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The end times are nigh because the human fertility rate is plummeting and there won't be a rebound. Small children grow up in a society that favors low fertilit

The end times are nigh because the human fertility rate is plummeting and there won't be a rebound. Small children grow up in a society that favors low fertility, they internalize it as normal, and when mature they do not buck that trend. Human extinction looms.

bittercynic 2y ago
I see this sentiment expressed pretty frequently, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? Is it that stable/declining populations will cause political instability and all-out war? Something else? It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? In most of the western world, they dipped that high decades ago. Anything below 2.1 is sub-replacement. The US is below this (ignoring immigration, it is already shrinking). East Asia is way, way below it. China deliberately forced theirs to 1.0, but can't force it back the other direction. The Japanese population is already shrinking year-over-year. Europe's no better. Only central Africa is above replacement fertility, and they're trending downward sharply. >Is it that stable/declining populations will cause Declining populations cause something far worse than war. They cause fertility to drop further. It's a vicious downward spiral. >It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit. They decline in a very specific way, where there are far more older people than younger. So the young have to pay more into taxes to support a bunch of old geezers who can't work. Retirement age recedes into the distance faster than you can chase it. The economy falters, infrastructure can't be maintained (let alone built new).
  - bittercynic 2y ago
    I agree that there will be some challenges due to the population aging, but if our numbers are shrinking we won't need to build as much new housing and other infrastructure. Also, for all its faults, industrialized agriculture makes it possible to grow enough food for everyone with remarkably few workers. It seems like we currently have a glut of people looking for work, and having fewer working age people would make it much easier for people to negotiate better wages and working conditions.
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Not sure about that. Current un-employment is at 4-5%, and a lot of people not finding jobs seems to be skills miss-match. Big picture, immigration is what is keeping the US going. US Citizens, don't like to pick strawberries, so when immigration is gone, no more fruits/vegetables. The negative population replacement has been covered up by immigration filling the gaps.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Well, see, if human population plunges enough, then there wont be the society that favors low fertility. There also won't be birth control pills. I mean, there also won't be industrialization, or western civilization, or democracy, or electricity, or antibiotics, or a bunch of other stuff we think is good. But if human population crashes in the way you describe, yes it will rebound - just from far lower than you wish.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >Well, see, if human population plunges enough, then there wont be the society that favors low fertility. In that scenario, no one does well. Back when we lived primitively, there was a large young population, tens of millions globally. Any single death or small group of deaths didn't really threaten extinction except locally (usually not even that). But though total population will be high even well into this era, it will be top-heavy with geriatric humans. A few deaths of those of reproductive age could have grim consequences. Everything works counterintuitively with declining populations.
ben_w 2y ago
> and there won't be a rebound Why are you confident of this? There's plenty of small high-fertility sub-populations, why not just assume they'll become dominant? Dunbar's number is small, suggests that the influence of society doesn't need to be considered at the level of an entire nation or even an entire city.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  Those small high-fertility clusters are still embedded in society as a whole. Their kind are converted at a far quicker rate than they can make kids. The Duggars won't have 400+ grandchildren, for instance, despite having 20+ of their own. The Amish, for instance, though somewhat insulated from the "conversion", buy and use John Deere tractors. What happens when the rest of the world is gone, do you think they'll start building them in factories for themselves? (And if they did, would their fertility remain high?) Yeh, confidence above 90%.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Those small high-fertility clusters are still embedded in society as a whole. Their kind are converted at a far quicker rate than they can make kids. The Duggars won't have 400+ grandchildren, for instance, despite having 20+ of their own. Some are as you say. Some are more insular, don't want to mix with everyone else. Some groups are less well defined, because rather than being a named group it's a heritable trait for taking more risks. > What happens when the rest of the world is gone, do you think they'll start building them in factories for themselves? If everything collapsed around them overnight, rapture/left behind style, so that they didn't have a chance to simply displace everyone else over a few generations in the way I'm actually expecting given the population is currently still going up despite the falling fertility, then they'd probably have problems — but even then they'd likely be able to make something like a 1750s era blacksmith making horseshoes and ploughs without huge difficulty.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      >but even then they'd likely be able to make something like a 1750s era blacksmith They don't mine ore. Once they've scavenged all the scrap, they couldn't make nails. That probably wouldn't be the biggest disadvantage though... they couldn't make much of any manufactured good, and their lifestyle depends on it. Whatever institutional knowledge they had for how to live in the 18th century is long gone. When they're back to a single-row iron plow pulled behind draft animals, they're not going to be getting 70 bushels of wheat per acre, they'll be getting 10. And then they won't be able to feed large numbers. None of what they do now works if our society fails, they need us. And they don't know how to do things they way they used to do, either.

