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A world with declining population. Full of old people due to population pyramid inverted. Full of stupid, and impulsive, and likely religious zealots, as those are the only groups with fertility rates above replacement level.
That's interesting. I've heard the exact opposite opinion somewhere, that the education of women doesn't have as big an effect as anticipated by the models, especially in Africa. This graphs shows it https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain... For some countries like India or China, the effect is very strong. Just a few years of education drastically reduce the number of children, but for other co…
What I didn't see mentioned in the article is the 3rd possibility: that the population will grow but eventually reach a stable plateau. I don't know the number ( Can any demographers weigh in?
Sigh. Someone has a book to sell by going against conventional wisdom, and the classic approach of taking a small trend and drawing a huge long straight line through it. It's not really surprising that this has happened, given the extent of efforts to reduce birth rates as a way out of poverty.
This is the same argument that has been used for decades and centuries to worry about population explosion, though. Was that mere book selling? We've now seen a trend of below replacement in places like Japan lasting for decades now, and they've luckily been able to change their society to be more welcoming to immigrants in order to compensate, but that only works if there are countries with higher birth rates to com…
PS: I realize now that people downvote not based on the content of the post or the argument but based on whether they don’t think the argument should be made because they dont like the conclusion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because it has to do with the death rate of children. On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). The combination of enough food, education and good health care are why less babies are born. So if you live in a country with good education but lack of food most women will still have more babies than two.
> On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). I don't believe that's true across cultures. Even in North America you've got social groups and organizations that are continuing to make babies like crazy.
The number 2 comes from the current world wide trend. In developed countries the fertility rate tumbles down but stops at around 2. So it is believed this is the average bottom.
Maybe you like this talk from Hans Rosling: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same argument that has been used for decades and centuries to worry about population explosion, though. Was that mere book selling? We've now seen a trend of below replacement in places like Japan lasting for decades now, and they've luckily been able to change their society to be more welcoming to immigrants in order to compensate, but that only works if there are countries with higher birth rates to com…
Or climate change? (Ducks) PS: I realize now that people downvote not based on the content of the post or the argument but based on whether they don’t think the argument should be made because they dont like the conclusion .
But there is something analogous: look at birthrates, and you have a pretty good idea about which direction the population will trend to within a few decades. It's a pretty straightforward, fundamental relationship.
I'll give you very long odds against.
I’m somewhat surprised by the tone of surprise in this article/interview. While I still frequently see references to “out-of-control population growth” among laypeople here on HN or on Twitter, often in reference to Africa, I have long gotten the impression that the scientific and political communities have turned to models showing drastically lower birth rates coinciding with increased development. Lower infant mort…
The slowing of the birthrate to manageable levels is very good, but too much of that (i.e. below replacement) leads to an inverted age pyramid, which is NOT unambiguously good. The fact that birthrates are falling and many countries will be left with a huge number of elderly folk without enough young folk to take care of them is not unambiguously good, particularly when it happens everywhere so there's nowhere to imp…
Our economy and intellectual progress is massively predicated on specialisation of labor. When I consider any single aspect of our life, even something as "simple" as how elevators work, it's astounding the amount of complexity that goes into it. Complexity that we can handle because we divvy it up amongst many many people who are completely specialized in understanding and fulfilling that task. Gradual increases in…
I often think about this too, are people who understand incredibly complex things dying off / retiring faster than technology can keep up with it ? I think about maitaitining really complex infrastructure, you kind of see this in Japan. So much complicated infrastructure, so many people checking out.
Do we know if Japanese businesses realized this at all? I think here in North America companies are still thinking it'll all be fine and the knowledge will somehow magically transfer to the next generation that they couldn't be bothered to train, largely as a lot of baby boomers haven't left yet, but they are going to, and soon.