UNICEF while in Africa in the 1980s Accidentally discovered that leaving a TV in villages. Dropped the birthrates by 50% overnight. We put a screen in everyone's hand starting in 2010. So this trend checks out.
Yeah but putting tv give information about others, hopefully reducing xenophobia. I rather have birthrates drop than violent population drop through war. Population drop is good anyway, less strain for Earth.
The UN World Populations Prospects (WPP) assume a rise in fertility in the developed world in the second half of this century. No one knows where this assumption comes from 😂
Heard of the possibilities religious revival and rural revival. My take on it is society changes and we don't need the past for a change. I think culture can change and people value children more than before. But its not a given. We know in 40 years or more.
The UN does not come up with random numbers but national and local governments do. They have too many reasons to overstate it to make reliable numbers. And that happens even in developed countries. The source of data is not really trustworthy in most cases.
AI humanoid robots are already a thing. They will provide very cheap labor and within twenty years should be able to do anything a human can do. But better. We have some interesting times ahead of us.
If they get that far. The ethanol is like the human demographic. It cannot replace itself. It takes more petroleum energy to make a volume of ethanol than the ethanol can produce. Even at 100% efficiency. Diminishing return. We have no solution we can use to replace petroleum. The food that approximately supports , 7 out of 8 people alive today live by the use of petroleum. Science Fictions will not lube a power plant, run your car or fly a plane. People imagine solutions for these problems exist. They do not exist and are exceedingly unlikely in our future that is left to us.
This is just like the IEA's renewable energy growth rates. They kept projecting flat growth of reneables each year but renewables keep growing exponentially. After 20 years, the IEA finally noticed something was going on and they are now showing modest growth rates of renewables. Looks like the population decline rates are going through the same (but inverted) projections.
The rate of childless women as a percentage has doubled since the late 70s. The rate of young men not seeking relationships has doubled since the early 2010s. While there must be a lower bound out there (not extinction) my bet is this trend has way to run yet
And that is what the data is showing us. To the extent some countries are showing a stabilization in birth rates, those rates are below 2.1. And essentially every country with TFRs higher than 2.1 are experiencing fairly rapid drops in birth rates. There's no reason to suspect they will plateau out at or above 2.1.
@@bobwallace9753 Add to that this is generational in timeframe so even if it was to level off @ replacement tomorrow that still wouldn't improve the situation this century. i'm most interested in the economic (read investment) impact and within my lifetime. Curiously it would be good to understand the cause and therefore possible solution?!? or is it just trending to it's own 'solution' i.e. we have lived through an anomaly/secular change that is highly unlikely to repeat and we're overshooting the mean? That's a question for Gen Z ;)
@@thesteamybox7936 Here's what makes it very hard to figure out our future. We are at the beginning of a very major technology shift. Probably. High probability. What's the problem with a rapidly decreasing population size? Obviously a problem for some businesses as customer bases will decrease. But that is not so much a problem for humanity as a whole. Just a problem for those businesses that will shrink and/or fail. The big problem is how we provide care and support for a large aging population with fewer people of working age. The technology shift that may make decreasing population a non-problem? Artificial intelligence. I can't predict the future with 100% accuracy but I think I see how things may develop. Almost immediately. Tesla seems to be extremely close to finishing work on full self-driving. A FSD system created by AI by feeding a supercomputer thousands of videos of good human drivers driving. And their supercomputer has now created a FSD system that is very close to needing no human backup. "All told, research by Harvard University estimates 5 million Americans now make a living, or at least work part-time, as professional drivers." Finish FSD and that frees up about 5 million people to do other kinds of work. It's like adding 5M new adults to the labor pool. Tesla now has at least two humanoid robots working in their factory doing, most likely, simple jobs that humans were doing. Each robot working three shifts every day with no vacation/holiday/sick time off replaces something like 4.6 humans. By the end of next year Tesla expects to have around a thousand humanoid robots working in their factories. That would free up over four thousand worker inthe first year. Other companies are also making very good progress with AI humanoid robots. Robots are likely to take over the simpler, more repetitive, and most dangerous jobs first, freeing humans to do other work such as helping the aged. It's hard to see how that doesn't happen. It's just a matter of how quickly. And it's likely to be fast. Very fast.
In my country, the lower birth rates are due to the fact that younger couples can’t afford to buy homes anymore & rents are far too high. I had my first child while I was renting & that affected our mortgage prospects because a child is seen as a financial drain. My younger siblings held off having any children until they owned a house & now they might only have 1 or even 0 children.
Your projection seems much more plausible than the UN's to me. I think we're going to see more and more countries start to freak out about their declining populations over the next few decades, and a lot of head scratching from economists trying to figure out how we deal with negative growth.
Very happy to see a pragmatic mathematician speak to demographics. Particularly impressed by your analysis, and description of linear projections as fantasy. Thank you.
In the developed world, the cost of living crisis coupled with more widespread awareness of potentially dark uncertainties for the future will likely dramatically accelerate population decline in the near to mid term. Vastly unaffordable housing poses significant obstacles to household formation, marriage and childbearing, effectively pricing young people out of participating in the continuation of our species.
I have thought that maybe high real estate prices are having the same effect as seen in the John B Calhoun "Mouse Utopia" experiments in which a mice colony had 2 conditions. Unlimited food and limited space. At a certain point male mice dropped out of competing for females and spent their time grooming themselves. They had no bite or scratch marks unlike the competitive males. They were grass eaters, otakus, basement boys, hikikomoris and MGTOWs. What is the west and especially Japan but essentially "mouse utopias" with close to unlimited food but limited space? What are humans but animals with the same ancient areas of brain biology even if the cerebral cortex is uniquely exploded in size for humans? The "unlimited food" element may change in coming decades for well known reasons.
People have been poor in the past and yet had children. People struggled to find housing in the past and still they had children. What changed is that effective birth control became available (with "abortion on demand" being available in some parts of the world, as a failsafe,) which allowed women to decide when or even if, they wanted to have children. Further, societal changes in the 1960s and 70s, encouraged women to pursue work and careers outside the home, causing them to delay or eschew having children altogether. Women experience peak fertility between the age of 17 to their mid twenties, with fertility slowly falling beginning in their late twenties and increasing more rapidly in the first half of their thirties. Further, the long term effects of hormonal birth control seems in many cases, appears to have further reduced fertility in women, so that, after stopping such birth control, they have increased difficulty in conceiving a child. Delaying children until a woman is in her thirties, meant that many women found themselves unable to conceive, even with medical intervention. And this is before we consider the environmental factors that have negatively affected male fertility. Further, one should not downplay the decades-long fear of overpopulation promulgated by the likes of Paul Erlich and increased urbanization which encouraged people to see children as more of a costly burden than a valuable asset, as they would be in a more agrarian society.
@@jamesrogers47 People in the past did not have BOTH essentially unlimited food AND limited space. The conventional sociological explanations of fertility, birth control, female education, female empowerment etc. may not explain all we are seeing. We are seeing men in many countries dropping out of sexual competition. and this seems to parallel the "mouse utopia" experiments. Men may be playing a much larger role in lower fertility than sociologists have notice or want to notice. If you're married to one narrative you can easily be blind to other factors. We are after all animals and we are not consciously completely in control of our own destiny. This contradicts the favoured "ever onward upwards agency of us glorious humans" narrative and the "female empowerment" narrative.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug Sounds like someone has "literally" a whole deck of victim cards, and is "literally" trying to play them all. Almost every population group on the planet is much wealthier today than fifty years ago. It's more a matter of values than economy.
We are following the "mouse utopia" curve and can expect a huge population collapse due to the psychological effects of generational overpopulation driving an increase in dysfunctional insanity across a large % of the population.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ugI would tend to agree with your suggestion. Most of it is a vaguely subconscious feeling of overcrowding. I know I get irritable when there are too many people around.
@@AegonCallery-ty6vy That's an interesting point. Just from agricultural means, the greater Mississippi river basin could definitely support a population as large as the Ganges basin, so it warrants asking the question what are the actual material reasons discouraging that population level from occurring.
