximize the number of bunnies in the world, the Pronatalist Foundation's goal is not a forever-expanding human population. Rather, our goal is to try to help as much of the existing cultural ecosystem as possible pass through the filter created by P.G.E.T. and preserve the diverse, pluralistic cultural ecologies that have allowed our species to thrive. 

Social Experimentation

If existing social structures can't motivate people to have kids we will have to build new ones. To this end, we work with a variety of groups experimenting with new ways of building communities, new ways of developing cultures, and new forms of education.

Reproductive Technology

In the last 50 years, average human sperm concentrations dropped by 51.6 percent, and total sperm counts dropped by 62.3 percent, similar biological fertility collapse can be seen wherever one looks.
We work both to isolate the cause of this collapse as well as develop and expand access to technologies to circumvent it.

Policy Research

The most obvious policy interventions seem largely ineffective against fertility collapse from cash handouts to banning abortion or decreasing the cost of childcare. To that end we work to find non-intuitive policy interventions that have a real impact outside of pandering to one's base.

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