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The global fertility rate is falling

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• unstatusthequo 6y ago
  This may be unpopular, but I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics.
  • Forge36 6y ago
    Potentially. I think we'll see another explosion in population IF a cause it's addressed. What those causes may be is not yet fully identified.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • syshum 6y ago
    Yes and no. if you look at the date though the places with the most "abundance" or wealth is where the fertility rate is collapsing. It is largely down to that wealth that people are having less children.
    • dougabug 6y ago
      Couldn’t this also be construed as a good thing? One outcome might wealth will be available to take care of the remaining population.
      • syshum 6y ago
        "Good" and "Bad" are down to perspective and is very subjective. Especially when talking about this issue. There is a strong correlation also with educational levels and birth rates. the more educated the person, means both they are more successful monetarily, and they are less likely to have children, or have only a single child which is less than replacement (every child has 2 parents) So is large numbers of uneducated people having children that statically will also be uneducated as well a "good" thing for humanity? I dont know have you watched the movie Idiocracy? Natrually then most people will say "well we just need to educate that generation, get those nations / people educated" , this however does not solve the problem of birth rates because as you educate more and more people, as you bring more and more people to success they will also stop having children. If you reach the utopia where everyone in society has equal levels of education, then it is very likely you will see population crash. Now technology could solve for that, extended life / extended fertility span for women for example would certainly inverse the population issue.
  • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    It may be unpopular, but I agree 100%. I don't want people to suffer unnecessarily. But the more people we add to the planet, the more we exacerbate problems with food, water, Co2 emissions, etc. In the end, something will curtail human population growth. I really hope it's voluntary and painless.
    • grugagag 6y ago
      Exactly, let it be our educated decision not starvation, senseless wars and poverty. And the more the human population rose it took into other populations, it led to numerous extinctions, etc I hope the trend stays like this. It’s not like there are 1000 people left, there are still billions extra
    • gscott 6y ago
      Most of the United States is unpopulated. We can easily double our population and be fine.
      • chillwaves 6y ago
        That's not the bottleneck. At present consumption levels, doubling the population of the United States would be disastrous.
    • aahhahahaaa 6y ago
      Following this logic (and ignoring the increase of suffering as a raw product of addition) it's totally possible there'd be less suffering if we stayed in loosely connected hunter-gatherer societies.
      • ivalm 6y ago
        Maybe, but we didnt, so here we are and I don’t see any megafauna to hunt near me. In the future we may wish to think more about our changes.
      • scarmig 6y ago
        Following this logic further, we might be best off if we reduced the population to a single person whose ideal, perfectly happy life is that of a hermit. Philosophers have given this a lot of thought: the "repugnant conclusion" is what to Google for.
  • ALittleLight 6y ago
    What is your estimate on the Earth's ideal human population and what is it based on?
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    Eliminate coal power and the "problem" is nowhere near as bad.
    • tim58 6y ago
      The problem is a lot bigger than coal power. One example, agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation and many of our current agricultural practices have questionable long term sustainability. In addition our agricultural processes are introducing new diseases into the human population, including our current pandemic. The problem of sustainably providing nutritious food people want to eat is just one of a dozen that we are not solving at acceptable levels.
  • miles 6y ago
    > I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. You might enjoy Peter Russell's "The Global Brain" for another perspective on human population growth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1sr9x263LM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1sr9x263LM . > We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics. It certainly seems that our carrying capacity could be much greater with sounder policies, practices, and politics.
    • paulcole 6y ago
      100% agree. If there’s one thing you can count on to come through in a tricky situation, it’s level heads and politicians.
  • Guy2020 6y ago
    In my view, you are echoing propaganda. Nothing says humans have to live in cities and burn massive amounts of fossil fuels. The way we are living may be stressful to the planet, but humans aren't the problem... it's the way we are forced to live that is.
    • busterarm 6y ago
      It's almost like we've all been convinced to join some weird, global suicide cult. Except instead of killing ourselves we're throwing our genetic information away. Almost everyone I know who is really well-off/rich is having several kids. Heck, Elon Musk, who is basically spending his life trying to solve these environmental problems as his multiple businesses, has six! Why are their social norms and thoughts on this so different from the rest of us?
      • aahhahahaaa 6y ago
        It's not rocket science, it's because they don't have to raise the kids - I'd be surprised if elon saw his kids for more than a third as much as the middle class sees theirs. Hell he wasn't even at the birth of his latest.
        • busterarm 6y ago
          Right, but the difference is that we don't admit that we're not willing to or can't take on the burden of raising children. Instead it's "oh, I'm doing what's right for the environment." One of these two behaviors is intellectually dishonest. Which one do you think it is? Aside: Most of the parents that I know are extremely involved in their kids lives, even if they pay for help.
      • Guy2020 6y ago
        Most of us are not willing participants in this "cult." We're dragged along by the nose.
      • cyberlurker 6y ago
        He's getting up there in age and there needs to be a Musk on Mars.
  • thaumaturgy 6y ago
    This is the popular view, reinforced by lots of different bits of media and pop culture. It's also wrong. Enough food is already produced right now to feed every person on Earth [1]. Most estimates furthermore put the Earth's carrying capacity at around 2 billion more people than we already have [2]. The problems that people think of when they think of "overpopulation" are the result of insufficient distribution systems, corruption, unconstrained capitalism, faulty human psychology, and poor education. They are problems caused by human beings screwing over their fellow human beings. Some of these problems get easier to solve when you have more people, not fewer, and in any case, nobody's yet figured out how to make things much better in a shrinking economy. [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241746569_We_Already_Grow_Enough_Food_for_10_Billion_People_and_Still_Can't_End_Hunger https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241746569_We_Alread... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Humans
    • imtringued 6y ago
      https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/ https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-d...
  • aahhahahaaa 6y ago
    It's obviously very difficult to predict, but there's also some expert speculation that affluence will spread widely enough to slow the birth rate down to be close to the death rate and we'll reach some sort of equilibrium.
    • skissane 6y ago
      I think another factor is traditionalist religious minorities – ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Amish, Latin Mass Catholics, etc – many of these minorities still have big families, and are sustaining those big families generation after generation. (Even though some people who grow up in those kinds of communities defect to mainstream society, something like 80% choose to stay.) Those religious minorities are quite small right now, but if they manage to sustain their current growth into the coming decades, they may end up being a much more substantial component of the population.
  • risyachka 6y ago
    No one is saying we must increase the population. Article points out that it is important to slow it down so decrease is not so rapid, otherwise it will be harsh. It's easy to slow down the birthrate if country wants it. It's much harder to raise it.
  • tamarind8 6y ago
    Over 50% of the worlds resources are consumed by the USA. A lot of it goes to waste e.g. restaurant food, "ugly" fruits etc The problem isn't the quantity of those resources, the problem is in distribution. The world is abundant enough to comfortably support twice as many humans, if human inefficiencies, waste, greed and selfishness are factored out. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumpt...
• hprotagonist 6y ago
  Elder care is a pressing issue, but in general isn't this good news?
  • eranimo 6y ago
    Not for the economy
    • grugagag 6y ago
      Yes for the planet and yes for the human race too, overpopulation leads to all sort of problems The economy should adapt not the other way around
      • kilroy_jones 6y ago
        Agreed, but no one seems to know how we decouple the economy from growth without hurting or angering a lot of people. Maybe we just tear off that bandaid quickly.
        • grugagag 6y ago
          The resources are there but they are misallocated and the few own most of them. When push come to shove it will become more and more obvious this is one of the problems. Until the we fight on stupid things
        • TOGoS 6y ago
          The number of people who would be adversely 'negatively' affected if we said "alright, we're taking control of this situation and not just going to blindly let you maximize your profits at the expense of the rest of the planet" is pretty small. A few millionaires and billionaires. The majority of us will adapt just fine.
    • aylmao 6y ago
      Guess it's time to re-structure the economy away from "who can consume and produce most".
• pobrecito 6y ago
  > The researchers warn against undoing the progress on women's education and access to contraception. Interesting...
