Related: Japan's birth rate is 1.43 children per woman now, far below replacement rate of 2.1. If the trend continues forever (which is a silly assumption) the Japanese people will completely disappear by the year....2500. I don't think we need to worry about extinction.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/12068068/Mappe...
It’s not really extinction that people worry about. It’s insolvency in virtually every social program the government runs.
And it really doesn’t take much because those programs were created with very generous predictions in growth. For social security the insolvency date is 2025 according to our own governments accounting.
==For social security the insolvency date is 2025 according to our own governments accounting. ==
Without changes, the Social Security system will pay out 79% of benefits starting in 2034 [1]. The concept that there will be no money paid out is oft-repeated, but mistaken.
Certainly a 21% cut is very significant, but there will still be funds. Obviously, the sooner we make small changes, the better funded it will be long-term. Things like changing the inflation index, removing the income cap or adjusting the full-retirement date could fill the gap entirely.
Don't forget technology deflation. The less dollars you need overall (cheap energy, cheap electric mobility, technology used to make healthcare more efficient) makes a benefits haircut more tolerable (although we are a very wealthy nation and have the means to avoid a benefits haircut).
When we get to universal healthcare, if my house is paid off, I have solar on my roof, and I have a paid off electric car, I don't expect my expenses to simply survive to be that high (and could live on less than 50% of my estimated social security benefit).
As an aside, I think looking at the global fertility rate is not very informative. The only reason that global fertility rates remain above 2 is because of Africa and the Middle East. The people of developed nations are, for the most part, going to gradually go extinct. This is list as of nations by fertility rate. [1] And that list is also an aggregate. Things such as education, modest or secular religious views, and income all work as major factors against fertility when looking at the composition of what is already, even as an aggregate, below replacement fertility rates.
This paints an interesting picture for the future. This [2] is a study from Pew showing the expected changes in religiosity in the future. Unaffiliated are expected to decrease from 16.4% to 13.2% by 2050, Buddhists down 7.1% to 5.2%., Muslims to increase from 23.2% to 29.7%, and so on. I don't understand why fertility rate is not a bigger consideration for people who consider themselves interested or invested in social progress. Fertility is arguably the biggest factor there is in what this world will look like in the coming years. If helping people to become economically comfortable, secular, and educated leads to them no longer reproducing - you're going to end up taking two steps back for every step forward.
It's also possible to be for social progress, but also think the world is over-populated. In fact if a person generally worries about the future of humanity, I would not be surprised to see a strong correlation between those two attitudes.
A fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'. You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely. Otherwise if you pick a moment of rising population you'll extrapolate up to infinity or if you pick a moment of falling population you'll extrapolate to zero. Reality doesn't work like that. Arguably it's just a trend towards right-sizing the population.
Globally fertility rates have been falling for many decades. It's hardly surprising that the poorest countries are among the last to see fertility rates decline the most, but as income and education rates in those regions rise, their fertility rates will also fall.
As a for secularization, which you seem to conflate with social progress, counting 'Muslims' and 'Christians' isn't a simple exercise. Counting everyone born to Muslim parents as Muslim doesn't make any more sense than counting everyone who gives presents at Christmas as Christian. In fact attendances at Mosques and actual participation in religious activities is in decline across most of the Muslim world. In Europe most 'Muslims' do not pray every day. Egypt is a good proxy for trends in the Muslim world due to it's cultural influence. There are steep declines in religious practice and support for imposing Sharia Law has more than halved over the last decade.
"A fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'. You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely."
Apart from that, if you speak of group A going extinct and group B not, you are implicitly defining them as separate species. I don't think that's an accurate description of the present nor a plausible description of the future.
> if you speak of group A going extinct and group B not, you are implicitly defining them as separate species
I don't see how this follows. I've definitely been in biology classes where we discussed different groups of rats in this way and we never considered them separate species just because they were different groups.
Right, it’s really hard to talk about this subject without running into bigotry, accidentally or on purpose. Almost all the distinctions in the GP comment are not inherent and can (and will) change during a single human lifetime—like religiosity or whether one lives in a “developed nation.”
In the long run, all nations are developed nations, and then what will we use to draw distinctions between human beings? I’m sure folks will think of something.
Is it? A big chunk of the "developing world" is (generally) Christian—pretty much all of the Americas, big chunks of Africa. The Philippines. Russia and some of the former Soviet bloc states. Meanwhile everyone agrees Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the "developed" states and I don't think it's fair to characterize them as Christian.
