The World’s Plummeting Fertility Rate

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-plummeting-fertility-rate/

by gmays • 3 years ago

31 25 3 years ago

Tepix4• 3 years ago

I'm not too worried, we're using way too many resources as-is and a shrinking human population will be good for the planet as a whole.

Also i'm convinced that sooner or later the trend will reverse, if necessary. Granted, this is not based on any facts. Is Israel perhaps an example of a high birthrate (2.9) "out of necessity"?

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

a shrinking human population will be good for the planet as a whole.

Of course it will, that is not what governments are worried about. The problem with a shrinking population is shrinking tax revenue, shrinking GDP, and worst of all for anything corporate, shrinking consumer spending.

Perhaps a cynical view but the worrying at Davos has nothing to do with planet Gaia or Humanity as a whole.

flexie• 3 years ago

From the point of view of spending less resources, a smaller world population is good. However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy populations who's populations have been stagnating for decades, not by the larger and poorer populations of India, South East Asia and Africa, that have seen most population growth.

The main worry I have is how we are going to manage financially. For hundreds of years, we've only had growing world population and it has been a driver for much economic growth. Industrialism and the increasing world population has gone hand in hand. Will we see more inflation now, when there will continuously be smaller working populations? What about investments: Will it be more difficult to attract investment when many markets are naturally shrinking due to shrinking populations?

Tepix4• 3 years ago

However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy populations

I don't understand why you write "however" here. Isn't it good if the populations with the highest per capita resource usage shrink?

ElevenLathe2• 3 years ago

The market will clear one way or another. Investment will fund schemes that work in the new state of energy and labor availability, or it will be lost. Retirement schemes will either work in this new regime, or go bust.

What will the state of those labor and energy markets be? If you know, and there's a killing to be made. Perhaps Africa is poised for 100 years of insane growth as the increasingly-wealthy Asian countries outsource production there. Maybe more expensive transportation will mean the end of meandering, globe-bestriding supply chains and the localization of manufacturing, with exports being concentrated in high-value items like machine tools. Maybe industrial civilization simply isn't possible within the energy and population limits that a global economy without fossil fuel can sustain, or maybe we can only sustain something like a 1960s (or 1930s or 1890s or whatever) standard of living. Maybe there is some deus ex machina technology that will mean limitless free energy and raw materials from the asteroid belt or something, and we'll all mostly live as westerners do now but with weirder social problems brought on by uncontrollable advanced AI manipulating our elections and culture.

Any of this is within the realm of possibility, and in every scenario there are winners and losers. Investment will go somewhere, the question is not how hard or easy it will be to attract it, but whether the fossil fuel wealth we've managed not to piss away in the past couple centuries is enough to bootstrap us into some sustainable form of civilization. If it is, will we manage to do it? Will we destroy the whole biosphere or only most of it? Will something recognizably human exist in the future? If not, when do we wink out?

xyzzy123• 3 years ago

In anglo countries at least, population growth and a large portion of economic growth has been driven by migration.

There are very strong incentives to try and "keep the party going", especially in economies (say Canada/Australia/NZ) that look basically like a thin layer of life support wrapped around an extractive housing market.

trashtester• 3 years ago

Also i'm convinced that sooner or later the trend will reverse, if necessary. Granted, this is not based on any facts.

The way I see it, humans are animals and the average fertility of this species of animals has recently gone down radically in most places due to changes in it's habitat that has reduced its fitness.

This has happened to millions upon millions of species in the past. One out of three things can happen:

1) The species goes extinct. This is more likely for species that are already pressured by competition from other species, since their ecological niche may go away completely.

2) The habitat reverts to a state where the average fitness of the species is high enough to sustain the population. This often happens in cycles for species like lemmings, where overpopulation periodically leads to population collapses.

3) If neither 1 nor 2 happens quickly, most species will adapt to the changes in their habitat. Often this happens by changing the relative frequency of genes in the gene pool towards those more fit to the new environment. This is arguably the main benefit of sexual reproduction. Sometimes a few mutations may also help adaptation.

Given the current size of the human population, (1) is not very relevant (or if it happens, it's for another reason, such as runaway AI). (2) could always happen, for instance if society collapses to a point where condoms are not available and there's not police available to prevent rape.

But if society remains relatively stable, I believe (3) will happen within 5-50 generations (starting in about 1950, meaning we're about 3 generations in). If I'm right, we will soon see that some genes are associated with higher fertility, and that the frequency of those genes keep going up over the generations. Since this is an exponential process, it starts out slowly.

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

We are already defined by genes that promote higher fertility. The sexual dimorphism between men and women really underscores that fact. Squeezing a child the size of a football out of you leans to wider hips, and there is enough real life inspiration for the "Pixar Mom Bod" to assume it's leaning to fertility.

But genes are only a blueprint, and the genes that lean to fertility may get turned off by constant exposure to plastics. Or moderately fertile people may get sucked into the "quiverful" movement and crap out 12 kids regardless of genetics.

pg_1234• 3 years ago

It won't be (3).

It's not about genetic fertility anymore, it's about conscious choice.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

I think we already see some groups inside declining countries that have higher birthrate. Those might end up dominating in couple of generations if they don't change too.

I'm not really worried about either way. I'm long dead by then or dead somewhat earlier as not enough funds go to keeping me alive.

dmm• 3 years ago

a shrinking human population will be good for the planet as a whole.

The main problem is not a shrinking population but an aging one. As long as TFR is below replacement the proportion of elderly increase forever. In the US right now there are 3 worker for every retired person. By 2030 it will be 2 workers per retiree. That's a 50% increase and it will continue to get worse until TFR increases.

An increasingly non-working population will have a lot of bad effects.

Tepix4• 3 years ago

Yes, that is a side effect that seems largely unavoidable, perhaps increased automation can compensate a bit.

aio2• 3 years ago

Isn't that what's happening more severely in places like Japan? Their population is lowering at a steady rate. Some people are worried about what will happen in Japan

TheLoafOfBread3• 3 years ago

Sex is a fun for poor people. As world is getting richer, there is much more to do than just make babies.

AussieWog93• 3 years ago

I might be wrong, but it seems at least for men in the Western world, wealth correlates pretty strongly with family size.

TheLoafOfBread3• 3 years ago

If that would be true, Western countries would be having more than 2,1 child per woman.

jl27182• 3 years ago

I would really like to know how you came up with that observation. Are you from a fundamentalist religious group? Small agrarian tribe? Billionaire yacht club? I think 99% of Americans recognize the opposite as overwhelmingly obvious.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

inglor_cz• 3 years ago

Alternatively, some forever chemicals are at work, bringing down our fertility even more than our affluent lifestyle. Even poorer populations such as the Roma in Eastern Europe have measurably fewer children than in 1990.

We are always looking for societal explanations and ignore possible effects of biology / chemistry. It is unpleasant to realize that we are biological machines that are fairly resilient, but will still break down or malfunction in certain environment.

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

I'd bet it has as much to do with obesity as forever chemicals screwing with the endocrine system.

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

well now that I have a stable salary I guess I can only get off by buying a boat

TheLoafOfBread3• 3 years ago

Or you can get married, divorced and then turn your salary into somebody's else alimony.

jl27182• 3 years ago

The fertility rate in Chad has hardly changed at all over the last 70 years since it’s been tracked despite massive reduction in infant mortality. Meanwhile, infant mortality in the developed world hasn’t changed at all and the fertility rate is dropping dramatically.

The Rosling hypothesis is false.

The World’s Plummeting Fertility Rate

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