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Although we say that oldies are a waste of space and non-productive, some cultures revere old people and they represent experience and knowledge. In our culture however they are thought of as pretty useless once they retire or get past 65 years old. My father-in-law is a TCM doctor and was still working in one of the most prestigious clinics in the country until a couple of months ago at 85 years old. So...we may have to change our attitude to age and kick out age-ism in the workplace.
The oldies are NOT the concern.
Whatever excessive breeding they might do has already been done.
Most of that is true for their adult kids as well.
The concern is how many kids their 10 or 12 or 20 grandkids will have.
Not the individual number per person but collectively how many NEW people will be coming.
We need to taper those raw numbers. Rates matter not.
Last edited by MrRational; 06-26-2021 at 01:02 PM..
The oldies are NOT the concern.
Whatever excessive breeding they might do has already been done.
Most of that is true for their adult kids as well.
The concern is how many kids their 10 or 12 or 20 grandkids will have.
Not the individual number per person but collectively how many NEW people will be coming.
We need to taper those raw numbers. Rates matter not.
Fertility rate is the only thing that matters.
The Smothers Brothers used to have a routine using your logic:
How many parents do you have?.... Two.
And how many grandparents do you have?...... Four.
And how many great grandparents do you have? ...... Eight. See?! Any fool can see the world population is shrinking at an alarming rate!
OP, there is something you are not considering. In pre industrial times, having many kids was not optional, it was basically implicitly mandatory through multiple societal constructs, so every personality was reproducing. In industrial times, these norms broke down due to many factors and the women who didn't want to have kids didn't. Today, the men who don't want to have kids AND the women who don't want to have kids aren't having kids.
The corollary of this is that the kids being born today and in the future are to those of parents who desire to have kids despite all the financial and leisure time sacrifices, a very different reproducing subset than the total population. Hardly any accident kids occur anymore. What this means is that in a couple generations, future humans will be wired differently descending from a stock of people who really valued family. These future humans will be a lot more inclined to want babies than current humans. In a sense, it's like the inverse of Idiocracy, but I 100% believe it's happening.
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As to be expected, the usual fatalist grumps came out of the woodwork describing humans as earth ultimate parasite and 'our' best hope is that 6 out of the 7 billion end up never reproducing. They are all geographically challenged, only way you can hold this view with their tinted glasses viewing the pre human world as some sort of garden of Eden. But that's already been hashed out in the other thread of whether the US should increase it's population. These views are why it's easy for people to hate environmental movements...
OP, there is something you are not considering. In pre industrial times, having many kids was not optional, it was basically implicitly mandatory through multiple societal constructs, so every personality was reproducing. In industrial times, these norms broke down due to many factors and the women who didn't want to have kids didn't. Today, the men who don't want to have kids AND the women who don't want to have kids aren't having kids.
The corollary of this is that the kids being born today and in the future are to those of parents who desire to have kids despite all the financial and leisure time sacrifices, a very different reproducing subset than the total population. Hardly any accident kids occur anymore. What this means is that in a couple generations, future humans will be wired differently descending from a stock of people who really valued family. These future humans will be a lot more inclined to want babies than current humans. In a sense, it's like the inverse of Idiocracy, but I 100% believe it's happening.
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As to be expected, the usual fatalist grumps came out of the woodwork describing humans as earth ultimate parasite and 'our' best hope is that 6 out of the 7 billion end up never reproducing. They are all geographically challenged, only way you can hold this view with their tinted glasses viewing the pre human world as some sort of garden of Eden. But that's already been hashed out in the other thread of whether the US should increase it's population. These views are why it's easy for people to hate environmental movements...
I suppose those are things worth considering. The fertility rate, however, is not my calculation. It is reported to the UN Population Division, who publishes the numbers.
There certainly is hope for mankind. There is hope for America, freedom and prosperity. There is hope for Canada, where 20% of the residents were not born there. In fact, Canada has an aggressive immigration/refugee program and they hope to go from the current 38M people to 100M people by 2100. They are fully aware of the challenges brought to the forefront by the world wide declining fertility rate and are determined to become one of the winners.
As I have said, I believe the losers will be the Asian countries, where outsiders are not usually welcome; over a long enough time span some of them may collapse with the remaining population becoming refugees.
Your vision of a stronger, more enlightened human population is refreshing. Imagine an America and a Canada with little need for a world wide army simply because those who threaten freedom have committed demographic suicide.
I suppose those are things worth considering. The fertility rate, however, is not my calculation. It is reported to the UN Population Division, who publishes the numbers.
There certainly is hope for mankind. There is hope for America, freedom and prosperity. There is hope for Canada, where 20% of the residents were not born there. In fact, Canada has an aggressive immigration/refugee program and they hope to go from the current 38M people to 100M people by 2100. They are fully aware of the challenges brought to the forefront by the world wide declining fertility rate and are determined to become one of the winners.
As I have said, I believe the losers will be the Asian countries, where outsiders are not usually welcome; over a long enough time span some of them may collapse with the remaining population becoming refugees.
Your vision of a stronger, more enlightened human population is refreshing. Imagine an America and a Canada with little need for a world wide army simply because those who threaten freedom have committed demographic suicide.
