If you want to attribute the variance in some trait in a population to variance in genetics then you must measure the heritability of the trait in question. Otherwise you are musing over a black box. Countless differences in environment could ultimately lead to roughly the same fertility rate overall. This may seem unlikely to you, but it is no more unlikely than the variance in a trait as social and complex as fertility being entirely decided by genes.
I think there is something in your theory that end of atranged marriage and rose of individual mating choice among Asians has left them in an 'evolutionary mismatch'.
I noted to myself once that Iranian chaps are physically unattractive. Maybe it's a gene-culture thing that arose because they didn't have to compete for females on basis of looks. East Asian men are handsomer I guess but maybe something related obtains with them at some level: they can't attract women in open market because they haven't got the goods physically.
I have read that Muslim birthrates among *some* groups (not pakis) in the West are starting to decline (maybe along with decline of arranged marriage?). If they really start to tank it might serve to support your theory about effect of free marriage choice on east asian fertility.
It would be nice if you could get the stats of the fertility of white men-asian women vs Asian man-white women marriages/couples to check your theory. And also any other combinations of races would be interesting too.
An interesting theory, but seems at best very incomplete and at worst very misleading. East Asians were reproducing a lot more in the not too distant past. Age of marriage for East Asians is now terrible. They are too busy getting their multiple degrees and then trying to save up something for a house (nearly impossible without parental support). Get these women married in their early 20s with their own home and they will have multiple kids. Arranged marriages (where parents and other matchmaker types think about the match very carefully and usually kids have some sort of veto right) have worked pretty well historically.
Mike at Imperium Press on substack has written on this topic of Asian fertility and he has an interesting theory that it comes down to them being exposed to fully fledged modern liberalism in a very compressed time frame, which, like a person with no antibodies being exposed to a deadly disease, is ravaging them. What liberalism did to their fertility rates it is just starting to do in the Muslim and African worlds. Anecdotally, it seems so far that the more advanced the liberalism an unexposed society is exposed to, the harder and quicker the resulting fertility collapse.
How does that explain China though? They’ve had a birthrate collapse in similar proportion. Also it doesn’t explain why South Korea is the worst. They had a full fledged military dictatorship for a lot of the post-War era.
Ditto - both countries were exposed to advanced liberalism starting fairly late, in the 1980s, and according to the theory that’s why the fertility collapse has been so rapid.
Other possibilities: both countries are very densely populated. China also had the one child policy in place for a while.
Despite having the 2 child policies, no one is still reproducing. China is also arguably at its most prosperous and yet the birthrate is worse than that of Japan.
Asian reproductiveness relies on things like footbindings and in certain places, multiple spouses.
We don't even worship having plenty of children in Asian. Asians worship money and degrees. It's because parents in Asia see children as retirement funds. It's why Asians emphasis having sons and ruthlessly train them to be good test takers. 500 years ago, it was about succeeding in Imperial Exams. Now its getting an engineering degree.
The wife maybe wants children, but not the husband or the parents. They want money.
Brother, American Asians are nothing like Asians from Asia. I lived in Asia for 3 years. American Asians are completely Americanized. The reasons for their low fertility are totally different than reasons in America, e.g. everyone cramming themselves into Tokyo and Seoul and leaving no space for families. Also their elitist college culture. You cannot get a job that provides money to raise a family unless you graduate a top uni.
The OKcupid data is not a good reference. Many niche ethnic dating apps for people looking to date in their own community, so the interpretation is distorted.
Also, don't you think its a little bold to say East Asians hate each other and their families? Perhaps there are other factors at play here with declining birth rates? I suspect its mainly economics or maybe anime. Maybe you can check the birth rate from post WW2 to now and see when the decline started.
I know It seemed to have started around 1970 in Japan. Personally I think its urbanization. We know overcrowding, apartment blocks are terrible for fertility. Also I think urban life could disconnect you from nature, and disrupt the passing of religion.
I'm sure that urbanism is part of the problem. I live in rural/small town Japan. I see lots of 2 or 3 children families. You don't see them in Tokyo (which I visit moderately frequently)
>The OKcupid data is not a good reference. Many niche ethnic dating apps for people looking to date in their own community, so the interpretation is distorted.
Yes, this point isn't made often enough when people bring up this data. When you put together a sample of whites, at least some of whom are not really open to interracial dating, with a sample of people of other races who have been directly self-selected for an interest in dating whites, you can't assume this translates to the dynamics of interracial dating in the population as a whole.
