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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

#281

Post by pokstad »

naravara wrote: post #175
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…

Wealth inequality is one of the drivers of reducing family size. As well-compensated, high-status professions require either high up-front costs in education and socialization or high risk early investment the rationale shifts from "needing a lot of hands to keep the family firm going" to "needing to dedicate a lot of resources to set the kids up for success." In other words, the economic incentives today are to "go…

Not sure this makes sense. The biggest driver of family size seems to be lack of birth control or religious beliefs. Wealthy people avoid having children because they either expect too much for their kids or are enjoying their child free lifestyles. Meanwhile, in the US many children are born to the poorest portion of the population.

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

#282

Post by ffwszgf »

adultSwim wrote: post #253

"India defuses its population bomb" "When famine struck, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially refused to deliver food aid, citing the country’s high birth rate." This moralistic Western framing is concerning.

It has little to do with birth rates and more to do with the Indian governments closeness to the USSR. LBJ thought it was ridiculous that India would vote against American interests in the UN and then turn around and beg for food

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

#283

Post by ffwszgf »

jeofken wrote: post #115

If economic prosperity results in 2 kids per woman, would evolution not favour genes that make it unlike a family is economically prosperous? Having 6 kids with different baby mamas and being an absent father is evolutionary success

You are getting downvoted but in 2021 that’s precisely who is having the most children in developed countries. If you look up birth rates by income bracket the trend is clear: poor people and broken homes birth more children than wealthier professionals

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

#284

Post by jay_kyburz »

bhouston wrote: post #53
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 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…

It will be much easier to meet carbon emission targets when your population is shrinking rapidly. :)

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

#285

Post by ffwszgf »

jimbob45 wrote: post #64

We struggle greatly to actually understand population numbers in many countries. Consider Afghanistan, where the numbers were in part made up until recently[0]. I really wish we could see more background on these numbers. [0] https://youtu.be/WF3Rkt42wPY?t=266

I’ve read that Nigerian census data is straight up made up since there’s a demographic war between the north and south and more population = more political power so there’s a strong incentive to “find” people

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

#286

Post by Ensorceled »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #174
rmk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there are more pandemics and wars that intervene. This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. I think we are perhaps 80% of the way to an endemic with successive mutations becoming less and less lethal, so perhaps the true death toll is in the 15-20 million range. Any large scale war between nation-states can have a pretty high death toll if things escalate out of co…

>This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. Every time I see such claims, I still cringe at the thought of figuring out what it actually means. The details are gory, and can be summarized simplistically by saying "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID". In other words, figuring out true disease toll is a rather ambiguous problem, as stated. Can someone point me to a referenc…

> "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID"

My favourite take on this:

    "I have Type 1 diabetes. I am healthy enough to run ultramarathons. 

    If I get attacked by a bear & the ICU has trouble managing my blood sugar while caring for my bear attack wounds...and I die... the bear is the cause of my death. "[1]
But it's irrelevant since these meta studies always use excess deaths over average because of reportings issues (both logistical and political).

Start here https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

[1] https://twitter.com/cadiulus/status/1300408867717812231

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

#287

Post by rafiki6 »

z3t4 wrote: post #156
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…

When the cost of human labor goes up, the inequality will go down. One question is if cities will keep growing, or if we will see decentralization. The corona pandemic has proved that many jobs can be decentralized using modern communication technology. While the average population gets older, we are also more healthy at higher ages, so we might not need as much care.

I feel you might be conflating decentralization with location dependency. I actually expect things to centralize and concentrate further in a fully location independent world.

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

#288

Post by bboreham »

baskethead wrote: post #246
akudha wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not familiar with Roma, whats wrong with them?

They are gypsies, aren’t they?

“Gypsies [is] pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity as well as its historical use as a racial slur.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

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

#289

Post by nitwit005 »

soperj wrote: post #160
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…

>you could say that global warming is one of its legacies Considering that the majority of emissions came from a select few countries(over half from the EU & USA) that don't make up the majority of the population, and they majority of those emissions have happened while there's been smaller population growth, I don't think it's unfettered population growth that's the problem.

As countries get wealthier, their CO2 emissions have also trended upwards. The world is clearly trending toward catching up to the wealthy countries. If everyone trends toward similar emissions per-person, then the raw number of people will be what matters most.

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

#290

Post by s17n »

dadjoker wrote: post #260

So sad to see this happen. Paul Ehrlich made a similar prognostication that never came to pass. There are many places in the world that did a similar thing and had to work to reverse it (S. Korea, Russia), by actually paying families to have children, and China recently reversed its draconian one child policy because they have seen first hand the problems it creates. Hopefully India doesn't run into the same problem…

Population growth clearly can't continue forever; we may as well get it to zero now instead of kicking the can down the road.
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