4 ms·

What kind of weird equilibrium is this. We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility. In a world that you have

What kind of weird equilibrium is this. We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility. In a world that you have both developed and developing countries, the stable equilibrium seems to be world suffering. Wtf.

MangoToupe 1y ago
Can you expound on this? It makes sense to me that global wealth inequality would drive conflict.
arcticbull 1y ago
> In a world that you have both developed and developing countries, the stable equilibrium seems to be world suffering. I think that's the wrong read. All sorts of animal population follow a sigmoidal growth pattern where there's exponential growth, some degree of overshoot and then a return to a steady level somewhat below that peak. I think it's more likely, drawing from biology, that we end up at a stable global population level without having to worry about moving backwards along the metrics of education, income or contraceptive access. Remember it was just a few years ago everyone was absolutely terrified that we would grow to the point where the world simply couldn't hold us all and we'd die off -- and now we're terrified the population will zero out. In reality, neither is very likely. We're probably just going to chill around 8 billion or so until/if we go multi-planetary.
- spwa4 1y ago
  Actually growth patterns of animals vary wildly. There's a whole set of animals that get "unstable" growth - Cats are famous for this, for example. That means that cat numbers in specific areas actually grow to the point that cats die out in the next generation, destabilizing the entire food chain in the process (happened in Australia, for example) The problem with this instability is that the numbers bounce around wildly. Up and down, by a lot, in as little as 2 or 3 generations. But there's a process that stops the bouncing: hitting zero.
  - XorNot 1y ago
    Cats are kind of crazy as an invasive predator: they can be sexually mature after 6 months and have litters of up to 6 kittens every 3 months. Obviously that's more at the upper end, but for an obligate carnivore that is an amazing multiplier.
    - klipt 1y ago
      They are small carnivores, I imagine their wild ancestors were kept partly in check by even larger carnivores eating them?
- bitmasher9 1y ago
  I don’t think we’re going to find a number and stay there. Too many factors impacting population size are changing. Healthcare, climate, food science, etc. It’s likely to always fluctuate, and it’s likely to continue to be something people worry about.
- dgunay 1y ago
  The economy depends on some level of growth, so if we can't accomplish that with a stable or shrinking population then it's gonna be a bad time for a while. EDIT: I did not think I'd have to state this explicitly, but: yes, I am in fact talking about the capitalist economy the western world currently operates under growth = economic growth
  - mulmen 1y ago
    The economy does not depend on population growth. It depends on productivity growth.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    Why does the economy require growth? Biological systems can find equilibria, why can't an economy do the same?
    - estimator7292 1y ago
      Because bigger number, obviously. All economies do not inherently rely on growth. It's just that capitalists have brainwashed themselves into believing capitalism is the only type of economy possible and that growth can go on without bound literally forever. It's exactly as stupid as it sounds.
      - cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
    - ForHackernews 1y ago
      Capitalism requires growth. If your sales aren't growing your stock price goes down.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      Economy in general doesnt require growth. The economy we were born into, the level of material production, business, amenities etc and how we run things, does. It can find an equilibrium at some point, but it will be blood and people who think they should have robot servants and food delivery wont like it. As for the time it will be achieving that equilibrium, it will be painful.
- roxolotl 1y ago
  Yea my crackpot theory is it’s genuinely something that’s inherent which is causing these declines. That’s why no attempts to reverse them have been successful. I think like you’re saying we’ll end up at some equilibrium.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  It's very dangerous to try and compare human behavior to any pattern seen in nature— particularly human behavior in aggregate. While humans are animals like any other, we are also very much not simple beasts beholden to environmental conditions. To wit: the current human population is beyond the natural carrying capacity of the places we live. The only reason we can sustain 7bn people today is because we've artificially increased local carrying capacity through artificial fertilizer. If we lost that technology today, a majorty of humans alive now would starve to death. There's really no reason to assume any environmental factors that don't physically preclude human occupation will have any effect on overall population numbers. We can artificially extend our ecosystem to support essentially unlimited people. The only real hard limit is space to physically put bodies and the amount of energy our society can use without boiling the oceans with waste heat. If population growth levels out, it won't be for any natural reason because we are already well beyond any natural limit.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    But we are beholden to environmental conditions! All of our technology, including the base materials for artificial fertilizer come the environment. The unique thing about humans is the inter-dependence. We need people specialized in tasks to keep everything running. This requires the use of 'money' in whatever form to do the bookkeeping on distributing resources. I think what we are seeing is that the 'money' aspect our human interactions seems to be key constraint on people having more babies.
- akavi 1y ago