Though I still think the East Asian female outmarriage rate speaks for itself. That's an independent and much more powerful confirmation of this point. Plus it aligns with common anecdotal experience. I'm much skeptical of the OKcupid data indicating that, for example, black women are more receptive to white men than black men. I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything, in data or in life, that would lead me to believe this.
Although this is an interesting and unique viewpoint, it would be hasty to attribute all of this to sociobiological factors, especially while relying on shaky data (like the OkCupid survey) and failing to engage with the prevailing explanations for the plummeting birthrates in Asian countries. Non-genetic explanations are far more plausible, including labor market inequality and uncertainty, a family-unfriendly work culture, the high cost of raising children in a competitive educational system, and gender-essentialist family organization.
The issue with the last factor is not that a gender-essentialist society intrinsically forbids high fertility—after all, many Islamic countries with high fertility rates adhere to gender-essentialist norms. Rather, it’s that East Asian societies occupy a peculiar position: they remain highly traditional while operating within economic institutions incompatible with gender-essentialism. Moreover, as this article notes, the rapid introduction of liberal ideology to East Asian societies has likely fostered significant intra-gender animosity.
The problem with most sociobiological hypotheses for behavior is that they are easy to propose but difficult to test. Reality also repels simplification. As Dostoevsky aptly observed, “Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow for clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification."
Thats a neat theory, but I have some questions. East asian fertility is very low indeed, but is that dramatically different from say Europe? Spain, Italy, Germany, all have lower fertility then Japan, in the case of Spain it is around 1.1. All these countries have a substantial boost from millions of muslisms and sub-saharans. Also all these countries sit squarely within the Hajnal line.
America already has a group with rock-bottom fertility levels, high outbreeding (70% according to Pew) and a substantial edge above regular whites IQ-wise: Ashkenazis. They also are a solid Democrat block. I dont see how they fit the general theory. While ghettoized for most of their History, within their community there is no evidence of any east-asian tier forced marriage trend.
There is certainly more to be said, but all in all the genetic argument for fertility doesnt seem to work outside of east-asians, which makes it sound as a sort of "just-so-story". Additional empirical evidence is clearly needed to answer this hypothesis.
On a final note, there also seems to be a tad much hyperbole. It is clear the so called "East Asian Question" mirrors quite closely with the aforementioned ashkes. If anything east asians seem even less politicaly mobilized, certainly less moneyed and lack demographic impetus. Can you offer a vision of the worst case scenario? Abolishing DIE on admissions, replacing blacks and hispanics for asians? San Francisco becoming somehow more leftwing? I should say I dont see all asians equally though, I do think Indian migration will pose a big problem if unaddressed. The "East Asian Question" on the other hand, likely wont amount to much.
Perhaps, despite enormous cultural differences, the specific cultural elements affecting fertility in East Asia are also present in the West. All those countries are capitalists, materialist and have low religiosity.
Aside from the one reference to religion I don't see any attempt to normalize the data along religious lines. Orthodox Christians and Jews regularly have more children in the West than their liberal counterparts.
I've also seen suggestions that there's a heavy track of economic troubles that track with the collapse of fertility in Japan. Did you factor that in/out of the equation?
The suggestion of some sort of multi-generational genetic failure is... odd. Gives a vague distaste.
I find all of the handwringing about the upcoming population declines rather tedious and boring. After all, demographic trends can change and reverse course. There are more people in Japan than there were before the war, and the Chinese sure as heck aren’t about to go extinct.
Just reading this now. This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some, but one of the cures to population decline is going to be 15-25% Bantu admixture. Getting the commendable Bantu extraversion, libidinality, and improvisitionalism without the attendant dysfunctions is the trick.
I'm definitely curious to read the rest of this series. My default feeling toward East Asian immigrants is fairly positive since they are smart and make good allies against the affirmative action regime, but their tendency toward bootlicking is admittedly a concern. If it were up to me I would probably selectively admit only Asians who had more disagreeable and independent personalities, although I'm not sure how to measure that since we don't seem to have equivalent tests for traits other than IQ.
If you want to attribute the variance in some trait in a population to variance in genetics then you must measure the heritability of the trait in question. Otherwise you are musing over a black box. Countless differences in environment could ultimately lead to roughly the same fertility rate overall. This may seem unlikely to you, but it is no more unlikely than the variance in a trait as social and complex as fertility being entirely decided by genes.