Don't think you've got that right. What seems to be lowering birth rates is a combination of education for women, gainful employment for women, access to birth control, movement from rural to urban settings, less infant mortality, and the lesser need for children to take care of parents when they age. If women can add to the family income in a meaningful way they become more valuable as workers compared to staying home and raising lots of children. In rural settings child labor is valuable. Even fairly young children can do simple work. All you need to do is feed them and give them some basic clothes. In cities there is very little possibility for family income from child labor. And it costs to educate children. If you can be somewhat sure that your child will survive into adulthood to take care of you, there's no need to have six or eight in hope that at least one will live.
Nice work, you have proved it with data which appears a certainty when I see around. By the way I am from India and UN population projections are way off for India. Whoever I see around in my extended family, work place, neighborhood, see a clear trend. People are not marrying, if they are it is pretty late in 30s which was 20s earlier. People are not having children for years after marriage, even if they are, they stop at one child only. I guess data will be really really surprising whenever a fresh census in conducted. I feel its population could peak in this decade or next decade itself.
Is there a financial reason why local governments might misrepresent the number of people in their district? Are there significant benefits flowing from the national to local government based on population size? Something like that which would drive over reporting? If states and counties in the US could get away with it they would benefit by reporting larger numbers. For example, the number of Congressional representatives allowed to a state is based on population size.
I pray India’s population starts declining by 2040 or sooner Let’s,face,it,life in India is unbearable for most Less people,more jobs more food more housing etc I wish india was at 800 million like the 80,s
Since the decline in birthrates has consistently outpaced projections before, I think it's fair to project it will continue to outpace projections. I honestly hope the population peaks in the 2040s, because that would avoid the specter of overpopulation in Africa and the Middle East, where most of the growth is occurring, and also give the Western world no choice but to transition away from our growth-reliant system. What we should really be aiming for isn't to grow but to stabilise our population. At the current rate it will shrink until there's nothing left and that's also undesirable.
Agreed, with one caveat: our propensity for extrapolation can lead to statements that soon become invalid as the context changes. I don't imagine fertility rates to be so stubborn that extinction results. Well before then life will be so different that whatever dynamics are driving current fertility declines today will be a distant memory and no longer apply. We are quick to imagine trends holding for the very long term, but they seldom do-especially in unsustainable conditions.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ugLightening bugs need leaf litter to lay their eggs in and to feed the larvae. Yards are overly manicured and have too much light pollution at night.
Overpopulation is a Western capitalist, liberal, Eurocentric myth created by misinformed and discredited men like Malthus and Ehrlich and propagated by ego maniacs like Bill Gates and their minions at the UN population program. The real problem for mankind is not overpopulation but the over consumption of scarce non-renewable resources by a relatively small percentage of human beings gorging themselves into numerical irrelevance primarily in the G7 countries and their allies in the global north. So, who overconsumes the world's non-renewable resources more than any other population cohort on earth? The very same people who preach that the world is overpopulated in the first case. The very same people who preach that population growth in Africa and the Middle East must be contained because it will eventually pose some nefarious threat to humanity or western civilization as a whole. These people are primarily white capitalist liberal Europeans and North Americans. See how that works? What is really at play here is the realization that youthful population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, coupled with rapid population decline and aging in Europe and North America over the coming century, will herald an unsurpressible shift in the current geopolitical and economic world order over the next century towards the global south. And that is quite simply an impossible pill for Europeans and North Americans to swallow. There, I said it.
A smaller global population would likely improve the quality of life for the people who are alive. The US population was about one-third what it is now when I was young. While we are dealing with the increased number of people, we're crowded. Our cities are huge. If you want to go to some parks or museums you need a reservation, you can't just go on a whim. It's harder to take an enjoyable drive in the country due to traffic problems. And we're crowding out other species. There's no reason humans deserve it all.
And create an economic BOMB that will devastate taxes, pension, economic growth, and elder care. All the world's economic models have been built on the assumption of a growing population creating more jobs, more economic output, more taxes, and paying for elderly care. That all is quickly going away, esp in the developed countries. Our high inflation in the US is just one sign of this drop in population growth, and there is plenty more pain to come.
Like what ? I have a few guesses....not having enough active people to make healthcare systems to function properly or not enough construction workers to fix your aqueducts.....there's plenty of "stress" incoming.
The potential rapidity of the population decline will devastate our civilization. And pop will continue to decline if TFR stabilizes between 1 and 2. The future is bleak in a world of declining population. Our modern civilization is at risk.
As with everything, the solution is to reduce the income gap. Declining population economic effects will be mostly felt by the low income demographics. If we do not have low income demographics then there wi be a lot less economic turmoil - if that is at all possible to do.
That 2:04 graph... just put your phone up to the graph and make a line from the previous data. That UN projection is crazy optimistic, the line looks very steep eyeballing it
Not optimistic. Unrealistic. Look at the actual data for countries with a TFR under 2. They show no signs of returning to the magic 2.1 number the UN fantasizes.
The UN projection is irrational. They predict a change in slope without presenting a reason why birth rates would return to replacement rates after falling below. I don't think it's optimism. I think it's a failure to understand the data that is right in front of them.
Great content mate. But there is one crucial issue not addressed in the video, that has a correlation to the reason why the UN projections have this big gap with reality. Many states and institutions have plenty of reason to overstate their populations and projections since they are sustained by funds. So they deliberately overstate it. And in one specific case we can point out Butan that literally over state its population in 5x in the 50-60s, tp be able to join the UN, since they demanded any state to have at least 1 million inhabitants to be able to join in. But the same pattern happens in most countries especially from local governments. Also there is another problem counting to the Global population. The double or in some cases multiple counts from dual citizenships, most countries have no means to filter it out of its actual population, I was myself counted in Brazil and Australia for 7 years until I got it fixed due to some issues, but many people want to keep this status quo so they can manage their assets and legal rights more freely.
The US government census does go strictly who is actually living there. They literally go door to door and count how many people live in that house. It doesn't matter what your citizenship status is. If you're there you count, if you're not there you don't count. Now is there fraud? I don't know. But at least the system seems to be well set up
The 1 million UN requirement is not correct. Many countries that joined the UN in the beginning had considerably smaller populations. There was in fact no such requirement at all.
Your first point makes sense, but the second one would have a very limited effect on total numbers. Especially considering that the two most populous countries and ones which send out so many emigrants (India and China) do not allow dual citizenship
People who discuss demographics always assume fertility is individual or culturally determined. But environmentalists frequently bring up concerns about declining fertility from toxic chemical proliferation and bioaccumulation since WW2. So with demographic declines that steep it seems important to know the reasons? Do couples want to get pregnant but cannot succeed, or choose not to because of economic limitations and social constraints? It would be almost comedic if plastic exposure or PFAS contamination were rapidly driving humanity to extinction, and no one noticed.
It goes even further than those things you discussed. Most experts believe it’s just industrialization in general. Over financialization, high cost of living, chemical contamination, social media, hyper-politicization, globalization, urbanism, feminism, high suicide rates, wokeism… I can’t make a comprehensive list because it just goes on and on. All are part and parcel of industrialization at large which affects the Y variable: the birth rate. I think chemical interruption prob has an effect… but the trends across multiple different societies (which have been happening for a long time) seem to indicate it more as one of many contributing factors than the root cause.
@@Willsmiff1985 I see high suicide rates consequence of too many people, ie more people, young adults, cant find their place in society (often that means job), thus they self delete or OD in drugs for same effect when no life prospects. I cant see any way similar situation back in 50s,60s... sure everyone can find that one example that suffered each of these issues back then but stats show different version. Agriculture previously has allowed these cycles of overpopulation (10 kids in every house) then some problems like famine taking huge chunks of lowest status people out of society and repeat.
@@effexon conclusion: society was never true a collaborative effort. It was a competition all along. And in the end only the most successful and well adapted will breed going forward. We’re learning that our species has a culling mechanism. And a LOT of lineages are about to be lost.
I hope the population doesn't rebound. Along with the phasing out of fossil fuels, the population deflation could play a big role in saving this planet from climate change as the Baby Boomers pass away.
