Many countries around the world have been faced with shrinking populations, resulting in major economies attempting to engineer higher birth rates. This practice is called pronatalism, which encourages the bearing of children with government support to create a higher birth rate. Those who push this practice often are those who fear that falling birth rates in developed countries will lead to the extinction of cultures, a crash of economies, and the collapse of civilization. However, high birth rates don’t necessarily mean that all of the world’s problems are fixed as it can cause resource depletion and environmental degradation. CSDE Affiliate Win Brown and his co-author Emily Klancher Merchant discuss in the article, “The problem with pronatalism: Pushing baby booms to boost economic growth amounts to a Ponzi scheme,” how it is notoriously hard to change birth rates, a new pronatalist movement, how pronatalism can be seen as a Ponzi scheme, government intervention in reproduction, and more. Read the article to learn more about the pronatalist movement.

CSDE Affiliate Crystal Hall and co-authors published the research article, “How academics and policymakers can collaborate effectively: Lessons from using behavioral science to improve U.S. federal government policies,” in Behavioral Science & Policy published by Sage Journals. Various public programs and services are administered by the U.S. government. Creating these programs requires an understanding of the psychological processes that influence behavior. The authors of this article state that, “policymakers may collaborate with academics who have expertise in behavioral science to generate ideas for improving existing programs, procedures, or policies; to test existing programs; or to design wholly new programs that address societal problems. Such collaborations also enable academics to test new or established theories in real-world settings.” In this article, the authors draw on their collective experience in the U.S. Office of Evaluation Sciences where they studied federal programs to outline the core issues that make research collaborations between academics and policymakers challenging. They also offer advice on how to make these partnerships productive and beneficial.

CSDE Affiliate Ann Bostrom and Former Evans Visiting Scholar Daniel Sloot published a research article in Energy Research & Social Science titled, “The role of framing in public support for direct air capture: A moral hazard survey experiment in the United States.” Dr. Sloot and Dr. Bostrom explain that the key to limiting global warming will likely require “removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeping it out of the atmosphere by sequestering it.” There is a crucial need for public support for the rapid upscaling of carbon removal and sequestration. However, there has been a concern that public support for these negative emissions technologies (NETs) will be impeded by the moral hazard that these NETs could compromise mitigation efforts and therefore should be avoided. Building on previous research, Sloot and Bostrom investigate the effects of four novel ways of framing the use of direct air capture (DAC), a form of carbon removal from the atmosphere that is currently of broad interest. Findings suggest concern about moral hazard is overrated. Read the rest of their article to learn more.