Jim’s Mowing founder says Australia’s birth rate is dropping because we’re getting too much dopamine – as he reveals his radical plan to fix it
Multimillionaire businessman Jim Penman is seeking to develop a drug he has dubbed ‘anti-cocaine’ to fix Australia’s low birth rate.
Penman – who founded and built Jim’s Mowing while also juggling being a father to ten children across multiple marriages – has long believed Australia’s waning birth rate is due to a rise in ‘dopamine’ being found outside the traditional family unit.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics in August this year released fertility data for 2024 and found Australia’s birth rate had dropped to its lowest level on record, with just 1.48 births recorded per woman.
The total fertility rate is the average number of children an Australian woman is expected to have between the ages of 15 and 49.
A slight increase was recorded to 1.69 in 2021, following Covid lockdowns, but levels fell every year after, hitting 1.49 in 2023.
Australia’s birth rate has been below the replacement level of 2.1 since the mid 1970s.
Back in his his university days, Penman became convinced this fall in births was the result of the rising availability of gambling, alcohol, drugs and junk food.
He believed the quick ‘dopamine rush’ from the vices made the hard but rewarding work of marriages, children and family relationships ‘less stimulating’.
Jim Penman (centre), the successful founder of Jim’s Mowing, also juggled being father to ten children across multiple marriages. He says Australians are suffering from excess dopamine
Penman (above) is funding the development of a drug ‘like an anti-cocaine’ to tackle the excess dopamine he believes is responsible for declining birth rates
He is funding research into a drug that would dull it.
‘It [vices] floods the brain with dopamine, which makes the brain less sensitive to dopamine … similar to what happens when you take cocaine or other drugs,’ he said, News.com.au reported.
Ahead of his bid for the seat of Northcote in Victoria’s upcoming state election, Penman revealed his ‘philanthropic’ private research organisation, Epigenes, is working to create a drug ‘like an anti-cocaine’.
‘On an individual level we need to get rid of these dopamine surges causing the problems – sex, porn, social media, gambling.’
Penman argues that while they can’t be removed from the world, they could be managed on an individual level.
‘A more realistic solution is to develop treatments, so things like family and children become more attractive.
‘If you could develop such a treatment, it would have dramatic consequences for anxiety, depression, alcoholism.’
Epigenes is researching the potential for Penman’s drug in partnership with La Trobe University.
However, Dr Liz Allen, a demographer at Australian National University, was quick to dismiss Penman’s claims that the birth rate decline was due to a dopamine overload.
‘Let’s be clear here, Australians are not foregoing children because they are hedonistic and selfish,’ she told 7News.
Penman (above) believes the falling birth rate is because Australians are finding dopamine outside the family unit – including in gambling, junk food, pornography and social media
‘Declining total fertility rates cannot be pinned down to one thing.’
Instead, she pointed to larger socioeconomic issues.
She argued the growing cost of living, housing affordability and global instability was contributing to Australians having fewer children.
– READ MORE: Alan Kohler’s warning to Australia about declining birth rate
– READ MORE: Australia warned it needs more immigration to cope with crashing birth rate