@@Matthew-bf2nc I suppose you think all the climate scientists are stupidly mistaken, or colluding in a giant conspiracy for some obscure personal benefit.😂
@@nicolasgirard2808 living standard often means food and housing, basics, are very expensive. kids need food too. income is often stagnant and cost of kids is difficult to estimate especially 5- to 10 years forward. one luxury many dont have is time.
@nicolasgirard2808 luxuries? Try necessities. In America giving birth is a 30k bill if you don't have insurance. Hard to buy groceries when you are working class, can barely afford Iinsurance and get hit with a bill that high.
Child mortality plays a role, and there's an important aspect that is counterintuitive. 1) Low child mortality = If you want two kids, you can have two babies, and you'll end up with two kids (to a high certainty). 2) 50% child mortality = If you want two kids, you'll need to have about eight babies to assure (to a high certainty) two surviving kids, but the average is four kids. That counterintuitive oddity doesn't get the attention it deserves Cultures end up adapting to high child mortality, leading to very high population growth. Then, when health improves, you end up with huge families until the culture adapts.
Using Prezi, which limits resolution. I eventually figured out a back door trick and new videos in Metastatic Modernity series will be 1080p starting on episode #6. Not that it helps on this video, sorry to say.
The main problem is urbanisation. Urbanisation continues and will continue for a long time until all the agricultural lands around the world are all farmed mechanically. Replacement rates in cities are typically in the 0.5-1 range and that is where the whole world will be going. The consequences of population decline are dramatic. We see this already in Japan, where the economy has stagnated ever since their population peaked. It starts with a major real estate crisis. Now we see the same thing happening in China. Korea is a ticking time bomb.
You almost got it right. In rural areas where growing food is based mostly on manual labor, children are assets. Quite young boys can tend the herds and help with planting and harvesting. Young girls can help care for younger siblings, freeing up the mother to do her work. In cities, children are economic liabilities.
Thanks, Tom, a mathematician here. I can't fathom why projections look like this. I can't fault your comments, which are what I have been saying for the last 5 years. That said, the world can change, and those projections can be altered as we can't guess what the future will hold.
Edcuated smart People will only have kids if they can provide for them it's not to have 7 so 2 can survive into adulthood. It's to have 2 so 2 can thrive and have all the opportunity others kids have.The only way to improve brith rate is have a verry good wealth redistribution system.
in west child services come after parents if they do that 7 kids and many cases put parent to jail too. iirc in many 3rd world places this doesnt happen so they can be more "careless".
Your whole position is false. People don’t have enough kids that they can provide for. People have enough kids that doesn’t disturb their lifestyle substantially. People can easily provide for 4. Easily. They just don’t because they don’t want to. It’s that simple. Redistributing wealth will make no difference. Start naming famous rich people with insufficient kids. Endless list. Money has nothing to do with it.
In the world after modern birth control, people have children based mostly on their VALUES, secondarily on economics. I know rich people with few, or no, children, and poor people with many children. This is in the same part of the US.
Years (decades?) ago, people were starting to talk about human population peaking at about 10B in about the 2040 timeframe. This is not new news. 8y ago Hans Rosling spoke about it. One of the largest unknowns is WHEN Nigeria's population growth is going to calm down. They're headed to a billion by themselves, so that's the critical unknown.
When you take in the demographic of an aging population, this is the drop off the cliff. No one knows for sure the population of the world in total. I have been observing this for several years now, when they were parroting the drum of over population I knew it was BS. As you spoke of, there is a lot of "assumptions" or "beliefs" not facts. I do not agree with people living longer, the boomers and their parents are going to have the longest longevity in our lifetime, and many of them are even struggling. They had cleaner lifestyle with nutritious food for a larger part of their lives than the generations after. The increase in disease in younger people proves this. I really think we go through this cycle every thousand years, it just wasn't recorded. When people are living in city's slave to a system, the want, desire, need and affordability to have children fades further with each generation.
The lower population curve is closer to that shown in the Limits to Growth models. (do a quick search for the graphic) The LtoG model actually shows a peak of less than 8 billion, which we have already passed. I haven't seen an explanation for that discrepancy.
Multiple LtG model runs were published, under different sets of assumptions. The doubled-resource run (BAU2) is the one most closely matching our actual trajectory, according to a 2020 paper by Herrington. BAU2 population peaks just prior to mid-century.
Two things: 0:17 That first chart always blows my mind. It's even crazier if you don't limit it to just the past 1000 years, but instead include the entirety of human existence. How about the studies that tracked the steady decline of human sperm counts over decades and implied we're on track towards zero by the middle of this century. Similar trends were also found to be true in other species.
Great analysis. One linkage that I would examine more closely is how a declining birth rate impacts overall life expectancy. Hard decisions will need to be made as the number of active workers to retired workers continue to decline. In the US, we are presently at 2.9 workers per retiree. However, by 2030, this ratio will decline to 2:1. Something will need to give, and I expect it will be end of life care. If that is the case, then it would potentially have little overall impact to your analysis. However, if other solutions are adopted because older people vote at greater proportions to the young, then I might expect to see worsening health outcomes in younger generations.
i'd love to get email notifications when you publish new blogposts. any chance that might be possible? with other blogs i follow i never miss a post but with yours i often do because i can't figure out how to subscribe.
I think they dont want to talk about declining population because our economic system simply cannot handle it. Capitalism will collapse when there is no more growth. We will need a new solution
That's not the issue. We will need a new economic system because it is highly likely that intelligent robots will replace humans and human labor will have no value.
People have been predicting the collapse of capitalism for over 150 years... it won't die by itself, we need to decide collectively to adopt something that's not growth-dependent
@@bobwallace9753 yes, but the question is who makes the choice of a new system? Who owns the robots? Who gets to control the robots? Hint: it's not necessarily democratic
@@trueriver1950 Well, in your opinion, who owns the robots? You do realize that capitalism won't work if the non-owners' labor has no value, don't you?
@@trueriver1950 there has been solid economic growth over the last 150 years. New resources were discovered, and population was rising to increase demand for produced goods. What's different now is the shrinking population.
The Bell Curve strikes yet again. Your final prediction mirrors the population graph of both a bacterial infection and a locust plague. All conform to the standard distribution graph as a function of time.
A bell curve is a distribution plot not a temporal trend. Bacteria and locust populations increase exponentially as a function of the natural exponent "e". You should run for president.
I became a student of UCSD in 1969. Harold Urey talked to me about physics when I couldn't find my teaching assistant. Roger Revelle had a symposium on plate tectonics which I attended (partially because they were serving food). I was just a regular San Diego kid who could do math, yet they both saw value in educating their students. Scientist are human and want the "glory" of a Nobel . The JWST has given the current science community a lesson in humility. The standard model in Physics as well as demographic projections are at best a SWAG at a moment in time.
I have to say that I commend your cautious and conservative approach to this subject. There are informed folk out there in media-land who are saying that we, as a species, are actually in serious trouble and I think they are right. The collapse that will follow the population dwindling will not be fun, even tho' there may be better times after that period. I keep telling myself that we went down to a thousand 'breeding pairs' in the ice ages so we are pretty resilient but it is still concerning that this is not getting much attention in the political sphere.
People having fewer children today than 50 years ago is not due to resource constraints; it's due to changes in values. Almost every population group on the planet is much wealthier now than fifty years ago. Today's population is more wealthy, educated, urbanized, materialistic, and hedonistic; but it is less religious. I know rich people with few (or no) children, and poor people with many children, all in the same suburban geographical area. The difference is values.
Too many people are looking at the total population size and growth. More important is the pressure each of us is putting on the planet.. Even if the population drops significantly but everyone wants to live like people in North America, the planet is in trouble. Even if the population continues to grow, but per capita consumption drops, the global economy is in trouble. How to navigate between those two is the challenge.
You might appreciate the follow-up video and associated write-up that address impact and disproportionate demands: ua-cam.com/video/hTMjxp3Nznk/v-deo.html dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/06/brace-for-peak-impact/
In John Calhoun's rat studies, the decline did not stop. The rats developed antisocial anti breeding behaviors and even though surrounded by plentiful space nesting materials and water they went extinct at the end. Google rat universe 133 to learn more about the seminal 197o's studies. However the decline of other species may indicate that we are poisoning our environment in a way that makes it difficult for vertebrates to reproduce.
