U.S. and World Population Clock | Hacker News Reader

U.S. and World Population Clock

census.gov

48 pointsrecardona32 comments

Notice that there are many more males than females in the USA for in the age bracket when relationships form. The ratio is 1.07 (.73/.68 = 1.07) for 19 year olds. It's incredibly high and I wonder why that is?

Think about the implication: No matter what those 107 guys do there will be only enough girlfriends/wives/lovers for 100 hundred of them. The ratio reverses only after age 45.

This might explain the extraordinary effort by men to meet women in the U.S. as compared to some other countries and earlier times in U.S. history. The dating sites, the PUA courses, and even Zuckerberg's original motive for Facebook. The competition is super intense because it's a zero sum game. For 7% of men it's futile. (I'm simplifying by ignoring 19 year olds with 45 year old girlfriends, gays relationships, and many other factors.)

Most people know that women outnumber men overall, but are unaware that the statistics for young people are reversed.

Relationships between people that aren't the same age aren't exactly unheard of, and exclusive monogamy isn't exactly an ironclad rule among humans, so two key assumptions underlying your conclusion seem to be invalid.

I've seen some statistics (not sure about their validity) stating that around 10% of the population are gay/bisexual, so if this were the case then having 7% more males than females wouldn't necessarily be a problem.

Unless 10% of females are also gay/bisexual, then it all cancels out. Also, gender disparities could affect the gay/bisexual communities just as much as the straight community.

That's true. Well at least the imbalance is only in a single age group, not for instance like in China where selective abortions have lead to a nationwide gender gap[1].

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific...

Dating was actually easier for me in china, and my now Chinese wife says is still is sort of hard for girls to find the right guys especially at the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum. It's complicated.

I lived in China for a couple of years and found the same, but I don't think our experiences would be representative of those of the average mainland Chinese male.

Average no, upper class definitely.

Interesting point.

The natural sex ratio at birth is estimated at 1.06, so that ratio of males to females for young Americans is not particularly out of expectation.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

I couldn't readily find numbers, but I would speculate that there may also be more male than female immigrants at younger ages.

Perhaps young men are more likely to immigrate than women? I believe I read somewhere Toxoplasma gondii causes higher birth percentage of males. Also the birth rate is naturally skewed. And then there are selective abortions, and less war to kill off all the young men.

Wow, I can't believe that birth is only 5x as common as immigration in the US. I knew there were a lot of people coming into the country but I didn't think it would be that significant.

We need more if we are to sustain our tax base; immigration only seems high because fertility is relatively low. While it's a lot in absolute terms, the US is only around 180th in terms of population density, well below average.

http://ssab.gov/Documents/IMMIG_Issue_Brief_Final_Version_00...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...

Or we could consider spending less.

No we couldn't. Entitlement spending (eg social security) is mandatory, by law. The architects of that system (and of Medicare) did not foresee the bay boomer generation and the sudden drop in fertility. US pensions are not especially generous, though Medicare costs could certainly be controlled. I urge you to read the SSAB report; this isn't something you can conserve your way out of, same way that you can't conserve your way out of rising carbon pollution.

Sure, Congress could pass a law to cut entitlements significantly. But good luck explaining to voters who paid payroll taxes all their working lives that they can't have what they paid for.

I see a discrepancy between the listing of the 10 most populous nations, and the counter...

http://i.imgur.com/Jm9uQSF.png 3. United States 318,892,103

But the counter for the USA (as I write this) says: 317,760,552.

The data for the top 10 countries are being pulled from the Census Bureau's International Database. Here's the US data: http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/regi...

There, you can see 2014's mid-year population is identical to the top 10 chart.

So 318,892,103 is the estimated mid-year population for 2014 (July 1), whereas 317,760,552 is the estimated population as of today (March 27).

This has been around a long time in one form or another. I remember being fascinated by it as a kid in the early 90s when I was first introduced to the Internet. (Does anyone have a screenshot for comparison? Sadly it doesn't seem to be on archive.org.)

Interesting that the population age drops off right at 65 (also the retirement age).

That's a function of the Baby Boomers starting to enter their mid-60s.

I would guess it's rather that the birth rate during the war was rather low, given that a lot of young males were either in Europe and/or killed?

That's not correct. Population growth increased from the 1930s compared to the 1940s, and accelerated during the war (it was eg twice as high in '45 and '46 as '33). The great depression had a much greater impact on population growth than WW2 did. The only negative modern year being 1918 (combination of WW1 + deep recession post war + flu pandemic). Live births also increased during WW2.

http://www.multpl.com/us-population-growth-rate/table/by-yea...

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html

It would be neat to have some kind of public display that shows two scrolling lists. One is a real time list of births in the US. The other, a real time list of US deaths.

The birth and death rates are low enough that most of the time both lists would be changing slow enough that you could easily keep up reading them, but high enough that you could see movement and see that the birth list is growing faster.

The death list would probably be the most interesting, as it would be less steady. You'd occasionally see blocks of deaths all in the same location as accidents and disasters happen.

That would require a live feed of births and deaths, which I don't think exists. The site is probably based on projections from census data.

Minority Report has live feed of future non-natural deaths.

Interested in the world's population and got 43 minutes to spare? Joel Cohen of the Rockefeller and Columbia has an excellent discussion. You may be surprised what you learn.

http://www.floatinguniversity.com/lectures-cohen

Also on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vr44C_G0-o

The slow demise of the world and it's resources clock.

Poorly-worded heading! Net gain of one person every 16 seconds while the World Population counter ticks merrily away at around two or three per second!

That's no clock,but a ticking time-bomb!

'One death every 12 seconds'___I didn't notice it before.

Quite interesting so many of the top countries are Muslim (Bangladesh, Pakistan, big chunks of Nigeria and India).

I wonder what will happen in the near future when the Muslim population inevitably dominates over the other groups.

As it gets more educated and gains a higher level of living standard, the muslim population will slow its birth rate. A high birth rate is primarily visible in countries where you HAVE to have kids to survive when you get old.

It is specifically about women getting emancipated.

Nigeria is really an oddity. Wonder why the birthrate is that exponential there.

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