population growth rate slowing.

[decay]

good news or not? (i say yes, at this time.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/us-birth-rate-plummets-to-its-lowest-since-1920/2012/11/29/ee7e8d16-3a3f-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story_1.html

also contains a couple amusing "thank you capt obvious" stats.

[Xat1cZ]

This world is over-populating/over-populated period... hopefully it slows down all over the world.

[Cliche Guevara]

If it slows too much it can have some economic issues (look at Japan, for instance), but environmentally speaking it's definitely good news. If you want to slow the birth rate of a population the number one priority is empowering women. That will have single biggest impact, everything else comes secondary.

[decay]

If it slows too much it can have some economic issues (look at Japan, for instance), but environmentally speaking it's definitely good news.

yeah, "greying" of Japan/Italy was mentioned on 2nd page, but only briefly.

i have to wonder, though-

issues that result of rising avg age. (this is not rhetorical- i don't know what those issues are.) are they really worse than the ones we experience as a result of continued near-exponential growth- especially since that growth is not sustainable with either current or hypothetical water/crop output?

my thoughts: when the dotcom bubble burst, it was a wake-up call. when the financial market one burst, it sucked. when the population bubble goes, it will be downright fucking ugly.

[evandael]

my thoughts: when the dotcom bubble burst, it was a wake-up call. when the financial market one burst, it sucked. when the population bubble goes, it will be downright fucking ugly.

i'm confused by this. do you mean when the swell of 15-25 year olds (the world over, especially in eastern nations) hit their peak of consumption and make demands for higher standards of living?


or do you mean when the world's population hits its peak sustainable level (some say 9 billion) and 'catastrophe' ensues?


all in all, slowing population growth is a good thing. i am not having children, and i stand firmly behind that proclamation. it's not about selfishness, it's about the strain we're placing on the earth and the people already here.

[Fourbanger]

This world is over-populating/over-populated period... hopefully it slows down all over the world.

The problem is it's not going to just slow down until we see healthcare, birth control, education (esp. for women), and a general increase in the standard of living in the parts of the world with the highest birth rates. Children are important sources of labor for their families in poverty stricken areas, and since the infant mortality rate is also very high in these areas people end up having a whole litter of kids to insure that at least few survive into adulthood.

Not so much the case in the US. We've been hovering around replacement-level fertility for a while.



But keep in mind that a population will still grow even if the total fertility rate (TFR) is under replacement level, it just means a slowing in the rate of increase. It would have to be outpaced by the mortality rate for the population to actually drop.

[decay]

i'm confused by this. do you mean when the swell of 15-25 year olds (the world over, especially in eastern nations) hit their peak of consumption and make demands for higher standards of living?


or do you mean when the world's population hits its peak sustainable level (some say 9 billion) and 'catastrophe' ensues?

i meant the latter- though in my head was the word "correction", not "catastrophe".

[DaveNorCal]

As economies move away from being primarily agrarian, the birthrate tends to drop. Likewise when women are more empowered and have access to birth control that they control. In my lifetime the average number of children of Mexican couples has dropped from over five to just over two. By the way, Mexico is the only country in North America whose middle class has been growing.

[Farbin Kaiber]

Do you think the rise is social acceptance of homosexuality has helped at all?

[Farbin Kaiber]

Not sure if I'm srs or trollin'.


Hrmmmmm......

[decay]

Not sure if I'm srs or trollin'.


Hrmmmmm......

we'll know you were if sleeve shows up.

srs ansr: hadn't thought about it, but it would take strong arguments to convince me that social factors held stronger sway than economic. doubtful.

[cale]

Interesting video of birth rates and population growth.

[rwh11385]

If it slows too much it can have some economic issues (look at Japan, for instance), but environmentally speaking it's definitely good news.

Indeed. Singapore has government-sponsored campaigns to promote couples making more babies. http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=258348

Europe too will be rocked by a growing retired population and shrinking base.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specia...f-America.html

The United States is also expected to grow somewhat older. The portion of the population that is currently at least 65 years old—13 percent—is expected to reach about 20 percent by 2050.