Looks a lot like the Club of Romes 'Limits of Growth' prediction of population. But rather then driven by accelerated death rates from a collapsing food supply, it's a collapse of birth rates due to the cost of living, housing etc.
Hello tom interesting video. What is you final projection for the world? Will you be doing a deep dive of the impacts of the places with falling population? What does it mean for GDP growth, housing, immigration and debt?
THE AMERICAN WOMEN IS ONLY HAVING 1.6 CHILDREN PER WOMEN, NOT ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN ANY CULTURE OR ECONOMY, IN THE USA, IMMAGRATION WILL SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR THE ECONOMY
Great video. Absolutely right projections seem to have been consistently optimistic. Our population forecasting has been poor. One thing I'd point out, in regards to your "limits to growth" comment, is that fertility is not evenly distributed. Most children being born today are not being born in OECD, or even rapidly developing countries, where fossil resorces are widely exploited. They are being born in Africa and Central Asia. In fact many of them are being bor in countries without the agricultural base to support the current population. That's why small changes in commodity prices cause hardship in these places.
I really enjoyed your video, especially how you used statistical tools to look at current models. Have you looked into the impact of infant mortality on female fertility? There is a lot of research indicating that fertility is driven by infant and child mortality.
Nice to see a projection from more realistic fertility forecasts, in light of recent declines. I would suggest a downward revision of Latin American fertility, considering recent drops in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. Seems fertility in this region can reach the levels previously only seen by East Asia. I would have noted the impact of the century on the racial/ethnic/cultural makeup of the world population. Africa will account for the majority of births well before the end of the century by this model, no? The number of European or East Asian people is going to see a great decline proportionally.
Falling amount of young and increasing amount of older people - is also very impactful - and is happening now - more important that peak population (if you ask me). Total Population is like counting all the monsters in a tower defence game.
Hi Tom, this is an excellent video. Thank you very much. In steadily declining fertility populations population peak is 35-40 years after peak child moment. Peak child has happened in 2012 so if the fertility trend is not reversed global population peak should happen between 2047 and 2052.
One more thing - there is decent amount of coverage in Nigerian press that their population numbers are seriously inflated. National budget is distributed per head so each regional leader is presenting inflated population estimates to get a bigger chunk of the money pie. Based on the voter registers and number of mobile phones they estimate that the population maybe as much as 100mln smaller than official. If this is a common problem across some other fast growing countries, population decline maybe happening much faster than 2040s.
Agree that peak births was 2012, according to UN WPP from 2022. The amount of demographic delay to peak depends on how close to replacement TFR is. If TFR stays as low as it is now or continues to decline a bit, the peak happens sooner (something my model allows me to track, given present age distributions).
This topic is soooo fascinating, and I've been following it for a while now. I think there are a lot of unknown unknowns that are going to make everyone wrong, myself included. But here are some of the things that I am watching out for. 1) life extension tech is coming. I think that it is going to blow a lot of estimates away. It will be too late for boomers, but a lot of GenX and younger will be living and extra 5-10 years past our expected experation date, and younger generations will likely live progressively longer. There is evidence that there will be a natural limit around age 120, so extension beyond that will have social and moral questions of engineering ones self rather than just maintaining for longer... But even what can be done with "natural" life extension methods will throw a lot of wrenches in a lot of metrics. 2) the weaponization of kids. This goes 2 directions. The first is what Russia is trying right now with government, media, church, and every voice screaming at their population that having lots of kids is theit patriotic duty to keep their national existence in the fight against "the west". But it isn't just a push to keep the front lines full of young blood to literally fight for esistance. There are economic benefits to being the growing population in a shrinking world will be palpable. And it isn't just nationalistic countries doing this. Japan and South Korea are pushing hard for their population to have more kids... And it's just not working. But the flip side to this is what China effectively did the last 20 years. Everyone assumed that China was the inevitable coming leader of the world. This prevented fights, and attracted business... But last year we found out that a chunk of their 25 and younger crowd simply never existed. Extra benefits for would be parents who could spend those resources on themselves. Localities that get extra funding from government and world support organizations for humanitarian aide... Lots of reasons to do this. And China largely did it on accident, but others have taken notes and will do it on purpose. 3) the great wealth transfer. Boomers take a lot of flack for things that aren't totally their fault... But they did break the norms of social expectations and have soaked up a lot of resources. Previous to the boomers there was an expectation that you have a lot of kids, and give them your all, move in with one of them as part of your retirement, and help take on some of their domestic front. No generation built much wealth, and what wealth existed wasn't as siloed within a generation. Boomers are the first large generation with a lot of wealth, and they intend to be independent through retirement... But also intend to horde the bulk of their wealth until the end to remain independant. Not saying that this is any better or worse than previous sociatal expectations... But what happens when the boomers eventually die? Their own kids will be well onto retirement when they get their inheritance, and the next generation won't be planning on an inheritance so they will be well onto their own retirement plans. My assumption is that a lot of that inheritance will trickle down to the grand kids in one way or another. With so many complaints of increasing inflation, lack of housing, etc... What happens when those resources are focused on a much smaller generation at a much younger age? With a lot of those economic stresses alleviated, will they start having kids younger? And by extension have more of them? 4) automation will play a massive role. AI is largely Over-hyped... It's coming, but that revolution is largely 10-20 years away. But physical automation and robotics (with or without AI) is rolling out quick. On the one hand, it is coming before population decline, which will make for interesting times when the largest ever working population starts being less needed. But then as populations start declining in earnest, automation will be a requirement for economic survival as smaller populations have to provide goods and services for larger retired populations. Less of an issue on the US where out population chart looks more like a smokes tack than a collapse. But for many countries, automation will be essential. Anywho, I'm not sure how these will play out, but I think these will likely be a lot of the biggest things to shape the coming decades as demographics change quickly. Going to be interesting times!
4) AI humanoid robots are already a reality. Tesla has a small number working in one of their factories right now. Progress is likely to be extremely fast. The 'revolution' may be over in 20 years. There is a monstrous amount of money to be made by the companies that produce good AI robots. A humanoid robot should cost well under $10k to produce and have at least a ten year useful life. It should be able to work close to 24/365. $10k / 10 years / 365 days / 24 hours = $0.11/hour. Plus a couple pennies for electricity. Capital will get thrown at companies working on human replacement robots. Some of the very smartest people will be very well paid to speed the process.
Financial markets will not respond like a gradual deflation to gradual population decline. We have a boom and bust cycle. So, instead, we will get more financial crises that either have to be papered over by central banks or governments or will devastate the housing markets, stock markets, and auto markets.
Population decline will quite a problem for agriculture too. We have become incredibly good at growing food, but if we produce too much, a long term price crash will result, causing widespread collapse of farms as they will be unable to sustain the payments on capital and inputs. Unless the decline is gradual enough.
Projections are really tenuous in times of rapid change. Will the rapid declines in fertility since 2008 continue, return to the slower declines of the previous 20 years, or do something else? Tom assumed the first alternative, and the UN assumed the second. Official projections by their nature don't assume rapid change.
(All of the following comments are just my uninformed speculation - so take it as a theoretical possibility). One factor that seems to be at play is the redefinition of childhood. Back in the 1920's (and before), children in rural areas were seen as a necessary resource (in addition to being loved offspring). More children meant more economic output and potentially greater wealth. Basically an additional child brought in more economic wealth than they cost. They were also less likely to survive. So in an effort to increase family wealth (nobody was wealthy, just trying to survive) and to account for the possibility that some of the children would not survive, it was in the best interests of a family to have many children. Fast forward to later generations and children are no longer a part of the workforce. This started in urban areas but since the 40's has started to creep into rural areas as well (child labor laws in the U.S. began in the late 30's). By the late 50's children basically no longer worked (or if they did, it was not enough to overcome their expenses making them a net negative in terms of family wealth). By the turn of the century this has only accelerated. Children now are meant to play, learn, and grow up as slowly as we can let them (with obvious, often tragic exceptions). Couple this with the time and physical impacts having a child has on a woman, and you start to see disincentives to having multiple children. Especially as women gain more political and economic power. Having a child now becomes a product of wanting one (or more) more than the necessity of having them. This incentive to not have as many children might have had to fight with a cultural expectation to have many children. I am guessing that that explains why we didn't fall off a cliff in the 50's. If a woman of (typical) child-bearing age is roughly 20-40 years of age, then we have had between 2 and 4 generations since the incentives changed. I can see where it could take that long for cultural shifts (responding to economic realities) to change. Africa is still on an earlier part of this trend line. But their shift is happening faster than happened in the western world. I expect that as the role of children (and the corresponding role of women) changes there, we will see a rapid progression to a lower birth rate there as well. TLDR: We used to need children as an economic resource. So more children meant more wealth. About 80 years ago (in the west) that role shifted to be one where children are an economic burden (at least till they reach maturity, though sometimes beyond as well). This has happened quickly and will continue to permeate throughout the world, hitting Africa last (though their trend lines seem to indicate it is happening faster there).
