Nobody doubts demographic decline - they just don't trust the "solutions"

In December 2023, we brought together academics, founders, investors, and influencers to explore the scope of global demographic decline and its consequences.

When we first announced the conference, the response from many quarters was confusion.

Isn’t the world over-populated? What would be so bad about fewer people?

The issue of natalism was regarded as “fringe”. Many of the academics whom we asked to speak turned us down — they agreed with us that demographic decline was a problem, but said it was too professionally risky to take any public position on the birth rate.

So we decided to focus on why everyone should be concerned about this issue — right or left, male or female — regardless of where you live, or whether you personally want a family. If you have a 401k, a mortgage, a social security number, or a checking account, demographic decline will impact your life.

At NatalCon 2023, we discussed what we could observe directly:

• The impact of depopulation — locally, in cities like Detroit, or nationally, in places like South Korea

• The instability of highly-levered systems that depend on population growth (the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market)

• Extreme changes in public health indicators that affect fertility, including obesity, metabolic disorders, microplastic pollution, etc.

• Collapse in family formation, with attendant declines in fertility

We brought experts in demography, genetics, endocrinology, family law, history, psychology, and more, to explain how demographic decline is changing the world.

Since then, natalism has gone mainstream:

Mainstream media outlets have caught up to the idea that demographic collapse is a serious problem.

Figures like Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Tucker Carlson took an early stand on the radical idea that babies are good and families matter — and are now closely involved with the incoming presidential administration.

This April, Elon posted the introductory speech from NatalCon 2023, with the words: “If birth rates continue to plummet, human civilization will end.”

We’re winning the argument that the problem matters.

Virtually all experts who study demographic decline recognize that it will transform life and politics in the 21st century.

But policymakers and community leaders are stalled by the fact that we can’t agree on what is causing the problem, or which interventions would be effective, moral, and feasible.

In academic circles, studying the causes of demographic decline is still taboo.

The unspoken assumption is that falling fertility is the inevitable consequence of the Sexual Revolution and other progressive political conquests of the 20th century — which means that anyone raising concerns about fertility must be conniving to roll it all back.

For their part, conservative commentators often do basically blame it on the Sexual Revolution (or video games, or porn, or the dearth of Good Men), and do want to roll it all back. So any discussion of demographic decline in a standard partisan context is generally a tedious and unproductive argument about whose fault it is.

But neither side understands what is happening as well as they claim.

Demographic collapse in East Asia is difficult to explain as a straightforward artifact of feminism or contraception. (To say nothing of the fertility crisis in the Islamic Republic of Iran.)

On the other hand, if all we needed was a robust welfare state with free hospitals and daycares, Norway and Sweden would not be among the least fertile countries on earth.

We don’t believe it’s possible or desirable to “turn back the clock”, and we don’t believe it makes any sense to argue about whose fault it is — but the status quo is unsustainable, no matter what you believe.

The good news: people don’t need to be coerced to have kids.

The overwhelming majority of people, including young people, already want to have kids.

There are almost no countries on earth that would still have a demographic problem if everyone realized their desired fertility.

We just need to help more people to build the families they want — which means we have to understand what is in the way.

So NatalCon 2025 will focus on finding the root causes of demographic decline, and converting that knowledge into practical guidance.

We’ve deepened our bench of experts, from a broader range of disciplines and ideological perspectives. We’ve built a stronger coalition of policymakers, investors, and influencers.

We’re in position to ask real questions and organize real research to end the ideological blame game and figure out what works.

Demographic decline will be as significant in the 2030s as AI has been in the 2020s — there is no domain of human life that it will not touch.

And just like AI, the people who see the future coming will be ready to take the lead in their families, communities, and nations.

The conversation is happening at NatalCon.

You should be here if:

• You want to meet values-aligned individuals and families

• You want to find solutions to the derangement of modern dating

• You want to create good conditions for your children to have children

• You want to protect your community’s reproductive and endocrine health

• You want to find partners or investors for a natalist business or policy initiative

• You want to preserve and grow wealth under conditions of demographic decline

Your ticket includes:

• Pre-event virtual AMA/webinar with selected speakers

• Dinner & symposium Friday March 28th at the Bullock Museum of Texas History

• Full-day conference Saturday March 29th with breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the AT&T Conference Center (across the street from the Bullock Museum)

• Access to (opt-in) attendee directory

• Premium access to newsletters and digital copies of books authored by our speakers, including Domestic Extremist by Peachy Keenan, The Pragmatist’s Guide series by Malcolm and Simone Collins, Creating Future People by Jonny Anomaly, and more

​Use offer code NATALISM at checkout for 10% off your ticket.

See you in Austin.