Episode Details

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