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Why Christians Don't Have Babies in East Asia
In this episode, the hosts engage in a controversial discussion that questions why Christianity fails to increase fertility rates among Asian populations. They dive deep into surprising statistics comparing fertility rates across religions in various countries like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, noting a stark contrast between Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and even unaffiliated beliefs. The conversation explores hypotheses such as the challenges created by being a minority religion, the influence of Western modern values, and the aesthetics of Christianity in East Asia. They also examine how religious communities have evolved over time to match or mismatch with traditional cultures, ultimately investigating whether these cultural dynamics affect birth rates. Additional discussions touch upon unique cultural aesthetics, such as anime and other media inspired by foreign religious imagery, and intriguing projects related to improving pronatalist efforts in South Korea.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an interesting and controversial discussion focused on the question of why doesn't Christianity work for Asians?
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: specifically when I say why doesn't it work here, I mean at increasing fertility rates. Because these numbers are going to shock you and I'm going to lead right in with the numbers. So I think a lot of people know that, okay, you're a Christian, you're a conservative Christian. You're going to have more kids if you're in a Western country, if you're in Europe, something like that.
Right. You know, this is a broadly known thing about fertility rates and it's also broadly known that Buddhism has the lowest fertility rate of all of the religious systems. Right. Right. Also
Simone Collins: like the end game of Buddhism is like, Genocidal conscious beings! Well,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, we'll
Simone Collins: get into why
Malcolm Collins: Buddhism has a low fertility rate, but I think the on the ground fertility rates of these religions may surprise you, And another thing you'll, you'll note here, surprisingly, is generally, as we've noted, if you are in [00:01:00] Europe or you are in the United States, if you are an average Catholic, you are going to have a lower fertility rate than the average Protestant at the same level of income.
Pretty dramatically lower, you can see our episode on this. But! It's the exact opposite in Asian population. So we'll also be talking about this because Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate there. So if you go to Japan, if you are a Protestant when this sample with cash, you had an average fertility rate of two, but if you were a Buddhist, you had an average fertility rate of 2.
1. Now keep in mind, this is an older sample, so the numbers are much lower now, but this is, you know, when this, this is the data I have, okay? So if you were a Buddhist in Japan, you had a higher fertility rate than if you were a Protestant. Now, if you were, if you were a Catholic, you'd be converted to a fertility rate of 2.
5. What is also interesting here is that in Japan, the no religion was two and the protestant was two. So no religion and protestant had the same fertility rate at this time in Japan. Korean, if [00:02:00] you were a protestant, you had a fertility rate of 1. 99. If you were a Buddhist, you had a fertility rate of 2.
35. That's so wild! Why? What? Yeah, and if you have no religion, it's 2. 96, so about the same as Protestant. Catholics here are actually, in Korea, are beaten by Buddhists. In Korea, the Catholic fertility rate is 2. 32, where the Buddhist is 2. 35.
Now let's go to Taiwan here, alright? In Taiwan, if you're a Protestant, you have a fertility rate of 2.
5. This is the one where they have a big jump o
Published on 10 months, 1 week ago