It's an amazing phenomenon planet-wide: wherever women are given some control over pregnancy, they have fewer children. Fewer children means fewer souls to harvest by the religious authorities.
The Fertility Implosion
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Re: The Fertility Implosion
#32I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…
At the beginning of the century (20th, that is), people were already afraid of a world with 2 or 3 billion people. They predicted mass resource shortage, wars and so on. But overall we could cope, and population has been increasing steadily ever since, and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Most people on Earth live now better than their ancestors. There is a huge amount of progress in q…
Do you realize this argument works for any X and X+k ? I assume you are not thinking that an infinite number of people would get along just fine, so clearly there are some other constraints. It may well be that those constraint kick in at a higher number than many assume, but it might as well be smaller.
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#33This is silly. > Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates No, usually what goes along with high birthrates is an agrarian peasant society that has to maintain high birthrates because 50%+ of children die before the age of 5, and if you want to have several kids of working age around to help in the fields, you need to aim for 8 or 12 newborns. Agrarian peasant societies happen to…
You've forgotten the role conflicts can play in birthrates, for example to ensure one group remains dominant. [1]
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#34American fertility is heavily stratified by education; less educated women reproduce significantly more: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/09/28/americas-fe...
And race, and wealth, and even political views:
> Mean number of offspring
> Wealthy liberal women (n = 35) 1.60
> Wealthy conservative women (n = 43) 2.49
> The difference is statistically significant. Wealthy white conservative women average 55 percent more kids than their liberal counterparts.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2012/03/fertility-among-weal...
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#35This is silly. > Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates No, usually what goes along with high birthrates is an agrarian peasant society that has to maintain high birthrates because 50%+ of children die before the age of 5, and if you want to have several kids of working age around to help in the fields, you need to aim for 8 or 12 newborns. Agrarian peasant societies happen to…
In general what you say is true, but there are some exceptions. The Hasidic Jews are one of the most fertile groups in the US, and they are low income, highly religious, but urban (most of them live in New York City).
You might think they're an insignificantly small group, but the counterintuitively fast nature of exponential population growth means that they'll become surprisingly large surprisingly quickly. They're culturally immune to the influences that caused fertility to collapse in others and they're unlikely to voluntary limit their fertility.
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#36I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…
The thing is quantity of life is growing where quality of life is low, and the quality of life is growing where quantity of life is low. So it's sort of the worst of both worlds: the developed countries could afford a population growth in a humane and civilized way but they won't. Conversely, developing countries with overly high population growth become a terrible mess that they couldn't afford. However, I also thin…
There's nothing stopping high birth rates in areas where quality of life is low - it just has to be balanced by high death rates. Suppose there's a country where it's possible to feed a million people, and there are already a million people. There is no economic growth. Suppose about a quarter of the population is women of childbearing age, and they each have a baby every five years, so each year there are 50,000 new people. That's perfectly sustainable as long as 50,000 of people die each year.
That's 1/20 of the population dying each year, so that implies high death rates and short lifespans. It would suck, but it would be sustainable. And that's pretty much how the world was for most of history.
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#37This is silly. > Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates No, usually what goes along with high birthrates is an agrarian peasant society that has to maintain high birthrates because 50%+ of children die before the age of 5, and if you want to have several kids of working age around to help in the fields, you need to aim for 8 or 12 newborns. Agrarian peasant societies happen to…
How contradictory and one-dimensional. Interestingly you call slums "urban". By just making these numbers up, did you take a look at the development of populations in these countries? Sudan has 20 times more citizens than 100 years ago, they increase their population by 5% every year and yet there is hunger every year. I could easily prove you wrong about your abnegate of the religious problem, but then some mod would delete my comment for reasons of political correctness.
You think know so much and understand so few, learn more about the basics, maybe?
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#38This is silly. > Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates No, usually what goes along with high birthrates is an agrarian peasant society that has to maintain high birthrates because 50%+ of children die before the age of 5, and if you want to have several kids of working age around to help in the fields, you need to aim for 8 or 12 newborns. Agrarian peasant societies happen to…
In general what you say is true, but there are some exceptions. The Hasidic Jews are one of the most fertile groups in the US, and they are low income, highly religious, but urban (most of them live in New York City). You might think they're an insignificantly small group, but the counterintuitively fast nature of exponential population growth means that they'll become surprisingly large surprisingly quickly. They're…
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Re: The Fertility Implosion
#39The real moral of the story? Health care startups in the next 20 years will be hot, as most of our world transitions to taking care of an increasingly elderly generation, robotics fill highly repeatable labor, and the resource crunch makes goods last longer.
I can already see the reaction to acqui-hires. The sick should love having their services sunsetted.
Ah, but direct to consumer isn't necessarily the right play in this market. HIPPA is still a major pain, and the sick (and families of the sick) tend to have less cash. (Though, they have a lot of points where their lives could be made better by software. The low hanging fruit has been done in the app store, of course.)
Further, if you go B2B, the aqui-hire might be more interesting if you have multiple hospital groups that like your product. (for example) In fact, it makes you more likely to be acquired for your technology.
Re: The Fertility Implosion
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What upcoming food shortage? Food production is largely a solved problem. We know how to sustainably produce large amounts of food from a given amount of arable land, and we have plenty of arable land to feed not just the current global population, but the projected maximum global population. It's true! We already have the ability to feed the largest population we'll ever have. True, Africa currently has food short…
"I don't think we are conquering global inequality. I think it's getting worse." I'm sure you think that, but the numbers are clear, and not really under any dispute. Global inequality has been falling steadily and rapidly since 1980; it's the biggest reduction in absolute poverty the world has ever seen. You can interpret those numbers however you like, but those are the numbers. "And the environment might not recov…
Some believe that equality means that the gap between the rich and poor is lessened, and if that was your frame of mind, then it does seem like global inequality has risen.
However, absolute poverty is decreasing just as you said, and i think that ought to be the real measure. Who cares if the richest of the rich is 100million times better off than the poorest, if the poorest is better off already?