• _bxg1 6y ago
  There's a short-term problem of society becoming "top-heavy", where there might not be enough young to pay for the continued care of the old. But in the long run this seems like a win. I wonder what impact it might have on climate projections.
  • cheez 6y ago
    Why does it seem like a win?
    • toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Less future humans in contention for limited planetary resources.
      • cheez 6y ago
        Are they really limited (edit: with respect to the number of humans)? What makes you say that?
    • arp242 6y ago
      The planet is of finite size, so unlimited growth was clearly never an option. The question is, what is the best population size, and how do we get to that level?
      • hubert1234 6y ago
        the universe is plenty infinite, we dont need to limit the population at all
      • cheez 6y ago
        There are natural growth levels I'm sure.
  • young_unixer 6y ago
    A big part of that problem is that most nations have a pension system where the active work force pays for the pension of the elder instead of each person paying their own pension by saving/investing troughout their lives.
• dutch3000 6y ago
  another chicken little article. worthless speculation about the future. who knows what will happen if the population declines. one thing is for certain though. it will be a positive for the environment. at some point the ponzi scheme, infinite growth society must have it’s day of reckoning
  • steve76 6y ago
    Sure. Curing cancer. Imaging black holes. All a giant scheme. In April, energy prices dropped. People stayed at home and read and just didn't mess up. If terrorists did not orchestrate the coordinated burning and looting of hundreds of USA cities, we might have kept it going. No more people telling everyone what to do from far away. Can't have that. So now we have to work our lives away again, just so some drunken mob does not cannibalize us from the inside. Why is population declining? People are awful today. Horrible and cruel to one another. People work each other to death and destroy families without a second thought just for money they spendthrift away. Sharing in service, grief, passing on wealth and knowledge to the next ones up, that's all gone. Now it's just a world of ogres. If you're kind, you're weak or weird. Everyone's looking to get one over on another. A pack of dogs cheating at cards paying monkeys to fix cars.
  • mindfulhack 6y ago
    I support this sentiment 100%. In human population, we should be aiming for quality, not quantity. Quality also means diversity. If higher quantity unavoidably brings a higher proportion of human suffering, then we have no other choice but to promote quality over quantity. I fear for the future of our species. Our evolutionary instinct to multiply combined with the tech we've created is now bringing this planet to the brink. Everyone wants to exist. But I would rather exist in a positive way, than exist at all.
    • ken47 6y ago
      People may believe that they fear for the "future of our species," but at a meta level, is it not merely an expression of the same innate human desire that caused us to build up civilization and medicine to the point that we're facing the aforementioned issues? Without getting into a long spiel, human intelligence appears to actually be extremely limited, compared to a theoretical perfect intelligence, and any explicit actions we may take to enforce "quality over quantity" could end up doing more "harm" than "good" as soon as 1 "move" beyond the furthest move that we're capable of calculating. IMO, there is no "saving" humankind. We're all doomed in some way. Life is just a way of postponing death.
• Guy2020 6y ago
  Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways. We once had much use for our children. When people were more independent and everyone pretty much had a small business, children were seen as the life blood of that business. Now, we are pretty much expected to fill a role at some large corporation -- which Japan is the greatest example of. Also, the family centered culture has changed to a work centered culture. It used to be a mark of shame not to have a large family -- you were seen as a "dead end." I don't think these changes are natural, given how little control people have over their lives. This stuff is being pushed from the top.
  • tclancy 6y ago
    I started to read this waiting for the punchline to a Dad joke. Kids can still mow lawns for sure. >This stuff is being pushed from the top. Is this some kind of Sparta thing? Like you all go up to the top of the mountain and someone pushes Dad off? Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. >It used to be a mark of shame not to have a large family When and where was this? As someone who grew up Catholic it feels like that cut both ways. To be vaguely serious for longer than I want, my wife and I just had a long, unfun conversation about how hard it is to deal with her mom's dementia and I don't know that we could do anywhere near as well with dealing with it if we didn't have a kid of our own. It's a shitty Ponzi schema, but the alternative is being Shakers.
    • hammock 6y ago
      > if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. Access to birth control and abortion, social services and welfare, trends in divorce and family court ... All of these things are top-down forces that create a tapestry heavily influencing human sexuality and the choices men and women make. One only has to look at how different things were 50 or so (or less) years ago before these things were as widespread.
      • 6y ago
• ericmcer 6y ago
  No mention of economic inequality or rising cost of living?
  • grugagag 6y ago
    It is one of the factors for sure, but also contraception, education, women emancipation (eg they are unwillig to make 10 kids unlike 100 years ago even in the western world)
• empath75 6y ago
  Why is immigration not the answer to this? Eventually developed countries are going to have to get over their bigotry and open the borders.
  • dutch3000 6y ago
    or undeveloped countries become developed. - this is clearly an option.
  • lol2143651 6y ago
    The very same reason that ethnic Chinese replacing Tibetans and Uygher does save Tibet or Xinjiang.
  • creato 6y ago
    Did you read the article? It addresses this. "However, this stops being the answer once nearly every country's population is shrinking."
  • dropit_sphere 6y ago
    It depends on what you define "this" as. If the problem is simply "not enough people," that of course is easy to remedy. I hear zoos have trouble getting pandas to mate. Why don't they just add some polar bears, or leopards, or even rabbits? What do you think the pandas would say if they could talk?
    • arp242 6y ago
      Ehm, those are different species? Are you suggesting that humans are made up of different species?
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • dropit_sphere 6y ago
        No, but since you mention it, it's interesting to note that one of the litmus tests for what constitutes a species is the ability to reproduce. A state is a three-way bargain between the living, the state, and the unborn. The state imposes all sorts of inconveniences on us---why do we put up with it? The constitution lists several reasons---common defense, general welfare, and to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" Imagine, privileging one's own children over someone else's! How aggressively family-ist. In other words, one of the primary purposes of a state is to act as a vehicle for inheritance. That's why immigration is not a solution---the point of a state isn't "people," it's our children, specifically. Without that, no one has skin in the game.
• cbsks 6y ago
  My wife’s theory is that there will be a lot of babies born in about 6 months (9 months after the quarantine started), but only for first time parents. Being quarantined with a child is the absolute best birth control.
  • durnygbur 6y ago
    For this a childless couple has to live together. Not separately in one person household, not with parents, not sharing the place with flatmates.
    • fastball 6y ago
      How does that change the point?
      • durnygbur 6y ago
        In Europe at least even until the age of 35 most people belong to one of the three latter groups.
        • fastball 6y ago
          Do you have these stats on that? It seems like a lot of unmarried couples live together these days. Anecdotally, I know more unmarried couples that live together than I do unmarried couples that live separately, at least if we're talking about the kind of relationship that is anywhere close to "making babies".
          • durnygbur 6y ago
            I'd say it's common knowledge in Europe. https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8whym9/rising_proportion_of_single_person_households_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8whym9/rising_propo... https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bbimot/share_of_youth_not_in_employment_education_or/ https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bbimot/share_of_you... https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ct33wa/neet_rate_in_europe_2017/ https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ct33wa/neet_rate_in... https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8vriuq/share_of_people_aged_2534_living_with_parents_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8vriuq/share_of_pe... https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/gplbtg/share_of_young_people_aged_2534_living_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/gplbtg/share_of_yo...
• Keyframe 6y ago
  I remember we learned in elementary school, about three hundred years ago when I was a kid, a correlation (or inverse of) between economic prosperity and demographic picture. It was so obvious it even had named phases for it (that we had to learn, which I forgot).. but from vague memory it was along the lines of expansion (when country is poor), stagnation (when well-fed) and immigration (when rich).
