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This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge no

This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility. Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. This is the grand social engineering challenge of the next 20 to 40 years I figure.

tomjen3 5y ago
I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. You can do things like ban childhood vacinations so lots of children die, but that isn't exactly going to make you very popular.
- bhouston 5y ago
  > I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. 50 to 100 years ago we probably didn't think it was natural to have humans willingly limit their population growth - it was viewed as completely unnatural, but it has basically happened nearly everywhere. I think you can do it via government rewards to those having larger families and starting them earlier. Housing discounts. Rebates. Tax credits. I believe Israel does this in combination with being religiously conservative, discouraging/banning most abortions, combined with a lot of government incentives, discounts -- in fact many of the people moving into the occupied territories are people starting families as the government discounts the housing there.
gizmo686 5y ago
Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive.
- bhouston 5y ago
  > Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? At some point yes we do. > There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. > here is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive. I think generational change is a major driver of innovation. Old people get stuck in their ways, more so then we are likely to ever admit -- but maybe we can solve brain plasticity as well? I think if we solve aging completely, we become a rigid oligarchic society.
  - pradn 5y ago
    If more people are able to have healthier lives and be productive in their chosen niche (if they choose to), there might be other benefits, too. For example, many fields benefit from long expertise, like mathematics.
    - prionassembly 5y ago
      On the contrary, it's widely acknowledge that mathematical ability and productivity decreases rapidly with age. (There are other fields benefiting from long expertise, like project management...)
  - rcoveson 5y ago
    > For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. How can we acknowledge that we need a lot of people to run the sort of society we ended up with today without also reasoning that the more advanced society we might achieve in 100 years might need a lot more people? There's nothing special about 10 billion people. People have been throwing out numbers as "overpopulation tipping points" for hundreds of years, and we've passed all of them. And now we acknowledge that it's important that we passed them, because we can't even keep our advanced version of "the lights on" without having done so.
naravara 5y ago
> Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. Straight line extrapolations of demographic trends based on current rates aren't super reliable. The system is sort of self correcting. Once population gets low enough people will eventually start birthing more. The only place it gets to be an issue is geo-strategic, like small populations can just get overwhelmed by larger ones either culturally, economically, or militarily.
mistrial9 5y ago
why did my dental technician (low paid service job with minimal requirements) happily tell me she has five children? their father "lost his green card" and left.. she was happy, it was one of the first things she told me.. I did not ask about that.. meanwhile, people from my own similar background are not getting married, not having children, and even more extreme things like that.. yet the average education in my group is a Master degree from a good college handwaving about "leaders in whatever" and "the answer is more education" are just wishful thinking and denial, in my direct experience
- tsol 5y ago
  It's cultural. For a lot of people having children is happiness. My mother would say about as much-- "children are happiness in life". She came from the previous generation in India, incidentally. Compared to many from the current generation(in America where I live) where children are just seen as a choice some people make. A very difficult choice at that-- so many people pick the most "logical" decision and just run DINK households. We love our freedom, and children significantly diminish that for at least 18-25 years

tomjen3 5y ago

I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. You can do things like ban childhood vacinations so lots of children die, but that isn't exactly going to make you very popular.

bhouston 5y ago
> I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. 50 to 100 years ago we probably didn't think it was natural to have humans willingly limit their population growth - it was viewed as completely unnatural, but it has basically happened nearly everywhere. I think you can do it via government rewards to those having larger families and starting them earlier. Housing discounts. Rebates. Tax credits. I believe Israel does this in combination with being religiously conservative, discouraging/banning most abortions, combined with a lot of government incentives, discounts -- in fact many of the people moving into the occupied territories are people starting families as the government discounts the housing there.

gizmo686 5y ago

Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive.

bhouston 5y ago
> Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? At some point yes we do. > There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. > here is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive. I think generational change is a major driver of innovation. Old people get stuck in their ways, more so then we are likely to ever admit -- but maybe we can solve brain plasticity as well? I think if we solve aging completely, we become a rigid oligarchic society.
- pradn 5y ago
  If more people are able to have healthier lives and be productive in their chosen niche (if they choose to), there might be other benefits, too. For example, many fields benefit from long expertise, like mathematics.
  - prionassembly 5y ago
    On the contrary, it's widely acknowledge that mathematical ability and productivity decreases rapidly with age. (There are other fields benefiting from long expertise, like project management...)
- rcoveson 5y ago
  > For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. How can we acknowledge that we need a lot of people to run the sort of society we ended up with today without also reasoning that the more advanced society we might achieve in 100 years might need a lot more people? There's nothing special about 10 billion people. People have been throwing out numbers as "overpopulation tipping points" for hundreds of years, and we've passed all of them. And now we acknowledge that it's important that we passed them, because we can't even keep our advanced version of "the lights on" without having done so.

naravara 5y ago

> Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. Straight line extrapolations of demographic trends based on current rates aren't super reliable. The system is sort of self correcting. Once population gets low enough people will eventually start birthing more. The only place it gets to be an issue is geo-strategic, like small populations can just get overwhelmed by larger ones either culturally, economically, or militarily.

mistrial9 5y ago

why did my dental technician (low paid service job with minimal requirements) happily tell me she has five children? their father "lost his green card" and left.. she was happy, it was one of the first things she told me.. I did not ask about that.. meanwhile, people from my own similar background are not getting married, not having children, and even more extreme things like that.. yet the average education in my group is a Master degree from a good college handwaving about "leaders in whatever" and "the answer is more education" are just wishful thinking and denial, in my direct experience

tsol 5y ago
It's cultural. For a lot of people having children is happiness. My mother would say about as much-- "children are happiness in life". She came from the previous generation in India, incidentally. Compared to many from the current generation(in America where I live) where children are just seen as a choice some people make. A very difficult choice at that-- so many people pick the most "logical" decision and just run DINK households. We love our freedom, and children significantly diminish that for at least 18-25 years