I prefer to just shorthand this as "OECD" versus "non-OECD" which manages to just about cover all the states everyone actually means when they use "Western" (including tons of countries that aren't Western at all) or "developed", though the latter's a decent enough term IMO. "Western" is especially silly, of course, for a bunch of reasons, including that pretty much all the "original" Western states were themselves at some point "Westernized"—rolled over by Generic European-ish Capitalist "Culture", erasing most of what was there before, and absorbing and exporting those elements that could be sold to others (those parts becoming "Western")
"Meanwhile everyone agrees Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the "developed" states and I don't think it's fair to characterize them as Christian."
This is just a nitpick as I agree with your overall point, but South Korea isn't agreed by everyone to be a developed country. In fact, they are right on the cusp as evidenced by the fact that some investment funds consider them developing and some consider them developed.
I almost think there should be a classification for the US, Japan, and the UK, and another for "everyone else". If you look at the number of medium to smallish companies that have access to public stock markets, there is a huge difference between those three countries and everywhere else. Something is fundamentally different about their economies. And I've never read where someone declares this a mystery worthy of investigation and tries to explain it.
You need to be aware of how the religion defines things because that definition has teeth for people actually living in those countries. The punishment for leaving (apostasy) is generally death. A third of people in the country where I’m from believe that really should be the punishment. (And it’s one of the “moderate” ones—in Egypt it’s about 2/3.) It’s a self-perpetuating system, which goes to the soundness of OP’s counting methodology above.
In Egypt, the rate of wearing some form of veil went from almost zero in the middle of the 20th century to 90% today. For the most part, that trend is enforced through various degrees of social coercion.
>A third of people in the country where I’m from believe that really should be the punishment. //
It's not just apostasy that's considered punishable by death though, "encouraging it" is too, AIUI. So what proportion of those people are just scared that their objection to death penalties will be considered to be support for apostasy and so they'll die. I mean who would answer "no" if there's any possibility that it might lead to your death or even just the persecution of you and your family?
"There's no compulsion in Islam" every Islam supporter online tells me.
In those countries there is a big divide between the liberal elite, which tends to be more secular, and everyone else. But any “coercion” caused by classist attitudes pales to the coercion on the other side. To put that article in context for our American readers: it’s like someone writing an article about how someone from rural Georgia went to Atlanta and someone mocked their accent. Except it’s written against the backdrop of the state passing the heartbeat abortion law.
On another note, when does influence become coercion? Is it only when it results in choices that the forces of global hegemony disagree with? Too many people are convinced that decision to wear a hijab can not be an authentically free one. It's very patronising.
I don't see how this is relevant to the point. So Islamic law says that these people who are increasingly not praying, not attending mosque and don't support Sharia law and to the point don't believe apostates should be killed, are still Muslims.
So what? Why should I care? What point are you trying to make?
World isn't overpopulated. I don't think there is a hard limit on number of people.
>You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely.
I assume the model probably looks at chances that offspring of Muslim parents share parents religion.
> fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'.
When you have countries with median age 40+, you know their health care and other systems are also struggling. The lower your fertility the older your society, the older your society, the lower your fertility. Can't attract immigrants? You are fucked basically.
> I don't think there is a hard limit on number of people.
We have around 7 billion people now. At the current growth rate of about 1%/yr the biomass of human beings will exceed the current weight of the planet Earth around the year 7200.
Not long after that this hypothetical growing humanity would collapse into a black hole under its own weight.
It'll already be quite cramped in the year 5400 with 1% growth. We'll have 5 people for every square meter of the surface of Earth (we have 510.1 trillion m^2). That's about the density near the front-row of a standing concert.
My main concern with overpopulation isn't how many people the world could support as a maximum, I'm sure it's very high, it's how many it can support without dramatically degrading the environment.
An ageing population has negative consequences, sure, we'll just have to manage them. Allowing the population to increase indefinitely isn't a solution though, it's just kicking the can down the road until you do hit a hard limit, and then you're in _real_ trouble.
All the good land is now dedicated to farming. What's left is the stuff that is hard to grow on; too rocky, too cold, too north for any light, too dry.
It turns out the oceans are the opposite of robust, for how large they are.
The economy of N. America depends on building cheap housing, to attract more immigrants, so they can work building housing, to sell to new immigrants.
I have nothing against immigrants. Just pointing out how the economy really works, despite what a small handful of people in a booming (but slowing) tech sector feel about what drives the economy - it's the housing market.
That's a humongous assertion about the US economy and not at all in line with the data. Construction is only 4.0% of the GDP, and the lump of finance and real estate (renting, reselling mixed in with the entire stock market) is 20%.
>The economy of N. America depends on building cheap housing, to attract more immigrants, so they can work building housing, to sell to new immigrants.