We're likely to see a big hit on population numbers due to climate change as some parts of the globe become uninhabitable. We already know how much resistance there is to immigration in most countries. Climate refugees will have a problem and many will die in place. How many might perish, we can't predict. But it might not be very different than what we see with major pandemics.
About 7 million people died in the COVID pandemic. That's 0.01% of the global population. This pales compared to the loss of life we can expect from global warming. Think in terms of the bubonic plague that killed between 30% and 60% of the population of Europe, then make it worldwide. Tipping points and interacting variables make it impossible to predict with certainty the number of early deaths we can expect but fossil fuel emissions and ecosystem destruction continue to accelerate, making it likely that conditions will be worse than we imagine.
@@fr57ujf If we stopped greenhouse emissions today the planet would continue to heat for some number of years until the extra carbon was removed from our atmosphere. That's physics. We are replacing fossil fuels with EVs and renewable energy. EVs are now about the same cost to manufacture as ICEVs and cheaper to operate. The price of EVs should rapidl decrease over the next few years. Wind and solar are our least expensive ways to generate electricity. Battery prices have massively dropped making reliable 24/365 renewable energy less expensive than extracting and burning fossil fuels. That is driving a shift from oil, coal, and natural gas to non-carbon emitting energy. That's economics. It's not unreasonable to think we will have largely transitioned from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2040. The issue we need to tackle is removing carbon from our atmosphere faster than just letting natural processes doing it at nature's pace. We need some smart people working on this problem. A lot of people may well die during the human-caused hot period. We need to work on limiting the number of deaths and cooling down the planet right now.
As civilisation we tend to create a new pyramid of power and money because social networks caused acceleration opposite to altruistic expectations: everyone chases wellbeing upon empathy and living for others. I mean this egoism is declining humanity in overall. Active woke distortions, passive and forgotten ethical life. Life is pricy? It's all about greed. We can hope life will be long and content even without children, but sometimes it's clear it won't.
I agree with you that there are many factors that decide the future population. I think the world oil production will rather soon start to permantely decline. By 2100 there will be very little oil left. So a lot less than 10 billion people.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug its a lie that we have infinite free energy all this conspiracies are bull shit god did not design this planet so there can be infinite human been in a finite planet with finite resources
Obviously there will be a point where oil production will decline. In a sense we're almost there, because Russian oil will fall off the market, and the only real new oil play is Guyana offshore, but that pretends that people without oil won't double down on using coal, since the choice between no energy and dirty inefficient energy is barely a choice at all. Honestly though, population decline may precede all of that, especially if large parts of Africa and Asia lose access to cheap petroleum based fertilizers which made the Green revolution possible in the first place.
Technically OIL production has already started to fall a few years ago. "Barrels per day" numbers have been propped up with "equivalents" such as bio, hydrogen, recycled fuels added into the charts as of they were actually "oil". And we are using a higher ratio of natural gas vs oil, finding new applications of the cheap gas replacing the oil based process. If you actually look at the amount of oil extracted per day it is already declining. As many above have mentioned our thurst for constant energy growth is being answered by "green" alternatives to petroleum and coal.
If we are looking at data in 2040 that allows us to determine that population growth has declined to zero, the reality will be that it actually declined to zero sometime ten to twenty years earlier. When we are able to see it in the numbers, and be certain, it has already happened sometime in prior years. Based on the way these population numbers are behaving it is possible that population grown has already declined to zero but our counting systems are inaccurate. They are inaccurate within a reasonable margin of error, but it is possible we are already at zero population growth, and the major economies of the world are starting to realize it. All that is needed is for an economy, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Ukraine, Russia - to go below replacement fertility and stay there for a decade or longer. We should be contemplating what could be happening if the global population is on a trajectory that has already peaked and is declining. USA population if immigration is taken out, is declining. Consider what happened repeatedly in John B Calhoun's experiments. On a very practical level, what happens across Europe and North America when over the next 10 years Boomers go to sell a home they have owned for decades, and there are no buyers. This is what we will very likely be facing in a few years.
It will be interesting to see what happens when large countries start to decline in population. I don’t think we really understand what that’s going to look like
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug I agree that we don't know what's going to happen and all projections are fantasies, as the video made clear. But I do think the 1340s, and later decades, in Europe, North Africa and Asia (a world very tightly connected thru trade) hold many important lessons for us globally now.
Good video.. Agree with the analysis that population might peak much ahead than UN estimates.. If not 2040, surely around 2050.. But surely not 2080, that is way off mark
All the models around population growth are likely to be mistaken. They all just assume Africa is going to follow the trend and there is no reason to think that it will. There is survey data from within Africa where women are asked how many children is the ideal number and in some places the average answer was 13.
It's not a matter of theoretical preference, but of resource limits. Africa, at 1.5 billion, imports 85% of its food from outside the continent. A declining population in the rest of the world is unlikely to somehow continue ramping up agricultural production to support arbitrary growth in economically-challenged and resource-poor Africa. The U.N. projection would have Africa rising to 4 billion by 2127, but how is that supported, biophysically? The continent probably can't get there on its own volition.
@@tommurphy2694 I agree, but I just don't think we will stop feeding them unless we ourselves face shortages. OTOH, when X changes, a change in Y usually follows. IOW, people change their behavior, whatever that happens to be when the status quo changes. This is why I think TFR will go up in the future. A lowering of TFR was a great response to the huge increase in population all across the world. But when the world population drops, people will change their behavior. China is proactively making changes. Not only did they get rid of the OCP, they now offer small financial rewards for a 2nd and 3rd child. Since it is a one party state, it is likely to get draconian, just like they did with the ocp. Forced pregnancy termination was a thing. There are people in China called "black" because they don't exist on paper. They were born at home and never registered. If you are forcing termination, how much of a leap is it to outlaw termination and the most effective form of bc?
@@tommurphy2694 The "population correction" in Africa (and parts of West and South Asia) will likely be horrific. Those countries badly need a one child policy.
Maybe they will be like all other peoples and move to the cities though, chinese money is flowing into projects in and this is different to US aid like grain and free clothes that destroy industries, in my opinion Africa could be over the next 80 years that same as the rest of the world has been the last 80
@@antonyjh1234 I wouldn't count on it. Also, the B&R project is worse than anything the West ever did. At least the infrastructure we provided actually worked.
As with everything else in the world the best way to avoid economic disaster once growth turns to reduction is to have relatively balanced distribution of income before it happens. As long as we have a large income gap between demographics, we will have massive starvation and civil collapse as the economy starts to reduce. The wealth elite with lie and cheat to maintain their wealth and growth, the working poor will starve, which will lead to a quick fall in demand making the reduction even faster in a doom feedback loop. If we have more equal income distribution, then the overall economy can shrink slowly with very little impact to prosperity for anyone. The economy can ebb and flow with organic demand as population and efficiencies change over time. Of course humanity cannot achieve improvements to income distribution so we are doomed. But at least we know we are doomed.
Why wouldn't human behavior change when circumstances changed? If population fell back to the 1980 level, why wouldn't some populations change their norms etc to deal?
