The exploding population meme is breaking.
Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 12:45 pm
Not a surprise to me, I was aware of declining populations back in the 70's, when I first heard that Germany (West Germany then) had lost population through the early 70's. I got down my mother's almanacs and tracked the populations as reported, and it was true. Germany was shrinking. My mother never threw away a book if she could keep from it, and those old almanacs were invaluable in the days before the Internet.
Now, the potential for shrinkage in world populations has spilled over into the mainstream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opini ... 15242.html
For as Phillip Longman, a scholar of demographics and economics at the New America Foundation, observes: "Never in history have we had economic prosperity accompanied by depopulation."
And depopulation, like it or not, is just around the corner. That is the central message of a compelling new documentary, "Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family." Longman is one of numerous experts interviewed in the film, which explores the causes and effects of one of what may be the most ominous reality of 21st-century life: the fall in human birth rates almost everywhere in the world.
Human fertility has been dropping for years and is now below replacement levels - the minimum required to prevent depopulation - in scores of countries, including China, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and all of Europe.
The world's population is still rising, largely because of longer life spans - more people live to old age than in the past. But with far fewer children being born today, there will be far fewer adults bearing children tomorrow. In some countries, the collapse has already begun. Russia, for example, is now losing 700,000 people a year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00188.html
Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children.
The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years.
The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women.
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I do disagree with the conclusion that a world with fewer people will be a poorer world, but that is because I do believe the technological singularity is going to utterly reshape the world economy by the time 2040 rolls around. We may well have medical treatments that restore youth, regeneration, and robots that actually do most work for us by that time. By 2070, the world will have undergone changes that will make the previous 20,000 years seem like a prelude. In terms of accumulated knowledge, we'll have tens or hundreds of millions of times the knowledge we had in 1900. Did we have hundreds of millions of times the knowledge of a puppy or even a cockroach then? The vistas opening before us are breathtaking, and most of us will live to see them unfold.
Now, the potential for shrinkage in world populations has spilled over into the mainstream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opini ... 15242.html
For as Phillip Longman, a scholar of demographics and economics at the New America Foundation, observes: "Never in history have we had economic prosperity accompanied by depopulation."
And depopulation, like it or not, is just around the corner. That is the central message of a compelling new documentary, "Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family." Longman is one of numerous experts interviewed in the film, which explores the causes and effects of one of what may be the most ominous reality of 21st-century life: the fall in human birth rates almost everywhere in the world.
Human fertility has been dropping for years and is now below replacement levels - the minimum required to prevent depopulation - in scores of countries, including China, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and all of Europe.
The world's population is still rising, largely because of longer life spans - more people live to old age than in the past. But with far fewer children being born today, there will be far fewer adults bearing children tomorrow. In some countries, the collapse has already begun. Russia, for example, is now losing 700,000 people a year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00188.html
Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children.
The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years.
The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women.
********
I do disagree with the conclusion that a world with fewer people will be a poorer world, but that is because I do believe the technological singularity is going to utterly reshape the world economy by the time 2040 rolls around. We may well have medical treatments that restore youth, regeneration, and robots that actually do most work for us by that time. By 2070, the world will have undergone changes that will make the previous 20,000 years seem like a prelude. In terms of accumulated knowledge, we'll have tens or hundreds of millions of times the knowledge we had in 1900. Did we have hundreds of millions of times the knowledge of a puppy or even a cockroach then? The vistas opening before us are breathtaking, and most of us will live to see them unfold.