population decline

[Armybrat 40822]

Let them loose to become feral kids then.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/

Read the last chart. It’s the actual numbers. It’s the actual birth rates broken down by religion and  by continent. What I said on population numbers are literally just stats regardless of @CooterBrown’s contentions or @Brisketexan bizarrely hearting a non sequiter and demonstratively false post that says religiosity doesn’t correlate to birth rates. 

7 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

I pay $34000/year for daycare between a 2 and 4 year old. They're too damn expensive.

And the rent is too damn high. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[Brisketexan 105057]

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/
Read the last chart. It’s the actual numbers. It’s the actual birth rates broken down by religion and  by continent. What I said on population numbers are literally just stats regardless of [mention=995]CooterBrown[/mention]’s contentions or [mention=593]Brisketexan[/mention] bizarrely hearting a non sequiter and demonstratively false post that says religiosity doesn’t correlate to birth rates. 
And the rent is too damn high. 

Yeah. Not sure that says what you think it does. Overlay incomes on those birth rates.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah. Not sure that says what you think it does. Overlay incomes on those birth rates.

Read the first article I posted already on the only study we have on the entirety of a country- the Swiss (97% anyway). Controlling for income and all other factors religiosity correlated and the rest didn’t. 
It’s pretty much empirical fact dude. The more you go to a church, mosque or synagogue the more you breed. The more a country puts aside its religiosity the lower the birth rates. It’s not arguable. It’s also been that way for a loooooong time. 

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

More- America- weekly attenders only ones above replacement level. Everyone else- way less. 
 

https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secular-fertility-divide

 

if you parse that by denomination the Fundies are way higher than the mainline groups. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[Armybrat 40822]

2 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Read the first article I posted already on the only study we have on the entirety of a country- the Swiss (97% anyway). Controlling for income and all other factors religiosity correlated and the rest didn’t. 
It’s pretty much empirical fact dude. The more you go to a church, mosque or synagogue the more you breed. The more a country puts aside its religiosity the lower the birth rates. It’s not arguable. It’s also been that way for a loooooong time. 

Religions breeding more tithers.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

More- from Bmc public health study:

Conclusions

These results help identify factors of likely importance for TFR in global regions and countries. More work is needed to establish causality and relative importance of the factors. Our novel quantitative analysis of TFR suggests that religiosity may counteract the ongoing decline of fertility in some regions and countries.

 

more:

Are religious people more likely to have kids?

 

 

Religion still plays a central role in family planning today, as the results suggest. "Our study confirms that practicing Christians, i.e., those who regularly attend church services, want and actually have more children than nominal Christians and non-religious people," says OeAW demographer Isabella Buber-Ennser.
 

more:

In line with previous findings that religious women have more children than secular women in industrialized countries, a connection between at least monthly church attendance and fertility was confirmed. However, religious parents showed they could avoid the pitfalls that having more children can bring.Jul 6, 2020

https://bigthink.com › the-present

 

I’m not hunting weird rabbit holes- we are talking first page of google shit. Empirical studies. I’m not even making value judgments!  It’s literally just the way things are. I don’t know which is the chicken or which is the egg but it’s a strong correlation. It runs together. And it’s noticed by seculars humus T’s that study it, religious people that study it, groups like pew that study it and everyone in between. 
It just is. 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[CooterBrown 18002]

If parenting didn’t suck and kids weren’t a money pit, more people would have them. 

[tbone_ 14106]

Or if we still needed an army to work the farm

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

Russia is going to be an nightmare and right quick.  They already were on the fast track to population decline, now they're killing all working age/fathering age men in the war.  They were supposed to be down 3-4 million in that group by 2030 based on demographics alone.  I'd bet that number will double given deaths plus instability that the war brings.

 

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88983

 

Quote

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8.02.2023

•  
  Andrei
  Kolesnikov

• Русский
• Print

 

Russia’s Second, Silent War Against Its Human Capital

One of the key sociopolitical problems of Russian society is that seventy-year-old political leaders are deciding for young people how they will live and what they will die for.