It's just hard to predict the future because changes precipitate changes in a non linear fashion. For instance, an absurd amount of Africa is under 21. With many of them now having internet access to the world, their lifestyle could shift rapidly, a lot faster than their grandparents did over several decades.
I would think stabilization seems more likely than perpetual decline, because as the world eventually enters upper middle class levels (like 100K USD annually per household), which it might hit by 2100, kids become affordable again. It's during this lower middle class / skilled industrial worker phase that kids stretch dual income earners limits. And that's where a lot of Asia is at now, but they are growing faster than we did, so things could change pretty rapidly there.
It's just hard to predict the future because changes precipitate changes in a non linear fashion. For instance, an absurd amount of Africa is under 21. With many of them now having internet access to the world, their lifestyle could shift rapidly, a lot faster than their grandparents did over several decades.
I would think stabilization seems more likely than perpetual decline, because as the world eventually enters upper middle class levels (like 100K USD annually per household), which it might hit by 2100, kids become affordable again. It's during this lower middle class / skilled industrial worker phase that kids stretch dual income earners limits. And that's where a lot of Asia is at now, but they are growing faster than we did, so things could change pretty rapidly there.
There’s also a major cultural shift happening globally, even in developing countries that are usually known for large demographic increases. More and more people are experiencing single life for longer periods of time, as they wish to focus on their own personal goals, rather than be tied up at home with families.
The global population will begin to shrink very soon, perhaps as soon as 10 years. And once it begins to decline, it will never stop declining. That's a fact, according to some demographers. They make a pretty compelling case for the ever-shrinking human population in the book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline. Their case, in simple terms, revolves around the emancipation of women and urbanization. It's more complicated than that, though, so interested parties should read the book or some of the many articles written about the subject.
Many countries are already on the decline and many more will join. Some governments will collapse - I mean cease to exist! There simply will not be enough people living in Bulgaria (to pick one) to support a government. Italy has noted that it is a dying country already.
So what will the world be like in 100 years? IN 2200, it is projected that the world will have about the same population as we do today, but the population will be much older. And old people (I am one) are not productive. We become a burden on our countries....
The global population, in the forecasts that I see (such as from the UN), is expected to keep increasing for decades to come, from under 8 billion today to about 11 billion by 2088.
That's way too many people; if the population falls, so be it. That will mean less environmental degradation, fewer people consuming natural resources and less traffic!
Israel's population, currently with a 3.04 birthrate, is projected to rise from 9m today to 18m by 2099.
What's more, the non-Orthodox Jewish population is growing faster than the Arab-Israeli population, contrary to earlier trends and predictions. As the Muslim Arabs become more prosperous, their impetus to have large families is vanishing and they are coming to resemble other modern groups. Needless to say, the Orthodox and especially the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) are continuing to have huge families.
Then there is immigration; as Muslim numbers rise in Europe, the number of Jews moving to Israel from that region is rising. In France alone, some 10K Jews are moving to Israel every year (a bunch of others are moving to Montreal).
It's interesting to note that much of Russia's foreign policy is driven by a desire to preserve and extend the Russian population. The Crimea annexation was deplored and sanctioned by the West, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of Russia's history. Crimea was a part of Soviet Russia until Stalin decided to dump it in the 1930s. He also banished much of Crimea's Muslim population to Siberia; more recently, Muslims have been moving back to Crimea, and Putin evidently wished to halt this trend and reclaim old territory, to add a million or so Russian speakers back into the Federation.
Putin also opted to annex eastern Ukraine with its majority Russian speakers who preferred to be part of Russia than be subjects of a corrupt kleptocracy regime in Ukraine (arguably, Russia's is just as corrupt however).
Demographics also helps to explain Putin's friendliness toward Israel, with its 2m Russian speakers. Israel is thought of as a Moscow-on-the-Mediterranean, and it is the number 2 holiday destination for Russian vacationers. When I was there (Israel), the Russians were the pushiest people, always cutting in line, yet were very friendly. Putin has openly encouraged Israelis to move to Moscow, and indeed there are a few young entrepreneurs of Russian descent who are moving to Russia to take advantage of the larger markets.
Getting back to the main topic, as the OP noted, the U.S. will probably continue to grow, mainly from immigration. The majority white-ethnic population is imploding, with millions of young people simply opting out of raising a family, whereas there are still high birth rates among American Muslims, Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Christians, Blacks, and Hispanics.
Africa is now over 1 billion, and likely to continue growing for quite some time. Judging by their birth rates, they may exceed 2B by century's end.
The global population, in the forecasts that I see (such as from the UN), is expected to keep increasing for decades to come, from under 8 billion today to about 11 billion by 2088.
That's way too many people; if the population falls, so be it. That will mean less environmental degradation, fewer people consuming natural resources and less traffic!
If you do not understand the math, you will believe what the UN said.
The math says one thing; the UN says another. One question that needs to be answered is, "Why does the UN forecast a number that is unsupported by the math?"
One answer is, Because people do not understand that the UN forecast is not mathematically supported, so the UN can easily get away with it. ........... But the larger answer is, Because it fits more with the UN's narrative.
Population will not fail in the usual sense. It will decrease, and that's a fact supported by a fertility rate of less than 2.0 nearly everywhere. I think your forecast of a cleaner, more managed earth is spot on.
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