The housing market is not really what drives the economy. It is where a massive amount of credit has been funnelled in the last few decades, though. We do need to change how our macro-economy functions, but unfortunately politicians and most of the economists advising them are oblivious to the critical role that credit plays.
>World isn't overpopulated. I don't think there is a hard limit on number of people.
Yes there most certainly is a hard limit on how many people this plant can support. We have increased it, and continue to increase that limit with technology at a faster rate than reproduction but there are social trends that are seeing that progress rolled back.
Anti-GMO, Organic, and several other social trends in food production means the amount of land, water, and other supplied needed to a feed a person is growing not reducing. With out Advanced Farming, pesticides, GMO Crops and other advancements we would have exceeded the planets ability to provide long ago.
Now that there is a strong incentive to produce organic non gmo food, technologies will be developed to increase crop yield given those constraints (in addition to existing permissible technologies in organic farming such as drip irrigation, tractors and: https://interestingengineering.com/video/this-flamethrowing-...). Sure, yields would always be higher if gmo and chemical pesticides were allowed, but in the long run we can still expect yields to increase.
GMO is not just about increasing yields but also getting crops to grow in wider more diverse climates, something we may very well need with Global Warming
Take for example the Semi-dwarf wheat that has been claimed to save billions of people and makes up pretty much all wheat grown today.
This adversion of GMO is not based in science but rather F.U.D. I find it amusing that many people that are Anti-GMO are also very very concerned with Climate Change, and laugh a people that question climate change for being "anti-science" then then spread all kinds of lies and misinformation about GMO...
> I don't think there is a hard limit on number of people.
Humans through our metabolic process generate waste heat and Earth can only radiate so much so that does put a hard cap, albeit one much higher than people generally image, but a cap nonetheless. If we assume only the heat generated by our metabolic process that puts the limit over 250 trillion[0] but if we account for energy for food and industrial purposes that puts the limit closer to 10 trillion[1].
The world is overpopulated. Humans have already eliminated as many species as other great extinction events. Our industrial activity has changed the Earth climate. There is very little wilderness left anywhere. The forests are getting clear cut and eliminated. We have exceeded the Earth's capacity to support us already and there is no end in sight, unfortunately. Humans are the disease and unless we learn to live sustainably (as opposed to infinite expansion), the life is going to get worse for every subsequent generation and we are toast in the end.
> The people of developed nations are, for the most part, going to gradually go extinct.
I doubt that. Or at least, it depends how you define "people of developed nations". Racial (for lack of a better word) composition will change, and immigration will play a role there. The US, for example, is becoming more Native American (many Mexicans being ~indigentes). And Europe more semitic (in the general sense).
What do you think makes a country, a country? I mean what makes, for instance, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia -- and what makes Norway, Norway? Let's carry out a simple thought experiment. Imagine you instantly swapped the peoples of the nations but kept everything otherwise identical. Are the people of Saudi Arabia (who now reside within the land and laws of Norway) now going to stop oppressing women? Are the people of Norway going to do the exact opposite and suddenly start oppressing their women, executing homosexuals, and all that stuff?
I'm sure you'd agree they would not. The nations would rapidly regress/evolve, depending on your worldview, to what they originally were. So it should be clear that what makes up the "people of a nation" are the people themselves - and by that you have shared cultural, ideological, and other views. And with migration and cultural assimilation this culture can grow and expand, as has been the history of much of America. On the other hand cultures can also be completely replaced. For instance, imagine Islam continues to fail to really integrate into nations and, through raw fertility rates, starts to become the dominant factor in a generally liberal nation. What do you think would happen to LGBT rights? Women's rights? Freedom of religion and expression?
Nations, in the sense of geographic locations, will probably not be going extinct anytime in the foreseeable future. But the views and values of nations, particularly those that trend towards embracing social views, are very much at risk of going extinct in the future. And the most ironic part this is that this is all completely foreseeable.
Trying another thought experiment, let's call it "boiling the frog" or "ship of Theseus".
If you introduce small quantities of immigrants into a society, gradually, and they adopt local customs, if after 100 years the native population has been replaced after integration, does it mean that the original country and its culture have disappeared?
If you take any nation today, regardless of hetero or homogeneity, it will likely scarcely resemble the culture of that nation from 50 years ago, let alone 100. Cultures changing is not really a problem and I think migration is in no way a negative when people assimilate. Assimilation, practically by definition, tends to be a host culture casting away perceived undesirable views and values, while adopting the perceived positive views and values of a migrating culture.