At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to draw up a package of measures by 2023 that will increase birth rates and life expectancy in Russia. He also expressed bewilderment at the falling birth rates in a number of regions. Yet just a few days later, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed changing the age at which Russian men are conscripted for mandatory military service from eighteen to twenty-one and increasing the upper age limit for conscription from twenty-seven to thirty. That would mean young men being called up after earning their college degrees, and trained specialists being pulled out of the job market to have their skills voided by military service. 

There is a major discrepancy between these two objectives. If men go to war or emigrate en masse instead of fathering children, where will the children come from? The effect on the labor market will also be severe: conscription at such a productive age leeches the labor force out of an economy that is already expected to lose 3–4 million people aged twenty to forty by 2030 (compared to 2020) for objective demographic reasons.

The working population is also losing those who have already left or will leave the country in response to the intense militarization of life, not to mention those who are mobilized, killed, or maimed in combat if the so-called “special operation” continues. 

Combined, this will create a significant labor force deficit and a plethora of demographic problems, further exacerbating the negative dynamics in birth rates observed in Russia since 2016–2017. The decrease in the working age population will become chronic, and the “preservation of the people” that Putin has spoken about for many years will not be achieved. 

Some of the objective reasons for Russia’s demographic problems reflect historical dynamics: the number of women of childbearing age is falling, and the average age at which women are having children is rising steadily in modernized, urban, well-educated populations.

There are short- and medium-term factors, too (which can also have long-term consequences). The COVID-19 pandemic and the “special military operation” have created a backdrop of extreme uncertainty about the future. This has predictably changed family planning: some people are deciding not to have children or to postpone starting a family or having another child until more psychologically and financially stable times. Nor does the militarization of life in Russia encourage people to add to their families, except for those who consider it their duty to supply the motherland with cannon fodder for future wars.

A year of military service for the 300,000 men mobilized into the army in September and October 2022 will mean 25,000 fewer births, estimates Mikhail Denisenko, director of the Institute of Demography of the Higher School of Economics. That isn’t a huge number, but it could rise significantly as a result of emigration, the long-term decline in birth rates, and potential expansion of the mobilization age.

Russian legislators are also pitching in to increase the birth rate. Worried about the reduced production of future soldiers for their imaginary empire, lawmakers—supported by the clergy—are mulling a partial ban on abortion. Yet Russia has mostly completed the “third demographic transition,” when the majority of the population gains the ability to regulate birth rates. Abortions are no longer widespread in the country.

We are seeing a phenomenon Russia has faced many times: wave after wave of wars and repression that drain away human resources. The best way to promote higher birth rates is to create the conditions for a stable, predictable, peaceful, and safe life—including for young men, safe from the clutches of the military.

Until 2022, Russia was considered a market economy with mid-level incomes, though those incomes were not distributed evenly, which fueled a trend that worries education economics experts: young people whose families cannot afford to put them through college have started rejecting higher education in favor of secondary vocational training, which allows them to enter the labor market sooner.

The proposal to change the conscription age to twenty-one, which was likely approved by the Kremlin, will be a double whammy for the labor market and the economy: highly qualified college graduates will not be able to enter the labor market and will instead end up in the military and lose their qualifications, while young men with vocational degrees who are already in the labor market will be torn from the economy partway toward improving their skills. It would be a mistake to think that this wouldn’t affect the qualitative and quantitative indicators of Russian GDP, household income, and quality of human capital.

Essentially, there is a second war under way at home: a war against the quality of human capital. And the militarization of the country creates all of the conditions to reduce this quality for the longest of terms. Although Russia will not see large-scale unemployment, this is only the case because the economy will face a deficit of both high-skilled and low-skilled labor.

Putin has encouraged the armed forces not to be shy about requesting more financing, and this also impacts the quality of human capital. Spending on the military and security is “unproductive expenditure,” meaning that it does not improve quality of life. It is anti-human in all senses. 

Meanwhile, the proportion of productive expenditure (above all, education and healthcare) is stagnant at best and cannot compete with the unproductive expenditure that takes priority for a military-police state. Furthermore, it’s difficult to assess the real scale of spending on the military and defense (including the state’s defense from its own citizens): about 23 percent of expenditure in the 2023 budget is classified. 

Another trend, according to Tatyana Klyachko, director of the Center for Continuing Education Economics of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, is that the average number of years of education of the employed population in Russia is stagnating at best, and falling in some aspects. This also reflects the fact that young people want to quickly enter the labor market and start making money. The value of a good education is declining. For the state today, quickly assembling and disassembling a Kalashnikov rifle is a more important skill.