I think there is something in your theory that end of atranged marriage and rose of individual mating choice among Asians has left them in an 'evolutionary mismatch'.
I noted to myself once that Iranian chaps are physically unattractive. Maybe it's a gene-culture thing that arose because they didn't have to compete for females on basis of looks. East Asian men are handsomer I guess but maybe something related obtains with them at some level: they can't attract women in open market because they haven't got the goods physically.
I have read that Muslim birthrates among *some* groups (not pakis) in the West are starting to decline (maybe along with decline of arranged marriage?). If they really start to tank it might serve to support your theory about effect of free marriage choice on east asian fertility.
No idea if the above is cogent I'm very tired
It would be nice if you could get the stats of the fertility of white men-asian women vs Asian man-white women marriages/couples to check your theory. And also any other combinations of races would be interesting too.
An interesting theory, but seems at best very incomplete and at worst very misleading. East Asians were reproducing a lot more in the not too distant past. Age of marriage for East Asians is now terrible. They are too busy getting their multiple degrees and then trying to save up something for a house (nearly impossible without parental support). Get these women married in their early 20s with their own home and they will have multiple kids. Arranged marriages (where parents and other matchmaker types think about the match very carefully and usually kids have some sort of veto right) have worked pretty well historically.
Mike at Imperium Press on substack has written on this topic of Asian fertility and he has an interesting theory that it comes down to them being exposed to fully fledged modern liberalism in a very compressed time frame, which, like a person with no antibodies being exposed to a deadly disease, is ravaging them. What liberalism did to their fertility rates it is just starting to do in the Muslim and African worlds. Anecdotally, it seems so far that the more advanced the liberalism an unexposed society is exposed to, the harder and quicker the resulting fertility collapse.
How does that explain China though? They’ve had a birthrate collapse in similar proportion. Also it doesn’t explain why South Korea is the worst. They had a full fledged military dictatorship for a lot of the post-War era.
Ditto - both countries were exposed to advanced liberalism starting fairly late, in the 1980s, and according to the theory that’s why the fertility collapse has been so rapid.
Other possibilities: both countries are very densely populated. China also had the one child policy in place for a while.
Despite having the 2 child policies, no one is still reproducing. China is also arguably at its most prosperous and yet the birthrate is worse than that of Japan.
Asian reproductiveness relies on things like footbindings and in certain places, multiple spouses.
We don't even worship having plenty of children in Asian. Asians worship money and degrees. It's because parents in Asia see children as retirement funds. It's why Asians emphasis having sons and ruthlessly train them to be good test takers. 500 years ago, it was about succeeding in Imperial Exams. Now its getting an engineering degree.
The wife maybe wants children, but not the husband or the parents. They want money.
It's probably why the WMAF thing is happening.
Brother, American Asians are nothing like Asians from Asia. I lived in Asia for 3 years. American Asians are completely Americanized. The reasons for their low fertility are totally different than reasons in America, e.g. everyone cramming themselves into Tokyo and Seoul and leaving no space for families. Also their elitist college culture. You cannot get a job that provides money to raise a family unless you graduate a top uni.
My country is going to sink. And they are too deluded, opportunistic and too damn Confucian to notice
Great essay. I've subscribed!
The OKcupid data is not a good reference. Many niche ethnic dating apps for people looking to date in their own community, so the interpretation is distorted.
Also, don't you think its a little bold to say East Asians hate each other and their families? Perhaps there are other factors at play here with declining birth rates? I suspect its mainly economics or maybe anime. Maybe you can check the birth rate from post WW2 to now and see when the decline started.
I know It seemed to have started around 1970 in Japan. Personally I think its urbanization. We know overcrowding, apartment blocks are terrible for fertility. Also I think urban life could disconnect you from nature, and disrupt the passing of religion.
I'm sure that urbanism is part of the problem. I live in rural/small town Japan. I see lots of 2 or 3 children families. You don't see them in Tokyo (which I visit moderately frequently)
>The OKcupid data is not a good reference. Many niche ethnic dating apps for people looking to date in their own community, so the interpretation is distorted.
Yes, this point isn't made often enough when people bring up this data. When you put together a sample of whites, at least some of whom are not really open to interracial dating, with a sample of people of other races who have been directly self-selected for an interest in dating whites, you can't assume this translates to the dynamics of interracial dating in the population as a whole.
