What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

[NobleSavage]

Birth rates in Europe and the US are below replacement level. Our populations incense from immigration, right? From what I've read when the 3rd world gets enough food and money they too will drop below replacement level. So what's it gonna be like with a ever shrinking population? Wouldn't this be deflationary?

 

[Jayjay]

I think it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. As birth rates decrease, I think medical advances will increase human lifespan to compensate it so that even below replacement rate the total number of people would not reduce the total population as quickly. It'd probably not lead to deflation of human accomplishments anyway, the growth enabled by technology will probably outpace the reduction in population.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

A lot like North America after Small Pox and the Plague arrived.

Because if it happens. It will be disease that does it (or catastrophic war).

 

[Canard DuJour]

What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

As long as the decline isn't sudden and steep - which is unlikely - probably not much different. Maybe a bit better for people whose material welfare depends on global labour market conditions, i.e. most of us by now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It will increase the percentage of GNP that has to go to caring for the elderly but as time goes on the GNP goes up, this won't be all that bad.

The main problem will be lower population densities for the infrastructure but it will require quite a drop for this to become a serious issue. (We are seeing problems like this in Detroit--the cost of maintaining roads & utilities is based on the area they cover, not how many they serve. When there is only one occupied house on the block instead of 30 the maintenance costs per customer are now 30x what they were before.)

 

[DBT]

What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

Reduced pressure on environment, less waste, lower consumption (unless consumption rate increases), more personal space, less congestion and friction on our roads and footpaths, but how significant this becomes depends on the rate and depth of population decline. Or population may just stabilize at around 10 to 12 billion. In my view, unsustainable (environmentally) in the long term.

 

[Valjean]

Barring war, environmental or economic collapse, I wouldn't expect world population to decrease anytime soon. The rate of increase may slow, but I've read that we're projected to add a few more billion/thousand million before equilibrium is reached.
That said, our numbers are already beyond the planet's carrying capacity. The ecosystem is in crisis and the seventh mass extinction is well underway. Economic problems are likely to prove insignificant in comparison. A decrease in population would be the best thing that could happen to out species.

We're not going to re-engineer the planet's ecosystem, but we can reorganize economies. An economy based on perpetual growth is obviously unsustainable.

 

[arkirk]

Barring war, environmental or economic collapse, I wouldn't expect world population to decrease anytime soon. The rate of increase may slow, but I've read that we're projected to add a few more billion/thousand million before equilibrium is reached.
That said, our numbers are already beyond the planet's carrying capacity. The ecosystem is in crisis and the seventh mass extinction is well underway. Economic problems are likely to prove insignificant in comparison. A decrease in population would be the best thing that could happen to out species.

We're not going to re-engineer the planet's ecosystem, but we can reorganize economies. An economy based on perpetual growth is obviously unsustainable.

I think the world will wait too long to set about decreasing the growth rate of human populations and if it keeps our current economic system, if and when the population begins to decrease by any fabian means of decrease, there will be economic problems with an aging population not being productive enough and perhaps being allowed to starve.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Birth rates in Europe and the US are below replacement level. Our populations incense from immigration, right? From what I've read when the 3rd world gets enough food and money they too will drop below replacement level. So what's it gonna be like with a ever shrinking population? Wouldn't this be deflationary?

So what? Isn´t that... by definition... a problem we can deal with?

 

[credoconsolans]

Sadly it would be little different.

Look at the world of the middle ages or the ancient world. Population not even near billions and yet there was still warfare, still hunger, still poverty, still cruelty. In a world full of resources, they still couldn't make a society where everyone was satisfied and taken care of.

 

[TV and credit cards]

If the third world could feed itself, the US would not need about one third of it's farmland. Forty percent of the US is considered farmland. Much of this land should be left to recover. We'd probably have a lot more water. On the downside, over $100B in exports would dry up and many farmers/laborers will have to seek employment elsewhere. Then the Mexican farm labor can take all the Walmart jobs. Fucking Hillary.

 

[arkirk]

If the third world could feed itself, the US would not need about one third of it's farmland. Forty percent of the US is considered farmland. Much of this land should be left to recover. We'd probably have a lot more water. On the downside, over $100B in exports would dry up and many farmers/laborers will have to seek employment elsewhere. Then the Mexican farm labor can take all the Walmart jobs. Fucking Hillary.