  • hiccuphippo 6y ago
    There's a new economic model starting to get popular in Europe called the Donut[0][1] according to which after a country reaches a level of maturity, it should stop focusing on growth and switch to stability so as to avoid overshooting. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut_(economic_model) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut_(economic_model) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhcrbcg8HBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhcrbcg8HBw
• qppo 6y ago
  I feel like bemoaning sub-replacement rate fertility doesn't take into account the exponential growth of automation in post-industrialized economies and how little labor actually needs to be done to maintain the same productivity, let alone how less labor increases productivity in an organization (no numbers there - just an observation from my own work). Extrapolated to society I'm not really afraid of an aging population of pensioners like Japan several years ago, because 10 years from now we'll be moving further from human controlled economic activity. But who knows if that is going to be a good thing. I guess what I'm saying is we're going to hit Star Trek or the Matrix
  • kalleboo 6y ago
    I worry because society has not given us the benefits of increased productivity. We've already massively increased productivity with computerization, but during that same period instead of more leisure time, society has actually demanded MORE working hours (by putting more women to work)
    • arp242 6y ago
      The question is, are those people actually doing useful work which contributes to an increase of happiness or living standards for people? I'd argue that many don't, and that many work on stuff that doesn't really matter. This includes many programmers, by the way. I've certainly done more than a fair share of meaningless "bullshit" programming work.
    • qppo 6y ago
      It's kind of hard to make a sweeping statement like that. We're seeing costs and benefits of increased productivity/efficiency. My diet consists of fruits and vegetables that my parents could only buy a few times a year when I was a kid. My grandmother made dresses from potato and flour sacks during the war, and my great grandmother sold jams from homegrown fruits because sugar was rationed. I'm typing this comment on a machine manufactured and assembled halfway around the world, designed 30 miles from where I'm sitting, and last week took a medical test that was developed, tested, manufactured and shipped across the country in weeks. To say that we don't benefit from increased productivity is not true - those anecdotes are all examples of how rapid industrialization across the globe and improved communications, design, manufacturing, operations, and strategy have quantifiably improved my life as a human. I also wouldn't say that the boon in productivity demanded more labor. Particularly because the entry of women into the workforce was driven by the Great Inflation (which didn't improve productivity) and the tail end of second wave feminism which had succeeded in changing our society's attitude towards women in the workforce. The decomposition of that barrier in our society begot such productivity in our economy, it didn't respond to the demand for more. But I agree, we're not getting all the benefits of such productivity. At least not all of us. But that's why UBI is probably the future, because eventually all our jobs are going to be automated.
• 0xFFC 6y ago
  RIP J. D. Unwin.
• ve55 6y ago
  Sad the amount of technological progress we may be missing out on by this, I rarely see it discussed but I think fertility is important in order for society to be able to maintain a steady course of improvement in science and technology.
  • HenryKissinger 6y ago
    The number of individuals with the potential of Albert Einstein (to pick a stereotype) in a given country is not correlated to the total number of people. Standard of living, a stable childhood environment, quality of schooling, modern medicine, economic opportunity, sanitation, are more important to nurture future innovators. A kid working the fields in Angola will probably never reach his full potential, but little Johnny from suburban America probably will.
  • chillwaves 6y ago
    What about the people who are already here but living in crushing poverty?
• asperous 6y ago
  Adding to the discussion, population density seems to cause lower birth rates: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27503981?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27503981?seq=1 To me that seems like a natural feedback loop. Once population declines to a certain level people will want to have more kids.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • snowwrestler 6y ago
    Does the article actually say population density "causes" lower birth rates? The title says it is a "factor," which is not necessarily a causal relationship.
• ggm 6y ago
  I would love to see this re-spun as a net-positive article, discussing how we can 'grow the economy' by providing goods and services worldwide instead of asymmetrically to only a small cohort of the population. 'Do it better with less people' is what sustainable is all about. Birth rate decline in many economies correlates strongly to rises in standards of living: kids are a hedge against economic bad times in poor, rural economies.
• dirtyid 6y ago
  Overall prognosis is still bleak. >However, this will be a truly global issue, with 183 out of 195 countries having a fertility rate below the replacement level. ... >As a result, the researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. ... >The population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100. We're still looking at a 2billion increase in population while simultaneously 9/10 billion people from least to less developed countries will be consuming more resources as they develop. Mostly through coal and oil.
• jstewartmobile 6y ago
  The current arrangement, where people with planning skills and self control aren't replacing themselves, is a disaster. And as expected, the propaganda payload is at the end: Prof Ibrahim Abubakar, University College London (UCL), said: "If these predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option." So to prop-up our sham economy / pension machine for a while longer, we're going to import people who didn't maintain civil society in their own countries, and figured they'd flee to the west rather than stay put and fight the good fight? Corporate propaganda for infinite 3rd-world labor.
• winrid 6y ago
  People used to want children so they could take care of you when you're older. I suppose people don't plan that far anymore.
  • winrid 6y ago
    Note - I'm not making this up. This is a real thing in Asia for example.
• alkibiades 6y ago
  i think the main question is if people want kids but aren’t having them for economic reasons or if they simply don’t want them. the latter seems fine to me but we still need to solve the problem of paying for the social security ponzi scheme and will have to deal with increased labor costs (which could be a good thing)
  • xsmasher 6y ago
    Those issues can be solved by immigration and by immigration, respectively.
    • scarmig 6y ago
      Immigration from the same countries that are rapidly improving their own standard of living, and at the same time experiencing their own demographic crashes?
      • xsmasher 6y ago
        No, immigration from other countries whose fertility is not crashing.
    • alkibiades 6y ago
      they can also be solved by cutting back benefits. and higher wages isn't neccesarily a "bad thing" that needs to be solved unless you're a major corporation, which is why they are desperate for immigration.
  • zanny 6y ago
    There is a ludicrous amount of wealth in almost every industrialized nation. Every single one has way in excess of the ability to guarantee minimum income to all citizens without exception let alone just a social security equivalent for the elderly. Its just a question of if they will be interested at all in keeping said people alive in the future.
• Lammy 6y ago
  "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones#Inscriptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones#Inscriptio...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• corysama 6y ago
  This article is quite exasperated, but doesn't say much. I'm far from an expert in this area, but here's what I've read elsewhere: We're quickly moving from the population explosion problem to the population implosion problem. No one planned it or made it happen. But, it looks like we're not actually going to overflow the planet with people standing shoulder to shoulder. Instead, the problem we're facing moving forward is a combination of longer lifespans and less children shifting the elderly support structure from a pyramid to a column. A big driver of this is people moving up in job prospects around the world. Clearly in rich nations like the US, Japan and UK couples are working more and putting off having kids. But, also in the poorer nations people are moving to the cities because that's where the jobs are. Once there, the combination of high rent and great reductions in child mortality means it doesn't make sense any more to have lots of kids hoping that a few survive long enough to work at a young age. Instead of having babies rapidly, women around the world are going to work to bring in that second income needed to pay the bills in the city. It's great news, really. It's just really scary really great news because we don't know how to set up a society where there aren't enough young people to support the elderly.
  • option 6y ago
    this is fantastic news. Yes, we don’t know how to properly adapt yet, but this planet resources are limited and we aren’t good at sharing them. What worries me is that long term this can be reversed just like current trend is reversing away from population growth. Current trend seems to be driven by job prospects, education and costs of raising kids. But what if in a future we all had basic income? No need to worry about food, shelter or education for your children. Won’t this lead to population growing again?
    • Arn_Thor 6y ago
      Why would it? Do you imagine people enjoy raising four kids or more? Children used to be old-age insurance. You needed so many to be certain some of them would survive, thrive, and take care of you in old age. If your needs are met, either through a good pension or UBI, you can have as many kids as you prefer. And by all indications, for most people that's actually around the natural replacement level, or fewer.
• rsync 6y ago
  Interesting for a variety of reasons but my immediate takeaway is that the world is in a long term deflationary economic trend and any attempts to push against that, however successful in the short run, will fail. Cash will be king and assets will be sold for pennies on the dollar, so to speak - provided you can remain solvent in the whipsaws and gyrations of the desperate attempts to stave off deflation at any cost.