Authoritarian regimes want to get rid of high-quality and globally competitive education. The “special military operation” has only accelerated the political purges at Russian educational establishments. We have yet to find out how many young people with science and technology degrees have left Russia (including due to fears of being persecuted for espionage or treason if working with covert innovations). However, even the nearsighted state has noticed that the number of high school students planning to take the Unified State Exam in physics and information sciences has fallen. 

A high-quality, modern education produces modern, thinking people, and thinking people aren’t prepared to go and fight for false ideals. Educated individuals are independent individuals, including economically. A militarized state does not need independent people. It needs people who diligently obey orders.  

One of the main problems of Russian society today is that the generation of seventy-year-old Russian leaders is deciding for young people how they will live and what they will die for. This is not a responsible strategy that will contribute to the healthy development of the country, and it certainly does nothing toward the “preservation of the population.”

By:

• Andrei Kolesnikov

End of document

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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[YGIFS 19449]

Why are white men the only ones seemingly worried about this "population decline"?  

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

Because we are all super racist.

[Dbeasy 15040]

On 2/5/2023 at 8:30 AM, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

Isn’t this just saying “Don’t let the population decline”?

No, because for every worker we take from a country we will give them an Aggie. It’s a huge productivity advancement. 

[Dbeasy 15040]

19 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

Italy is the most catholic place in the world and they have one of the lowest birth rates. Being religious doesn’t mean shit.

Exactly. Obviously Vespas cause sterility in Italian women. There’s really no other explanation. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

6 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Or if we still needed an army to work the farm

this is it, in a nutshell.

we are in a weird inflection point where we still feel like we need 40 hours out of an intellectual economy as though we are putting rear views in cars on the line. i actually think that until we have real reform in the work week, we simply will continue to see this decline. i could conceivably do my job in 20 hours a week. i would probably be more productive with 4 hours of work a day rather than (the pretense of) 8. i tell you what i cannot do: raise another child. 2 was almost impossible. they are now 15 and 14 and impossible in different ways, but covid really highlighted how fucked everything is regarding our priorities. 

it's also part of the reason you are seeing real reform in the workplace, and some of the european benchmarks that americans used to despise are starting to become more normal. don't get me wrong, american work culture is still toxic as fuck, and i'm a big result of that, as a 44 year old dude. came into the workforce during a major recession following college, found an unrewarding career with what looked like a dead end future (boy was i right about that), moved to japan, which has perhaps the most toxic work culture in the world. 

anyways, i see things now like 3 months of paternal leave, and i'm amazed. i'm jealous, but i'm not mad for kids today - they deserve it like we did. i'm just glad they can grow up with that. i had two preemies. for the first i think i took three days of parental leave, because any more than that and i would be digging into vacation. he was in the nicu for 3 weeks. i got three days. for my second, i had to take fmla during another recession. my wife ended up having to take a job at their daycare and interrupt her career in order to for us to make ends meet before they reached school age. just thousands and thousands of dollars going out the door, and we were fortunate to have help. all because i had to be at work 40 hours a week for a fucking escrow job. lol.

i would've probably had more kids if 1) my wife was medically safe to have them, and 2) i made about double what i do now, 15 years after my first.

no wonder people don't want babies.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

9 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

this is it, in a nutshell.

we are in a weird inflection point where we still feel like we need 40 hours out of an intellectual economy as though we are putting rear views in cars on the line. i actually think that until we have real reform in the work week, we simply will continue to see this decline. i could conceivably do my job in 20 hours a week. i would probably be more productive with 4 hours of work a day rather than (the pretense of) 8. i tell you what i cannot do: raise another child. 2 was almost impossible. they are now 15 and 14 and impossible in different ways, but covid really highlighted how fucked everything is regarding our priorities. 

it's also part of the reason you are seeing real reform in the workplace, and some of the european benchmarks that americans used to despise are starting to become more normal. don't get me wrong, american work culture is still toxic as fuck, and i'm a big result of that, as a 44 year old dude. came into the workforce during a major recession following college, found an unrewarding career with what looked like a dead end future (boy was i right about that), moved to japan, which has perhaps the most toxic work culture in the world. 