It's plausible more deaths and low fertility continue to accelerate. An economic recession is underway in many places and with a globally synchronized monetary system it will catch up everywhere and it could be worse than 2008. We could have more war break out and with the dying off of old white men we could see competency plummet. Not only could infrastructure crumble, we might not be able to feed all those Africans. With shrinking population economic/funding systems stop working. Healthcare, pensions, taxes all plummet. Maybe hormone disrupters like micro plastics continues to get worse, women and men ideologically continue to drift apart, fertility continues to free fall with no bottom other than an asymptotic 0.0.
Such arrogance in your statements. Dynamics that are currently driving the system will change. Change is the only constant. I am cautiously optimistic that humans will be able to overcome whatever challenges we face.
@@yashwardhansable5187 what arrogance? I hedged the entire statement with "its plausible"... not "it's certain". My point was its within the realm of possibility that things spiral towards the downside, that there are a lot of risks that could cause feedback loops that could feed into each other causing things to accelerate towards the worse. It's important to at least be cognizant of that possibility and hopefully prepare a little for that outcome.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug You have obviously never been to the US midwest and west. People are not have fewer children due to resource constraints. People all over the world are more wealthy today than they were fifty years ago. People are having fewer children because they value children less. Part of that is education, part is urbanization, part is decline of religion, and part is materialism and hedonism.
@@dzcav3People are having fewer children because they are waking up to the brainwashing that tells them life has no meaning if they don't reproduce. They also are waking up to the immense destruction and degradation of the planet and don't want to contribute to that. Not everyone is a simpleton.
Urbanization seems to be one of the drivers of lower birth rates. The reason, apparently, is because in rural settings children are an asset. At a very early age they can start to do useful labor and all one has to do is feed them. In urban settings there are very few ways for children to bring resources into the household and you generally have to not only feed them, but to educate them. In urban settings children become a liability.
@@dzcav3 Part of the reason. In rural settings where agriculture is not mechanized, children are an economic asset. In urban settings children are an economic liability. I doubt the decline in religiosity has much, if anything, to do with it. It's more about the time and money cost of children in urban settings and access to effective birth control.
Population decline is strongly aligned with urbanization. In a city it's very hard to raise a big family and you have to provide for them instead of children helping out. Now, an average person in the city pollutes in an order of magnitude more than a person living in a rural area especially in a developing country. That means that though we think that curbing population is a good thing, in fact it is due to urbanization and thus will only accelerate emissions and global warming...
Unfortunately this analysis aligns with what my "gut" (I know...) has been telling me after years of digging into the dire situation humanity appears to be heading into. Digging into all sources I could find for the numerous issues impacting global society my gut has told me we have ~20 year until societal collapse (I do not exactly know what that means) and about 50 years until humanity is essential done being the dominant species (I feel like it means the end of humanity as we know it, but that could be my interpretation - personal bias is really hard to filter out) . I think (hope?) those are sequential, giving us ~70 years. And yes, I am well aware that a "gut" feeling is far from science but it isn't that kind of a thing. It's more of a subconscious synthesis of all the data I've been taken in being processed at a more fundamental level. All I can say is my "gut" has been right way too many times in telling me things that I only come to understand *fully* much later. Again, it's not simply a "feeling" although I wish it was.
Some scientists say that the planet's ability to sustain human life is between 3 to 5 billion people. We're currently over 8 billion so many of us will exit the scene if this is correct.
Under estimated factors: - The degradation of our environnement is accelerating and will put more and more pressure on our health which will eventually lead to reduce the life expectancy. - The fear of the futur is growing amount the population which will lead to not want to have a baby in these scaring future - The cost of living is increasing a lot and the power of purchase for the young generation is rather low comparatively to the young baby boomer time. In 1990 I bought my house for twice my salary, today it is 10 times my salary (in Canada). When your purchase power is low then you do not want to add another expense as a child - The cost of raising a child today is way higher than in the 70s so why have a child you can not afford So that is why I think that the earth population will peak sooner than forecasted and will decrease more rapidly than forecasted.
@Tom Murphy I completely understand why you changed the assumptions in the birth rates. However I believe you might have inadvertently made an assumption you have not even realized you were making in the death rates. It is understandable why you can imagine no new medical technology in the developed economies, and therefore no increase in life expectancies in the developed economies. It makes no sense however to assume zero reduction in infant mortality, zero reduction in child mortality, and zero implementation of existing medical technology in the less developed economies and least developed economies. The country of Romania had zero economic growth from 1980 to 2000 ( when analyzing GDP in constant dollars, or accounting for the inflation). Even with zero economic growth, the country reduced infant mortality, reduced child mortality, and implemented existing medical technology to increase total life expectancy over that 20 year period. The implicit assumption you are making by assuming zero growth in life expectancies in lesser developed economies and least developed economies is a continuous global recession lasting until the end of the century.
Assuming unsustainable consumption and populatiions can be sustained is a modern form of faerietale. Biodiversity loss, top soil loss, radically unsustainable agribusiness aka "green revolution" required to feed today's world which basically boils down to converting petro chemicals and a few other inputs applied by industrial machines into food. None of these can be sustained. It's safe to say the further beyond sustainable limits we push the lower the long term population will and can be, since we will be using up non renewable, or very slow to renew (like topsoil and aquifers) resources to maintain or expand our numbers. And that's barely touching on the pollution we are generating to do this. One part of which we focus on, namely greenhouse gas emissions leading to global heating, but that's just one symptom of the larger artempt to convert the planets finite resources into an infinitely growing human population. Formula is somewhat basic: each region that can produce its own food and water sustainably is probably going to do ok. Warning signs are desalinization, declining water tables, top soil loss, farmland loss due to soil degradation, import of food staples. In terms of further expansion numbers it's common to ignore the massive amounts of toxins being released by industrial practices, plus the increasing stresses of living in an overpopulated world. Of course birth rates are decling, depending on your optimism levels, we are easily 3-8x over the Earth's carrying capacity. Insect collpses in industrial world are all you need to see. Or desert nations with populations easily 20x over their carrying capacity converting oil exports into population expansion. Each region is different in this regard.
It's been apparent for the last decade that the UN is WAY behind the curve in its population assumptions. The UN seems to think that industrial revolutions and transformations today will happen at the same pace they did a century ago, and that, in the long term, everything will return to "normal", as defined by the UN. The IIASA projections and those from more independent sources such as the book Empty Planet (by Bricker and Ibbitson in 2019) have shown lower peaks and much earlier than the UN projections.
A large bunch of old people sitting around, having to care for each other, and live simply, with the youth needing to live caring for themselves, or the old, and not enough young people capable of filling conscription ranks such that, border conflicts will be smaller and more localized due to fewer bodies available for large armies. Food will need to become more locally grown and transported. Sounds a more positive future.
Yes! Some people will say "this isn't civilization," but it is. It is the kind of civilization that built Stonehenge and which kept the human species going for millennia across the planet.
Peter Zeihan's book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" is a good place to start on the impacts of population decline. In some cases, deglobalization can lead to worse outcomes for the environment. For example, as Russia depopulates, they could lose the ability to keep their natural gas outputs up, leading to countries switching back to coal. We have already seen this happen due to the Ukraine war. There are other population models. The Wittgenstein Center predicts global population to peak in 2070 at 9.4 billion.
China's birth rate plunged after 2000 because a generation had grown up in the cities where most of the people around them were an only child. Being the only child had been normalised. The government no longer had to restrict births. Having one child had become people's expectation. Now the government finds it can't get most people to consider having more children. Is this a cultural trend that can ever be reversed, to stabilise the population? I suspect it would take a generation of higher birth rate compulsion, like the one child policy.
At a certain baseline human-nature level I think governments can't control their citizens' childbearing behavior EITHER WAY, no matter how much they want to. Mormons and certain other Christian & Jewish sects in the US have defied the general downward trend in fertility rates for many decades. And this holds even for people who live their entire lives in dictatorships like China's. There is a limit to how much bodily tyranny / social engineering they will tolerate.
Never in all of history have we not had a population that was growing: handling this change is going to be one of the biggest challenges of this century 🤷♂️
We've already got the solution. We have AI humanoid robots doing work in factories right now. We're in the very early stage of developing the AI but progress should be rapid. We know how.
Thank you for explaining your model in detail ... I think you may need to make some changes to this model as a result of the COVID vaccine ... I think that will affect the birth rates but only time will prove (or disprove) this possibility!
