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The world might run out of people

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Re: The world might run out of people

#181

Post by dmitriid »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #77
dmitriid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultures have nothing to do with it. See Hans Rosling's talk on this [1] or see it yourself in data [2]. As soon as education, medicine, economic situation improves, you get a drop to ~2 children per woman across all cultures. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies [2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

While I see that there is a definite trend, if culture had nothing to do with it, why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children? And I see a ton of groups there that have the highest life expectancy and < 2 children, all Asian countries. That seems to indicate that 2 is not in fact a magic number at all.

> why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children

"Many more". Israel: 3.11 (down from 4 in 1960s), Faroe Islands: 2.6 (down from 3.2 in 1970s).

Compare to Niger: 7.24.

And especially compare to muslim countries which just love having kids, don't they? Oh, look dropping from 8 kids per woman to around 2 for most of them (some are understandably lagging behind, like Yemen, Iraq, Gaza)

> That seems to indicate that 2 is not in fact a magic number at all.

I said ~2 kids, i.e. about two kids, not exactly 2 kids. There's nothing magic about this number, it's sub-replacement fertility [1]. 2.1 for developed countries, 3.4 for some developing countries. Yes, some nations will dip below 2, can't see how that disproves my words. Neither culture nor religion have anything to do with it. Give people quality of life, education, access to modern medicine, and they stop having 8 kids per woman, and quickly dip to about replacement fertility rates.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Re: The world might run out of people

#182

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

dmitriid wrote: post #181
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see that there is a definite trend, if culture had nothing to do with it, why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children? And I see a ton of groups there that have the highest life expectancy and < 2 children, all Asian countries. That seems to indicate that 2 is not in fact a magic number at all.

> why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children "Many more". Israel: 3.11 (down from 4 in 1960s), Faroe Islands: 2.6 (down from 3.2 in 1970s). Compare to Niger: 7.24. And especially compare to muslim countries which just love having kids, don't they? Oh, look dropping from 8 kids per woman to around 2 for most of them (some are understandably lagging behind, like Yemen, Iraq, Gaza) > T…

Numbers like 1.17 and 1.21 are not roughly two kids, it's half two kids. What wiggle room are we talking here? I was originally responding to someone who said

> On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800).

and that doesn't seem to be the case.

And you said that culture had nothing to do with it, but clearly the variation in the birth rates (50% to 150% of the ~2) in countries with roughly the same standard of living is due to something.

Re: The world might run out of people

#183

Post by magduf »

Bartweiss wrote: post #159
simplecomplex wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you plan on taking care of you when you get older? You’re going to pay nurses, and maybe live in a retirement home?

An average middle-income family with two kids spends more than $200,000 to raise each child to age 17, followed by college costs (and/or any other support). In coastal cities, the number is more like $250k. That price is rising faster than inflation at about 3%, and college costs are rising 4%+. To begin with, let's just ignore college and just annualize it all to $15,000/year. Merrill Lynch claims that an average re…

I think we've also lost sight of something else in this kids-vs-no-kids argument: few kids.

Studies probably do show that people with kids are healthier and longer-lived than childfree people. And "sucking it up" and having a kid or two like someone above says can give you this. However, this still results in a declining population, remember, which is what the main article was talking about in the first place. Every couple having 1 kid isn't going to maintain the population, for obvious reasons, and not even 2 will do it (you have to have an average of 2.1-2.2).

Now add to this the fact that more and more people aren't even getting married in the first place (which is improving the divorce rate), and not having kids, not necessarily because they don't want them, but because they can't find a suitable partner. I see this all the time here in the DC area on the dating sites: women who are 35+, frequently 40+, sometimes even 45+, saying they're never married, have no kids, but want them. 45 is a little old for a woman to have kids, and most likely if she hasn't found a man to her liking by that age, she never will.

Re: The world might run out of people

#184

Post by _cbsz »

polskibus wrote: post #125
_cbsz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inflation will eat most of your savings What? This is why investment advice for retirement generally revolves around allocation into stocks and bonds while leaving only an emergency fund plus regular expenses in more liquid assets like savings accounts. Inflation will only eat your savings if you fail to invest. If you want to talk about risk, well, inflation is why a total failure to accept risk is extremely risky…

Sure, this advice seems ok in current economic setting, where workforce size is replenished by newer generations. Now think about what would happen if there are a lot of old retired people but the number of people willing to work for them is 50% of what is required, in most branches of the economy. Money will start chasing the workers, and they pay will sky rocket. It's more like SV skyrocketing housing prices and to…

> pay will sky rocket

Why do you think that this will entirely fail to incentivize prospective retirees to work for more total years of their lives in order to benefit from increased pay?