  > I think it's more likely, drawing from biology, that we end up at a stable global population level without having to worry about moving backwards along the metrics of education, income or contraceptive access. There's absolutely no inherent equilibrating force that will stabilize global fertility rates at replacement. Many countries have blown by replacement (the USA included) and continue on a downward trend year over year.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    And if even cultural norms were reversed to pro-birth, it wouldn't be enough to reverse the trends, as the decline is compounding, and the increase of average age produces other complications (hard economic issues for starters, making people even more hesitant).
- zaptheimpaler 1y ago
  I think the real problem is the age structure of the population is increasingly skewing older and this problem becomes worse the lower the birth rate. I don't know how we're going to keep supporting more and more people getting past the retirement age and collecting benefits on a shrinking working age population being squeezed harder by taxes. Either retirement spending goes down maybe with higher retirment age or increased healthspan, or we become much more efficient at taking care of the elderly with fewer resources, or the working class gets squeezed harder & harder.
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    There’s also the option of raising corporate and high-net-worth-individual tax rates!
- coldtea 1y ago
  >All sorts of animal population follow a sigmoidal growth pattern where there's exponential growth, some degree of overshoot and then a return to a steady level somewhat below that peak. Animal populations usually decline because they lack food or have predators and other external factors. Not usually because of a lack of will to reproduce due to social or economic reasons.
saghm 1y ago
> We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility. In a world that you have both developed and developing countries, the stable equilibrium seems to be world suffering. Alternately: in the past, dying was a lot easier, and society adapted to that by creating extra people, and we've reached a point where that isn't as necessary. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be awesome to improve things for the number of people we do have, or that those improvements are easy, but it's not obvious to me why the assumption would be that quality of life only changes if the population continues changing. In other words, it sounds like you're measuring two different things, noticing one of them slowing no longer increasing, and trying to make inferences about the other one without actually establishing how exactly that connection works.
SLWW 1y ago
I am a top 15% earner in my area, have been for 7 years, and I'll be able to afford a home maybe in another 5-10 years. If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children. On top of the issues with people working so often and so hard that they rarely have time to meet anyone outside of work; no wonder people aren't marrying.
- arcticbull 1y ago
  > If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children. Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. It's really a question of prioritization. People say they're holding off on kids for X or Y reason but I think this is more of an expressed vs revealed preferences situation. They would rather chase material wealth for themselves than have kids, and to be clear I'm not judging just observing. Through most of human history mud huts weren't a blocker to having kids. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    That’s because people pulling a nice paycheck have gotten a taste of stability and don’t want to risk losing it, and this is intensified when the economy is turbulent. People making less never had stability in the first place and don’t have as much to lose. Aside from that, it's merely observations/anecdotes, but from what I’ve seen people who have managed to achieve a massive uplift in economic status (say from minimum wage in their mid-20s → net worth north of $500k-$1m in their mid-30s) are more likely to have children than people who’ve always been wealthy. I would theorize that such individuals feel a greater degree of economic freedom, having lived at the bottom and being able to make more effective use of what they have.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    > Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. Previously, but this no longer holds. https://www.governance.fyi/p/45-why-rising-family-size-temporarily https://www.governance.fyi/p/45-why-rising-family-size-tempo...
pfannkuchen 1y ago
Another possibility is that a third factor is causing both better living conditions and lower fertility, not that better living conditions inherently cause lower fertility.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  I believe lower fertility is most closely associated with education for women. Women with an education sometimes find interests other than being a baby factory.
dylan604 1y ago
> We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility How do you come to this conclusion. We're seeing that our oh so clever selves have used chemicals/plastics in these nice living conditions to the point they have negative consequences on our health. Having a nice place to live with a job with a nice salary while lending to better health does not lower one's fertility. Maybe these people with the nice jobs and nice places to live are choosing not to have kids which become the reason they can't have nice things. I think you've jumped to an incorrect conclusion
- taneq 1y ago
  This trend has been going on for much longer than the current worries about microplastics and whatnot. Lower fertility doesn’t necessarily mean lower physical fecundity. It can also just mean that generations of kids have been raised to believe having kids early ruins your life, and should only be done much later after you graduate university and your career is well established (by which time you’re in your latter 20s and your fertility is naturally lower.)
tw04 1y ago
Perhaps it’s Mother Nature desperately trying to tell humans that current capitalism and the pursuit of endless growth is unsustainable. Other species die out when they reproduce too quickly for the environment to support it. Humans modify the environment right up until they can’t to continue to pursue growth.