If some geopolitical analysts are correct, the pullback from globalism, the collapse of Russian exports of both grain and fertilizers could cause a huge drop in the productivity in the subsaharan Africa farming region and drive a famine throughout Africa that could reduce African populations by nearly 1 billion.
@@tommurphy2694 That is a good flip as well. On your video on energy I wanted to ask you what you think will happen after the rapid reduction in demands in energy due to reduction in population. Could what we are seeing in China a harbinger of what to come?
The dowry system along with the Ultrasound has actually contributed to a reduced birth rate. Since male babies were considered favourable, many female babies were aborted but now in many countries there is a larger proportion of males to females. In parts of these same countries, young women have actually become scarce leaving them to choose their male mates instead of the other way around. These young women are chosing men who are wealthier and want less children.
countries need to encourage people to clusters in particular areas stop spending money on long range infrastructure, look at countries with really livable cities as best practice Amsterdam, Tokyo for eg. Less sprawl makes them more livable and cheaper to run. Less roads. less distance for buses etc. let some areas of your country return to nature imagine a vibrant Singapore type city surrounded by nature , look Ottawa Canada awesome setting,
Population collapse wont be the issue. Debt will be. Debt, fueled by fiat currency currently runs the global economy. Eventually some nation will have its working population shrink to the point where it can no longer service its nations debt. At which time it will implode. Now if its a small nation like Sri Lanka in 2022, no big deal, unless you live there. But if its a major nation, and US debt starts getting dumped. Its over. Not just for the US, but for all the dollar denominated debt contracts, which are how most nations do transactions, are done. Global trade stops over night because why am I giving you food for worthless fiat currency that has zero value. Then billions more die. Most nations outside Nigeria in Africa are not self sufficient for food supplies. Some of them import 90% of calories. Even Nigeria would take a massive hit, but might endure. The average person has no idea. Its nightmare fuel.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug AS LONG AS YOU HAVE BIG MONEY TO PAY, BUT THERE WILL NOT BE NURSES TO TAKE CARE OF YOU , BUT THERE MAY BE SOME 80 YEAR OLD NURSES STILL ALIVE
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug THE GOV MUST PAY WOMEN TO HAVE CHILDREN, HUNGARY IS ALL READY PAYING 90 THOUNSAND DOLLARS FOR ANY WOMEN TO HAVE 3 CHILDREN, PLUS THE GOV MUST GIVE FREE CHILD CARE, AND FREE HEALTH CARE , ITALY IS GIVING AWAY FREE HOUSES, IF YOU MOVE THERE,
It is all Africa. The rest barely matters. Africa projected to add 600 million by 2040 and another 800 million by 2060, and another 600 million by 2080. Those assume high fertility rates don't come down quickly, but even if they do the % of young people in these countries is very high, so even with lower fertility lots of women in the child bearing ages. Nigeria alone is projected to add 100 million by 2040, another 100 million by 2060 and another by 2080. Is this possible ...???? Similar with Ethiopia. If these do not happen, a peak at 2040 is quite likely. What can stop them??? Hopefully something. A world population back at 2 billion would make the survival of humanity a much safer bet ... and much better for the planet.
UNICEF while in Africa in the 1980s Accidentally discovered that leaving a TV in villages. Dropped the birthrates by 50% overnight.
We put a screen in everyone's hand starting in 2010. So this trend checks out.
This sounds completely made up. What are powering the TV with? Who is broadcasting? Absurd.
Actually you can hook up to a solar charging station and some phones in that part of the world are solar powered
IIt's not tv anymore, it's porn on the internet accessed through all of those personal screens.
Yeah but putting tv give information about others, hopefully reducing xenophobia. I rather have birthrates drop than violent population drop through war. Population drop is good anyway, less strain for Earth.
Pure BS of the anti-screens cult.
We need to plan for an economy which is not growth-dependent. We should already be moving toward that, but nobody seems to be working on it.
The UN World Populations Prospects (WPP) assume a rise in fertility in the developed world in the second half of this century. No one knows where this assumption comes from 😂
Probably linked to global warming.
Heard of the possibilities religious revival and rural revival. My take on it is society changes and we don't need the past for a change. I think culture can change and people value children more than before. But its not a given. We know in 40 years or more.
Because their once majority old people population who cant reproduce died out
The UN does not come up with random numbers but national and local governments do. They have too many reasons to overstate it to make reliable numbers. And that happens even in developed countries. The source of data is not really trustworthy in most cases.
Pipe dreams.
waiting for corporations to start counting robots in population growth like they count ethanol as oil barrels
Corporations are people, or so I was told by politicians.
@@robertgulfshores4463 Corporations are the psychopathic, unaccountable manifestation of our aristocrat overlords.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ugYou'll have a bit more oomf to your bang, but have you done anything for the knock?
AI humanoid robots are already a thing. They will provide very cheap labor and within twenty years should be able to do anything a human can do. But better.
We have some interesting times ahead of us.
If they get that far. The ethanol is like the human demographic. It cannot replace itself. It takes more petroleum energy to make a volume of ethanol than the ethanol can produce. Even at 100% efficiency. Diminishing return. We have no solution we can use to replace petroleum. The food that approximately supports , 7 out of 8 people alive today live by the use of petroleum. Science Fictions will not lube a power plant, run your car or fly a plane. People imagine solutions for these problems exist.
They do not exist and are exceedingly unlikely in our future that is left to us.
This is just like the IEA's renewable energy growth rates. They kept projecting flat growth of reneables each year but renewables keep growing exponentially. After 20 years, the IEA finally noticed something was going on and they are now showing modest growth rates of renewables. Looks like the population decline rates are going through the same (but inverted) projections.
The rate of childless women as a percentage has doubled since the late 70s. The rate of young men not seeking relationships has doubled since the early 2010s. While there must be a lower bound out there (not extinction) my bet is this trend has way to run yet
And that is what the data is showing us. To the extent some countries are showing a stabilization in birth rates, those rates are below 2.1. And essentially every country with TFRs higher than 2.1 are experiencing fairly rapid drops in birth rates. There's no reason to suspect they will plateau out at or above 2.1.
@@bobwallace9753 Add to that this is generational in timeframe so even if it was to level off @ replacement tomorrow that still wouldn't improve the situation this century. i'm most interested in the economic (read investment) impact and within my lifetime. Curiously it would be good to understand the cause and therefore possible solution?!? or is it just trending to it's own 'solution' i.e. we have lived through an anomaly/secular change that is highly unlikely to repeat and we're overshooting the mean? That's a question for Gen Z ;)
@@thesteamybox7936
Here's what makes it very hard to figure out our future. We are at the beginning of a very major technology shift. Probably. High probability.
What's the problem with a rapidly decreasing population size? Obviously a problem for some businesses as customer bases will decrease. But that is not so much a problem for humanity as a whole. Just a problem for those businesses that will shrink and/or fail. The big problem is how we provide care and support for a large aging population with fewer people of working age.
The technology shift that may make decreasing population a non-problem? Artificial intelligence.
I can't predict the future with 100% accuracy but I think I see how things may develop. Almost immediately.
Tesla seems to be extremely close to finishing work on full self-driving. A FSD system created by AI by feeding a supercomputer thousands of videos of good human drivers driving. And their supercomputer has now created a FSD system that is very close to needing no human backup.
"All told, research by Harvard University estimates 5 million Americans now make a living, or at least work part-time, as professional drivers." Finish FSD and that frees up about 5 million people to do other kinds of work. It's like adding 5M new adults to the labor pool.
Tesla now has at least two humanoid robots working in their factory doing, most likely, simple jobs that humans were doing. Each robot working three shifts every day with no vacation/holiday/sick time off replaces something like 4.6 humans. By the end of next year Tesla expects to have around a thousand humanoid robots working in their factories. That would free up over four thousand worker inthe first year. Other companies are also making very good progress with AI humanoid robots.
Robots are likely to take over the simpler, more repetitive, and most dangerous jobs first, freeing humans to do other work such as helping the aged.
It's hard to see how that doesn't happen. It's just a matter of how quickly. And it's likely to be fast. Very fast.
that's really depressing
In my country, the lower birth rates are due to the fact that younger couples can’t afford to buy homes anymore & rents are far too high.
