It's not good. Our civilization is quickly becoming inhospitable to humans.
Having a child used to be a random experiment and you needed to make sure that one makes it through to care for you when you will be old or sick. Pensions, health and welfare systems and much better child mortality rates make it unnecessary to have many children. A replacement fertility rate of slightly over 2.0-2.1 is/would be fine in developed countries.
Yeah, but that's now what we're having. My country sits at 1.4, and the only subpopulations with above replacement rate TFR are non-indigenous, so to speak.
South Korea has a TFR of below 1.
Japan has a TFR of ~1.4.
Most European countries are somewhere between 1.4 and ~1.7.
The US is below 2.
The West is dying out, and has been for a while.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab...
(You can change the countries displayed by clicking the (+) sign on the right hand side of the graph. I preselected UK, US, Germany, Iran and South Korea here.)
And many developed countries are far below that. That's what I read the parent to write about, not the shift from pre-industrial to industrial times.
Medicine has improved such that it is far less of an evolutionary pressure. I imagine psychological well being, and wealth are more of an issue. It would be interesting to look at the correlation between mental health and wealth, or if there’s a key point between them.
Or there could be a selection pressure for more social groups of humans, a eusocial society, I can’t remember who suggested that.
Your parent comment is right in pointing out that it is not a familiar abbreviation.
Transferrin receptor, Temporary Fly restriction, Terrain Following Radar, Time Frequency Representation
And a Truck in Thailand is named TFR also...
I don't think that was the idea, rather: fix the circumstances and the people will do the rest themselves.
> For example in India's case it would be madness to encourage even more fertility.
And fertility rates there haven't dropped as they did in the developed world, so it's really not the same issue.
That depends on the definition of "better". In purely material terms, the developed world is the best there ever was. Yet depression, drug abuse, loneliness etc are rising, so maybe humans require more than just material things.
For animals, living in a zoo is the best thing to do. Steady meals, a doctor on call and they'll even bring you mates to reproduce. Yet somehow, many animals in captivity don't want to breed, maybe it's similar for humans.
But realistically currently controlling population is the aspect that is most important so improving well being should be done in a way that does not result in a higher birth rate.
We really do not need more humans, we are not an endangered species. The only reason we think we do is because many societies have essentially created Ponzi schemes where the welfare of the elderly generation relies on ever increasing numbers of younger generations, which will inevitably become unsustainable.
According to the dictionary "inhospitable" means "Unfavorable to life or growth", and it's much harder for me to have one children than it was for my grandparents to have five.