3 ms·

I don't think that this is going to be true. I think it is pretty clear that population is going to fall from mid century on. It may fall very fast at the tail

by sgt101 7y ago

I don't think that this is going to be true. I think it is pretty clear that population is going to fall from mid century on. It may fall very fast at the tail end of this century the current crop of young adults die. It looks like real fertility rates (the actual incidence of people having babies has fallen and continues to fall).

drclau 7y ago
Can you provide some data to support this? I’m genuinely interested.
- rb808 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... Still many countries are >2 but they're falling rapidly too. Its surprising to me to see Bangladesh at 2.1 and India at 2.2. Places like S Korea 1.1, Italy 1.3, Japan 1.4 you can do the math yourself. (1.3/2)^N means without immigration their populations nearly disappear in 100 years. Russia 1.6, China 1.6, Thailand 1.5 takes maybe 12 generations to do the same.
  - nfc 7y ago
    I think if what we are discussing is population growth we should talk about the global data not that of individual countries. Whether some countries population is increasing or not is a different question. I looked at this source https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate which seems to imply that globally the number of children per woman is 2.5 so still much higher than the replacement rate (of course we'd have to talk about more than fertility rate to have a real discussion). As far as I understand the projections about population stabilization are based on predictions of a reduction of children per woman in countries where this is still very high. It's possible that these predictions are right but they are just that, predictions. As an aside, I think we should dedicate a bit more effort to try to understand the implications of both possibilities and a bit less to try to assert as certain what is just a prediction. This is not obviously not only a reply to the parent's point, I just found myself writing a longer reply than expected ;)
    - mrkstu 7y ago
      Except it has consistently been reducing everywhere- its just that some continents started much higher and will take longer to get down to ~2 or below.
      - nfc 7y ago
        I'm not saying it will not happen, there are certainly clues pointing out in that direction so no need for "except" :). On the other hand there are scenarios compatible with the data you are mentioning that do not lead to population stabilization. For example. Let's say that while the majority of the population (Population A) is reducing its fertility rate a subpopulation (Population B) keeps it at a higher rate. Let's suppose that both populations maintain this behavior for several generations. In this case we would see an initial reduction in fertility rate not leading to a stabilization of the population Will this happen?, I don't know. What I'm saying is that I feel in these discussions often people place too much faith on their preferred extrapolations ;)
- sebwi 7y ago
  I highly recommend to take a look at the summaries from Our World in Data if you are interested in human development [1]. We have already seen the peak of the global annual population growth rate, so most of the population growth will happen until 2050 with ~ 9.7 billion people worldwide by then. Nevertheless, there are likely to be ~ 11 billion people around in 2100 [2]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/ [2] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
29athrowaway 7y ago
I think otherwise. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
empath75 7y ago
It's going to drop the easy way (fewer children) or the hard way (war or mass starvation). There's only so many people the planet can physically support.

by sgt101 7y ago

drclau 7y ago

Can you provide some data to support this? I’m genuinely interested.

rb808 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... Still many countries are >2 but they're falling rapidly too. Its surprising to me to see Bangladesh at 2.1 and India at 2.2. Places like S Korea 1.1, Italy 1.3, Japan 1.4 you can do the math yourself. (1.3/2)^N means without immigration their populations nearly disappear in 100 years. Russia 1.6, China 1.6, Thailand 1.5 takes maybe 12 generations to do the same.
- nfc 7y ago
  I think if what we are discussing is population growth we should talk about the global data not that of individual countries. Whether some countries population is increasing or not is a different question. I looked at this source https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate which seems to imply that globally the number of children per woman is 2.5 so still much higher than the replacement rate (of course we'd have to talk about more than fertility rate to have a real discussion). As far as I understand the projections about population stabilization are based on predictions of a reduction of children per woman in countries where this is still very high. It's possible that these predictions are right but they are just that, predictions. As an aside, I think we should dedicate a bit more effort to try to understand the implications of both possibilities and a bit less to try to assert as certain what is just a prediction. This is not obviously not only a reply to the parent's point, I just found myself writing a longer reply than expected ;)
  - mrkstu 7y ago
    Except it has consistently been reducing everywhere- its just that some continents started much higher and will take longer to get down to ~2 or below.
    - nfc 7y ago
      I'm not saying it will not happen, there are certainly clues pointing out in that direction so no need for "except" :). On the other hand there are scenarios compatible with the data you are mentioning that do not lead to population stabilization. For example. Let's say that while the majority of the population (Population A) is reducing its fertility rate a subpopulation (Population B) keeps it at a higher rate. Let's suppose that both populations maintain this behavior for several generations. In this case we would see an initial reduction in fertility rate not leading to a stabilization of the population Will this happen?, I don't know. What I'm saying is that I feel in these discussions often people place too much faith on their preferred extrapolations ;)
sebwi 7y ago
I highly recommend to take a look at the summaries from Our World in Data if you are interested in human development [1]. We have already seen the peak of the global annual population growth rate, so most of the population growth will happen until 2050 with ~ 9.7 billion people worldwide by then. Nevertheless, there are likely to be ~ 11 billion people around in 2100 [2]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/ [2] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

29athrowaway 7y ago

I think otherwise. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

empath75 7y ago

It's going to drop the easy way (fewer children) or the hard way (war or mass starvation). There's only so many people the planet can physically support.