Re: The world might run out of people

#185

Post by ryandrake »

polskibus wrote: post #166
ryandrake wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what workforce % does compounding interest stop working? Or are you saying interest rates will become negative as the workforce drops? Society’s experience replacing workers with robotics and automation may suggest otherwise. Now may be the best time to stop having kids and instead invest what you’d otherwise spend. Chances are there will be few remaining un-automated jobs by the time they need employment. I say t…

I'm saying that if today there is one caretaker for one retiree, but tomorrow there's one caretaker for 3 retirees then caretaker tomorrow can easily demand a lot higher pay than today - he'll work for the highest bidder. Compound interest gains can be offset by this inflation. Similar localized inflationary pressures can be seen in SV where there is limited supply of houses and there are many highly paid specialists…

Not all retirees will need “caretakers”. My guess is by the time I retire there will be a robot to inject me with my meds and another one to wipe my rear—as long as my retirement savings holds up I won’t need to hire anyone.

Re: The world might run out of people

#186

Post by dmitriid »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #182
dmitriid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children "Many more". Israel: 3.11 (down from 4 in 1960s), Faroe Islands: 2.6 (down from 3.2 in 1970s). Compare to Niger: 7.24. And especially compare to muslim countries which just love having kids, don't they? Oh, look dropping from 8 kids per woman to around 2 for most of them (some are understandably lagging behind, like Yemen, Iraq, Gaza) > T…

Numbers like 1.17 and 1.21 are not roughly two kids, it's half two kids. What wiggle room are we talking here? I was originally responding to someone who said > On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). and that doesn't seem to be the case. And you said that culture had nothing to do with it, but clearly the variation in the birth rates (50% to…

If what you said was true, muslim countries would still have 8 kids per woman. They don’t. Just go to the link and play with the slider.

Once again. Slowly.

As people gain access to medicine and education, and as quality of life increased, traditions and religion fly out of the window. Even deeply religious countries like the Gulf states go from 7-8 kids per woman to roughly 2 kids per woman.

These factors trump any other factor in determining how many kids a woman will have.

Once the countries get on more or less the same level in terms of these factors, only then will you see variations due to other things like culture, religion, what not.

Israel is 1.5 times more than other developed countries (and the difference is slowly but surely dropping)? So? Niger is almost 4 times more than other countries.

Medicine, education, quality of life. These three universally affect rates regardless of tradition, religion or what not.

Re: The world might run out of people

#187

Post by est31 »

magduf wrote: post #155
est31 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alzheimers patients need 24/7 care. This isn't something that small families with 3-4 siblings can do by reasonable means next to having a job, raising the next generation, and living in the neighbouring town or even further than that. In the old days, poor people just died young because of exhaustion and rich people well they have the means for proper care per definition.

It's looking like Alzheimer's will be a solved problem before too long, with all the current research on it.

There is indeed a lot of research on Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. But I'm a bit more sceptical than you. We still don't know exactly what's happening in Alzheimer patients. We might even split up the disease into multiple sub-diseases as it happened with cancer. However, you are right, a lot of stuff can happen before people who are young today (20s and younger) get old.

Re: The world might run out of people

#188

Post by masonic »

magduf wrote: post #154
stephenhuey wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something to be said for that. My kids do require a lot of attention and work and I sometimes I feel very tired out and short on time to get things done before crawling into bed for enough sleep to be productive at the office the next day. However, even though I really enjoy creative technology work at my job, on average my relationships with my kids give me greater satisfaction than any projects I work on. M…

I have a good friend whose mother tells her that she (my friend) ruined her life, and that she never really wanted kids or to get married to the man she married when she got pregnant.

In the TV series "Doc Martin", the main character comes from such parents.

Re: The world might run out of people

#189

Post by magduf »

auiya wrote: post #165
martin1b wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why we have the problem at hand.

> problem at hand Is it a problem? I would submit it is a solution.

It's a problem if you don't want your economy to collapse because of too many elderly people who can't work and not enough young people to keep things going for them all.

Re: The world might run out of people

#190

Post by magduf »

telesilla wrote: post #160
magduf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boys are inherently more destructive and violent than girls; it's a biological fact, and is the whole reason prison inmates are over 90% male.

And those of you who aren't in prison, probably had better parenting right? (and some luck). Anyway, I don't mean to hijack this thread but if the parent is saying he doesn't want kids because they are unruly, he might look to the parenting of said kids. Kids can—and should!—be bringing joy and lightness and laughter and learning. It's a tragedy that the modern person avoids have children because of economic concerns…

Just about everyone I know who has little boys has major problems with them: they all seem to have autistic traits, and severe behavior problems. I don't know what the problem is, but it makes me not want to be involved with boys in a parenting situation.
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