If the population of the world were to decline in a rationally controlled manner without some sort of inhumane solution...ie. as China and Japan are doing, all that would be required is an adjustment to current economic thinking. There still could be growth industries but there also would be shrinking industries. Capitalism requires a growing overall market to meet its growth requirements. Such a system cannot adjust to meet the requirements of declining demographics. We are witnessing in Japan a country that is experiencing population decline and still trying to hang onto a system that demands growth. That will not work and soon we will see more radical changes there.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Birth rates in Europe and the US are below replacement level. Our populations incense from immigration, right? From what I've read when the 3rd world gets enough food and money they too will drop below replacement level. So what's it gonna be like with a ever shrinking population? Wouldn't this be deflationary?

I think human population growth will plateau only with Malthusian barriers to growth: lack of fresh water, lack of energy, lack of food, epidemics, natural disasters, wars, and so on. The established estimates that assume populations will decrease their growths and plateau as they become richer assume racial egalitarianism, where equatorial populations are assumed to be genetically the same in their sexual behavior as northern populations. But, it is a hypothesis that has seemingly failed when examining the descendants of Mexican immigrants to the USA: third-generation descendants of Mexican immigrants have about the same or higher fertility rate as their parents and grandparents, even while being richer and more highly educated (i.e. “Mexican-Origin Fertility: New Patterns and Interpretations,” 2000). As fertility rate among populations seems to be largely a function of ancestral distance from the equator, I favor J. Philippe Rushton's theory that a higher fertility rate was a means for a gene's survival in a dangerous chaotic environment with plentiful resources--many children would die but the genes would live on--whereas northern populations adapted to their cold scarce consistent environments through parental investment of fewer children and greater intelligence. As the equatorial environments have industrialized and become safer, this means the equatorial populations will continue their high fertility rates but without the high death rate, and they will out-populate the northern populations, even while they become richer, until they hit those deathly Malthusian barriers. The world population will eventually plateau, but it will not be by choice and it will not be pleasant. Global warming will exacerbate the problems, as the killer heat waves, storms and droughts will affect equatorial climates the most, and cold northern climates will only become warmer and more human-friendly.

 

[Axulus]

Birth rates in Europe and the US are below replacement level. Our populations incense from immigration, right? From what I've read when the 3rd world gets enough food and money they too will drop below replacement level. So what's it gonna be like with a ever shrinking population? Wouldn't this be deflationary?

I think human population growth will plateau only with Malthusian barriers to growth: lack of fresh water, lack of energy, lack of food, epidemics, natural disasters, wars, and so on. The established estimates that assume populations will decrease their growths and plateau as they become richer assume racial egalitarianism, where equatorial populations are assumed to be genetically the same in their sexual behavior as northern populations. But, it is a hypothesis that has seemingly failed when examining the descendants of Mexican immigrants to the USA: third-generation descendants of Mexican immigrants have about the same or higher fertility rate as their parents and grandparents, even while being richer and more highly educated (i.e. “Mexican-Origin Fertility: New Patterns and Interpretations,” 2000). As fertility rate among populations seems to be largely a function of ancestral distance from the equator, I favor J. Philippe Rushton's theory that a higher fertility rate was a means for a gene's survival in a dangerous chaotic environment with plentiful resources--many children would die but the genes would live on--whereas northern populations adapted to their cold scarce consistent environments through parental investment of fewer children and greater intelligence. As the equatorial environments have industrialized and become safer, this means the equatorial populations will continue their high fertility rates but without the high death rate, and they will out-populate the northern populations, even while they become richer, until they hit those deathly Malthusian barriers. The world population will eventually plateau, but it will not be by choice and it will not be pleasant. Global warming will exacerbate the problems, as the killer heat waves, storms and droughts will affect equatorial climates the most, and cold northern climates will only become warmer and more human-friendly.

While you do sometimes have posts that are interesting and thought provoking, this has got to be one of the silliest things I have seen you try to argue/defend.

 

[bilby]

I find it amusing that people still discuss population as though indefinite growth is inevitable.

You are all four decades out of date.

Once the contraceptive pill was invented, the problem of human population growth was solved. It took a couple of decades to get to the point where this wondrous invention that has saved humanity was sufficiently widely available, and still it is hard to come by in many places. Even once it is widely available, it takes most of a human lifespan to reverse the rise in the raw population figures, due to demographic lag. But the effect is real, and it is not going to happen; it HAS HAPPENED.

World population will stabilise in the next few decades; and will likely decline starting about a century from now.

Economic Growth and Population Growth are very loosely coupled concepts; there is no reason at all why economic growth cannot continue with a declining population; nor is there any reason why economic growth must imply growth in the use of resources.

