4 ms·

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So, that seems to support the article's contention, at least for the US – and if we look at other countries, we observe things are broadly similar, so that in turn supports that contention for the planet as a whole. However, we also observe in the US small, ultra-conservative religious minorities, such as the Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who still have a high fertility rate, and also have high youth retention (80-90% of their children will stay in the group as adults). Now, even though these groups are a tiny percentage of the population, the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population, which could then result in a national baby boom. And, eventually, as they spread across the globe (they exist to varying degrees in other countries too), a global baby boom. So 2013's "peak baby" may end up being surpassed. Of course, there is no guarantee that is going to happen – maybe they'll get to a certain size, and then they'll stop growing. And of course, it is physically impossible to sustain exponential growth indefinitely. However, it remains a possible future that they won't stop growing until after they've gotten so big that 2013 turns out not to be the year of "peak baby" after all. Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out.

bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, I don't know if any realm of human sciences where extrapolating exponential growth yields trustworthy results, outside maybe of wealth accumulation, and even then not for 2 centuries.
- skissane 3y ago
  I never claimed that it is inevitable that they'll sustain their current growth rate for the next 2-3 centuries, only that it is entirely possible. And I don't see why it wouldn't be. If you look at ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York/New Jersey, I don't see how they'd hit any natural barriers to their continued growth until they are many times larger than they are now, at which point they'd be a serious challenger for becoming the population majority. The main ways it might not happen would be if either (1) they (gradually or suddenly) abandon their current culture for a less fertile one, (2) mainstream society persecutes them sufficiently. Both are entirely possible, but neither is anywhere near certain. The situation for the (Old Order) Amish is more difficult, since – unlike ultra-Orthodox Jews – they'll run out of enough land to sustain their agrarian lifestyle, and will have to transition to a more urban one. While the more urban lifestyle of ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrates it is possible for insular high fertility religious minorities to exist in an urban setting, there is a real risk that they might lose their fertility and/or their insularity in the process. Also, people often bring up the problem Israel has with many ultra-Orthodox Jews not working and relying on government subsidies to live. That is much less of a problem in the US than it is in Israel, so the sustainability of that lifestyle is less of a barrier to future growth in the US than it is in Israel. Furthermore, the fact they manage to grow so much in the US without doing that, means being forced to stop doing that isn't necessarily going to stop their growth in Israel either.
  - joshuahedlund 3y ago
    What are their historical and present population and growth numbers?
    - skissane 3y ago
      Consider a place like Kiryas Joel, New York: in the 2000 census it had a population of 13,138; by 2010 it had grown to 20,175 (a 53.6% increase over the decade); by 2020 it had grown to 32,954 (a 63.3% increase over the decade); the US Census Bureau’s 2022 estimate is 38,998 - 18.3% in only two years. The vast majority of that growth is due to births not migration. It is now the largest municipality in its county, and also its MSA - in 2023, the White House renamed the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown MSA to the Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh MSA, in recognition that it has overtaken Poughkeepsie proper as the MSA’s most populous municipality (although greater Poughkeepsie is still larger) And Kiryas Joel is expanding in its de facto area: as its spiritual leader, Satmar Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum likes to say, its “holy borders” go further than its legal boundaries under New York state law, although very likely the legal boundaries will at some point grow too. And, there are similar ultra-Orthodox communities in other parts of New York state, and also in New Jersey (especially Lakewood)
      - jacobolus 3y ago
        Ultra-orthodox communities (like everyone else in the modern world, with vanishingly few exceptions) are entirely dependent on the broader society/economy. Under the implausible scenario where they approached a majority of the population, they'd inevitably (a) diffuse much more broadly into the rest of the population, and (b) make their current set of organizing practices unsustainable, without any persecution involved.