anyways, i see things now like 3 months of paternal leave, and i'm amazed. i'm jealous, but i'm not mad for kids today - they deserve it like we did. i'm just glad they can grow up with that. i had two preemies. for the first i think i took three days of parental leave, because any more than that and i would be digging into vacation. he was in the nicu for 3 weeks. i got three days. for my second, i had to take fmla during another recession. my wife ended up having to take a job at their daycare and interrupt her career in order to for us to make ends meet before they reached school age. just thousands and thousands of dollars going out the door, and we were fortunate to have help. all because i had to be at work 40 hours a week for a fucking escrow job. lol.

i would've probably had more kids if 1) my wife was medically safe to have them, and 2) i made about double what i do now, 15 years after my first.

no wonder people don't want babies.

There is nothing untrue about anything you wrote (I don't know if I'd co-sign american work culture being toxic as fuck b/c I think it's what makes us the economic jugernaught of the world and I don't believe there is any such thing as freedom without economic options- but that's a discussion we could have another day- you accurately described what it looks like working in America) and it's all a great argument not to have any kids, or to have only a couple.  I have 3 because I didn't get with my wife until we were 31 years old and having one at 32, one at 34 and one at 37 was exhausting. If we'd have found each other at 24 we'd probably have another 2 or 3 more.  I love being a dad. It's all I ever wanted growing up.  Our marriage is rock solid and my faith belief tells me that I and the kids are all part of a greater story that is awesome and I get to share that story with them so I feel almost compelled to create- even in light of the fact that everything everyone said about kids being a massive pain in the ass, expensive and hard is 100% true.  I think there's other people in my church that agree with that and also reproduce beyond population replacement level. I think there are some people of faith that don't have agency over their own decisions and have to do it to satisfy their husband.  I think there are probably some that feel the command to go forth and multiply is imperative.  So, I imagine it's a mixed bag and even then we are talking about just barely above replacement level.

If you didn't have everything going on that I was describing in the last couple sentences it's easy to say "eh, what's the point" and not have kids or have 1.  As was seen in the study in Switzerland where Nones had a shockingly low 1.11 babies.  At that rate without immigration you'd be talking about that country not being viable in what 2 generations?  And there being just nobody there by 5 generations? 

 

G1- 8.7 M

62-4.83M

G3- 2.65M

G4-1.46M

G5- 803K

 

How long would it take before everyone moved away because the country was a ghost town and they didn't have any of the opportunities and vibrancy that come from people being clustered closely together?  I would think a tipping point would happen around G2 and certainly by G3 where everyone moves the hell away.  So, you just have to supplement that by immigration if you aren't going to have your muslims, Hindu's and Fundy's breeding.  

[Biff Tannen 45663]

5 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I love being a dad. It's all I ever wanted growing up.  Our marriage is rock solid and my faith belief tells me that I and the kids are all part of a greater story that is awesome and I get to share that story with them so I feel almost compelled to create- even in light of the fact that everything everyone said about kids being a massive pain in the ass, expensive and hard is 100% true

Slaterokay.gif

[Brisketexan 105057]

Seems to me we can look at the situation this way: religion, poverty, being agrarian -- all of those correlate with a higher birth rate.  A collective description, yeah, with some pejorative baggage, is "primitive."  The more primitive your society, the higher your birthrate.  The more advanced your society, the lower your birthrate.  

The bigger question is "what is the future for 'advanced societies?'"  An economic model based on constant population growth, more resource extraction, etc., isn't a great long-term model.  But having that system, and also having a declining population is also a shitty model.  So....yeah.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Slaterokay.gif

Eh, I'm almost incapable of being inauthentic.  I know that's not a popular position on this site I'm sure, but it was all I ever wanted out of my life from the time I was little- to have a wife that I loved and loved me and kids I could teach, do stuff with and hang out with.  I'm not embarrassed by it nor do I think that anyone else should feel that way. It's just the way I felt. 

[Schulz2.0 28951]

55 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Why are white men the only ones seemingly worried about this "population decline"?  

You're missing the Asians (Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans).