Between 2000 and 2050, census data suggest, the U.S. 15-to-64 age group is expected to grow 42 percent. In contrast, because of falling fertility rates, the number of young and working-age people is expected to decline elsewhere: by 10 percent in China, 25 percent in Europe, 30 percent in South Korea and more than 40 percent in Japan.

Within the next four decades most of the developed countries in Europe and East Asia will become veritable old-age homes: a third or more of their populations will be over 65. By then, the United States is likely to have more than 350 million people under 65.

The prospect of an additional 100 million Americans by 2050 worries some environmentalists. A few have joined traditionally conservative xenophobes and anti-immigration activists in calling for a national policy to slow population growth by severely limiting immigration. The U.S. fertility rate—50 percent higher than that of Russia, Germany and Japan and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, South Korea and virtually all the rest of Europe—has also prompted criticism.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotk...ers-toothless/

“Most of my friends are not married,” one 35-year-old female civil servant told me. “They don’t want to be single but they are too busy with their work commitment. My friends are consumed by work. Money, status, prestige, climbing the ladder. You expect things to change when you get older but it doesn’t. The calculation just doesn’t work out”

For many of these people, not having offspring makes sense in terms of concentrating on career goals and reducing financial pressure. But it could prove a social disaster in the long run. All Tiger nations now suffer fertility rates roughly half the 2.1 children per household needed to replace the current population. By 2030 these countries could have fewer people under 15 than over 60.

[rwh11385]

The problem is it's not going to just slow down until we see healthcare, birth control, education (esp. for women), and a general increase in the standard of living in the parts of the world with the highest birth rates. Children are important sources of labor for their families in poverty stricken areas, and since the infant mortality rate is also very high in these areas people end up having a whole litter of kids to insure that at least few survive into adulthood.

Not so much the case in the US. We've been hovering around replacement-level fertility for a while.

[image of us fert rate]

But keep in mind that a population will still grow even if the total fertility rate (TFR) is under replacement level, it just means a slowing in the rate of increase. It would have to be outpaced by the mortality rate for the population to actually drop.

True story. Why are people shocked that immigrants which were the primary drive of population growth would slow down the baby making and adopt more American lifestyles? Like the article mentioned, they are pursuing a better life. Wasn't the concern of the right being flooded by Hispanics who bore a lot of children and would eat up resources? Now immigration has slowed and so has their demographic birth rate and people are concerned over that?

We do need to attract immigrants in order to grow and economic growth depends in part to population growth. But people also being responsible and pursuing the size of family they can afford is good too. It's certainly easy to provide education for a couple children than a van-full, and fewer people are needing large numbers of offspring to tend farms anymore. And hopefully with more education and innovation we can care for our elders more effectively. But the old way of constantly birthing more to support the retired (like social security is in trouble now because of that assumption) isn't going to be very feasible. The US will be much better off than most of Europe, Asia, etc. at least. And we can continue to grow with developing countries as they move from Ag to industry.

As economies move away from being primarily agrarian, the birthrate tends to drop. Likewise when women are more empowered and have access to birth control that they control. In my lifetime the average number of children of Mexican couples has dropped from over five to just over two. By the way, Mexico is the only country in North America whose middle class has been growing.

Indeed.

cale's post of Hans Rosling is good - he has a ton of explanations of the effects of development and income on fertility rates, etc.

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/popu...th-ikea-boxes/

Explaining population growth requires simplification, but not oversimplification.
In this TED video, Hans Rosling explains why ending poverty – over the coming decades – is crucial to stop population growth. Only by raising the living standards of the poorest, in an environmentally-friendly way, will population growth stop at 9 billion people in 2050.

Here's an animation that shows that as the world developed and as average income per capita increased, birth rates have dropped: www.bit.ly/UurIRJ

[Farbin Kaiber]

Well, lets do this purely on science, like some here need to do, and with proof, like rwh11385 always does.

If it's been proven that frogs change gender to resolve issues where there are not enough breeding pairs to sustain life...

http://www.genetics.org/content/164/2/613.full

It would therefore be probable that nature would also act upon a species to resolve the inverse.

So, yes, one would assume that if nature could modify physical traits to improve population, it would also stand to reason that nature could also modify mental concepts in a species to slow down overpopulation.