After watching this video I am left with this question.
The video ultimately claims that humans will not disappear, but doesn’t do a great job explaining why.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but for the (or a) population to be and remain stable, the total fertility rate needs to be equal to the global replacement rate (which recently was 2.3).
And since the total average fertility rate appears to be currently at this 2.3, any drop in the fertility rate in place A would have to be compensated with a rise in the fertility rate in place B (assuming that, at some point, we would like to stop population decline)?
I guess one way for a population to remain stable, while women are having fewer than 2.3 children, would be to have fewer men? If a population has 100 women and 10 men, each woman would only have to have on average (a bit more than) 1.1 child? (Which would of course also require a collective form of prenatal sex selection.)
I realize that would be bonkers and unethical. Just wondering out loud.
If it stays there forever, yes.
It won’t though, as there become fewer humans it’s likely it will become easier to have more children again (fewer people for the same amount of finite resources) and the rate will increase.
(fewer people for the same amount of finite resources) and the rate will increase.
Funny way to think…
Actually it is poor countries (less ressources) that have the higher birth rates.
I’d say, having children is hard work, but people in rich countries are lazy :-)
Blaming this on “laziness” is a really naive and unfair take on why rich nations have less kids. The more likely reasons, and more commonly accepted reasons are:
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better career opportunities for women
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better education
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costs of children
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challenges with child care
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easier access to contraceptives
I like how we phrase this as “better education” and “better career opportunities for women”. While technically true relative to poor countries, these explain nothing about why fertility rates are so low. They are related, but framing them differently will help us understand.
Why do people have fewer kids? Because economic life in most developed countries is relatively unstable, and to ensure economic stability, we require people to develop years of education and work experience to receive a comfortable salary. In many places we now require two such incomes. This mean women really don’t have a choice but to pursue advanced education and work, whether they want to or not. And we are not willing to accommodate children during education or work. This means women (and increasingly men too) are severely penalized economically for having children, and so of course people will have far fewer on average.
Another likely factor is the atomized nature of the modern family. Many people need to move to distant places for work, severing their direct ties to family and community. Human mothers aren’t well equipped to raise children solo, and even two parents is a stretch if you have 2+ kids. In past times we always relied on neighbors and extended family to help keep an eye on the youngsters and to teach parents the skills they need to do it right.
If you look at the very wealthy, there is some evidence that they have higher fertility, though I couldn’t find good data on this so take it with a grain of salt. But they have access to enough money to buy personalized childcare, which solves almost all of the above issues.
In developing countries, children often mean free labor and form the basis of your retirement through elder care, so while the economic conditions are of course worse overall, the opposite incentives exist. Another factor is that poor, agricultural societies are almost always extremely patriarchal, which tends to lead to high (involuntary) fertility.
In my view, egalitarian economic reforms will help bring fertility rates in all countries towards a healthy moderate level.
People from poor countries that move into wealthy countries adopt the birth rate almost immediately.
It isn’t about laziness, it’s about education and wealth.
You are contradicting yourself. By moving into a wealthy country you neither gain education nor wealth. Its about culture and environment.
My guess is: in wealthy countries people are living more isolated. Without help from friends and family you have to invest a huge amount oft time into rising a child, which many can’t afford.
You’re thinking about the resources wrong. I mostly mean land availability.
Even in first world countries the birth rates are higher outside cities than inside. In undeveloped counties the birthdates are lower in crowded cities.
Mathematically? Obviously, yes.
Socially? Would never happen. Imagine our population is just stock. It goes up and down depending on how good things look. At some point, it cannot continue as it’s not financially feasible. But when it drops back down into realistic numbers, balance goes up again.
You can see this behaviour in the generations (Z, Y, X, Boomer, Pre-war, etc.) These generation changes are marked by a tipping point of birthrate increasing or decreasing in a nation—typically globally, which is why we all tend to agree on the start/end of generational eras within 3–5 years.
Not to mention that technology is continuing to advance in new and unexpected ways.
We’re getting close to artificial womb technology, for example. There are already artificial wombs that are being experimented with as a way to save extremely premature babies that wouldn’t survive in a conventional incubator, for example.
Commodity humanoid robots are also in development, and AI has taken surprisingly rapid leaps in development over the past two years.
I could see a possibility where in a couple of decades a human baby could be born from an artificial womb and raised to adulthood entirely by machines, if we really really needed to for some reason. Embryo space colonization is the usual example given, but it could also potentially work as a way to counter population decline due to people simply not wanting to do their own birthing and child-rearing.
No, the only people complaining about replacement rates are governments that are in bed with corperations that need endless growth to feed thier capitalists machines.
No, because it won’t stay down that low. No need for funny maths; some people enjoy making babies.
Let me spoil part of the Foundation series for you. In one book, the cast visits a planet where they encounter one person with psychic powers surrounded by robot servants. He reveals that the planet is evenly divided by I think 128 people like himself who want for nothing and live comfortably. They only reproduce asexually, and only in preparation for their own death or when another dies.
What this illustrates that’s relevant for you is that yes, not hitting the replacement rate could lead to significant population decline, but only until people are comfortable enough and want to have kids or feel it is the best way to maintain their way of life (think farmers having kids to help on the farm).