[hayden_horn 11362]

3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Seems to me we can look at the situation this way: religion, poverty, being agrarian -- all of those correlate with a higher birth rate.  A collective description, yeah, with some pejorative baggage, is "primitive."  The more primitive your society, the higher your birthrate.  The more advanced your society, the lower your birthrate.  

The bigger question is "what is the future for 'advanced societies?'"  An economic model based on constant population growth, more resource extraction, etc., isn't a great long-term model.  But having that system, and also having a declining population is also a shitty model.  So....yeah.

well, i think it really has to do primarily with how we have structured our entire society around an idea of money being necessarily scarce because population is ever-growing, meaning that all resources are necessarily growing more scarce to feed the fucking monkey, man.

what if we thought about society as a means to elevate all of us, instead of a few? what if we based our entire economic model around achieving sustainability and abundance so we can all fucking relax and live the good life?

oh, right because we are broken humans. all of us. broken.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Seems to me we can look at the situation this way: religion, poverty, being agrarian -- all of those correlate with a higher birth rate.  A collective description, yeah, with some pejorative baggage, is "primitive."  The more primitive your society, the higher your birthrate.  The more advanced your society, the lower your birthrate.  

The bigger question is "what is the future for 'advanced societies?'"  An economic model based on constant population growth, more resource extraction, etc., isn't a great long-term model.  But having that system, and also having a declining population is also a shitty model.  So....yeah.

Look at my model from Switzerland.  Tell me, is there any conceivable way you find that to be sustainable?  The answer is no.  If you don't have a certain population density you just don't have the ability to have restaurants, concert halls, museums, cultural events, sports teams and basic infrastructure to say nothing of the economic ruin that comes along with that etc.  In other words- with that kind of population decline you'd see in "advanced" society if everyone breeded like the Nones (and the Nones are certainly taking over for the faithful) - you within a couple generations live in the sticks and anyone that isn't an old gets the hell out of there as soon as possible because life is boring and stupid.  Seems to me a society isn't particularly advanced if they hand the world to the next generation in a lesser state, stinking of decay and the idea that best times are behind you.  Look at how fucking depressing the rust belt is and realize that they have a very small population loss and it's turned them into shitholes nobody wants to live in.
Can you US forestall a localized population decline with immigration?  Sure.  But that's just robbing Peter to pay Paul at the end of the day and destabalizing the rest of the world. 

[Brisketexan 105057]

Just now, Wulaw Horn said:

Look at my model from Switzerland.  Tell me, is there any conceivable way you find that to be sustainable?  The answer is no.  If you don't have a certain population density you just don't have the ability to have restaurants, concert halls, museums, cultural events, sports teams and basic infrastructure to say nothing of the economic ruin that comes along with that etc.  In other words- with that kind of population decline you'd see in "advanced" society if everyone breeded like the Nones (and the Nones are certainly taking over for the faithful) - you within a couple generations live in the sticks and anyone that isn't an old gets the hell out of there as soon as possible because life is boring and stupid.  Seems to me a society isn't particularly advanced if they hand the world to the next generation in a lesser state, stinking of decay and the idea that best times are behind you.  Look at how fucking depressing the rust belt is and realize that they have a very small population loss and it's turned them into shitholes nobody wants to live in.
Can you US forestall a localized population decline with immigration?  Sure.  But that's just robbing Peter to pay Paul at the end of the day and destabalizing the rest of the world. 

I'm not disagreeing with the trajectory you are pointing out.  I'm suggesting that "just have more babies" is similarly robbing Peter to pay Paul, if we're only doing that to satisfy an economic model that depends on perpetual growth and resource extraction.

We SHOULD have an economic model that accounts for for a stable/declining population with plenty of resources and the attendant wealth that come with such advancement.  That's the long-term path that will resolve the issue.  But nobody is interested in that.

[hayden_horn 11362]

why is all economic growth based on a pyramid scheme?

why have we never thought through the possibility that we did it?

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I'm not disagreeing with the trajectory you are pointing out.  I'm suggesting that "just have more babies" is similarly robbing Peter to pay Paul, if we're only doing that to satisfy an economic model that depends on perpetual growth and resource extraction.

We SHOULD have an economic model that accounts for for a stable/declining population with plenty of resources and the attendant wealth that come with such advancement.  That's the long-term path that will resolve the issue.  But nobody is interested in that.