But a failure to assimilate, should the migrant culture become large enough, can result in the exact opposite outcome. Minority views seen as unacceptable may, over time, start to reach the point of becoming politically influential. So for instance, how likely do you think it is that a western liberal nation will criminalize homosexuality over the next 100 years? The question's ostensibly stupid. It's so far outside our trajectory and realm of thought that it seems about as likely as pigs learning to fly.
But just consider one example. Sweden today is one of the most liberal nations in the world with an extremely generous welfare state and an incredibly inviting people. They're also a very small nation of about 10 million people, not long ago it was less than 9 million. And their fertility levels have plummeted. At one point they were literally negative. And their embracing nature has also seen a near open door policy to migration, which is a big part of the reason that their population (and fertility) rates have increased. However, many of the individuals migrating are not assimilating - and hold views which are in extreme contrast to 'Swedish' views. If we assume Sweden continues along its current trajectory, it's not really out of the question to see what is today one of the most liberal nations in the world criminalizing homosexuality and beyond.
That is fundamentally what I meany by a people being exterminated. It's not the 'people' as in a genetic lineage, but the shared views and values that makeup a people. There will certainly be people that call themselves Swedes in the future. But the views and values of this nation may end up regressing (from our perspective) dramatically in the future. Centuries of progress and social development cast aside in what could be a matter of decades for a lack of fertility and a refusal to consider the implications of nonassimilating migration.
I would fully agree you with you. Newton's Third has a habit of showing up in many sociopolitical scenarios. This alone would make prediction any distance into the future effectively impossible, even if we ignore the million other variables involved. Thought I think we can at least consider which scenarios seem, at minimum, more or less likely than others.
As for examples though, we have to consider two major differences. First, extremely low fertility rates are extremely new -- even as recently as the 60s the US total fertility rate (average number of children per woman over their lifetime) had peaked at just a bit under 4. That already meant things like fertility did not really play a major role in these issues. And obviously as you go further back there is an upward trend.
The second issue is that widescale welfare systems did not exist mostly until the 20th century, and the great depression time in particular. You had things like poorhouses where people could exchange hard labor for a meal and bed, but these were extremely local and small scale systems. There would not be support for millions of foreign individuals unable to otherwise independently support themselves. As a consequence of this, mass migrations were effectively impossible. So you won't find today's scenario in the past, because it did not exist.
But I do think we can at least see rough analogs of this scenario play out practically everywhere that 'we' have colonized and decided to stay. Those were different times and war was often involved, but when you look at the times following peace things rarely got better for the natives. Once 'we' established ourselves disparities just grew over time and native views, values, and cultures were gradually relegated to an ever smaller piece of society to the point that, for instance, today in America we rarely even acknowledge Native Americans when speaking of things like 'minority representation.'
> ... for instance, today in America we rarely even acknowledge Native Americans when speaking of things like 'minority representation.'
Well, that's because 90% of them had died, mostly from diseases spread by colonists, and many in war. Even perhaps genocide. So of course there's not much of their culture left.
But if descendants of immigrants from Central and South America become the majority, that's in some way a victory for Native Americans.
But people are also changed by their environment, this is not a one way street. I expect immigrants to the US to gradually lose the viewpoints of their original countries and to take on the viewpoints of their adapted home. Especially the children that are born there.
Also I expect that moving from a poorer/less-educated country to a richer/more-educated country will also effect people's values and beliefs.
>>imagine Islam continues to fail to really integrate into nations and, through raw fertility rates, starts to become the dominant factor in a generally liberal nation
One fallacy in this type of speculation is to assume that Muslims in the West will continue to have the same fertility rates they did in their ancestral countries. Maybe the first generation will, certainly not the second.
Quoted on the US statue of liberty, by Emma Lazarus:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Surely you mean indígena. Indigente means homeless, or when you want to call someone that has no idea what he talks about, for instance when they talk about racial trends in Europe and North America, "indigente intelectual".
>I don't understand why fertility rate is not a bigger consideration for people who consider themselves interested or invested in social progress. Fertility
From their perspective, the right thing for their societies to do is to progressively go extinct serving each member's personal convenience. Fertility, outside of personal choice as a lifestyle accessory, is something for the deplorables and the developing nations. Some are so educated that they expect miracle drugs in the future will keep them young forever (solving the pesky non-replacement problem).
(They also rationalize their societies extinction in that the world is "overpopulated").
You really shouldn't use weasel words and just point out the sizes of the groups you're taking about.
The problem is global and very likely tied to overlong work and education during prime reproductive time. Especially when there is virtual segregation in some branches. It is, no matter whatever is said, tied to belief.
>You really shouldn't use weasel words and just point out the sizes of the groups you're taking about.
You use this term, "weasel words". I don't think it means what you think it means.
What exactly are the weasel words here? I was quite clear.
