The global population pyramid • Hacker News Board

Re: The global population pyramid

#161

Post by cryptonector » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #151

cryptonector wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only pensions. Individuals cannot save any kind of money for retirement on their own if there will be no one to give to in exchange for services after retirement. We cannot save without children, and the only answer is more automation, or just tough it out until the hump is past and we can have a more stable population. Toughing it out is not easy: young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if th…

> young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Well, people describe their behavior that way, and it may be true to an extent over very short timescales (like a short recession), but economic development empirically leads to decreased population growth overall; people don't have more kids because they are prosperous and less because they are not, but the reverse.

That's the general arc, yes, but I think for Europe the specific effect lately has been the opposite. Perhaps it's part of the same effect, just a generalization.

  Economic growth ->
  longer life expectancy / lower child mortality ->
  population boom ->
  people figure this out ->
  baby bust ->
  ??? ->
  stable population.

We're in the ??? part, and we may overshoot both sides of equilibrium for a long time for all I know. My sense is very much that fertility rates below replacement rate is due to young people feeling incapable of affording child rearing.

Re: The global population pyramid

#162

Post by iguy » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #75

iguy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to hear more precisely what you'd propose here. My impression that, unfortunately, many such attempts to (essentially) make life better for working mothers appear to have pushed us away from families-with-kids, and towards ever more singletons (including single mothers). They tend, I think, to move us from a system in which the family is the economic unit, to one in which its personal compromises are n…

Why do you say that is unfortunate?

Because I think nearly everyone involved in attempting to change how things work was sincere in their hope that this would only lead to improvement. Yet on some pretty important measures, like the proportion of lower-class kids who get to grow up with a father, we've done very badly indeed.

Re: The global population pyramid

#163

Post by shellkr » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #28

bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

>And if you encourage immigration as the solution to shrinkage you end up with rising racism and other reactionary trends to these changing demographics. One of the worst things about using immigration as a solution is that it's merely a bandaid. The worst thing is that people who encourage mass immigration are (likely) unknowingly saying their country is more deserving of the temporary benefits of immigration, and t…

Being able to move where the jobs are... aren't really a bad thing. It helps all participants. The only downside is that you might have a bit of a brain drain. Which is not necessarily bad. Those with brains goes to another country where they can work and then being able to send money back home. Poor countries in Europe did this in the big emigration and populated America. Those countries are among the richest in the world now. Both America and Europe benefited by it.

They might not be able to find jobs in their home country which could be a burden on the country. If they move and start working in another country. They might get a job that is harder to recruit to and not only just fill that spot but also pay taxes.

Most studies I have seen claim that the more exposure one have to people of other cultures, the more acceptance it will have. So it is actually the opposite. The more immigrants, the more acceptance there should be.

Re: The global population pyramid

#164

Post by pascalxus » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

A shrinking population can be better than a growing population. Currently, we're experience a drop in material quality of life, due to limited resources, limited land, cities not having enough space for people, etc. A shrinking population can solve a lot of problems at once. Also, it's not particularly kind to expect future generations to carry all the burdens we've created.

Re: The global population pyramid

#165

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #145

lordnacho wrote: post #14

Perhaps a bit grim, but I'm actually visting my dad, who ended up in hospital a couple of days ago. He's survived, but he's not been in great health recently and I've been thinking a lot about life and death. In 1950 he'd have been about 6 years old. If you then look at the 2018 curve for 74 year olds, you can see a fairly large part of his cohort has passed. Looks like more than half actually, if I'm interpreting th…

We're around the same age, and our fathers are, as well. My father was recently hospitalized, another minor heart attack. He's been alive for the past 14 years thanks to a pacemaker. My oldest living uncle had bypass (5 bypasses!) surgery last week. My wife and I are well into the third trimester of a spontaneous multiples pregnancy. It feels like life and death are literally chomping at the bit on either side of me…

Sounds like a real outlier that you lost that much of a class. I guess the car accident is actually one event, but it's still a big and shocking loss.

For me the surprise was that two of the four were murdered. Your chances of dying at all in a given year before 40 is something like a quarter of a percent. Your chances of being murdered has got to be some tiny fraction of that.

Re: The global population pyramid

#166

Post by irrational » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

chr1 wrote: post #153

irrational wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t a future secular society unlikely when the people that are having large numbers of children are highly religious? It would seem that as the secular world keeps having fewer children that eventually the vast majority of people will be highly religious.

Religiousness is not genetic, many children from highly religious families become atheists or are moderately religious people who can bend or ignore religious rules when needed.

