Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Church attendance and fertility cross-nationally

I was able to get total fertility rate (TFR) estimates from the CIA World Factbook. I subtracted 2.1 from each score--the rate necessary to keep a country's population stable. Positive scores reflect the extent to which a society is growing. Negative scores show the degree to which a society is dying.

I correlated this measure with the percent of the population that attends church weekly (World Values Survey). For 91 countries, it is .68--a very strong relationship. Societies with low numbers of people going to church are very likely to be dying.

By the way, I noticed that few countries are really close to 2.1. Societies tend to be either growing or dying.

9 comments:

  1. Wow. That is a huge correlation. Those who hope that God will finally be extinguished any day now are missing the forest for the trees. It seems nations and cultures that push God out are themselves snuffed out.

    Opiate of the masses? Actually quite literally the lifeblood of the masses.

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  2. "Say I want population control.
    What ideology should I promote?"

    Two parts:
    (a) No sex outside of wedlock.
    (b) You can't get married until you have your shiz together.

    This was the Northern European system for many hundreds of years during the last millenium. It has the benefit of being eugenic.

    The modern philosophies of population control, atheism and feminism are very dysgenic because they infect primarily smart people.

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  3. I wouldn't say "dying"; rather, they are transitioning.

    In the Eastern European countries, slow-breeders are giving way to fast-breeders, which will eventually replenish their dwindling populations.

    In the Western European countries and in North America, the White fraction is decreasing in favor of immigrant groups.

    And one minor quibble: the replacement level is higher in impoverished countries thanks to the higher mortality rate.

    Of course, the issue of population replacement in the West is of concern, but I don't think we have to fear any high-IQ nationalities "dying" off anytime soon.

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  4. @Jayman, you say
    "In the Western European countries and in North America, the White fraction is decreasing in favor of immigrant groups."

    What you are talking about is something like Brazil. American and European nations are worldwide leaders in many things. If the best in the world is something like Brazil, you are looking at a vastly diminished future, more than even raw numbers would predict. In Brazil, the high IQ elite does not concern itself with progress and scientific advancement, it concerns itself with its own safety and maintaining its space.

    That's not even the worst of it:
    The worst of it consisted of the masses murdering the higher IQ productive classes. This was no aberration. This occurred over and over in many nations of the atheistic left, as Communism racked up 100 million kills.

    Although things can seem grim at times, Europeans have been known to fight back, when they have no other options.
    http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hayha.html

    "The Winter War ended as a victory for Finland. The Red Army captured a mere 22,000 square miles of territory and lost close to one million men, more than forty times the number of Finnish casualties. Simo Häyhä received five medals for valour, including the prestigious Kollaa Cross, and was express-promoted from corporal to second lieutenant. Throughout the war, Häyhä raked in a total of 505 confirmed sniper kills (in some sources he is credited with 542). On top of this, he also mowed down two hundred men with a Suomi 9mm submachine gun, bringing his total kill count to over 700 men in under 100 days. "

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  5. @Jayman, I really feel like leftism is a serious obstacle to solving the present problems.

    Leftism in America is all about helping people avoid the consequences of their own actions, through welfare.

    And you have shown recently on your blog that fertility among blacks, the biggest consumers of welfare on a per capita basis, is highly dysgenic in relation to IQ.

    Perhaps the end result if the leftist elite figures out what is going on, would be coerciveness regarding fertility. Which could work on one hand at the cost of our humanity on the other.

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  6. The solution that will probably be arrived at in many places will be a deal... you can get lots of welfare, if you agree to long-term birth control. It infantilizes people but it would work and leaves people free to make their own choices.

    It is the only simple solution I can think of, and it will surely come when the great nations start to be under true duress.

    The other solution is that the nation simply goes bust in a big way from leftist welfare, Soviet Union style, and then the welfare state in an instant is gone. This is not unrealistic as America is presently funded largely by foreign borrowings almost entirely from nations that are amid demographic collapse, with no resolution in sight.

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  7. @Dan:

    Fortunately, at the moment, we are a long way off from catastrophe, and it could be headed off if we wanted to try. That's different from saying that we will, though, unfortunately.

    Coercive methods probably aren't actually necessary. Making long-term contraception available and cleverly marketing it, along with some welfare reform (to reward being child-free, as opposed to having broods of children)—coupled with serious immigration reform (primarily, severely curtailing the number of immigrants) could do the trick.

    I don't think the problem is HBD-denial per se. That stops us from talking about HBD sure, but other problems, such as with even high-IQ immigration remains. I suspect that problems implementing many necessary changes in this and other spheres stem from corporatism. For example, immigrants, even smart ones, benefit the rich at the expense of the average American, by apparently depressing wages and allowing the rich to keep the spoils of the economy to themselves. I think that this is why things are slow to change on this front; the powers that be see nothing in it for them.

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  8. Anonymous8:28 PM

    "The other solution is that the nation simply goes bust in a big way from leftist welfare, Soviet Union style, and then the welfare state in an instant is gone."

    No, it is too much to bear. Please tell me that Uncle Sam will move hell or high water to make sure we keep giving poor women birth control. You can take away their food stamps and their Section 8, but please don't take away their pills or shot.

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  9. @Jayman, I really feel like leftism is a serious obstacle to solving the present problems. Leftism in America is all about helping people avoid the consequences of their own actions, through welfare. And you have shown recently on your blog that fertility among blacks, the biggest consumers of welfare on a per capita basis, is highly dysgenic in relation to IQ. Perhaps the end result if the leftist elite figures out what is going on, would be coerciveness regarding fertility. Which could work on one hand at the cost of our humanity on the other.

    ReplyDelete

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