Would Taking Away Women’s Right to Own Property Solve the Fertility Crisis?

In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone dive into a fascinating Swedish study that reveals surprising insights about how winning the lottery impacts men and women differently when it comes to marriage and fertility. The study shows that men who win the lottery tend to marry and have more children, while women's fertility doesn't increase, and low-income women often get divorced. The conversation delves into the biological and social factors behind these trends, the importance of men and women working together in marriage, the perils of atomized child-rearing, and the role of income and status in shaping fertility decisions. Join them as they explore the implications of these findings for pronatalist policies and the future of the family.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Okay. I'm really excited. We're talking about this because I saw this and kind of was really surprised.

Malcolm Collins: It's a great graph in terms of providing information that is useful to the perinatalist movement. It's just one of those instances. Where the information is maybe not the information we'd prefer from a palatability

Simone Collins: perspective.

Yeah. And we have to, we have to hat tip. So I got this from Wyvert on Twitter who shared I'm reading his tweet, a remarkable and high quality Swedish study. If men win the lottery, they marry and have children. If women win the lottery, their fertility does not rise. Indeed, low income women get divorced.

You might think more resources means more kids. Yes, with men, not with women, which is fascinating. Totally fascinating.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: So I want to word this a different way because I don't know if you've fully conveyed it. When a man wins the lottery, whether he is poor or wealthy, he is much more likely to have [00:01:00] more kids and he stays with his partner typically.

When a woman wins the lottery, she both does not have more kids and if she is not wealthy, she will often leave her partner. So. From a pronatalist perspective, if you're thinking, where do you do cash handouts? Where do you put money? You do not want to give money to women,

Simone Collins: which is wild because that's where the cash handouts go.

The cash handouts. overwhelmingly go to mothers. When yeah, I, I, I, gosh I don't, I don't even know where to start.

You actually see this in a lot of the old documentation about the charity work being done in Africa, where they're like we're giving money to women because when women have money, they have fewer kids.

Simone Collins: I mean, first I appreciate the information that cash handouts don't work. I think it's very spicy. This idea that like, well, enormous cash handouts. Yeah. Enormous cash handouts. Let's, let's just give cash handouts to men, like men, you know, here's money to [00:02:00] raise kids. What would happen?

You know, let's talk about

Malcolm Collins: like maybe biologically or socially why this phenomenon is happening. Why do men have kids, but women leave their partners? I want to hear your hypothesis

Simone Collins: first. Well, I honestly, I think it's, you could call this trickle down pronatalism. So men. And I think you're very indicative of this, that when they think about having kids, they often kind of think, well, I'm just gonna marry someone and then she'll have and raise the kids, which is totally not what you do.

Obviously, Malcolm, like you are very hands on and raising our kids, but when you were younger. Just thought you were going to have a ton of kids and you weren't really concerned about like how you were going to raise them or how you were going to work that out. Just, you would be very successful and very wealthy and you'd have a lot of kids and it just kind of happens.

And I think a lot of women Turn to men for resources and see men as, as the, Source of resources and stability that enables them to feel very comfortable having kids, [00:03:00] whether or not they maintain a career, which is why I think many of these women who won the lottery left men because they had a different source of and a better source of resources.

So I think the interesting thing, the idea here with triple trickle down pronatalism is if you give more money to men and then They can attract more women and then have more kids because women are more attracted to the men or they're more likely to have

Malcolm Collins: kids. The question exactly. Okay. Okay. Why is it that women when they get more resources, don't just use the resources they have to have kids?

Why is it that they will only have A man's kids for resources.

Simone Collins: Oh I think it's

Malcolm Collins: like, it doesn't make sense what you're saying.

Simone Collins: No, I, no, I I'm bad at articulating things, but I think it's a status thing. Women women seem to be more comfortable having kids when they are pair bonded with a partner who is higher in status than them. Who appears to be the source of resources.

A woman is made. Less [00:04:00] likely to take

Malcolm Collins: a maternal that's a really interesting point you just made

Simone Collins: She's less likely to take a maternal role in life if she sees an increase in appreciation in her status through wealth Because now suddenly the number of bachelors who are actually eligible to her because she has to marry up That's like a very female trait is, is just extremely low.

So now there are fewer men that she can pair bond with. There are fewer men she can marry, and it's going to be really hard for her to settle down with someone and have kids. Whereas with a man suddenly he has a ton more options because now there are more women that who will see him as equal or higher status to them.

Malcolm Collins: So I have a really interesting piece of evidence here that might bolster what you're saying. So my brother's spouse has always said that her goal in her career is to bolster my brother, to make him look, you know, like a bigger deal than, than he might otherwise be. Because I often ask, like, you're doing most of the work.

You have most of the credentials here. Why is he always really.

Simone Collins: [00:05:00] Equal credentials from,

Malcolm Collins: well, they have equal credit. So, so a bit of background here. Both my brother and his wife have MBAs from Stanford. Both of them have degrees undergraduate degrees from St. Andrews, which is a university in the UK. But she is, I'm just going to be honest here.

She's harder working than he is, and more aggressive than he is. Yet, she always frames him as running everything. And I have asked her about this before, and I was like, Why are you doing this? Like, why do you And you do this too, with me, Simone, to an extent.

Simone Collins: I think that's more about, like, gender dimorphism, and what men and women bring to the table.

Men bring Some stuff that doesn't look like man hours, you know, it's more like very, very, very strong.

Malcolm Collins: This is how you are justifying it to yourself. I understand. But if you are a man, you wouldn't say I, who I'm putting in more effort in man hours, is subordinate to you, who puts in less, you being me, who puts in less effort in man hours.

And I do, I genuinely do, you know I put less effort in man hours into everything that we run. Yeah, but

Simone Collins: you [00:06:00] put more value into everything

Malcolm Collins: we run. Well, and that's what you would need to say if you