• durnygbur 6y ago
  Social systems are zero sum game between individuals paying in and receiving benefits from them. Meantime the salaries are stale, salary deductions only increase, and corporations (ehem formally "charities") funnel out billions annually through tax havens and heavens. In countries where social systems are not that mature and trustworthy (e.g. post-Communist countries) even the most qualified like doctors and engineers pick contracting as a form of the employment to skip contributing to the social systems or to contribute only the minimum required by law. How long more is this sustainable?
  • zanny 6y ago
    Its never been "sustainable", its just a question of when society wants to bring the proverbial chickens home to roost.
    • durnygbur 6y ago
      "Purge of the needy and old", something like in the Bergamo area in Italy this March and April... and marginalization of the homeless and incarcerated like in the US.
• ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Well that is a particularly click baitey article. My index is failing me here but I recall a paper that had looked into falling birth rates as standards of living increased and found that birth rate correlated strongly with the "cost" of children. The supposition (it really wasn't a theory or even a solid hypothesis) was that as parents became more educated and society's measure of success became more material, the parental effort to provide the "best" for their kids went up. It worked kind of like this, you have kids, you want them to have as good or better life than you have. If you've defined "better" here as wealth and social status, then you want them to have more opportunities. Getting them those opportunities (which you may have missed out on) costs money (wealth). Examples, good schools, good nutrition, good after school programs, Etc. Also, the developing society is putting more social status points on "successful" people (at least outwardly so by their display of wealth) which incentivizes couples to both continue their careers and "success trajectories." That path costs still more because now you have to add day care and possibly a nanny or two to the mix. Here in the U.S. there is actually an interesting empirical example that supports this, its called foster care fraud. When the state offers to pay money to someone as a foster parent, a small number of people will exploit this by becoming foster parents for many many children to accrue the state benefit for "caring" for them. As an example, it suggests to me that if the state provided support to people with larger families that offset their costs significantly, the result would be larger families. I would not argue that this "proves" the supposition that child care costs drive down the size of families, but to me it argues that it is likely a large factor in the decision.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > My index is failing me here but I recall a paper that had looked into falling birth rates as standards of living increased and found that birth rate correlated strongly with the "cost" of children. The supposition (it really wasn't a theory or even a solid hypothesis) was that as parents became more educated and society's measure of success became more material, the parental effort to provide the "best" for their kids went up. I think it is pretty clear that humans (like animals generally) are more likely to adopt K strategy (smaller numbers of offspring with higher investment in each) rather than r strategy (larger numbers of offspring with smaller investment in each) in a stable, secure environment, and that this is structurally favored by the environment. I wouldn't put much weight on the suggestion that either the number or investment piece drives the other, though.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• voisin 6y ago
  Millennials can’t afford to move out of Mom & Dad’s basement, get married, and have kids. Our society is profoundly sick, both figuratively and now literally.
  • zanny 6y ago
    Its working completely as intended. The stratification of class is a measure to maximize profit. The disconnect of markets from actual human wellbeing feeds into a perpetual profit loop that makes capitalists numbers bigger without actually being based on anything real. If anything it is a mercy that todays kids will go childless because any children they would have will just be even more thoroughly screwed by economic mandates placed upon them by long dead barons of industry.
  • luckylion 6y ago
    We have the same effects in Europe (even more pronounced than in the US) and Millenials here can absolutely afford to move out and generally do, so that seems to not be relevant.
  • AuryGlenz 6y ago
    That’s not the only reason. Overweight women have a harder time conceiving. More alarmingly, men’s sperm counts have been dropping for decades, and not by small amounts. I think it’s a greater threat to humanity than global warming, yet most people aren’t even aware of it.
    • voisin 6y ago
      For every one couple who wants to get pregnant but can’t due to weight or sperm count, I would wager there are dozens and dozens who cannot afford to take on a baby.
• SupriseAnxiety 6y ago
  It’s too expensive to have kids and there’s a lot of homosexuality plus some people don’t want kids. It’s what happens when the government done fucks up
  • bawolff 6y ago
    Fun fact, gay people have existed for a while now.
  • defterGoose 6y ago
    This is the most weirdly anecdotal and vacuous statements I've ever read.
• scarmig 6y ago
  The good: a lower total population is good for climate change. Additionally, humans can focus on living in the most habitable, productive areas, improving per capita efficiency. The neutral: day-to-day things are unlikely to be affected much. Fewer farmers, but fewer mouths to feed. This applies to most consumables. The mildly negative: for knowledge intangibles, a lower total population means a lower number of scientists, entrepreneurs, etc. Perhaps substantially less. Apex projects that take a substantial proportion of the world's capital and labor (e.g. colonies on Mars) become a lot harder, with many becoming impossible. This is somewhat counteracted by most countries becoming richer and more educated. The disastrous: older societies where each person working has to support multiple other people are sclerotic societies. A society where younger workers have to pay taxes 2x higher than they do today, to support a bunch of old people who already own all the housing and capital stocks? That's a society that I'd move away from in a hurry, regardless of if I'm old or young. I'm going to have to encourage any kids I have to study Yoruba. This is one of those huge issues on par with climate change, but people mostly don't care or think about it. I'm not sure what governments can do about it. At some point I want to study Israeli demographics and fertility more, as it's the only country I know of that has maintained a high TFR (>2.1) even in its secular populations.
  • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "A society where younger workers having to pay taxes 2x higher or more than they do today..." Most likely social welfare programs for the elderly will simply be allowed to collapse. Nothing will motivate the young to vote like having their paychecks eaten away. I feel bad for young people graduating now; if they're not able to save the _entire_ cost of their own retirement over the course of their career, they are just plain screwed.
    • scarmig 6y ago
      Retired voters, and voters approaching retirement, will fight denture and nail against that. The likely result is some claw back of benefits for them, but young workers would still carry a much heavier tax burden than the retired class did, preempting their own retirement savings. That causes them to defer or forego marriage and children as well, causing a continuing downward spiral. Without an attestupa or genuine efforts to improve fertility rates, we're in for very grim times in most countries. There's a kind of virtuous cycle here, though, as a government that does figure out how to mold its age demographics in an effective manner will be a much more attractive destination for young emigrants.
• legostormtroopr 6y ago
  Its concerning that this article closes with the idea that "migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option." There are multiple factors that limit population density, most important of which is access to space and clean water. The fact that a professor from London, with a population density of over 10,000 people per square kilometer [1] is advocating for continued growth is odd. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_p...
  • Leherenn 6y ago
    The sentence is a bit weird as well, if every one is having a population decline, then migration cannot be the solution, at least not globally. Maybe he meant every one will compete for migrants, but some of them will lose the game. (Probably the poor and climate change hit countries.)
  • jl2718 6y ago
    Yeah, I don’t see the problem here. Seems like the planet did just fine with less humans on it for quite a while. Even human history shines particularly well after broad population declines.
• cheeselip420 6y ago
  What's terrifying is that just as we face all of this pressure from falling fertility rates, we have the technology to implement massive state-sponsored breeding programs to "fix" the problem...
  • sand_castles 6y ago
    How is that going to work exactly ?
• bing_dai 6y ago
  One of the most fascinating books I read is Pricing the Priceless Children by Viviana A. Zelizer (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0691034591 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0691034591). The central theme is that modern children are "economically useless" and "emotionally priceless".
• jgilias 6y ago
  This absolutely must be reasoned about together with climate change projections. I don't see there's any chance in hell we can stop at a 2 degree world. That means though that large parts of the world will likely become inhospitable to human life as we know it. So, I'd expect either huge population transfers, wars, or both. The population decline will likely not be uniform then, as people will flock to the still hospitable parts of the planet. Provided 'native' populations don't go full lock-the-borders mode.
• joshspankit 6y ago
  Why are they trying so hard to manufacture reasons why a lower population would be a bad thing? Might see reduced populations by the end of the century?? We don’t even know if we’ll be immortal or off-planet by then.
• m0zg 6y ago
  > migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option Looks like the projections contradict this in at least two ways: 1. The population of the United States is projected to grow slightly, so it's not "all nations" 2. The population of two of the most currently populous countries, China and India will drop so precipitously that I'm not sure where they expect the "migration" to come from.
