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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#91

Post by angmarsbane »

rayiner wrote: post #11
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subc…

I've been encouraging my cousin who desperately wants children to have them in her two bedroom apartment but she feels that she needs to have a house first and she and her husband can't afford one. They're in their late 30s. My partner and I are mid-30s planning to have young children in our 2 bedroom apartment, we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST in our Los Angeles neighborhood. More space means untenable commutes which brings more complicated childcare logistics (can't get to daycare before it closes, less time with kids etc).

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#92

Post by Animats »

robots0only wrote: post #83
Animats wrote: post #34

The future is probably a society with more robots than humans. We can see this happening now at Amazon. Amazon is a good case to watch, because their operations replace humans with robots on close to a one to one basis. Right now, Amazon has about 1.5 million human employees, and 1 million robots. Amazon reached peak humans in 2022, with around 1.6 million employees. Then human employees began to decline slightly. Ro…

The 1 million robot number that Amazon keeps on using is a quite nuanced. It includes more ~800K robots that simply just move stuff in a 2D plane. I think the number of robots that actually manipulate things is far far less (probably less than 500) (but really no human wants to just move things from A to B). Also, I completely agree with what you said. Cars (w/ no self-driving) can be thought of as primitive robots (…

The simple Kiva mobile platforms are most of the robot count, but they replaced large numbers of people who did walk around warehouses moving stuff from A to B.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#93

Post by jocaal »

vixen99 wrote: post #17
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

'hoarding more and more of the wealth'. Sounds very much like you believe in the pie fallacy. A zero sum game? Maybe that's not what you meant though.

The pie isn't always growing and the pie isn't always static. There are times where either can happen. I think people are just feeling that we are entering a period where the pie will be stagnant for a while. In the short term the world might be a zero sum game.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#94

Post by toomuchtodo »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #82
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social welfare state will still exist, it'll just be more costly as drag than it is today (in the US, ~$1.1T/year of uncompensated caregiving occurs, for example). Capitalism is more the challenge, it's built on squeezing the aggregate working age population for profits, and that cohort is in terminal decline over the long term. Between global sovereign debt load [1] and the demand for future profits (slides 31-33 of…

A tfr of 1.7, the welfare state will be costly but exist. A tfr of .73 like korea has? Long term, that’s 1 20 year old and 3 45 year olds taking care of half a baby, 7 70 year olds and 10 95 year olds

It is what it is. You do the best you can with what you have.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#95

Post by testing22321 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #85

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but the population numbers and statistics for Africa are totally unreliable. Fertility and total population are all wrong. The DRC is said to have 100M people, but check out satellite imaging. There's no chance -- and I mean none -- that it actually has 100M people. Unless 9-out-of-10 inhabitants live in the woods under tree cover, the actual population of the country is…

I drove right around Africa through 35 countries over three years. I drove across both Nigeria and the DRC.

There are dozens and dozens of massive cities that take hours to cross in Nigeria you’ve never heard of. Anecdotally, it’s way, way, way more populous than anything nearby. Ethiopia felt somewhat similar in parts, as did Egypt.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#96

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Qem wrote: post #52
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no guarantee your children will take care of you. Walk through any nursing or care home and speak with residents, ask the last time a child saw them. One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent - https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-qua... - July 19th, 2023

> There is no guarantee your children will take care of you On the flip side, for those childless, it's completely guaranteed none will. > One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent That sounds like a 75% success rate.

doubtful 75% is all high quality. The one quarter is probably all really bad, then some of that 75% is bad enough that it won't make much difference. Probably 25% is so into their parents that they will actually take care of them.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#97

Post by bryanrasmussen »

rayiner wrote: post #33

The point on p. 39 about immigration is important for everyone to understand: > Most immigrants worsen the fiscal position of the government. According to an Economist article addressing data collected by Denmark, each non-western immigrants produce a negative financial benefit over their lifetimes, and immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, are a net cost on the government at every age: https://inq…

Denmark has shown a rather pronounced distaste for integrating people into the workforce whose names signify non European origins.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#98

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

testing22321 wrote: post #95
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #85

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but the population numbers and statistics for Africa are totally unreliable. Fertility and total population are all wrong. The DRC is said to have 100M people, but check out satellite imaging. There's no chance -- and I mean none -- that it actually has 100M people. Unless 9-out-of-10 inhabitants live in the woods under tree cover, the actual population of the country is…

I drove right around Africa through 35 countries over three years. I drove across both Nigeria and the DRC. There are dozens and dozens of massive cities that take hours to cross in Nigeria you’ve never heard of. Anecdotally, it’s way, way, way more populous than anything nearby. Ethiopia felt somewhat similar in parts, as did Egypt.

Can you name a few of them in Nigeria? On satellite imaging, from what I've seen, they're not so massive, and they're mostly comprised of a sprawl of 1-3 story buildings.

We can compare vs. cities that we have good numbers for. Or Chinese/Indian cities, for that matter. (After looking at Nigeria or the DRC, a quick glance at India via satellite imaging is shocking.)

That said, Egypt is very populous, there's no doubt about that one.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#99

Post by cosmic_cheese »

cyberax wrote: post #18
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

This is probably a factor, but I think it’s a mistake to treat cities not being suited for raising children as a hard, immutable fact. They’re bad because rent continues to soar which clashes on two fronts (kids are expensive already and increase space requirements) and we as a society have decided to build our urban spaces (suburbs included) to be explicitly not friendly to children, families, or anybody not driving and to instead favor adults with money to spend. These are things we could change, should we want to.

The other thing to look at is why people have migrated into cities, and the answer is pretty simple: it’s where the good employment prospects are. The further yet get away from urban cores the worse those get: fewer jobs, worse compensation and benefits, greater risk of being stuck between jobs for long periods of time. Anybody worried about birthrates should be embracing remote work and making sure they compensate their employees well.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#100

Post by rangestransform »

cyberax wrote: post #18
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

I read some unsubstantiated claim about cities being bad for fertility because there’s an abundance of things to do that aren’t popping out children
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