bittercynic 2y ago

I see this sentiment expressed pretty frequently, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? Is it that stable/declining populations will cause political instability and all-out war? Something else? It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? In most of the western world, they dipped that high decades ago. Anything below 2.1 is sub-replacement. The US is below this (ignoring immigration, it is already shrinking). East Asia is way, way below it. China deliberately forced theirs to 1.0, but can't force it back the other direction. The Japanese population is already shrinking year-over-year. Europe's no better. Only central Africa is above replacement fertility, and they're trending downward sharply. >Is it that stable/declining populations will cause Declining populations cause something far worse than war. They cause fertility to drop further. It's a vicious downward spiral. >It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit. They decline in a very specific way, where there are far more older people than younger. So the young have to pay more into taxes to support a bunch of old geezers who can't work. Retirement age recedes into the distance faster than you can chase it. The economy falters, infrastructure can't be maintained (let alone built new).
- bittercynic 2y ago
  I agree that there will be some challenges due to the population aging, but if our numbers are shrinking we won't need to build as much new housing and other infrastructure. Also, for all its faults, industrialized agriculture makes it possible to grow enough food for everyone with remarkably few workers. It seems like we currently have a glut of people looking for work, and having fewer working age people would make it much easier for people to negotiate better wages and working conditions.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Not sure about that. Current un-employment is at 4-5%, and a lot of people not finding jobs seems to be skills miss-match. Big picture, immigration is what is keeping the US going. US Citizens, don't like to pick strawberries, so when immigration is gone, no more fruits/vegetables. The negative population replacement has been covered up by immigration filling the gaps.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

Well, see, if human population plunges enough, then there wont be the society that favors low fertility. There also won't be birth control pills. I mean, there also won't be industrialization, or western civilization, or democracy, or electricity, or antibiotics, or a bunch of other stuff we think is good. But if human population crashes in the way you describe, yes it will rebound - just from far lower than you wish.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>Well, see, if human population plunges enough, then there wont be the society that favors low fertility. In that scenario, no one does well. Back when we lived primitively, there was a large young population, tens of millions globally. Any single death or small group of deaths didn't really threaten extinction except locally (usually not even that). But though total population will be high even well into this era, it will be top-heavy with geriatric humans. A few deaths of those of reproductive age could have grim consequences. Everything works counterintuitively with declining populations.

ben_w 2y ago

> and there won't be a rebound Why are you confident of this? There's plenty of small high-fertility sub-populations, why not just assume they'll become dominant? Dunbar's number is small, suggests that the influence of society doesn't need to be considered at the level of an entire nation or even an entire city.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
Those small high-fertility clusters are still embedded in society as a whole. Their kind are converted at a far quicker rate than they can make kids. The Duggars won't have 400+ grandchildren, for instance, despite having 20+ of their own. The Amish, for instance, though somewhat insulated from the "conversion", buy and use John Deere tractors. What happens when the rest of the world is gone, do you think they'll start building them in factories for themselves? (And if they did, would their fertility remain high?) Yeh, confidence above 90%.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Those small high-fertility clusters are still embedded in society as a whole. Their kind are converted at a far quicker rate than they can make kids. The Duggars won't have 400+ grandchildren, for instance, despite having 20+ of their own. Some are as you say. Some are more insular, don't want to mix with everyone else. Some groups are less well defined, because rather than being a named group it's a heritable trait for taking more risks. > What happens when the rest of the world is gone, do you think they'll start building them in factories for themselves? If everything collapsed around them overnight, rapture/left behind style, so that they didn't have a chance to simply displace everyone else over a few generations in the way I'm actually expecting given the population is currently still going up despite the falling fertility, then they'd probably have problems — but even then they'd likely be able to make something like a 1750s era blacksmith making horseshoes and ploughs without huge difficulty.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    >but even then they'd likely be able to make something like a 1750s era blacksmith They don't mine ore. Once they've scavenged all the scrap, they couldn't make nails. That probably wouldn't be the biggest disadvantage though... they couldn't make much of any manufactured good, and their lifestyle depends on it. Whatever institutional knowledge they had for how to live in the 18th century is long gone. When they're back to a single-row iron plow pulled behind draft animals, they're not going to be getting 70 bushels of wheat per acre, they'll be getting 10. And then they won't be able to feed large numbers. None of what they do now works if our society fails, they need us. And they don't know how to do things they way they used to do, either.