I don't think such a thing is even possible. I will read you if you can spell it out in 10,000 words or less.

The last great advancement, The Information Age was made out of sand.  We aren't scarce resources and there's plenty of breathing room- I know- I have been to all 50 states and driven just about every highway and byway in this country, some of it in a retractable roof RV.  We could give everyone in the world an acre of land and they could all fit in the state of Texas leaving the rest of the world totally and completely unpopulated.  We have war and famine and pestilence because of bad government (I'm not talking about petty differences between R's and D's I'm talking about fundamental inhuman shit heads like the Norks who intentionally starve their people) not lack of resources.  Whenever we have connected a bunch of people together in an area we transform ourselves for the good. That was the story of the Renaissance, The Industrial Revolution and the Information revolution.  IT's not robbing Peter to Pay Paul, it's awesome.  That's all of our human history- solving problems and making things better for the next generation.  Leaving a declining population that doesn't even have enough hope to have kids is the opposite of that. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[Brisketexan 105057]

1 minute ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I don't think such a thing is even possible. I will read you if you an spell it out in 10,000 words or less.

The last great advancement in the information age was made out of sand.  We aren't scarce resources and there's plenty of breathing room- I know- I have been to all 50 states and driven just about every highway and byway in this country, some of it in a retractable roof RV.  We could give everyone in the world an acre of land and they could all fit in the state of Texas leaving the rest of the world totally and completely unpopulated.  We have war and famine and pestilence because of bad government (I'm not talking about petty differences between R's and D's I'm talking about fundamental inhuman shit heads like the Norks who intentionally starve their people) not lack of resources.  Whenever we have connected a bunch of people together in an area we transform ourselves for the good. That was the story of the Renaissance, The Industrial Revolution and the Information revolution.  IT's not robbing Peter to Pay Paul, it's awesome.  That's all of our human history- solving problems and making things better for the next generation.  Leaving a declining population that doesn't even have enough hope to have kids is the opposite of that. 

And "perpetual population INCREASE" isn't a long-term recipe for success, either.  Sure, better-managed, the world can handle some more people.  But again, that's ultimately not sustainable.  We are sentient beings, not a virus (I hope).  Time to start acting like it.  START.  Not get all the way, there, but maybe a vision for a different path.

[Bevo 13560]

9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

And "perpetual population INCREASE" isn't a long-term recipe for success, either.  Sure, better-managed, the world can handle some more people.  But again, that's ultimately not sustainable.  We are sentient beings, not a virus (I hope).  Time to start acting like it.  START.  Not get all the way, there, but maybe a vision for a different path.

Can we start by removing about 800,000 from Austin?

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

And "perpetual population INCREASE" isn't a long-term recipe for success, either.  Sure, better-managed, the world can handle some more people.  But again, that's ultimately not sustainable.  We are sentient beings, not a virus (I hope).  Time to start acting like it.  START.  Not get all the way, there, but maybe a vision for a different path.

My suspicion is that the world could sustain and thrive, easily, with a population of 50B. You don't have to worry about it.  Peak population is going to hit around 2050 or so in the world (it's already hit for almost every native population in the first world and most of the second world- though some countries might grow larger due to net migration increase) and then it's all a downhill slide from there. Of all the things you worry about ending the world this is the one that's most likely. It will be over hundreds of years, but It's going to be a real (and I think unsolvable) motherfucker. 

[bolverk 29652]

Not sure the northern hemisphere will be able to rely on anyone but sub-Saharan Africa for loads of new immigrants unless those other countries start losing population themselves. One thing the map doesn't capture though is infant mortality rates, which may raise the bar on replacement levels much higher than 2.1 births per woman.

Everywhere in dark blue is below replacement level.

Taken from r/MapPorn:

Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/

[YGIFS 19449]

Would forcing women to get off birth control help our birth rates?  

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

I’ve thought about that 2.1 number lately.  It seems intuitive in that you need a male and a female and add in infant mortality.  But is it anything more than just that intuitive logic?  It seems like you could have replacement level a lot lower than that because 2.1 assumes a man is only getting one woman pregnant.  
 