  • ralfd 6y ago
    Africa. https://www.hoover.org/research/africa-2050-demographic-truth-and-consequences https://www.hoover.org/research/africa-2050-demographic-trut... Specifically graphs like this: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/goldstone_africa_2050_demographic_truth_and_consequences_revised1-20.jpg https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/goldstone_africa_...
• manquer 6y ago
  One aspect this article does not address at all is the massive sex ratio imbalance in India and China (for different reasons) at around 1,100 men for every 1000 women. This means there are 100 million girls less today in these countries alone, finding a suitable partner becomes harder and there are lesser number of couples will be there in the first place who can have kids The 2.1 replacement is perhaps not adequate at all. The models are outdated and largely considers IFMR and few other factors, it does not factor really in issues such as the gender imbalance, hikikomori, much later age pregnancies ( higher chances of miscarriages etc?) and slightly more controversially also same sex relationships / marriages . I do not mean to imply same sex relationships are bad or anything like that, What I mean to say is that everyone needs to have more kids as it is harder for same sex couples to have biological children ( while adoption is great and purest expression of parenthood it does not increase the population)
  • ggggtez 6y ago
    Miscarriages are not births. If the birth rate remains at 2.1 you can have as many miscarriages as you want, and the population will still increase. The same with Hikkikomori, and gay people. As long as there is 2.1 children born for every woman, then the population will increase. The only factor which you mention that is correct is that in a society that murders female babies, then yes, you will need more than a 2.1 birthrate. And as the article mentions, India is expected to grow over the next 80 years. So they clearly have a fertility rate that exceeds whatever number they need. I think you are confusing the fertility rate, with how many children a family with children would have. The denominator is different, and that's a completely different issue, but perhaps one that is worth thinking about.
    • tomerico 6y ago
      You are failing to account for the gender imbalance. Consider an extreme gender ratio where for the 2.1 born for an average woman, there are 2 males and 0.1 females. This means that every generation will have 10X less women.
      • 6y ago
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  Yes, finally we get off this stupid econ, pop, and everything else growth wagon. Too bad this isn't an intentional march to Fukuyama take 2, but a sign of the Keynesian feedback loop being broken.
• mchusma 6y ago
  I hope Humanity grows many orders of magnitude larger and expands across the galaxy. The universe will be a more interesting place. Some people here are saying this is good for the environment. Having 20% fewer people won't do that. Clean energy and other technology will. You can easily fit 100B humans on earth, with more of the earth dedicated to nature preserves. (Maybe a trillion people https://youtu.be/8lJJ_QqIVnc https://youtu.be/8lJJ_QqIVnc) Macau has over 21,000 people per square km. There are 510M sq km of landmass on earth. This means on 1% of the landmass you could fit 100B people. You can fit quadrillions in ONeil cylinders just in our own solar system. We shouldn't shrink into extinction, we should ride to the stars and populate the galaxy with consciousness.
  • AlexandrB 6y ago
    > Macau has over 21,000 people per square km. There are 510M sq km of landmass on earth. This means on 1% of the landmass you could fit 100B people. Yes, because the earth's carrying capacity is about square footage and not the resources necessary to keep those people alive, healthy, and happy for 80+ years. How many square km of farmland do you think is necessary to feed Macau?
    • csomar 6y ago
      The sea is full of resources. No wonder coastal cities eats lots of fish.
      • adrianN 6y ago
        Fish population is crashing hard worldwide. If we continue fishing as much as we do now, the oceans will be pretty much empty in a generation or two.
  • p1esk 6y ago
    You could probably fit even more in virtual reality.
    • inopinatus 6y ago
• thehappypm 6y ago
  Give it a few generations. In the past, having a family was status quo and basically required. Now, it’s a choice. Natural selection will heavily favor those with the “I want kids!” gene.
  • rimliu 6y ago
    That's not how natural selection works. Most of us want sex because of that gene. But we do know about contraception, which natural selection knows nothing about.
    • bondarchuk 6y ago
      Contraception is part of the environment in which natural selection occurs, in that sense it "knows" about it. Concretely, if there is a set of genes that makes it more likely to have children in spite of contraception, that can be selected for.
      • rimliu 6y ago
        No. You do not pass e.g. ability to read via genetic code. So you do not pass knowledge about the contraception (or lack of it) either.
        • __s 6y ago
          If reading is advantageous to select for, you'll find that natural selection will prefer whichever genes facilitate reading ability There are a lot of subtle hereditary hints. This isn't to say a person can't consciously counteract those hints, but that in the long run those hints will have an impact on behavior which feeds back into selection It's possible to inherit traits which will hint one to choose not to use contraception This is the whole nature vs nurture debate. Ultimately it's both
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • mellosouls 6y ago
• shahbaby 6y ago
  It's only 'jaw-dropping' if you've been living under a rock.
• bemmu 6y ago
  Kind of a silly thought experiment, but ever wondered why you were born at this point in history, and not some other point? If population is now nearing its peak, you're more likely to be among the people alive now.
  • pythux 6y ago
    I think you might be referring to the « doomsday argument »? - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
    • kmonsen 6y ago
      I read a science fiction book based around this once. It makes a lot of sense at first, the issue is that we are not a random sample. People could have used this argument at any time in human history.
• hunter-2 6y ago
  The article is a little alarmist. Automation is on the rise which means you don't so many people to take care of things. So there will be enough resources to handle healthcare and the elderly.
• gumby 6y ago
  This is pretty great. I expect automation will address a lot of the labor shortage issues.
• cayblood 6y ago
  This doesn't seem that "jaw dropping." Hans Rosling was saying this for at least a decade prior to this, that global population would peak around 10B and decline thereafter. That said, I think that viable longevity therapy will significantly alter this trend.
  • YinLuck- 6y ago
    What have you seen or read so far this century to make you think "longevity therapy" is anything but techno drivel? If anything, the global explosion of obesity and the metabolic conditions associated with it (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc) will counteract any miracle longevity therapy even if it comes along.
• mirimir 6y ago
  TFA shows the US population increasing slightly by 2100. But there's no comment. I wonder about the basis. Is it projected immigration?
  • tuatoru 6y ago
    It must be, because TFR for resident populations is below replacement. Every wave of immigration has seen this fall: first-generation kids are intermediate, and second-generation have the same TFR as the population as a whole.
• jb775 6y ago
  I think people are putting too much emphasis on the financial costs, you figure it out as you go. I have a 1.5 year old and it's hard to explain the simple joys I get from just running around the house with him goofing off. It's nice to forget about the real world for a while and build a pillow fort. He's also brought much joy to other family members (grandparents, cousins), and my extended family is closer as a result.
  • mjburgess 6y ago
    People who think about social policy on the scale of nations need to worry about costs. This isn't something that you "figure out as you go", it's something that causes wars and societal breakdown. We're already in a democratic world where the key voting fault lines are young-vs-old.
• gHosts 6y ago
  Anybody look at that graph and say... WTF?! The data says nothing like what the headline says! Yes, the projection goes down sharply... but the best estimator of tomorrow is yesterday, and the last few years of data are saying nothing like what the projection is showing!
  • akvadrako 6y ago
    It took me a minute to get what you’re saying but indeed the graph is quite deceptive. The time scale isn’t consistent.
• flattone 6y ago
  Do we need more people?
  • a3n 6y ago
    Of course we do. Who else is going to buy all the crap that billionaires are selling us now?
• moultano 6y ago
  This trend among other things is one of the inspirations for writing this essay that was well received on here a few weeks ago. https://moultano.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/the-defaults-dont-work/ https://moultano.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/the-defaults-dont-... I really feel like we don't have any effective model for how to integrate parenthood in our lives anymore, and so having kids has become almost an affectation or a hobby, rather than something that everyone bases their life around as a matter of course.
  • Nimitz14 6y ago
    Great read thanks for posting.
• nine_zeros 6y ago
  Ah classic boomers strike again! Who will take care of them when they are old? Who will pay into social security? We don't need more babies on the planet. Countries with baby deficit can just get more skilled immigrants to keep the tax base and economic system functioning.