MangoToupe 1y ago

Can you expound on this? It makes sense to me that global wealth inequality would drive conflict.

arcticbull 1y ago

> In a world that you have both developed and developing countries, the stable equilibrium seems to be world suffering. I think that's the wrong read. All sorts of animal population follow a sigmoidal growth pattern where there's exponential growth, some degree of overshoot and then a return to a steady level somewhat below that peak. I think it's more likely, drawing from biology, that we end up at a stable global population level without having to worry about moving backwards along the metrics of education, income or contraceptive access. Remember it was just a few years ago everyone was absolutely terrified that we would grow to the point where the world simply couldn't hold us all and we'd die off -- and now we're terrified the population will zero out. In reality, neither is very likely. We're probably just going to chill around 8 billion or so until/if we go multi-planetary.

spwa4 1y ago
Actually growth patterns of animals vary wildly. There's a whole set of animals that get "unstable" growth - Cats are famous for this, for example. That means that cat numbers in specific areas actually grow to the point that cats die out in the next generation, destabilizing the entire food chain in the process (happened in Australia, for example) The problem with this instability is that the numbers bounce around wildly. Up and down, by a lot, in as little as 2 or 3 generations. But there's a process that stops the bouncing: hitting zero.
- XorNot 1y ago
  Cats are kind of crazy as an invasive predator: they can be sexually mature after 6 months and have litters of up to 6 kittens every 3 months. Obviously that's more at the upper end, but for an obligate carnivore that is an amazing multiplier.
  - klipt 1y ago
    They are small carnivores, I imagine their wild ancestors were kept partly in check by even larger carnivores eating them?
bitmasher9 1y ago
I don’t think we’re going to find a number and stay there. Too many factors impacting population size are changing. Healthcare, climate, food science, etc. It’s likely to always fluctuate, and it’s likely to continue to be something people worry about.
dgunay 1y ago
The economy depends on some level of growth, so if we can't accomplish that with a stable or shrinking population then it's gonna be a bad time for a while. EDIT: I did not think I'd have to state this explicitly, but: yes, I am in fact talking about the capitalist economy the western world currently operates under growth = economic growth
- mulmen 1y ago
  The economy does not depend on population growth. It depends on productivity growth.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  Why does the economy require growth? Biological systems can find equilibria, why can't an economy do the same?
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    Because bigger number, obviously. All economies do not inherently rely on growth. It's just that capitalists have brainwashed themselves into believing capitalism is the only type of economy possible and that growth can go on without bound literally forever. It's exactly as stupid as it sounds.
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
  - ForHackernews 1y ago
    Capitalism requires growth. If your sales aren't growing your stock price goes down.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    Economy in general doesnt require growth. The economy we were born into, the level of material production, business, amenities etc and how we run things, does. It can find an equilibrium at some point, but it will be blood and people who think they should have robot servants and food delivery wont like it. As for the time it will be achieving that equilibrium, it will be painful.
roxolotl 1y ago
Yea my crackpot theory is it’s genuinely something that’s inherent which is causing these declines. That’s why no attempts to reverse them have been successful. I think like you’re saying we’ll end up at some equilibrium.
estimator7292 1y ago
It's very dangerous to try and compare human behavior to any pattern seen in nature— particularly human behavior in aggregate. While humans are animals like any other, we are also very much not simple beasts beholden to environmental conditions. To wit: the current human population is beyond the natural carrying capacity of the places we live. The only reason we can sustain 7bn people today is because we've artificially increased local carrying capacity through artificial fertilizer. If we lost that technology today, a majorty of humans alive now would starve to death. There's really no reason to assume any environmental factors that don't physically preclude human occupation will have any effect on overall population numbers. We can artificially extend our ecosystem to support essentially unlimited people. The only real hard limit is space to physically put bodies and the amount of energy our society can use without boiling the oceans with waste heat. If population growth levels out, it won't be for any natural reason because we are already well beyond any natural limit.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  But we are beholden to environmental conditions! All of our technology, including the base materials for artificial fertilizer come the environment. The unique thing about humans is the inter-dependence. We need people specialized in tasks to keep everything running. This requires the use of 'money' in whatever form to do the bookkeeping on distributing resources. I think what we are seeing is that the 'money' aspect our human interactions seems to be key constraint on people having more babies.
akavi 1y ago
> I think it's more likely, drawing from biology, that we end up at a stable global population level without having to worry about moving backwards along the metrics of education, income or contraceptive access. There's absolutely no inherent equilibrating force that will stabilize global fertility rates at replacement. Many countries have blown by replacement (the USA included) and continue on a downward trend year over year.
- coldtea 1y ago
  And if even cultural norms were reversed to pro-birth, it wouldn't be enough to reverse the trends, as the decline is compounding, and the increase of average age produces other complications (hard economic issues for starters, making people even more hesitant).
zaptheimpaler 1y ago
I think the real problem is the age structure of the population is increasingly skewing older and this problem becomes worse the lower the birth rate. I don't know how we're going to keep supporting more and more people getting past the retirement age and collecting benefits on a shrinking working age population being squeezed harder by taxes. Either retirement spending goes down maybe with higher retirment age or increased healthspan, or we become much more efficient at taking care of the elderly with fewer resources, or the working class gets squeezed harder & harder.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  There’s also the option of raising corporate and high-net-worth-individual tax rates!
coldtea 1y ago
>All sorts of animal population follow a sigmoidal growth pattern where there's exponential growth, some degree of overshoot and then a return to a steady level somewhat below that peak. Animal populations usually decline because they lack food or have predators and other external factors. Not usually because of a lack of will to reproduce due to social or economic reasons.