One dude gets two ladies pregnant. They have three kids total to replace the three parents.  Add in a fractional share for infant mortality.  Replaced there at a 1.6 rate or something.  
 

Am I wrong? Is there some reason to believe 2.1 is the replacement level that I’m not thinking of?

[bolverk 29652]

21 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Would forcing women to get off birth control help our birth rates?  

The literature I've read in the past is that there's a very strong correlation between women's educational attainment levels in a country and its birth rates. @Wulaw Horn's citation of data regarding religiosity is a new wrinkle and is perhaps unsurprising, given that higher educated people have a tendency to be less religious.

To your point, higher educated societies also have stronger representation of women in positions of power, so it'd be much more difficult to force them to get off birth control in those countries. Any further commentary by me on that topic would breach the CR barrier.

[YGIFS 19449]

I get it.  But if we can't talk about population rates/lack of...without discussing stuff like "women", and "birth control"...there's no fucking point.  It's just white guys yelling at clouds. 

[bolverk 29652]

8 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

I’ve thought about that 2.1 number lately.  It seems intuitive in that you need a male and a female and add in infant mortality.  But is it anything more than just that intuitive logic?  It seems like you could have replacement level a lot lower than that because 2.1 assumes a man is only getting one woman pregnant.  
 

One dude gets two ladies pregnant. They have three kids total to replace the three parents.  Add in a fractional share for infant mortality.  Replaced there at a 1.6 rate or something.  
 

Am I wrong? Is there some reason to believe 2.1 is the replacement level that I’m not thinking of?

Kids, especially boys and young men, often die of idiocy beyond infancy and before inseminating a woman. So, yeah, you'll have to keep that number beyond the decimal place notched a little higher. Plus, if you're giving to women of child birth to each man, the spares will end up killing a bunch of folks.

[bolverk 29652]

8 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I get it.  But if we can't talk about population rates/lack of...without discussing stuff like "women", and "birth control"...there's no fucking point.  It's just white guys yelling at clouds. 

I ain't yelling though I do find the topic interesting, as I've worked with quite a bit of demographic data throughout my professional career. It's just that when we start talking about "solutions" (assuming this is a problem), then that brings up policy discussions which then devolves into politics. I'd be all in favor of moving the thread, but it's not my call.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

10 minutes ago, bolverk said:

The literature I've read in the past is that there's a very strong correlation between women's educational attainment levels in a country and its birth rates. @Wulaw Horn's citation of data regarding religiosity is a new wrinkle and is perhaps unsurprising, given that higher educated people have a tendency to be less religious.

To your point, higher educated societies also have stronger representation of women in positions of power, so it'd be much more difficult to force them to get off birth control in those countries. Any further commentary by me on that topic would breach the CR barrier.

Yeah but the religiosity in places it’s studied in depth (like the Swiss) matters more then any of the other controls. They are isolating it to that one variable and that’s the one that correlates. 

[YGIFS 19449]

Once again, I get it.  But as women become more educated...it's a sign that their society is progressing beyond farming/machinist/housewife paradigms, no?  With that education and embrace of freedom, as a corollary, comes a desire---obviously hellbent and twisted---to have some domain over their birthing rights.  Western and Asian men are also wanting fewer children, but let's not pretend---women who are operating under "muh freedomz" with a diploma in hand, don't want to be baby factories.  What's more, society at large knows they don't need to be.  The rest of this shit is just spinning data as an excuse to google "South Korean creampie" videos.  Or so Brisket said.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

42 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Would forcing women to get off birth control help our birth rates?  

Of course it would. I can’t imagine how bleak the situation would have to become for that to be something seriously considered anywhere in the western world. I get the sense the vast majority of the west would rather commit cultural suicide than ban birth control 

[Mole 4330]

23 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

…seculars humus…

 

Now I want some secular humus.

[bolverk 29652]

3 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Yeah but the religiosity in places it’s studied in depth (like the Swiss) matters more then any of the other controls. They are isolating it to that one variable and that’s the one that correlates. 

I'm not disagreeing with you on that point and admitted it was a new wrinkle.