• steele 6y ago
  zika is still a thing.
• a3n 6y ago
  What if governments force births?
  • novia 6y ago
    That... would be a human rights violation.
    • a3n 6y ago
      Sure would be.
• spiritplumber 6y ago
  Good!
• gregfjohnson 6y ago
  The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful people I know, and it is comforting to be aware that we will be part of each others' lives forever. I spent a lot of time in assisted living facilities with my mother as her health failed, and I saw a lot of old people in those facilities with no one to visit them. It is comforting to know that I will not spend my final years in loneliness and isolation. Our grandchildren are an unalloyed joy. We have two 3-year-old identical twin grand-daughters, and they are working their way through the nuances and finer points of grammar. It is indescribably adorable to see their efforts at expressing their detailed and elaborate thoughts. My grandsons are seriously into aviation, and I've become the go-to aerodynamics consultant. Our four-year-old asked me with great seriousness, "Grand-dad, why is the horizontal stabilizer always shorter than the wings?" Another time, the family was at the beach. He, his dad, and I were looking out at the ocean. He asked, "What are waves?" Darn good questions! No rose-colored glasses fantasy here: I've found that your children can break your heart and devastate you just as well as bring you unfathomable joy. My daughter (a black-belt IP lawyer now), when she was about four, wandered off in a crowded video game arcade, and we searched through the crowds for her for about ten minutes, with growing panic and horror. We found her and all was fine. Fact is, if you love someone as much as you end up loving your children and grandchildren, their decisions and choices will have profound effects on you. My therapist observes that you are only as happy as your least happy child. So, the decision about whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences. I highly recommend it.
  • philshem 6y ago
    Thank you for sharing. I'd like to add my experience that being a parent has made me a better child.
    • godfreyantonell 6y ago
      Definitely my experience as well.
• jcun4128 6y ago
  Maybe it's poor access to contraceptives but I personally know people(family) in a third-world country where a single person has 4+ kids... I'm like why, can you even afford it. These people are also still living on a dirt patch in the forest/woods. What's crazy too is in the 15+ years I left, it's still almost the same... I guess that's what happens when you're far away from major cities.
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The labor from those 4 kids is the greatest form of wealth that person will have.
• blargmaster33 6y ago
  Standard "White countries must accept brown people or die" propaganda.
• ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Maybe a controversial opinion, but: the specific way in which Western capitalist societies (which were then pushed on to the rest of the developed world, directly or indirectly) went about the liberation of women is a major cause of population implosion. It used to be possible to raise a family on a single income. However, once corporate interests (and the blind market itself) realized that having women in the workforce would both increase potential consumers and increase the workforce (thus depressing wages), the model of everyone should be a worker first and a father/mother/family member second won out over alternatives. Add to that an entertainment-and-consumption-focused value system, and you have the present day: young people either can't afford to start families or are culturally discouraged to; to be a mid-twenties married couple with kids is almost embarrassing or shameful in many social groups. We need a new model of work, in which parents (both men and women) aren't punished for simultaneously pursuing individual career goals and wanting to build a family unit.
  • nocitrek 6y ago
    I agree with you. The message is mixed. You shouldn't have kids because climate change / woman should go into workforce, yet on the other hand we need people to support our eldery. So which is it? You can pile up immigrants to support eldery, but why don't we work on baby boom within our communities? Why don't western woman have 6-7 kids, like their African counterparts?
• Leherenn 6y ago
  The article talks about this slightly, but very long term humanity will need a stable fertility rate and I have no idea how it will happen. If the fertility rate keeps being below the replacement rate, at some point humanity will disappear. While short/medium term negative population growth might be a good thing, at some point we will need to do something.
  • kmonsen 6y ago
    That point is unreasonably far in the future and there are probably much bigger issues right now. If humanity was facing extinction because people don’t want to give birth this is very solvable.
  • 29athrowaway 6y ago
    If population keeps doubling every 60 years we will also disappear.
• creato 6y ago
  It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity for them. The best case scenario for huge numbers of people is stagnation. A shrinking, aging population would fix this problem. The demand for labor will go up, the supply will go down. Bad for the investor class looking for profits, good for reducing economic inequality. People will be able to profit from labor again. The techno utopian solution of allocating everyone a 20 m^2 apartment, a vr headset, and 1500 calories of soylent per day is going to be a disaster unless you also allocate everyone some future drugs to keep them sedated.
  • pstuart 6y ago
    We are on the cusp of the next step of humanity (if we don't kill ourselves first). I think this story lays out how that could look: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
    • iso1631 6y ago
      A choice of two dystopias, yeay
      • pstuart 6y ago
        Did you read the story all the way through? If we're going to live in a world dominated by AI/Automation it presents a compelling alternative to the current path.
  • echelon 6y ago
    > The techno utopian solution of allocating everyone a 20 m^2 apartment, a vr headset, and 1500 calories of soylent per day is going to be a disaster unless you also allocate everyone some future drugs to keep them sedated. I don't know if you live in California, but I think that there's sort of a reality distortion field that comes with living in a big and expensive city. Here in Georgia the rents are cheap and people seem to be moderately satisfied. A little money goes a long way. You can own acres of land dirt cheap and do with it whatever you want.
• LordHumungous 6y ago
  It beats a gigantic Malthusian trap.
• ragerino 6y ago
  That's a good thing, because fertile soil depletion is going to be a huge problem. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/third-of-earths-soil-acutely-degraded-due-to-agriculture-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/third-of...
• rmykhajliw 6y ago
  I've read plenty researches: main factor is healthcare. It's a natural a better healthcare - leads to lower child and women death rate. That's why people are having less child and they become more valuable. 100 years ago there's NO statistic for child under 13yo death rate. Mostly because it was TOO high around 50-60% children are dying before they get ready for marriage. My grand-grand-ma told me she had 8 brothers and sisters and only 2 survive: she and her brother. In that time it was reasonable to bake kids in enormous numbers in hope some of them are won't die. Then healthcare changed everything.
  • freddie_mercury 6y ago
    > 100 years ago there's NO statistic for child under 13yo death rate 100 years ago was 1920. Many countries absolutely had infant mortality statistics by 1920. See R.A. Meckel's "American public health reform and the prevention of infant mortality, 1850-1929" which (as the name implies) goes back was more than 100 years. See also I. Loudon's "Death in childbirth: an international study of maternal care and maternal mortality, 1800-1950"
• zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Thank goodness! I hope this is true. Please let it be true, that the population will decrease in the example countries and elsewhere. Seems to be about the only thing, that can protect us from further overpopulating the planet with more humans. Even better, if it is caused by more education and more similar or equal opportunity for women. We should start celebrating women, who choose not to get children or at least not more than 1 child as climate saviors too.
  • mlang23 6y ago
    +1 Its about time that "be fruitful and multiply" comes to an end.
  • spodek 6y ago
    Agreed! A great resource on the subject is Countdown by Alan Weisman. I did a few podcast episodes on my Leadership and the Environment podcast on population: https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/310-the-start-and-end-of-any-serious-conversation-on-the-env https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/294-population-how-much-is-too-much https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/250-why-talk-about-birthrate-and-population-so-much https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/248-countdown-a-book-i-recommend-by-alan-weisman https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/251-lets-make-birth-control-only-a-finance-issue https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/alan-weisman http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/alan-weisman For those who think we can grow forever, Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog covers it in his post Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist
• ralfd 6y ago
  > Prof Murray adds: "It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like." Case in point: This implies the professor has only one child.
• jb775 6y ago
  Serious thought/question: I think everyone can agree that reproduction is how you advance your gene pool to the next stage of the human species. Does this mean people who don't want kids are effectively weeding themselves out? And is this somehow a function of survival of the fittest (or natural selection) in action?
  • imtringued 6y ago
    Yes, in theory all the people who refuse to reproduce will be gone and are replaced by the children of those who want to reproduce. Over the long term this problem will fix itself. However, I personally believe that the population will level out instead of keep shrinking forever until reproductive pressures fix the problem by force.
