Are We Breeding Ourselves Into Cognitive Decline?
The uncomfortable truth about fertility, intelligence, and our future
I’ve spent the last few months digging into why everything feels harder.
Why collaboration feels sluggish.
Why execution breaks down.
Why otherwise simple processes—customer service, onboarding, task handoff—now require three times as many reminders, check-ins, and hand-holding than they used to.
At first, I thought it was just post-pandemic brain fog, or maybe burnout on my end.
But then I started looking at the data.
IQ scores are dropping. Across developed nations. Across demographics. Across generations.
And while the world screams about screen time and schools (fair), there’s another variable almost no one wants to touch:
Who’s having kids. And how many.
Intelligence and Fertility: The Data Doesn’t Lie
This isn’t speculation. It’s a statistically documented phenomenon:
- Higher IQ individuals have fewer children.
- Lower IQ individuals have more.
Consistently. Across countries. Across decades.
A 2008 study by Shatz found a strong negative correlation between national IQ and fertility rates. Nations with higher average cognitive ability tend to have smaller families. Those with lower average IQs reproduce at significantly higher rates.
[source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000244]
Domestically, Retherford and Sewell’s landmark U.S. study found the same pattern, with higher-IQ individuals delaying or reducing reproduction—often because of education, career, or financial tradeoffs.
[source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-genetics/article/how-intelligence-affects-fertility-30-years-on-retherford-and-sewell-revisited-with-polygenic-scores-and-numbers-of-grandchildren/AB8EF68EE05C8DFD0A1C424B4FF7BC1F]
And now? Polygenic data confirms it: genes associated with higher cognitive ability are under negative selection pressure in most developed societies.
Let’s Talk About Incentives
This isn’t a morality issue. It’s a systems issue.
The truth is: we’ve made reproduction easier and more accessible for the least cognitively equipped to raise high-functioning kids—and harder and more costly for the people best equipped to raise them.
- Higher-IQ individuals work more hours, face more career pressure, and often delay reproduction until it’s biologically harder or financially unsustainable.
- Meanwhile, support systems that are essential for safety and equity (housing vouchers, welfare, healthcare subsidies) can unintentionally remove friction from early or repeated reproduction in under-resourced, low-IQ populations.
That’s not a critique of individual families.
It’s a critique of the ecosystem we’ve built.
One that often punishes excellence with burnout and rewards dysfunction with dependency.
Nature, Meet Nurture
Yes, IQ is partially genetic. But it’s also shaped by:
- Nutrition (hello, Red 40 and ultra-processed everything)
- Early language exposure
- Physical activity
- Emotional safety
- Educational quality
But if the environmental inputs are deteriorating and the heritable cognitive pool is shifting downward, what do we think happens over time?
Spoiler: not good things.
Why No One Talks About This
Because it sounds elitist.
Because people confuse pattern recognition with prejudice.
Because any mention of intelligence and reproduction in the same sentence conjures the ghosts of eugenics.
But that’s not what this is.
This is data. Demographics. Math.
And if we don’t have the stomach to talk about it now, we’ll be forced to answer for it later—when innovation stalls, systems collapse, and most people can’t navigate the very tech-driven world we’ve built around them.
What Do We Do With This?
We stop pretending the issue isn’t real.
- We restructure incentives so having children isn’t financially suicidal for high-functioning families
- We invest in early childhood development, not just reactive support
- We talk honestly about what kind of minds will be needed in an AI-dominated world
- And we stop vilifying intelligence as a privilege, when it’s actually a survival asset—for all of us
Final Thought
IQ isn’t a measure of human worth.
But it is a measure of something.
And if we want a future built by capable, creative, problem-solving humans, we need to protect the conditions that create those minds—and rethink the systems that are quietly selecting against them.
Because evolution doesn’t care about fairness.
It responds to inputs.
And right now, ours are telling the wrong story.
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