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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

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Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#121

Post by mpol »

bhouston wrote: post #66
gizmo686 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations…

> Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? At some point yes we do. > There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. > here is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Onc…

> [...] enough humans to run an advanced society. [...] I think generational change is a major driver of innovation [...]

That is a good point, and I would like to add that currently most young people on this planet are not part of innovation. They have to make sure they get food and shelter. If in the future we solved poverty and everyone has access to good education and a relative safe life, many more young people can be innovative. One can dream ;)

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#122

Post by praptak »

mastax wrote: post #76
bhouston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did. I think that unfettered population growth would have caused massive issues -- you could say that global warming is one of its legacies. But there will be a whole host of new issues as we face this new challenge of moving towards sustainable fertility. I suspect we will see a lot of government intervention with incentives towards l…

Many European countries have extremely generous benefits for raising children, but it has been broadly ineffective at raising birth rates - with the possible exception of the Czech Republic. I agree though that governments are going to try, and they may find a way to do it. There was a good episode of The Weeds podcast, "Baby making vibes," which talked about this. Some of it is focused on the American political lens…

Are these benefits generous enough to make one feel safe with the crappy job market and the raising costs of living?

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#124

Post by zpeti »

mpol wrote: post #103
zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

The dark horse in this race will be climate changes. These predictions look natural, as extrapolation from the current situation with decreasing growth in population. I hope we (the politicians) don't hold tight to a strict plan, because if and when climate changes start to have a big impact, millions of people might have to move to different countries. These two things combined, decreasing population and massive mov…

Climate changes are way exaggerated. Almost all official predictions by IPCC etc, which aren’t addicted to clickbait, say that over the next few decades we will lose some GDP growth due to climate change. But world GDP will still grow. There won’t be starvation, or famine, etc.

This is not the world ending apocalyptic scenario that’s thrown around in the media.

Perhaps a few countries will become uninhabitable, but I find that unlikely too. The current cases of countries that because uninhabitable dealt with the issues (eg Netherlands) and are still thriving.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#125

Post by nynx »

ElectronShak wrote: post #119
nynx wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have a completely different mental framework than you and have more evidence-based ways of deciding whether something is good or not.

So much trust in mortals.....nah, I'll pass

I'm not sure what else you could trust in. Even if a christian god exists, the bible was written by humans, copied over and over by humans, and translated by humans.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#126

Post by BobbyJo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #77
BobbyJo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP == The room available for mobility.

Technically, social mobility is just relative income position changes over time, which applies to zero sum games. It does not imply that you can significantly increase your income. Social mobility is also an indirect measure of income distribution, and by proxy geographic compactness -- you can double your income and still have low mobility if the distribution is wide. A country can be "highly mobile" with flat GDP a…

I think it's more apt to consider mobility in absolute terms in this context as opposed to relative. Having a country with super high mobility but extremely low GDP is obviously not favorable.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#127

Post by powerapple »

zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

I am hoping that machine will finally be the new slave so humans can really be free! Maybe western countries population problem won't be a real issue before developing countries can be wealthy.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#128

Post by catlikesshrimp »

f00zz wrote: post #87
Callmenorm wrote: post #2

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

Yes, happened to Brazil. When you've squandered your demographic dividend without escaping poverty it's basically game over.

Reference? (What are you talking about?)

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#129

Post by vorpalhex »

jasonhansel wrote: post #93

> the first national family planning program An odd euphemism for a program that, in practice, involved forced sterilizations and eugenics: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790 According to Vox: "In 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the declaration of a national emergency. She seized dictatorial powers, imprisoned her political rivals, and embarked, with the help of her son Sanjay, on a…

If America can change the entire fertility of a country merely by the president getting frustrated, imagine what we could do when the entire legislature is upset!

Or the one comment is just used to defray blame, America does not have cosmic superpowers and India is in fact capable of making their own national decisions, seeing that they are a state.

Sanger like most historical characters is imperfect (so was LBJ) but it is a gross simplification of history to pitch them as the root cause.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#130

Post by mpol »

zpeti wrote: post #124
mpol wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark horse in this race will be climate changes. These predictions look natural, as extrapolation from the current situation with decreasing growth in population. I hope we (the politicians) don't hold tight to a strict plan, because if and when climate changes start to have a big impact, millions of people might have to move to different countries. These two things combined, decreasing population and massive mov…

Climate changes are way exaggerated. Almost all official predictions by IPCC etc, which aren’t addicted to clickbait, say that over the next few decades we will lose some GDP growth due to climate change. But world GDP will still grow. There won’t be starvation, or famine, etc. This is not the world ending apocalyptic scenario that’s thrown around in the media. Perhaps a few countries will become uninhabitable, but I…

Two decades, sure, but two centuries? If sea level is about to rise 1 or 2 or 3 meters, things will surely change more than what we see now. I live in the Netherlands, I am not worried about myself. But the world for our children might look different in this regard than ours. And we should not fall into the trap that it only exists when it touches us, then it will be way too late.
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