Compared to my parents, I spent 20x the time parenting (the new normal) and I'm not sure these stats reflect that.
Our global birthrate is a unconcerning 2.3 and worldwide restroom use continues apace.
Sex is edging out smoking but not by much.
Our global birthrate is a unconcerning 2.3 and worldwide restroom use continues apace.
Sex is edging out smoking but not by much.
It’s easy to be complacent in developed countries because birth rates have come way down, probably because of increased wealth and better education/opportunity for women and girls - but this is not yet the case in developing countries, and the nature of exponential growth is that if it exists anywhere locally, then it will eventually come to exist globally.
It really doesn’t help to cut aid programmes to places that are most in need of development.
This is really bad if your country's pension and welfare system assumes a certain ratio of people will be in the labor force, relative to the number of old and retired people, as most developed countries do. A declining birth rate is much worse than a slightly positive birth rate.
Edit: it’s not that I don’t believe the population projections showing a peak later in the century (although I think the Club of Rome one in particular is inaccurate), it’s that these projections are based on there being continued effort to bring birth rates down, hence now not being the time for complacency or defunding these efforts.
The upshot is that everyone will need to save more for retirement than they do currently, whether privately or via taxation.
It's always a bit of political struggle of course with back and forth, but the general trend is just that.
We are living in the age of peak entitlement, where we draw down on the finite fossil fuel reserves of the past while simultaneously drawing down on the earnings of our children in the future.
What do you think the actual number is in terms of dedicated hours per day?
My mom parented between zero and few hours a week. Both her time and mine were representative of our respective generations. The major difference was her time spent was unchanged since before history.
And sometime between her gen and mine, US childhood was mostly eradicated.