Though I still think the East Asian female outmarriage rate speaks for itself. That's an independent and much more powerful confirmation of this point. Plus it aligns with common anecdotal experience. I'm much skeptical of the OKcupid data indicating that, for example, black women are more receptive to white men than black men. I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything, in data or in life, that would lead me to believe this.
Although this is an interesting and unique viewpoint, it would be hasty to attribute all of this to sociobiological factors, especially while relying on shaky data (like the OkCupid survey) and failing to engage with the prevailing explanations for the plummeting birthrates in Asian countries. Non-genetic explanations are far more plausible, including labor market inequality and uncertainty, a family-unfriendly work culture, the high cost of raising children in a competitive educational system, and gender-essentialist family organization.
The issue with the last factor is not that a gender-essentialist society intrinsically forbids high fertility—after all, many Islamic countries with high fertility rates adhere to gender-essentialist norms. Rather, it’s that East Asian societies occupy a peculiar position: they remain highly traditional while operating within economic institutions incompatible with gender-essentialism. Moreover, as this article notes, the rapid introduction of liberal ideology to East Asian societies has likely fostered significant intra-gender animosity.
The problem with most sociobiological hypotheses for behavior is that they are easy to propose but difficult to test. Reality also repels simplification. As Dostoevsky aptly observed, “Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow for clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification."
Thats a neat theory, but I have some questions. East asian fertility is very low indeed, but is that dramatically different from say Europe? Spain, Italy, Germany, all have lower fertility then Japan, in the case of Spain it is around 1.1. All these countries have a substantial boost from millions of muslisms and sub-saharans. Also all these countries sit squarely within the Hajnal line.
America already has a group with rock-bottom fertility levels, high outbreeding (70% according to Pew) and a substantial edge above regular whites IQ-wise: Ashkenazis. They also are a solid Democrat block. I dont see how they fit the general theory. While ghettoized for most of their History, within their community there is no evidence of any east-asian tier forced marriage trend.
There is certainly more to be said, but all in all the genetic argument for fertility doesnt seem to work outside of east-asians, which makes it sound as a sort of "just-so-story". Additional empirical evidence is clearly needed to answer this hypothesis.
On a final note, there also seems to be a tad much hyperbole. It is clear the so called "East Asian Question" mirrors quite closely with the aforementioned ashkes. If anything east asians seem even less politicaly mobilized, certainly less moneyed and lack demographic impetus. Can you offer a vision of the worst case scenario? Abolishing DIE on admissions, replacing blacks and hispanics for asians? San Francisco becoming somehow more leftwing? I should say I dont see all asians equally though, I do think Indian migration will pose a big problem if unaddressed. The "East Asian Question" on the other hand, likely wont amount to much.
Perhaps, despite enormous cultural differences, the specific cultural elements affecting fertility in East Asia are also present in the West. All those countries are capitalists, materialist and have low religiosity.
Aside from the one reference to religion I don't see any attempt to normalize the data along religious lines. Orthodox Christians and Jews regularly have more children in the West than their liberal counterparts.
I've also seen suggestions that there's a heavy track of economic troubles that track with the collapse of fertility in Japan. Did you factor that in/out of the equation?
The suggestion of some sort of multi-generational genetic failure is... odd. Gives a vague distaste.
"Conservatives" are mostly in love with Jews and recognize the right of Jews to continue to exist, but no similar right for whites.
Genes are a manifestation of the spirit.
I find all of the handwringing about the upcoming population declines rather tedious and boring. After all, demographic trends can change and reverse course. There are more people in Japan than there were before the war, and the Chinese sure as heck aren’t about to go extinct.
Just reading this now. This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some, but one of the cures to population decline is going to be 15-25% Bantu admixture. Getting the commendable Bantu extraversion, libidinality, and improvisitionalism without the attendant dysfunctions is the trick.
I'm definitely curious to read the rest of this series. My default feeling toward East Asian immigrants is fairly positive since they are smart and make good allies against the affirmative action regime, but their tendency toward bootlicking is admittedly a concern. If it were up to me I would probably selectively admit only Asians who had more disagreeable and independent personalities, although I'm not sure how to measure that since we don't seem to have equivalent tests for traits other than IQ.
Just accept the ones rejected by the Ivy League