        skissane 3y ago
        Of course they are going to have to change as they grow. The question is how big the changes will be. We already see this in Israel - a big increase in Haredi women pursuing secular careers. In other communities worldwide, that development ended up significantly undermining the patriarchal culture and producing a demographic transition to lower fertility. But, will it necessarily have the same consequences for the Haredim? We will have to wait and see: maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Precedent would suggest the Haredim won’t be able to avoid that outcome, but the situation on the ground suggests that maybe they will I’m not claiming any of this is inevitable, only possible, plausible. Nobody knows for certain what the future holds-we shall find out
DavidPiper 3y ago
> Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out. Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period. I agree that circumstances might mean that the global peak baby might be 200-300 years away, but the thing that makes the current round of peak-anything relevant is that we don't know how our social and economic systems will function when certain things are in long-term decline (even if they do pick up again in a few hundred years). If we knew what a few centuries of low birth rates or low oil consumption looked like, we wouldn't be nearly as interested in what "peak-those-things" means, the same way we're not all that interested in specific market peaks because we understand the boom/bust cycles and long-term productivity increases, etc.
- JeremyNT 2y ago
  > Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period. Humans are presumably always going to want babies. There's nothing to really replace them. On the other hand, coal/oil/pollution all seem highly likely to be a transient phase of industrialization. There's no reason to think we should ever go back to burning coal or oil once we have renewables. Oil is tricky in that we do like plastic and there's no obvious alternate material, but the amount of oil needed for plastic will be minuscule compared to the amount of oil burned as we bootstrap to renewable energy sources.
andsoitis 3y ago
> mainstream Americans What is a mainstream American?
- skissane 3y ago
  I mean mainstream American society of secular to moderately religious people, as opposed to ultra-religious minorities such as ultra-Orthodox Jews or Old Order Amish I mean the term quite broadly and inclusively, since many of the big divides within American society (ethnicity, race, politics, class) make a relatively modest difference to fertility rates, and those differences appear to be shrinking over time
- Andrex 3y ago
  Legally speaking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  Any American who likes Tom Petty.
- bregma 2y ago
  SWM
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Putting aside the considerable statistical skepticism, the natural next question we all have at noticing these trends is - is there any way for secular society to get some of the "special sauce" these ultra-religious groups have, before the aggregate supply of everything starts to fall? Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a long time, and so have a lot of my friends. So maybe the best answer is the common sense one: Wait a few generations for all those not susceptible to the secular pronatalism mind virus to select out of the gene pool, and hope society doesn't crumble under its own technical debt in the meanwhile.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > Wait a few generations ... and hope society doesn't crumble We don't have a few generations until we are beyond the point where we can mathematically recover unless we develop economic mass adult-cloning technology and develop the psycho-social faculties to integrate that into a healthy (enough) society. The world won't end, but let's just say hyper-advanced visions of the future seem unlikely at this point.
- vouwfietsman 2y ago
  Secular pronatalism as an ideology is new to me, but obviously the main limiting factor in fertility rates globally is just a mismatch in the lifestyle of the modern luxury-expecting freedom-enjoying individual vs the self sacrifice needed to do child raising. I would say a significant part of that is financial and time-related, both things which have obvious political, not ideological, solutions. Fighting the ideology of individualism with an ideology of self sacrifice did not work for climate change and will not work for pronatalism. I often joke to my peers: it doesn't matter what I invest in, my best financial decision was buying a house, my worst financial decision was having kids, the rest is just screwing around in the margin.
- skissane 2y ago