saghm 1y ago

> We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility. In a world that you have both developed and developing countries, the stable equilibrium seems to be world suffering. Alternately: in the past, dying was a lot easier, and society adapted to that by creating extra people, and we've reached a point where that isn't as necessary. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be awesome to improve things for the number of people we do have, or that those improvements are easy, but it's not obvious to me why the assumption would be that quality of life only changes if the population continues changing. In other words, it sounds like you're measuring two different things, noticing one of them slowing no longer increasing, and trying to make inferences about the other one without actually establishing how exactly that connection works.

SLWW 1y ago

I am a top 15% earner in my area, have been for 7 years, and I'll be able to afford a home maybe in another 5-10 years. If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children. On top of the issues with people working so often and so hard that they rarely have time to meet anyone outside of work; no wonder people aren't marrying.

arcticbull 1y ago
> If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children. Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. It's really a question of prioritization. People say they're holding off on kids for X or Y reason but I think this is more of an expressed vs revealed preferences situation. They would rather chase material wealth for themselves than have kids, and to be clear I'm not judging just observing. Through most of human history mud huts weren't a blocker to having kids. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  That’s because people pulling a nice paycheck have gotten a taste of stability and don’t want to risk losing it, and this is intensified when the economy is turbulent. People making less never had stability in the first place and don’t have as much to lose. Aside from that, it's merely observations/anecdotes, but from what I’ve seen people who have managed to achieve a massive uplift in economic status (say from minimum wage in their mid-20s → net worth north of $500k-$1m in their mid-30s) are more likely to have children than people who’ve always been wealthy. I would theorize that such individuals feel a greater degree of economic freedom, having lived at the bottom and being able to make more effective use of what they have.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  > Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. Previously, but this no longer holds. https://www.governance.fyi/p/45-why-rising-family-size-temporarily https://www.governance.fyi/p/45-why-rising-family-size-tempo...

pfannkuchen 1y ago

Another possibility is that a third factor is causing both better living conditions and lower fertility, not that better living conditions inherently cause lower fertility.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
I believe lower fertility is most closely associated with education for women. Women with an education sometimes find interests other than being a baby factory.

dylan604 1y ago

> We know that better living conditions (health, income, education etc) lead to lower fertility How do you come to this conclusion. We're seeing that our oh so clever selves have used chemicals/plastics in these nice living conditions to the point they have negative consequences on our health. Having a nice place to live with a job with a nice salary while lending to better health does not lower one's fertility. Maybe these people with the nice jobs and nice places to live are choosing not to have kids which become the reason they can't have nice things. I think you've jumped to an incorrect conclusion

taneq 1y ago
This trend has been going on for much longer than the current worries about microplastics and whatnot. Lower fertility doesn’t necessarily mean lower physical fecundity. It can also just mean that generations of kids have been raised to believe having kids early ruins your life, and should only be done much later after you graduate university and your career is well established (by which time you’re in your latter 20s and your fertility is naturally lower.)

tw04 1y ago

Perhaps it’s Mother Nature desperately trying to tell humans that current capitalism and the pursuit of endless growth is unsustainable. Other species die out when they reproduce too quickly for the environment to support it. Humans modify the environment right up until they can’t to continue to pursue growth.