    • abjKT26nO8 6y ago
      > Yes, in theory all the people who refuse to reproduce will be gone and are replaced by the children of those who want to reproduce. Those, who do want to reproduce, will also be replaced by the next generations. Natural selection doesn't select individuals, it selects genes. And your genes are well-represented in the rest of the population.
• hnarn 6y ago
  As the article states, women are choosing to have fewer children. There are multiple ways to read this, and you can take the materialist theory of them just being caught up in their careers, but I tend to fall into a more cynical interpretation: humans are social creatures, and we are acutely tuned in to threats around us. I think humans are becoming increasingly aware, consciously or unconsciously, that we are killing ourselves through destroying the planet and that there is no way we can sustain further population growth. Whether “focusing on your career” is the chicken or the egg in this situation is up for interpretation.
• iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  Lets build a world people want to have kids in then.
• nottrobin 6y ago
  This is old news, bit glad it's getting mentioned I guess. Confused that the BBC seem to be running it as if it's new. And it's astounding that they somehow put an overall negative spin on it. The problems of an ageing population seem miniscule compared to the problems of resource scarcity and climate change.
• 11235813213455 6y ago
  This is quite good news for the environment
• xchaotic 6y ago
  That Dr Murray is a spin doctor too. The argument is that its good for the environment. And he says yes but the social problems. Well it doesn’t change the fact that it is one of the best ways to preserve natural environment, and somehow I think dealing with ageing society, especially with assistance of technology is an easier problem than global environmental disasters such as climate change etc. He also says it would take a few centuries for humans to disappear. I would like to see the calculations he’s done as they seem wrong.
• Hoasi 6y ago
  Kids used to be the future, and still are, in a future with less of them.
• quattrofan 6y ago
  Overpopulation and the resulting over consumption and pollution are our biggest threats. This is a good thing, certainly until we can figure out a way to live on another planet easily.
• alecco 6y ago
  Inverted population pyramid causes many problems. All the ponzi-like schemes for pensions will collapse. There will be a massive influx of sub-saharan African immigrants in the Western world as they are the only ones still making babies. Latin America holds up, mostly. But there's already internal mass migrations in the millions. China has been investing a lot on on designer babies, artificial womb, and cloning technologies. It's going to be... interesting to see how it all develops.
• rorykoehler 6y ago
  Good news for everything but the pyramid scheme we call capitalism.
• self_awareness 6y ago
  > Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work? Does the fairy-tale world that most HN users live in can answer these questions for me please?
• FourthProtocol 6y ago
  So, massive article on how terrible a declining population is, but only four (supposedly, maybe) negative effects listed? - Who pays tax in a massively aged world? - Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? - Who looks after the elderly? - Will people still be able to retire from work? I welcome a declining population. Because the climate will benefit and the poor will be less so, and the threat of war would diminish. I would hope this, at least, because I'd like to believe that fewer lives would place more value on the lives of others.
  • raziel2p 6y ago
    Why do you think the climate will benefit? Smaller but richer populations have polluted more than large but poor populations in the past. Due to global trade and wealth accumulation, a declining population could easily just lead to more concentrated wealth and more luxury goods consumption (think private jet flights, yacht construction...) which leads to pollution not decreasing. Similar with war - tons of wars are fought for wealth and resources, which seems unrelated to population, and even with a small population, drone attacks, assassinations and proxy wars are still entirely possible.
    • Spearchucker 6y ago
      You're probably right. My thinking is that with time and with a reduced population the world might become more enlightened. Also if there is an agricultural surplus that it might be put to use feeding the poor. I'm an optimist, and hope the world might one day become an egalitarian matriarchy that learns a thing or two from the past.
• jxramos 6y ago
  Does anyone know how to derive replacement rate (aka break even) fertility? If the number falls below approximately 2.1, then the size of the population starts to fall.
• amriksohata 6y ago
  I find articles like this send a mass hysteria that its happening across the world, when in fact its actually dependent on the country. You can see middle east countries to africa are not falling, but yes the overall worldwide rate is falling. https://external-preview.redd.it/_mQKfLNs2BdBrdF5eF0GNxqPMlBKjLV-ao50S0OyvqY.png?auto=webp&s=b90d559108d9efe8366c8d186f03ab52fdbc8348 https://external-preview.redd.it/_mQKfLNs2BdBrdF5eF0GNxqPMlB...
• aaron695 6y ago
  As life span increases, which it will in the next few decades, so will the length of fertility. So any extrapolation out 80 years is nothing more than sensationalism. I truly don't understand this nonsense. We can clearly see in the past 80 years, the really slow moving pre internet past, the global fertility rate has changed how it works significantly, but suddenly in this hyper-society we are wasting time looking at 2100?
• iso1631 6y ago
  Can we take a minute to appreciate that graph The X axis run at a nice pace, about 7 pixels a year, upto 2017 It then compresses the next 83 years in the space of about 10 years.
  • david_draco 6y ago
    Exactly, the plot is misleading. It suggests a dramatic "jaw-dropping" change, while in reality the curve is slowly crawling towards and below 2.
• drobert 6y ago
  Like any complex phenomena declining fertility has multiple causes. The importance of each cause depends on the local conditions. 1. Easy access to contraceptives (they are easily available throughout the developed world) 2. Positive view of abortion (the christian world used to see abortion as a crime, now with increased secularisation more is placed on the mother's preference than on the fetus). 3. Pressure on resources (when having children becomes a choice, it doesn't happen 'naturally', people are less likely to bring a child into the world if they cannot raise it properly). 4. Education and career orientation of women (Educated women make less children, they finish school around 24, start their career and if they don't secure a partner by 30-32 their fertility windows has closed - even if biologically they could bear children, they struggle finding a partner to raise children with). 5. The marriage institution has collapsed (Marriage is the bedrock of children rearing - high divorce rates, divorce courts, normalisation and acceptance of divorce has made people less likely to marry and thus having the environment in which to raise children). 6. Culture - it's not cool to have children. Now it's cool to travel the world and find yourself and experiment with as many partners as you can. This culture is not conducive to child rearing. Movies, books, music do not portrait happy families. Today, cool is to be 'different'. 7. Religion - christianity with its marriage and chastity laws is dying out. Is is being replaced by the secular world where monogamy and child rearing are not perceived as something desirable. 8. Lack of social support - as people travel to find jobs they do not live with their parents. Raising children without the support of grandparents is much more difficult. 9. Low wage growth due to women joining the work force. One man could maintain a family with children and his wife, 50-60 years ago. That is no longer possible unless you are in the top 0.1%. 10. Skewed dating market. Women are desirable by men until they reach 30-32. After that few men who want a family would try to know and marry a women because she is less likely to bear children and this is not a priority for her. Women are under much pressure to sort out their careers, know themselves and start of family by early thirties. The education and career 'system' is not optimised for mothers. 11. Global warming and reaching peak resources. We have reached the peak point in multiple natural resources and are destroying natural habitats at an alarming rate. This makes people less likely to see a hopeful future into which children have a place. To summarise, we live in era of tremendous technological and cultural change where we reached the limits of our planet's resources in the way we currently use them and this has led to population shrinkage in the developed world.
• sudoaza 6y ago
  Blame it to the abundance of endocrine disruptors in the ambient. Thyroid problems are in an all time high, specially in women.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  Why would a decline of sum(humans) even be a problem? We have destroyed large swathes of our habitats, poisoned the air, land and water not only where we live but also where we get our resources, exploit and kill each other because of a skydaddy or for financial gain, and delude ourselves into thinking we're a gift to this earth or even the universe. How we can even think that putting more consumers on this planet is good for the environment is beyond me. The best way to stop polluting is to consume less. The max minimum of consumption is an absence of consumption. We don't need more people, we need less of them. And if education and prosperity is making us recognize that, then I demand more education and more prosperity worldwide.
• fizixer 6y ago
  This is perfect. We need this ASAP. It'll convince more and more that healthful longevity is a viable future.
