If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still increasing
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
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.
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.
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).
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/12/shocking-truth-20-of-health-...
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.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
[2] - https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-20...
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.
>You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely.
> fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'.
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.
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.
>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.
As described, that would fall into the 4%.
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.
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.
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...
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].
[0] https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/19441/what...
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.
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.
It just goes to show.
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")
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.
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.
That is, in fact, exactly how it’s defined within that religion. Also, using Egypt as an example is deeply ironic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZIqdrFeFBk
Why should someone not in a religion care how that religion defines things? I'm not quite clear what you're trying to say here.
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.
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.
So what? Why should I care? What point are you trying to make?
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").
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 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.
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).
Edit: Oops, I mean "indígena".
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.
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?
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.
Can you point to any historical examples of the process you are describing?
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We'll see soon if this theory is correct with globally stagnating population or not.
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.
Hopefully this all happens after I'm gone.
You don't get that in secular society.
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.
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)
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.