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No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100 years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50. The interesti
by 0n34n7 7y ago
No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100 years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50.
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.
- nn3 7y agoIt could be also more females reaching reproductive age. Traditionally a lot of kids died early before they could reach it. This was a traditional limiter on average life time.
- simonh 7y ago>No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100 years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50. 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.
- AstralStorm 7y agoTo a point this trend does continue, with developing countries taking up some slack. We'll see soon if this theory is correct with globally stagnating population or not.
- simonh 7y agoI prefer to say stabilising.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoHow you choose to spin it does nothing to change the very negative economic situation that a non-increasing population would bring.
- ido 7y agothat sounds like a problem with our economic system more than with our reproductive trends. At a certain point population growth would have had to plateau, it couldn't have continued growing forever.
- jcadam 7y agoIt's all self correcting in the long run, I say. 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.
- simonh 7y agoWhat makes you believe secularism leads to reduced social cohesion? Surely it eliminates a source of friction between religious groups?
- antepodius 7y agoSuppose every member of a small town went to church every sunday. Everyone interacts with everyone else in the area, for a bit. You don't get that in secular society.
- oblio 7y agoThere's many ways to socialize and few of them are religious. I'm willing to bet we had parties way before we invented religion ;)
- em-bee 7y agoso that means the replacement rate of 2.3 should be dropping or has dropped
- ido 7y ago15B+ at 2100 is not the main-stream prediction anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...