True, but I know highly religious families that are having up to 13 children. If even 50% of those kids stay religious they are out birthing probably 3-4 secular families (who tend to have 0-2 children). And, of course, it also goes the other way, sometimes children of secular families become religious.

Re: The global population pyramid

#167

Post by phil21 » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #161

dragonwriter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> young people put off having children or avoid it altogether if they feel they can't afford it. Well, people describe their behavior that way, and it may be true to an extent over very short timescales (like a short recession), but economic development empirically leads to decreased population growth overall; people don't have more kids because they are prosperous and less because they are not, but the reverse.

That's the general arc, yes, but I think for Europe the specific effect lately has been the opposite. Perhaps it's part of the same effect, just a generalization. Economic growth -> longer life expectancy / lower child mortality -> population boom -> people figure this out -> baby bust -> ??? -> stable population. We're in the ??? part, and we may overshoot both sides of equilibrium for a long time for all I know. My…

I'm curious if any modeling has been done around 1 vs. 2 working-parent households in developed countries, in relation to population growth. Would we really be having a problem with "natives" not having kids if a single parent could work full time for a (very) comfortable lifestyle as it was just 40 years ago?

It seems to me there is at least a correlation around the time a 2 parent household more or less became a requirement for the middle class to simply survive and when it became such a burden to raise a child. Since everyone is now more or less competing with 2x dollars for the same amount of fixed cost "stuff" (housing, education, healthcare, etc.) prices for those things rose substantially faster than inflation.

Then you add in the second or third highest cost a dual-income family has (child care) that didn't really exist 40 years ago.... It seems at least obvious on it's face that this was going to happen. We removed any and all slack from our family lives, and wonder why we can't seem to get ahead when we have multiple decades of income hyper-planned in advance.

I also think car culture and suburbification of many western countries also heavily contributed - at the same time we were forcing parents to both work outside the home, we also decided it wasn't cool to live near extended family or within a close-knit multi-generational community. Thus making the need for child care even more acute.

I'm not entirely sure the point I'm making really - just that it seems so obvious. This outcome was practically written in stone on the policies (fiscal, social, and energy) western governments put in place since WWII.

Re: The global population pyramid

#168

Post by frosted-flakes » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:32 AM UTC

collyw wrote: post #93

theandrewbailey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I don't understand how supporting families means devaluing women. What exactly do you mean by "devalue"? If motherhood is the stated goal of a woman, and she achieves it, how/why is she "devalued"? If it brings her meaning and fulfillment, isn't that something to be celebrated and respected? I'm also bothered by your swipe aga…

From a purely economic perspective, staying at home raising kids isn't going to generate you any income. We should perhaps value mothers in other ways, but money is the principal indicator of value in our current society.

Many countries with strong social support systems have a baby bonus program where people are literally paid to have kids.

In Canada, it's based on household income. In 2016, the max was $6,496 per child under age 6 and $5,481 per child age 6 through 17.

If you have two kids (2 years old and 10 years old) with a household income of $50k, that works out to roughly $10k per year. When you consider that you don't need to pay for childcare (which could be more than $20k per year for a 2-year old in Toronto) and the constant care and support those children will receive, that's actually pretty good. And once the kids get a bit older and can be trusted to care for themselves once they get home from school, the stay-at-home parent can easily start working full-time again.

Re: The global population pyramid

#169

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

rosege wrote: post #152

all2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... they represent a path forward towards high quality of life and lower ecological impact. Could you expand on "high quality of life"? I'm not sure how that follows from decreased population.

As someone living in a city that has over the last 20 years had a massive increase in population I believe the previous poster is referencing less competition for limited resources. In day to day life this could be less traffic jams or less competition to use shared resources such as parks or even just lower property prices.

Understood but lower population could also mean less people trading and that would impact quality of life quite badly. Steve Jobs living in a world of 10,000 would have been living in abject poverty no matter how good his entrepreneurial skills. A larger population can do more things, and with trading increase quality of life in important ways (medicine, technology, arts) that may be better off than ghost towns with cheap property. My point is your parent commenter is right to ask whether lower population really means higher quality of life, I don’t think it necessarily does.

Re: The global population pyramid

#170

Post by LMYahooTFY » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

patentatt wrote: post #117

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the GP comment suggest that? It's not clear to me. It seemed to suggest that there are complementary roles that cannot be completely subsumed by either individually.

The undertone is that women are better at being parents than men. I don’t agree with that.

Can you elaborate and explain how this "undertone" is present?

How do you see the GP comparing two mutually exclusive roles in child rearing?