In 1972, 27% of men and 21% of women reported having no children. That’s a difference of 6%.

In 2022, 34% of men and 28% of women reported having no children. That’s a difference of… 6%.

This data comes from the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago.

If you know all the redpill canon about 80/20 and enjoying the decline, you might expect that the gap between childless men and childless women in the west would have widened across a 50 year span as the top 20% of men build their harems, and yet it’s remained relatively stable.

The blackpillers always take it a leap forward with the narrative that if you’re not in the top 5% of men “it’s over bro” but if we’re using reproductive success as a stand-in for sexual success (I understand they’re not 1:1) it sounds like you don’t necessarily need to be in the top 20% of men to reproduce, let alone the top 5%. You just need to not be in the bottom 20.

On the other hand, a 2018 survey recorded that 55% of millennial women and 40% of millennial men recorded having at least one child, for a difference of 15%.

So which do you think is the case:

  1. That there’s too much noise in the overall GSS data and that a greater share of women are reproducing with a smaller share of men

  2. Or that this snapshot of millennials is skewed by the fact that they’re still in their reproductive years, and that women tend to have children younger than men, just like they marry younger than men do.