2 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Of course it would. I can’t imagine how bleak the situation would have to become for that to be something seriously considered anywhere in the western world. I get the sense the vast majority of the west would rather commit cultural suicide than ban birth control 

Here, you're revealing a bit of an agenda on the topic. A) "Cultural suicide" implies that immigrants don't largely adopt the attitudes after a generation or two of the society they move into, and B) It ain't just "the West" that's facing this issue; it's the north, half the south, the east, and the west. Birth rates are plummeting everywhere, including sub-Saharan Africa.

[Schulz2.0 28951]

3 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

My suspicion is that the world could sustain and thrive, easily, with a population of 50B.

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

2 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

As I said- it doesn’t matter what I think the number is- we will never get to 10B. We peak at right around 9B in 2050 and truthfully probably happens sooner than that as the trend accelerates. 

[Wulaw Horn 19064]

6 minutes ago, bolverk said:

I'm not disagreeing with you on that point and admitted it was a new wrinkle.

Here, you're revealing a bit of an agenda on the topic. A) "Cultural suicide" implies that immigrants don't largely adopt the attitudes after a generation or two of the society they move into, and B) It ain't just "the West" that's facing this issue; it's the north, half the south, the east, and the west. Birth rates are plummeting everywhere, including sub-Saharan Africa.

I mean- first it’s cultural suicide and then it’s just species wide suicide if these trends continue, especially as they continue to accelerate. 

Immigrants typically tend to live in their own areas and eventually assimilate after a couple generations, sure, but that presupposes a stable population of natives which wouldn’t exist in this scenario we are describing. 

I’ve always been a big proponent of large and orderly legal immigration so I’m not saying this as Xenophobe, I’m just saying this is the path if immigration is a desperate bargain to try to overcome decimated populations. 

[YGIFS 19449]

Desperate bargain?  It's been the lifeblood of the west for 500 years.  And it works every fucking time it's been tried, albeit taking longer in some generations than others.  

"Living in their own areas"?  Yeah, that fucking "All Irish" pocket of Westlake keeping me up all night.  

[Biff Tannen 45663]

14 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Wulaw thinks we live on Coruscant. 

[Schulz2.0 28951]

5 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Wulaw thinks we live on Coruscant. 

He's just showing everyone what the Dunning-Krueger effect looks like.

[Doc Sam Beckett 5792]

Wulaw AND YGIFS babbling simultaneously?? 

[YGIFS 19449]

Don't drag me into your shit.  I've got like 4 posts on this whole thread, and they're all short.  Y'all wanna offer up your daughters as concubines for this "repopulate the west" bullshit crusade, be my guest.  

[Neonmoon 38129]

Am I the only person rooting for population decline?

[bolverk 29652]

29 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I mean- first it’s cultural suicide and then it’s just species wide suicide if these trends continue, especially as they continue to accelerate. 

Immigrants typically tend to live in their own areas and eventually assimilate after a couple generations, sure, but that presupposes a stable population of natives which wouldn’t exist in this scenario we are describing. 

I’ve always been a big proponent of large and orderly legal immigration so I’m not saying this as Xenophobe, I’m just saying this is the path if immigration is a desperate bargain to try to overcome decimated populations. 

Not necessarily. Educational standards, political institutions, and cultural expectations do not disappear overnight. Those will linger long enough that new populations will largely adopt them. I'm not saying they won't be influenced by new entrants into modern society, but I've seen first hand both in the US and Europe how immigrant populations, including Muslims, can quickly adopt all of those.

Besides, Western culture (beyond religion) is the dominant global culture, and young people by and large appreciate those freedoms immensely. Of course, there all always outliers and some countries do a much better job than others in including them into the fold, but I'm fairly optimistic from my western white male chauvinist perspective that we, as a species, will eventually settle into a more stable pattern if we don't blow ourselves up or destroy a habitable climate in the meantime. For me, those are much higher on my list of concerns than a loss in global population.

But let's go back to maps with more recent data on religiosity and consider a couple highly religious countries and compare them to the birth rates map above. Focus on Iran and India below and then glance back up to recent birth rates. What do you see?

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/

I think there's more to it than just religion alone. Yes, there's a strong correlation, but I'm not sure it's the only causation.

 

EDIT: I'm sincerely not trying to CR the topic, but why don't we try to integrate new populations better to counteract their "tendency to live in their own areas" so as to ensure they quickly adopt Western values as possible?

Edited February 9, 2023 by bolverk