  I’m sceptical about how successful secular pronatalism can be. Large families, generation after generation, can come at a substantial personal cost, and it is a difficult sell for individuals if it is just a matter of principle, as opposed to something backed by promises and threats of post mortem reward and punishment. Furthermore, many religious pronatal groups reduce defections by socially ostracising and demonising defectors, making defection expensive. That kind of behaviour is much easier to justify given religious premises than secular ones. So I doubt secular pronatalism is ever going to be as successful as religious pronatalism. At its best, it might see some success under particularly favourable circumstances, but religious pronatalism will thrive in far less favourable conditions
navane 2y ago
I heard the retention of their offspring was 20%, so they have 5x more offspring, but only 20% of that stays 'in the group', net result 0.
- skissane 2y ago
  Kiryas Joel, New York, is growing over 50% per decade. That is not consistent with “net result 0”. If you look at the actual statistics on the growth of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the US and Israel, and Old Order Amish in the US, the actual figures are inconsistent with “net result 0”
globalise83 2y ago
The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable.
- skissane 2y ago
  > The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable. In 2023, Israel contained over 1.28 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, 13.5% of Israel’s population. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, it will be over 16%. [0] By shortly after 2065, it is estimated that 50% of Israeli children will be Haredi. [1] I think this is counterevidence to your claim - the social indoctrination processes necessary to maintain Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism have already scaled to over 1 million people, and are projected to scale much further than that [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-population-will-be-16-of-israelis-by-decades-end/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-po... [1] https://archive.md/lYYgK https://archive.md/lYYgK
  - globalise83 2y ago
    So in % terms not even a rounding error of the global population by 2085. These religious communities rely on both cult-like indoctrination and quasi-incestuous family networking in tandem to survive. We are not going to see Amish or ultraorthodox Jewish populations taking over the world.
  - _hcuq 2y ago
    Don't the Haredi refuse to enlist? Doesn't seem sustainable...
    - skissane 2y ago
      Refusal of enlistment is not essential to the Haredi lifestyle, and so it seems plausible their resistance to that might gradually weaken There is already a minority of them, the Hardal (Nationalist Haredi), who are happy to enlist, but whose birth rates, retention rates, and general lifestyle, are similar to the Haredi mainstream
shepherdjerred 2y ago
> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population It's so unhelpful to speculate about what the world will be like 100 years from now. Think about what things were like in the 1920's and how unrecognizable the world is by comparison. Then, consider that technology is being developed significantly more quickly than it was in the 1920's.
- tlocke 2y ago
  True, I struggle to think 10 years ahead these days. The horizon for predictions is definitely shrinking.
rustcleaner 2y ago
Just a friendly reminder to modern Progressives that (on average) you will not be in the future described by parent because you were tricked into an anti-natalist posture and will fail to reproduce adequately. It's a problem which kills itself in time so long as the problem doesn't ideologically metastasize into competiting populations.
- doug_durham 2y ago
  Ahh, so conspiracies now. Interesting approach. "They" tricked us with the ever menacing "they".
  - happypumpkin 2y ago
    Their theory also depends on the children of the "conservatives that have the most kids" remaining conservative, which I haven't observed among my own social group. My friends that had the most conservative parents (ex: Jehovah's Witnesses) went the furthest in the opposite direction, becoming progressives who don't want many (or any) kids. Personally, I'd rather have fewer kids and be able to give them more attention and resources.
    - skissane 2y ago
      Some ultra-conservative groups have >80%, even >90% youth retention – such as Older Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Jehovah's Witnesses youth retention is a lot lower – I've heard claims it is less than 50%, that on average more leave than say. Plausibly, being much closer to mainstream culture makes it much easier for people brought up JW to leave, whereas people raised in communities where English isn't even their first language, find that much harder.
- plokiju 2y ago
  friendly reminder to you: you won't be in the future either. because all humans have short lifespans. having children won't change that. enjoy the ride, whatever that means to you
faeriechangling 2y ago
>the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population, which could then result in a national baby boom. Only if their reproductive habits do not change in that time. Hard to project out 3 centuries with a good deal of accuracy.

bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago

> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, I don't know if any realm of human sciences where extrapolating exponential growth yields trustworthy results, outside maybe of wealth accumulation, and even then not for 2 centuries.

skissane 3y ago
I never claimed that it is inevitable that they'll sustain their current growth rate for the next 2-3 centuries, only that it is entirely possible. And I don't see why it wouldn't be. If you look at ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York/New Jersey, I don't see how they'd hit any natural barriers to their continued growth until they are many times larger than they are now, at which point they'd be a serious challenger for becoming the population majority. The main ways it might not happen would be if either (1) they (gradually or suddenly) abandon their current culture for a less fertile one, (2) mainstream society persecutes them sufficiently. Both are entirely possible, but neither is anywhere near certain. The situation for the (Old Order) Amish is more difficult, since – unlike ultra-Orthodox Jews – they'll run out of enough land to sustain their agrarian lifestyle, and will have to transition to a more urban one. While the more urban lifestyle of ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrates it is possible for insular high fertility religious minorities to exist in an urban setting, there is a real risk that they might lose their fertility and/or their insularity in the process. Also, people often bring up the problem Israel has with many ultra-Orthodox Jews not working and relying on government subsidies to live. That is much less of a problem in the US than it is in Israel, so the sustainability of that lifestyle is less of a barrier to future growth in the US than it is in Israel. Furthermore, the fact they manage to grow so much in the US without doing that, means being forced to stop doing that isn't necessarily going to stop their growth in Israel either.
- joshuahedlund 3y ago
  What are their historical and present population and growth numbers?
  - skissane 3y ago
    Consider a place like Kiryas Joel, New York: in the 2000 census it had a population of 13,138; by 2010 it had grown to 20,175 (a 53.6% increase over the decade); by 2020 it had grown to 32,954 (a 63.3% increase over the decade); the US Census Bureau’s 2022 estimate is 38,998 - 18.3% in only two years. The vast majority of that growth is due to births not migration. It is now the largest municipality in its county, and also its MSA - in 2023, the White House renamed the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown MSA to the Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh MSA, in recognition that it has overtaken Poughkeepsie proper as the MSA’s most populous municipality (although greater Poughkeepsie is still larger) And Kiryas Joel is expanding in its de facto area: as its spiritual leader, Satmar Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum likes to say, its “holy borders” go further than its legal boundaries under New York state law, although very likely the legal boundaries will at some point grow too. And, there are similar ultra-Orthodox communities in other parts of New York state, and also in New Jersey (especially Lakewood)
    - jacobolus 3y ago
      Ultra-orthodox communities (like everyone else in the modern world, with vanishingly few exceptions) are entirely dependent on the broader society/economy. Under the implausible scenario where they approached a majority of the population, they'd inevitably (a) diffuse much more broadly into the rest of the population, and (b) make their current set of organizing practices unsustainable, without any persecution involved.
      - skissane 3y ago
        Of course they are going to have to change as they grow. The question is how big the changes will be. We already see this in Israel - a big increase in Haredi women pursuing secular careers. In other communities worldwide, that development ended up significantly undermining the patriarchal culture and producing a demographic transition to lower fertility. But, will it necessarily have the same consequences for the Haredim? We will have to wait and see: maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Precedent would suggest the Haredim won’t be able to avoid that outcome, but the situation on the ground suggests that maybe they will I’m not claiming any of this is inevitable, only possible, plausible. Nobody knows for certain what the future holds-we shall find out

DavidPiper 3y ago

> Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out. Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period. I agree that circumstances might mean that the global peak baby might be 200-300 years away, but the thing that makes the current round of peak-anything relevant is that we don't know how our social and economic systems will function when certain things are in long-term decline (even if they do pick up again in a few hundred years). If we knew what a few centuries of low birth rates or low oil consumption looked like, we wouldn't be nearly as interested in what "peak-those-things" means, the same way we're not all that interested in specific market peaks because we understand the boom/bust cycles and long-term productivity increases, etc.

JeremyNT 2y ago
> Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period. Humans are presumably always going to want babies. There's nothing to really replace them. On the other hand, coal/oil/pollution all seem highly likely to be a transient phase of industrialization. There's no reason to think we should ever go back to burning coal or oil once we have renewables. Oil is tricky in that we do like plastic and there's no obvious alternate material, but the amount of oil needed for plastic will be minuscule compared to the amount of oil burned as we bootstrap to renewable energy sources.

andsoitis 3y ago

> mainstream Americans What is a mainstream American?

skissane 3y ago
I mean mainstream American society of secular to moderately religious people, as opposed to ultra-religious minorities such as ultra-Orthodox Jews or Old Order Amish I mean the term quite broadly and inclusively, since many of the big divides within American society (ethnicity, race, politics, class) make a relatively modest difference to fertility rates, and those differences appear to be shrinking over time
Andrex 3y ago
Legally speaking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
SantalBlush 3y ago
Any American who likes Tom Petty.
bregma 2y ago
SWM

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

Putting aside the considerable statistical skepticism, the natural next question we all have at noticing these trends is - is there any way for secular society to get some of the "special sauce" these ultra-religious groups have, before the aggregate supply of everything starts to fall? Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a long time, and so have a lot of my friends. So maybe the best answer is the common sense one: Wait a few generations for all those not susceptible to the secular pronatalism mind virus to select out of the gene pool, and hope society doesn't crumble under its own technical debt in the meanwhile.

