Episode Details

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the surprising reality of fertility rates across Latin America. Discover why official numbers from organizations like the UN may be misleading, how actual birth rates compare country by country, and what these trends mean for the future of the region and beyond. The discussion covers demographic data, cultural factors, religious influences, and the broader implications for global population trends. Whether you’re interested in demographics, policy, or just want to understand the real story behind the headlines, this episode is packed with insights and data.

Malcolm Collins : [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about something that I accidentally stumbled into while I was trying to grab fertility rates for a reporter.

And so the reporter comes to me and they go you know, we, we were talking about this with Telemundo, we were talking about the fertility rates across Latin America, and I Googled because I remembered that Columbia, for example, had a very low fertility rate. Yeah. The, the measured rate right now, and I’ll put the Wikipedia page where it has like the government stats on this, okay.

Is 1.0 6 6 6 6 7. That’s, that’s basically half this population every generation for

Simone Collins: comparison, UK’s around 1.5 US is around 1.6. That is.

Malcolm Collins : Bad. You got 1.07 around it. Ooh. And so I googled it and the Google result came back was 1.6. That’s a, that’s a, a decimal point error. That’s, that is enormous error.

And I was like, where the hell is this number coming from? I did some digging [00:01:00] and it soon became, please don’t see the un, it was coming from the un. No, no. And so I asked an ai, I’m like, how is the UN getting this number? Whereas Wikipedia and Columbia is getting this number.

Mm-hmm.

And it explained to me the difference in methodology.

It said. Oh, the number that you are looking at, the 1.06 number, that’s the measured fertility rate in Columbia. The number that the UN is reporting is the number that they predict should be the fertility rate of f

Simone Collins: It’s like our sun, Octavian and, and some math problems we give them where we’re like, Hey, what’s X plus x?

And, and he gives us a number and we’re like, no, no, no, it’s, it’s seven. And he’s like, no. It’s 13 because he said it was 13. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins : He understands. That is the UN right now. Oh. And so what we’re gonna be going over in this is because then I was like, how bad is this OVERREPORTING number in terms of the data that a lot of people are getting.

So we went through the official sources Wikipedia, where they’re citing the [00:02:00] country’s own demographic statistics.

Yeah.

Across Latin Americans. We’re gonna go across Latin American countries right now.

Okay.

Which by the way. If you average them come out to a TFR by, by their relative populations below the US’ TFR already.

Yeah. And I point out this isn’t just a Latin American problem. This is a Latin American problem in the United States. The state or territory was the lowest fertility rate, and by the way, it’s not even close. Puerto Rico, which has a fertility rate of only 0.9. All right. That is

Simone Collins: so bad. It’s so bad.

Malcolm Collins : No, I have mentioned this quote before, but I have to mention this quote here ‘cause it’s so important. There’s a Latin American demographer who is a professor at Penn. You know, Ivy League Penn. Very nice, fancy school,

Simone Collins: respected, reputable.

Malcolm Collins : Actually, we should reach out to this guy about having him on the show, if you can make a note of that.

Okay. Because he’s rig