• k__ 6y ago
  How come they project it below 2? I think it's perfectly reasonable that the numbers drop to 2 if more and more people in the world get stable lifes.
• dmch-1 6y ago
  This article is not about the correlation of individual happiness and having children, but about a demographic change and issues it might bring in the future. In hundred years we may have a population where 80+ year olds are twice as many as 20 year olds. What will be the health of such a population? Who will take care of the elderly? What will be the economic prospects or innovation on which the today's society relies? Some very legitimate questions, and here I read about advantages/disadvantages of having children from a personal perspective. Just annoying that many people are unable to think about anything beyond their current immediate environment.
• sjg007 6y ago
  Kids are great. But you only have about 13 years with them until they decide want to hang out with their friends instead of you. Enjoy the journey. It is hard work though! Especially combined with the pressure and commitments of working.
• kindly_fo 6y ago
  Why scientists are wrong: If you have fertality rate of 2.0 you will have children and grandchildren. For example having children in 25 and then grandchildren in 50 and then grandgrandchildren in 75. So basically if fertality rate is 2.0 you will have 2^3 = 16 more ppl on same time on earth. To make no more people on earth you would need to have childs and get out of earth. So please make planet healthy, be child free. Enough is enough.
• EntitledParent 6y ago
  Good.
• jl2718 6y ago
  I fail to see the problem. Lower population means an age of abundance: high supply, low demand, safe environment, automation, freedom, leisure, invention. Think dark ages, plague, Renaissance. Pensions can either deflate with price level, or governments can inflate with basic income. It’s only bad for an elite class of people that benefits from increasing consumption, but doesn’t pay the social cost of it. And if you pay more than 0.1% of your net worth in taxes, that’s not you. The elites have become brazen in their assumption of our stupidity.
• bmcn2020 6y ago
  obviously, the quarantine might change those results :D but on a serious note -- the global population has been falling. And it might be seen as a "negative" thing, but if you change your perspective: the global rate was at once higher only because women DIDN'T have access to education, opportunities, employment, or the rest. A positive, vis-a-vis a negative, is a negative, right?
• fallat 6y ago
  There are two types of people in the (this) world (thread): * People who defend the non-existent children * People who defend non-existent children can't be defended because they're non-existent My opinion: do what your brain and heart tell you to do.
• jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  We should discuss the most important reason people have children. A way to make their genetic material immortal. At least half of it. There is no other way to continue living after ceasing to exist. The joy of children, the company, the pain of loneliness being childless etc are emotions that is like malicious code that hacks the human psyche in order to replicate some other lines of code on to the next generation.
• AuryGlenz 6y ago
  My wife and I have been trying for nearly 3 years now. We're both healthy - we exercise, eat right, and we're in our early 30s. We were saving up for IVF all of last year so we'd be able to do it this year. Unfortunately, I'm a photographer and COVID has destroyed the chances of that happening. Minnesota's wedding season is really short and runs from early June to late September. That means we may not have enough until the end of next summer. When you've been trying for as long as we have every month you wait is absolute torture. My wife cries regularly, and while I've held together better I've had a few absolute breakdowns. Nothing has made me feel like more of a failure of a husband than this has. Our infertility is unexplained, so it could be my fault. Worse is the fact that I have a degree in computer science and I could have had a job that paid better in the best of times, and right now could be done remotely. It's agonizing that all of this stress and suffering could be over if we just had some more money. The problem is for most people there's no definitive answer, and IVF success rates aren't absolutely amazing. It'll cost north of $30,000 for just one try after the actual procedure, testing, and medicine. That has less than a 50/50 chance of working. How many times should you try before giving up? I've already put two years worth of savings/retirement in to it. I honestly think insurance should be mandated to cover at least one round of IVF. Isn't making babies our entire biological reason for being?
• bawana 6y ago
  We have shit on this planet so much, we do not deserve children. None of us choose to be born. Yet we have to deal with mistakes and evils of generations past. Even the joy of discovery, of exploring a world anew, of making our own rules has been stolen. We live in the dead shells of our foolish ancestors, dragging their legacy into a future chosen for us by the wealthy 1%
• sdunwoody 6y ago
  I think a lot of people are incorrectly identifying this as a good thing. Really, this is an unprecedented phenomenon in recorded human history. The entire social structure of basically every country on the planet is completely unprepared for the challenges that a rapidly aging popuation will bring. The effects won't be felt for decades after the change begins, and once it starts in earnest, it will prove very difficult to reverse in any short timescale. It will become a sort of feedback loop - fewer people have children, so the capacity for children in the next generation is reduced. Because the retiree/worker ratio has now increased, the young people there are, are unable to afford having children, and so on. Even with massive increases in productivity, you would see economies contracting. Ending up in a deflationary trap with increasing (and unsustainable) debt. I see these kind of statements so often: "AI will solve this problem" - really? The World Bank development report 2019 (https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2019 https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2019) basically comes to the conclusion that "while automation displaces workers, technological innovation creates more new industries and jobs on balance". This has been the case for centuries now. Automation causing mass unemployment always seems right around the corner, yet never comes. I'm confident that we're now in the "trough of disillusionment" when it comes to progress on AI. Things like self driving cars for example are much more complex than we had considered. "This is good for the environment" - It might not be though; the economic issues caused by aging populations could lead countries to take exploitative short-term decisions; converting rainforests to farmland, using cheaper means of generating electricity (that also prove to be more damaging to the environment) for example. It is generally more expensive to be green (in the environmental sense). The competition for immigration (which seems like an inevetable outcome in this scenario) could also destabilise certain countries, with potentially dire outcomes. "It will reduce inequality" - Japan is ahead of the curve on the whole aging population front, and the average wages there have basically stagnated for the past two decades: https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/wage-growth even as the number of employed people has stagnated/fallen: https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/employed-persons https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/employed-persons I think the keys to this are: - Why are people having fewer children? If it's a genuine choice, then of course this is acceptable. But I think often the number of children people want to have is actually higher than the number they feel they are able to support due to economic (and other) reasons: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/08/27/the-empty-crib https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/08/27/the-empty-crib - If the retiree/worker ratio is going to increase, and life expectancy is going to increase, then how can we manage this in a way that puts minimal pressure on health and social care systems? - Are there any other ways we can prepare economically/socially for a society with an inverse population pyramid (I personally think this is a very, very difficult problem to solve, but would love to be proved wrong) - How do we manage depopulation of specific communities? This is a problem that Spain is currently experiencing (e.g. it is more economical to forcibly move people away from communities that are dying out and no longer economically viable)
• carapace 6y ago
  So the Amish win? It seems everything has already been said: Most of our problems are driven by population pressure. Leveling off is a good thing, despite potential expense of reconfiguring society and economies (but we have to do that anyway to address climate change!)
• libraryatnight 6y ago
  "Prof Ibrahim Abubakar, University College London (UCL), said: "If these predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option." So if the US current attitude towards immigrants persists, this is a future in which it does not compete well?
• amfittr 6y ago
  Just a few points I didn't see elsewhere and would like to point at for further thought. It seems to me that some parents have kids to help them deal with their existential angst and fulfill a need for meaning they couldn't find elsewhere, let's say providing and caring for people who are already alive and in dire need of help, lets say orphans in developing countries, homeless ppl etc. Or something entirely different. Having children have a very strong narrative for meaning associated with it, which might cause some who are lost in their life have children which will be equally lost. I happen to hear things like "spread my genes" as example, probably not accounting for the 99.9% similarity with the next random guy and we all share the same ancestors. Even the homeless dude would help us spread our (common) dna if we could help him get his act together. There are lots of good reasons for having children already mentioned and I agree with many of them, however, difficulty making friends and feelings of meaninglessness should probably be resolved before having children. Focusing on having something meaningful to give is a lot better. My takeaway from the article is that people deal with more complexities today and might not reach a point where they feel enough "on top of things". Having children if already stressed out might not leave much left to give.
• lenkite 6y ago
  This is a very good thing. Earth is overpopulated. Ideally we shouldn't have more than 2 billion on the planet for long-term environment sustainability.