Economic growth on a per capita basis is all that is needed to achieve an overall improvement in worldwide quality of life; so it isn't even important whether absolute growth continues in a world with falling population - but it is likely that it will, unless population crashes dramatically (which is very unlikely to happen).

The cult of the overpopulation panic, like all cults, is based on myth. The myth is supported by disinformation, and by FUD - in particular by the conflation of different kinds of 'growth' as if they were interdependent. They are NOT.

The Population Bomb scare was real fifty years ago; it was stupid thirty years ago; but understandably stupid. Today it is stupid and indicative of people having completely failed in their duty of scepticism.

Mathus was right; but things changed, so he isn't right any more. Ehrlich was wrong, but in the early days, he could be forgiven for not knowing he was wrong, because the game had only just changed, and the impact of the change was not yet clear. Nobody who has seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse at all for worrying about overpopulation. And nobody who hasn't seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse for spreading fear and disinformation. But it does get a LOT of money out of the pockets of the gullible, so like all cults, it will be hard to expunge from society.

 

[Valjean]

Bilby:
Economic Growth and Population Growth are very loosely coupled concepts; there is no reason at all why economic growth cannot continue with a declining population; nor is there any reason why economic growth must imply growth in the use of resources.

Please clarify.
I can understand stable or rising individual prosperity with declining population, but, overall, we depend on resource extraction to sustain us -- finite resource extraction.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Mathus was right; but things changed, so he isn't right any more. Ehrlich was wrong, but in the early days, he could be forgiven for not knowing he was wrong, because the game had only just changed, and the impact of the change was not yet clear. Nobody who has seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse at all for worrying about overpopulation. And nobody who hasn't seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse for spreading fear and disinformation. But it does get a LOT of money out of the pockets of the gullible, so like all cults, it will be hard to expunge from society.

I disagree. While overpopulation is not a major concern at the world level anymore it still is locally an issue. For example, the Rwandan "genocide" was what Malthus was talking about.

 

[bilby]

Bilby:
Economic Growth and Population Growth are very loosely coupled concepts; there is no reason at all why economic growth cannot continue with a declining population; nor is there any reason why economic growth must imply growth in the use of resources.

Please clarify.
I can understand stable or rising individual prosperity with declining population, but, overall, we depend on resource extraction to sustain us -- finite resource extraction.

'Sustaining us' is a tiny part of the first-world economy. What proportion of US citizens, for example, are employed in mining or farming?

A sizeable and rapidly growing proportion of human endeavour is spent in the handling of information. You don't use up minerals to make information, and you don't need fields to grow it in; the idea that economic activity is directly proportional to resource usage is even more outdated than the idea of the population crisis.

It's not the 19th Century any more. Hasn't been for a while.

In the Middle Ages, the rich people were those with enough to eat. But in developed economies of the twenty-first century, rich people don't eat more than middle class people. And by medieval standards, there are almost no poor people left.

 

[bilby]

Mathus was right; but things changed, so he isn't right any more. Ehrlich was wrong, but in the early days, he could be forgiven for not knowing he was wrong, because the game had only just changed, and the impact of the change was not yet clear. Nobody who has seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse at all for worrying about overpopulation. And nobody who hasn't seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse for spreading fear and disinformation. But it does get a LOT of money out of the pockets of the gullible, so like all cults, it will be hard to expunge from society.

I disagree. While overpopulation is not a major concern at the world level anymore it still is locally an issue. For example, the Rwandan "genocide" was what Malthus was talking about.

Local overpopulation is entirely artificial. Its causes are not in any way related to the possible causes of global overpopulation, and are political, not resource driven.

Indeed the case of Rwanda is a strong indication that economic and population growth are decoupled - the fact that Rwandans cannot get rich without land is the root cause of the problem - and yet the inhabitants of Manhattan Island are able to get very rich indeed with far less land.

The difference in wealth between NYC and Kigali is not due to the New Yorkers having more land to bequeath to their sons.

The simple solution to 'local overpopulation' is to go somewhere else. That renders it a totally unrelated issue to that of global population.

Malthus's error was to assume that the economy would always remain dominated by agriculture. Because it did not, his predictions failed. In Rwanda, it did, so they didn't.

You have not shown any hint of disagreement with my arguments; wanting to change the subject is not disagreement. Local overpopulation is oxymoronic.

 

[ZiprHead]

What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

Roomier?