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> Technological innovation caused increases in food production, which caused higher population growth — until the additional mouths to feed canceled out the pro
by throwaway4aday 4y ago
> Technological innovation caused increases in food production, which caused higher population growth — until the additional mouths to feed canceled out the productivity gains, bringing living standards back to subsistence levels.
Is this accurate? My understanding was that the cap on human population levels had more to do with survival rate of childhood for which nutrition is only one of many factors. Didn't we see a larger increase in population due to advances in medicine eliminating many childhood diseases? I'd say that this reasoning is rather tenuous, if food production were the only limit on population growth then we should have seen booms in population level with each agricultural advance rather than the slow, linear increase up until the industrial revolution.
> the value of human capital reached the point that parents chose to have fewer children and invest more in their upbringing
This also seems to run counter to evidence from currently industrializing societies where reduction in infant mortality and increases in education are the big drivers of dropping fertility rates. It isn't that they see more value in their children, it's that they aren't dropping like flies so you don't need to have 8 kids just to make sure 2 make it to adulthood and can help support you as you get older.
> Because a subset of a group is likely to be less diverse than the whole group, populations became more homogeneous the farther they traveled
This is just lack of genetic diversity and I don't see what it has to do with the following sentence
> diversity can inhibit economic growth by decreasing social cohesion, but it can also increase growth by promoting specialization and innovation
because that kind of diversity has more to do with appearance, language, culture, religion, etc. than it does with genetics, physical appearance being the only one of that mix that is determined by genetics.
> In Galor’s account, Europe escaped the poverty trap in the 19th century because of increased investment in education and the decline of the gender wage gap.
This is the first I've heard of it.
- RappingBoomer 4y agoyeah, the article is full of de rigueur dogma & talking points, so much so that it verges on word salad
- malfist 4y agoI stopped reading about three quarters of the way through, it seemed to be so much drivel. It seemed to be dangerously verging on "14 words" nonsense. Hyper concerned as it was about women earning a paycheck instead of making babies and declining birth rates in genetically homogeneous regions.
- twofornone 4y ago>it seemed to be so much drivel. It seemed to be dangerously verging on "14 words" Blithely dismissing cultural practices which may lead to successful and flourishing societies merely because some of them also happen to be espoused by white supremacists is more dangerous.
- malfist 4y agoSure, next time I'll really pay attention to white supremacists because they might have really good ideas on how to organize society. /s
- fleddr 4y agoHow would one explain triple the population size in India and China in comparison to the US and Europe? The answer is not less infant mortality. The answer is rice, versus potatoes/wheat. You can harvest rice 3 to 4 times per year versus just once per year for potatos. And rice doesn't grow in Europe, it doesn't have the climate.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoMaybe you have different numbers than I can find but all of the graphs of population growth show pretty much the same thing for India or China as they do for other countries: an almost flat increasing trend that hockey-sticks as soon as the country modernizes and then begins to level off or decrease as education catches up. The historical population of India seems large until you consider that the subcontinent is the size of Europe and then factor in the earlier start they had compared to Europe and there's no mystery left.
- throw0101a 4y ago> The answer is rice, versus potatoes/wheat. […] And rice doesn't grow in Europe, it doesn't have the climate. Perhaps the answer then is "climate" and not any particular foodstuff.
- usrn 4y agoArtificial nitrogen fixation is what caused the population boom after the 19th century. It's also arguably one of the primary causes for the first World War.