Also how about some less hostility? Did I say anything personal about you?
>The problem is global and very likely tied to overlong work and education during prime reproductive time. Especially when there is virtual segregation in some branches. It is, no matter whatever is said, tied to belief.
Never said the reality of the issue was tied to belief. The issue however is tied to culture, lifestyle, beliefs, and how those influence people's decisions.
The question is do those stats accurately take into account the non-reproductive spread of social progress. Non-religiosity, education, female rights etc are all increasing outside of reproduction. Islamic countries may be growing population wise, but as female empowerment increases this may very well start to slow, as might rates of religiosity.
Current major source countries of immigrants (Mexico, Vietnam, China, Turkey, etc) are going through steep birth rate drops. The vast majority of countries with birth rates high enough to maintain their own population while allowing for waves of immigrants large enough to sustain other countries are in Africa. And they're dropping.
Assuming the rates keep going as they are, in about 50 years, we'll be down to about 10 countries that will have enough people to migrate to other countries to support their economic ponzi schemes/social security, and the world will just be too big and full of old folks to get by with so few immigrants. Before we get to that point, we need to start working out economic systems that don't rely on constant growth to be sustainable.
Maybe I'm missing something but I feel like the title is misleading.
>If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still increasing
But, it is, isn't it? The best TLDR I can grok (and forgive me, it's early and the coffee hasn't kicked in) is that there are fewer births per woman but more women in the reproductive age, so more births overall?
Hopefully someone can help correct my misunderstanding.
From the article, the number of children hasn't increased. The decrease in births per women cancels out the increase in women of reproductive age, resulting in the same rough number of births per year.
It really comes down to this:
> But it of course also matters that all of us today live much longer than our ancestors just a few generations ago. Life expectancy is now twice as long in all world regions.
twice as long?! That is nuts, what's the math on that. Am I wrong in understanding that to mean, e.g., in lots of places the life expectancy was 40 and now it's 80?
Because new people are still being crated and they live longer, it means that saturation level is higher.
To me the title sounds like we were in "children of men" or "handmaid's tale" but the supply of people is the same. Amount kids is the same because they "die" when they become adults. So simple math tells us there's more adults.
It's easy to imagine as a stream of ants going out of a wall crack. they walk straight and they die. If you take 1st few inches or cm, those are children, they enter and leave this area at a constant pace so the count is the same. Now you count ants on the rest of the path. How there can you make more ants there? They gotta die later.
You can make them die statistically, cut path into sections and see how total or each section count change.
TL;DR: life expectancy is longer now than ever before, so more women in the reproductive bracket, and this basically cancels out a falling fertility rate.
No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100 years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50.
The interesting point here is the concept of “population momentum” which acts like a capacitor that buffers decreasing fertility rates in the short term - yet - “peak child” has been reached.
I think the takeaway here is people who extrapolate global population in 2100 at 15+ Billion have it wrong.
It could be also more females reaching reproductive age. Traditionally a lot of kids died early before they could reach it. This was a traditional limiter on average life time.
>No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100 years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50.
You're looking at the wrong thing. It's the life expectancy of the children that matters most, not the life expectancy of adults into old age. The reason the number of women in the reproductive bracket has risen is that more of those births are surviving to child bearing age.
It's not a matter of spin, it' a matter of reality. At some point we need to move to a sustainable economic model. The alternative is eventual catastrophe. By definition an unsustainable economy, which does not become sustainable, will eventually not be sustained.
I also don't agree the consequences have to be 'very' negative. However that's such a vague and undefined term, it could mean anything. I believe the costs are manageable and that a stable, sustainable economy can be compatible with stable or rising living standards.
A non-increasing population leads to economic stagnation (at best). That, coupled with a decline in religiosity leading to a loss of societal cohesion will eventually bring down the whole house of cards that is modern civilization.
Famine, war, etc. follows. And we're back to a less populated world with high infant mortality again. Hard times lead to a return to religiosity and large families.
> A non-increasing population leads to economic stagnation (at best).
Kind of like in agriculture, there's "intensive" economic growth and "extensive" economic growth. Intensive being when the same number of people are more productive and extensive being when you have more people.
You can have economic growth with a stable population. Heck, Romania's having economic growth while its population is declining! (a population loss of about 10% in the last 15 years, during which time its economy doubled)
Harvest festivals were religious- or at least tied up in religion.
You can't just take a core element of a heavy intertwined, complex system without collateral damage. It's like deleting a file in a spaghetti codebase. Half the codebase interacts with any given file in some way or other.
that sounds like a problem with our economic system more than with our reproductive trends. At a certain point population growth would have had to plateau, it couldn't have continued growing forever.