nyokodo 3y ago
> Wait a few generations ... and hope society doesn't crumble We don't have a few generations until we are beyond the point where we can mathematically recover unless we develop economic mass adult-cloning technology and develop the psycho-social faculties to integrate that into a healthy (enough) society. The world won't end, but let's just say hyper-advanced visions of the future seem unlikely at this point.
vouwfietsman 2y ago
Secular pronatalism as an ideology is new to me, but obviously the main limiting factor in fertility rates globally is just a mismatch in the lifestyle of the modern luxury-expecting freedom-enjoying individual vs the self sacrifice needed to do child raising. I would say a significant part of that is financial and time-related, both things which have obvious political, not ideological, solutions. Fighting the ideology of individualism with an ideology of self sacrifice did not work for climate change and will not work for pronatalism. I often joke to my peers: it doesn't matter what I invest in, my best financial decision was buying a house, my worst financial decision was having kids, the rest is just screwing around in the margin.
skissane 2y ago
I’m sceptical about how successful secular pronatalism can be. Large families, generation after generation, can come at a substantial personal cost, and it is a difficult sell for individuals if it is just a matter of principle, as opposed to something backed by promises and threats of post mortem reward and punishment. Furthermore, many religious pronatal groups reduce defections by socially ostracising and demonising defectors, making defection expensive. That kind of behaviour is much easier to justify given religious premises than secular ones. So I doubt secular pronatalism is ever going to be as successful as religious pronatalism. At its best, it might see some success under particularly favourable circumstances, but religious pronatalism will thrive in far less favourable conditions

navane 2y ago

I heard the retention of their offspring was 20%, so they have 5x more offspring, but only 20% of that stays 'in the group', net result 0.

skissane 2y ago
Kiryas Joel, New York, is growing over 50% per decade. That is not consistent with “net result 0”. If you look at the actual statistics on the growth of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the US and Israel, and Old Order Amish in the US, the actual figures are inconsistent with “net result 0”

globalise83 2y ago

The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable.

skissane 2y ago
> The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable. In 2023, Israel contained over 1.28 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, 13.5% of Israel’s population. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, it will be over 16%. [0] By shortly after 2065, it is estimated that 50% of Israeli children will be Haredi. [1] I think this is counterevidence to your claim - the social indoctrination processes necessary to maintain Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism have already scaled to over 1 million people, and are projected to scale much further than that [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-population-will-be-16-of-israelis-by-decades-end/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-po... [1] https://archive.md/lYYgK https://archive.md/lYYgK
- globalise83 2y ago
  So in % terms not even a rounding error of the global population by 2085. These religious communities rely on both cult-like indoctrination and quasi-incestuous family networking in tandem to survive. We are not going to see Amish or ultraorthodox Jewish populations taking over the world.
- _hcuq 2y ago
  Don't the Haredi refuse to enlist? Doesn't seem sustainable...
  - skissane 2y ago
    Refusal of enlistment is not essential to the Haredi lifestyle, and so it seems plausible their resistance to that might gradually weaken There is already a minority of them, the Hardal (Nationalist Haredi), who are happy to enlist, but whose birth rates, retention rates, and general lifestyle, are similar to the Haredi mainstream

shepherdjerred 2y ago

> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population It's so unhelpful to speculate about what the world will be like 100 years from now. Think about what things were like in the 1920's and how unrecognizable the world is by comparison. Then, consider that technology is being developed significantly more quickly than it was in the 1920's.

tlocke 2y ago
True, I struggle to think 10 years ahead these days. The horizon for predictions is definitely shrinking.

rustcleaner 2y ago

Just a friendly reminder to modern Progressives that (on average) you will not be in the future described by parent because you were tricked into an anti-natalist posture and will fail to reproduce adequately. It's a problem which kills itself in time so long as the problem doesn't ideologically metastasize into competiting populations.

doug_durham 2y ago
Ahh, so conspiracies now. Interesting approach. "They" tricked us with the ever menacing "they".
- happypumpkin 2y ago
  Their theory also depends on the children of the "conservatives that have the most kids" remaining conservative, which I haven't observed among my own social group. My friends that had the most conservative parents (ex: Jehovah's Witnesses) went the furthest in the opposite direction, becoming progressives who don't want many (or any) kids. Personally, I'd rather have fewer kids and be able to give them more attention and resources.
  - skissane 2y ago
    Some ultra-conservative groups have >80%, even >90% youth retention – such as Older Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Jehovah's Witnesses youth retention is a lot lower – I've heard claims it is less than 50%, that on average more leave than say. Plausibly, being much closer to mainstream culture makes it much easier for people brought up JW to leave, whereas people raised in communities where English isn't even their first language, find that much harder.
plokiju 2y ago
friendly reminder to you: you won't be in the future either. because all humans have short lifespans. having children won't change that. enjoy the ride, whatever that means to you

faeriechangling 2y ago

>the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population, which could then result in a national baby boom. Only if their reproductive habits do not change in that time. Hard to project out 3 centuries with a good deal of accuracy.