>Yes, or more likely, it's a random fluctuation indicative of nothing in particular. The latter assumption, which may seem overly skeptical, is how a scientist

>Yes, or more likely, it's a random fluctuation indicative of nothing in particular. The latter assumption, which may seem overly skeptical, is how a scientist is expected to look at an unexplained change in the rate, based on a precept called the null hypothesis It's NOT UNEXPLAINED and it's NOT RANDOM. Does your browser support Flash? If I point you at a chart composed using gapminder.org could you please please LOOK AT IT? (Or if you can't, could you let me know what the constraints are on what your browser can see, so I can find another way to get you the information?) The link will follow this paragraph. Press the "play" button below this chart to see an animated plot of fertility versus child mortality. Several specific countries are hilighted - you see a trail of their progress over time - but the ENTIRE MASS of countries follows much the same pattern - it moves down and to the left. Here's the link: http://www.bit.ly/18hUMjA http://www.bit.ly/18hUMjA It truly boggles my mind that you could think even for a second that the slowdown in population growth is "likely a random fluctuation indicative of nothing in particular". It is a TREND. The phenomenon is quite consistent. Across the ENTIRE PLANET, countries are increasing their GDP, decreasing child mortality and decreasing the rate at which they have kids, with all those changes roughly in tandem. And it's not a random walk where one needs to cherry-pick any specific interval to see these trends - if you just look at the entirety of ALL the data we have available and plot it, you can see a consistent movement. Please look at the animation. Play around with it - use the checkbox list on the right to highlight other specific countries. Get a sense of what the data is actually DOING before you claim it's a random fluctuation. A random walk WOULD be susceptible to cherry-picking - the trend would only show up if you pick certain time ranges or certain sets of countries. This is not that. (Given current trends, the world population would not double again - it would stop growing short of that.)