The Unexpected Future

[Kamaji]

The Unexpected Future

We need to consider ways to reverse or at least slow rapid depopulation

Joel Kotkin
Wendell Cox
20 Aug 2022

We are entering an unanticipated reality—an era of slow population growth and, increasingly, demographic decline that will shape our future in profound and unpredictable ways. Globally, last year’s total population growth was the smallest in a half-century, and by 2050, some 61 countries are expected to see population declines while the world’s population is due to peak sometime later this century.

This kind of long-term global demographic stagnation has not been seen since the Middle Ages. World population has been growing for centuries, but the last century has dwarfed previous rises. About 75 percent of the world’s population growth has occurred in the last hundred years, more than 50 percent since 1970. But now, population growth rates are dropping, especially in more developed nations, according to the United Nations (all subsequent references to UN research in this essay are drawn from these data).

It’s not a matter of if but when global populations will start to decline. Under the UN’s medium variant projection, the world’s population will peak in 2086, while under the low variant, the peak will occur in 2053, and by 2100, the population will be about a billion below today’s level. Demographer Wolfgang Lutz and colleagues project a global population of between 8.8 and 9.0 billion by 2050 falling to between 8.2 and 8.7 billion by 2100. The projected declines are concentrated in countries with high fertility rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, we will inhabit a rapidly aging planet. In 1970, the median world age was 21.5 years. By 2020, it had increased to 30.9 years, and the UN projects that it will be 41.9 years in 2100.

We are well past the time when we need to concern ourselves with Paul Ehrlich’s long-standing prophecy that humanity will “breed ourselves to extinction.” On the contrary, we need to worry about the potential ill-effects of depopulation, including a declining workforce, torpid economic growth, and brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and their more hard-pressed successors. The preponderance of low fertility in wealthier countries also presages a growing conflict between the child-poor wealthy countries and the child-rich poor countries.

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Source:  https://quillette.com/2022/08/20/the-unexpected-future/

[Fishrrman]

I read Kotkin's article yesterday.

Very interesting, but he reaches the wrong conclusion.

The world WOULD be better off with fewer people -- MANY fewer.

Same as would we, right here in this country.

I liked it better back around 1954 or so, when the population was 140 million. Even that may have been too many.

The left has its fallacies and unrealistic belief systems, but so does the right. One of those is that "the more growth, the better". There are limits to growth, just as we must all acknowledge the limits of our own lives.

How would you like living on, say, Long Island if the population there was 300 million?

[jmyrlefuller]

I read Kotkin's article yesterday.

Very interesting, but he reaches the wrong conclusion.

The world WOULD be better off with fewer people -- MANY fewer.

Same as would we, right here in this country.

I liked it better back around 1954 or so, when the population was 140 million. Even that may have been too many.

The left has its fallacies and unrealistic belief systems, but so does the right. One of those is that "the more growth, the better". There are limits to growth, just as we must all acknowledge the limits of our own lives.

How would you like living on, say, Long Island if the population there was 300 million?

I will respond the same way I respond to anyone who says the world is overpopulated.

You have the power to reduce the living population on earth by one, and authorities can never punish you for it. Yet the vast majority of people who hold that belief will not. Oh, sure, some may abort pregnancies and pretend that doesn't count. But when it comes to their own lives, they're worth living.

But if life is worth living, and worth the resources we consume in the process, then it is worth propagating to keep it alive beyond our inevitable demise. That doesn't mean we have to party like it's 1945, but it does mean that we have to have more than zero living children.

That's what breaks my heart so much about my personal life (and yes, I know, I'm trying not to bring it up as much but it's germane to the conversation so I'm going to). I want to have a child. I can live without getting married, but in this age of a depopulation bomb, for me not to be able to even have a single biological child—and I have no known genetic problems in my sizable extended family that would discourage me from doing so—that's what I dread. Yet, because of the way society is headed, I see no hope.

[libertybele]

I will respond the same way I respond to anyone who says the world is overpopulated.

You have the power to reduce the living population on earth by one, and authorities can never punish you for it. Yet the vast majority of people who hold that belief will not. Oh, sure, some may abort pregnancies and pretend that doesn't count. But when it comes to their own lives, they're worth living.

But if life is worth living, and worth the resources we consume in the process, then it is worth propagating to keep it alive beyond our inevitable demise. That doesn't mean we have to party like it's 1945, but it does mean that we have to have more than zero living children.

That's what breaks my heart so much about my personal life (and yes, I know, I'm trying not to bring it up as much but it's germane to the conversation so I'm going to). I want to have a child. I can live without getting married, but in this age of a depopulation bomb, for me not to be able to even have a single biological child—and I have no known genetic problems in my sizable extended family that would discourage me from doing so—that's what I dread. Yet, because of the way society is headed, I see no hope.

@jmyrlefuller I truly hope your dream of having a biological child is realized sooner rather than later.

The myth of overpopulation is bull.

https://www.usccb.org/committees/pro-life-activities/myth-overpopulation-and-folks-who-brought-it-you

[Fishrrman]

bele wrote:
"The myth of overpopulation is bull."

Have not you, yourself complained about all the newcomers moving into Florida...?

It's "bull"... until it happens where you live.