Posted on 01/22/2012 4:54:42 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
At present, the only developed nations with "high" (relatively speaking) birth rates are America and Israel. The rest are below replacement level, and many of them are desperately trying to change that with bribes.
There are millions of them living and working here - that is my point - the rate of their importation being irrelevant to the fact that their economic benefit to their home nation comes from them NOT living and working there - but living and working HERE.
Do I need to explain that to you again?
Now why did a 7 child per woman birth rate NOT provide much of an economic boon to Mexico compared to the USA during the same time while we had a much lower birth rate? How did we manage to have a much better economy with a much lower birth rate?
I'm trying to remember what exactly my friend said. I think he mentioned that, say, one of the statistics was that college educated Muslim women have a low fertility rate. Which would make you say, "yeah, but does it really matter? How many Muslim women are college educated anyway?"
I'll take your word, though. I may have to order the book or check it out of the library.
As for you, allmendream, it's true that America had vast tracts of land to conquer. What if I showed you that Britain and Germany also had high birth rates, since they were not expanding geographically? I bet they had relatively high birth rates, but it's surprisingly difficult to find any historical data for them. I'll keep searching.
What exactly do you define as a reasonable birth rate? In 1960, American women had a fertility rate of around 3.5 and black women around 4.5. Our borders were no longer expanding at that point and infant mortality was also not the problem it once was.
And let me add that that is besides the point. No one here has been arguing for massive birth rates. We're just arguing that the low birth rates will create significant problems. That's what you seem to object to.
Those nations with high rates (>5 children per women let us say) tend to be economic basket cases. Now my thinking is that one is causing the other - but it is the bleak economic and mortality prospects that cause the high birth rate. Children being the retirement plan of the third world.
Those nations with lower than replacement rates tend to be moribund Socialist nanny States. They are now trying to incentivise reproduction and having some success with it, because lo and behold - people respond to economic incentives!
When there is an societal, economic or other incentive to have more children - birth rates will increase - it really isn't much of a problem.
Even according to the scenario you spell out - human population is expanding and will do so for the next forty years - then it might contract - but only if a recent trend hold exactly the same for the next forty years!
I object to the notion that the greatest threat humanity faces is lack of fecundity.
Humans have problems - but fecundity is not one of them.
Looking at the graph of human population over the last few thousand years it seems obvious that we are headed up for 8 billion a lot faster than we are headed down to 6 billion.
I also don’t think overpopulation is that big of a problem - IF you have a corresponding change in technology that makes us all live in health and comfort. I think the Earth could easily support 14 billion people - but not with present day technology.
People see a trend and then say “What if...... what if the trend continued unabated for the next forty years?”
The recent decrease in birth rates from historic highs will most likely be a dip at best that will slow but never decrease our rapid climb to 8 billion people.
The sky is not falling. In forty years the sky will almost certainly not fall. When children are needed women can produce them at a rate of 7 per woman.
One thing I think we can all count on is human beings fornicating and producing children when they want them.
In forty years if more children are needed I am sure there will be volunteers to make them.
Until then we are at 7 billion and rapidly approaching 8.
Now it seems that those high birth rates have come down some. The trend may or may not continue.
As to the ‘demise of the west’ because people in Europe seem too preoccupied to reproduce at replacement rates - that, it seems to me, is more of a cultural/national argument than an economic one.
The surplus population of the third world seems ready to replace any shortfall in Europe - and from having lived there long ago - it seems a good % of the workforce is from there.
See post #155.
In comparison to developed countries, agrarian societies today are economic basket cases. But in this which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg scenario, it wasn't the high fertility rates that caused better or worse economic situations.
Societies that modernized and "succeeded" transitioned from the universal norm high fertility rates to developed world lower lower fertility rates.
Societies that failed to develop into first world economies did not transition from the universal norm high fertility rates to developed world lower fertility rates, they simply maintained the prior universal norm.
High fertility did not cause modernization. Neither did it cause economic stagnation.
Economic development and "success" in first world nations lead to lower fertility rates.
As third world nations transition to first world status, all trends indicate they too will have lower fertility rates.
Economic prosperity leads to lower fertility.
High fertility does not cause economic stagnation, or else America would never have become an economic world leader.
And as Julian Simon pointed out, population growth is not an impediment to economic growth. In fact, it may be a necessity for it.
But population contraction has always been associated with economic contraction.
I figure that after so much decline, the most fit humans will walk out alive. There are some people like myself who know about wilderness living, and could do so if technology collapsed. Same with fertility and food. I have long suspected that trying to get some of my own hunted meat and grown vegetables and fruit may actually make a difference in my health. I suspect part of the diabetes/obesity problem may be food additives. Either way, I could leave a long rant, but you probably get the idea, the tougher, more fit individuals will rise up from being the subset to the dominant population, while those who can’t do without the modern tech will sadly bite it. Hopefully Jesus can step in and help at some point.
Absolutely! And with western medicine and western agriculture “to the rescue” and we see the exponential increase in population in the 3rd world as their “have a lot of kids retirement plan” met the western ethic of not liking to see starving and/or disease ridden kids.
It seems to me that the healthy rate of reproduction we see in the chart above for modern nations is what should be emulated - and while I agree that low birth rates of moribund socialist states point out the bleakness of life and the hopelessness and lack of opportunity under that state run system and are to be avoided - I reject the idea that this is a doomsday scenario as far as WORLD population.
That it seems, despite undue hostility from both sides (mia culpa), is our major bone of contention - IF this reduction in birth rates is actually a threat to mankind - let alone the “greatest” threat to mankind.
We will see in 2050 if the current trend continues unabated and if - at some predicted 9 billion world population - that world population starts to come down.
Until then we live, and will for the next forty years, in a world of expanding human population with a reproductive capacity well in excess of what is currently utilized.
“Who gets to pick which 2 billion of us go??”
Yeah, well, there’s the rub isn’t it?
I dunno.
I do know that overpopulation is more of a problem than underpopulation. I also know that at some point Mother Nature will offer up a solution. Hers will likely be more unpalatable than any we could come up with.
You might want to Google rat experiments where colonies are given unlimited food and water in a limited space.
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