I had my first child while I was renting & that affected our mortgage prospects because a child is seen as a financial drain.
My younger siblings held off having any children until they owned a house & now they might only have 1 or even 0 children.
Your projection seems much more plausible than the UN's to me. I think we're going to see more and more countries start to freak out about their declining populations over the next few decades, and a lot of head scratching from economists trying to figure out how we deal with negative growth.
Very happy to see a pragmatic mathematician speak to demographics. Particularly impressed by your analysis, and description of linear projections as fantasy. Thank you.
In the developed world, the cost of living crisis coupled with more widespread awareness of potentially dark uncertainties for the future will likely dramatically accelerate population decline in the near to mid term. Vastly unaffordable housing poses significant obstacles to household formation, marriage and childbearing, effectively pricing young people out of participating in the continuation of our species.
I have thought that maybe high real estate prices are having the same effect as seen in the John B Calhoun "Mouse Utopia" experiments in which a mice colony had 2 conditions. Unlimited food and limited space. At a certain point male mice dropped out of competing for females and spent their time grooming themselves. They had no bite or scratch marks unlike the competitive males. They were grass eaters, otakus, basement boys, hikikomoris and MGTOWs. What is the west and especially Japan but essentially "mouse utopias" with close to unlimited food but limited space? What are humans but animals with the same ancient areas of brain biology even if the cerebral cortex is uniquely exploded in size for humans? The "unlimited food" element may change in coming decades for well known reasons.
People have been poor in the past and yet had children. People struggled to find housing in the past and still they had children. What changed is that effective birth control became available (with "abortion on demand" being available in some parts of the world, as a failsafe,) which allowed women to decide when or even if, they wanted to have children. Further, societal changes in the 1960s and 70s, encouraged women to pursue work and careers outside the home, causing them to delay or eschew having children altogether. Women experience peak fertility between the age of 17 to their mid twenties, with fertility slowly falling beginning in their late twenties and increasing more rapidly in the first half of their thirties. Further, the long term effects of hormonal birth control seems in many cases, appears to have further reduced fertility in women, so that, after stopping such birth control, they have increased difficulty in conceiving a child. Delaying children until a woman is in her thirties, meant that many women found themselves unable to conceive, even with medical intervention. And this is before we consider the environmental factors that have negatively affected male fertility. Further, one should not downplay the decades-long fear of overpopulation promulgated by the likes of Paul Erlich and increased urbanization which encouraged people to see children as more of a costly burden than a valuable asset, as they would be in a more agrarian society.
@@jamesrogers47 People in the past did not have BOTH essentially unlimited food AND limited space. The conventional sociological explanations of fertility, birth control, female education, female empowerment etc. may not explain all we are seeing. We are seeing men in many countries dropping out of sexual competition. and this seems to parallel the "mouse utopia" experiments. Men may be playing a much larger role in lower fertility than sociologists have notice or want to notice. If you're married to one narrative you can easily be blind to other factors. We are after all animals and we are not consciously completely in control of our own destiny. This contradicts the favoured "ever onward upwards agency of us glorious humans" narrative and the "female empowerment" narrative.
Move fifty miles 🤷🏻♂️ suddenly affordable. Woah
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug Sounds like someone has "literally" a whole deck of victim cards, and is "literally" trying to play them all. Almost every population group on the planet is much wealthier today than fifty years ago. It's more a matter of values than economy.
We are following the "mouse utopia" curve and can expect a huge population collapse due to the psychological effects of generational overpopulation driving an increase in dysfunctional insanity across a large % of the population.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ugI would tend to agree with your suggestion. Most of it is a vaguely subconscious feeling of overcrowding. I know I get irritable when there are too many people around.
Try living in India.
@@AegonCallery-ty6vy That's an interesting point. Just from agricultural means, the greater Mississippi river basin could definitely support a population as large as the Ganges basin, so it warrants asking the question what are the actual material reasons discouraging that population level from occurring.
Humans are not mice. I get your point, but seriously doubt your conclusion.
Don't think you've got that right. What seems to be lowering birth rates is a combination of education for women, gainful employment for women, access to birth control, movement from rural to urban settings, less infant mortality, and the lesser need for children to take care of parents when they age.
If women can add to the family income in a meaningful way they become more valuable as workers compared to staying home and raising lots of children.
In rural settings child labor is valuable. Even fairly young children can do simple work. All you need to do is feed them and give them some basic clothes. In cities there is very little possibility for family income from child labor. And it costs to educate children.
If you can be somewhat sure that your child will survive into adulthood to take care of you, there's no need to have six or eight in hope that at least one will live.
Nice work, you have proved it with data which appears a certainty when I see around. By the way I am from India and UN population projections are way off for India. Whoever I see around in my extended family, work place, neighborhood, see a clear trend. People are not marrying, if they are it is pretty late in 30s which was 20s earlier. People are not having children for years after marriage, even if they are, they stop at one child only. I guess data will be really really surprising whenever a fresh census in conducted. I feel its population could peak in this decade or next decade itself.
Is there a financial reason why local governments might misrepresent the number of people in their district? Are there significant benefits flowing from the national to local government based on population size? Something like that which would drive over reporting?
If states and counties in the US could get away with it they would benefit by reporting larger numbers. For example, the number of Congressional representatives allowed to a state is based on population size.
I pray India’s population starts declining by 2040 or sooner
Let’s,face,it,life in India is unbearable for most
Less people,more jobs more food more housing etc
I wish india was at 800 million like the 80,s
He didn't "prove" anything and actually says that through the implication, "I don't know."
i rediscovered your blog a few months ago. Didn't know you had a youtube account, it only came into my suggested feed today. Subscribed
Wonderfully illuminating video Tom. I learned a lot and this helps me think differently about likely future population size.
Thanks for the video. Open minded discussion around those themes are a must if one is to plan for long term life in this planet.
Since the decline in birthrates has consistently outpaced projections before, I think it's fair to project it will continue to outpace projections. I honestly hope the population peaks in the 2040s, because that would avoid the specter of overpopulation in Africa and the Middle East, where most of the growth is occurring, and also give the Western world no choice but to transition away from our growth-reliant system. What we should really be aiming for isn't to grow but to stabilise our population. At the current rate it will shrink until there's nothing left and that's also undesirable.
Agreed, with one caveat: our propensity for extrapolation can lead to statements that soon become invalid as the context changes. I don't imagine fertility rates to be so stubborn that extinction results. Well before then life will be so different that whatever dynamics are driving current fertility declines today will be a distant memory and no longer apply. We are quick to imagine trends holding for the very long term, but they seldom do-especially in unsustainable conditions.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ugLightening bugs need leaf litter to lay their eggs in and to feed the larvae. Yards are overly manicured and have too much light pollution at night.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug You might like Nate Hagen's interview with William Reese.
Overpopulation is a Western capitalist, liberal, Eurocentric myth created by misinformed and discredited men like Malthus and Ehrlich and propagated by ego maniacs like Bill Gates and their minions at the UN population program.
The real problem for mankind is not overpopulation but the over consumption of scarce non-renewable resources by a relatively small percentage of human beings gorging themselves into numerical irrelevance primarily in the G7 countries and their allies in the global north.
So, who overconsumes the world's non-renewable resources more than any other population cohort on earth?
The very same people who preach that the world is overpopulated in the first case. The very same people who preach that population growth in Africa and the Middle East must be contained because it will eventually pose some nefarious threat to humanity or western civilization as a whole.
These people are primarily white capitalist liberal Europeans and North Americans.
See how that works?
What is really at play here is the realization that youthful population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, coupled with rapid population decline and aging in Europe and North America over the coming century, will herald an unsurpressible shift in the current geopolitical and economic world order over the next century towards the global south.
And that is quite simply an impossible pill for Europeans and North Americans to swallow.
There, I said it.
A smaller global population would likely improve the quality of life for the people who are alive. The US population was about one-third what it is now when I was young. While we are dealing with the increased number of people, we're crowded. Our cities are huge. If you want to go to some parks or museums you need a reservation, you can't just go on a whim. It's harder to take an enjoyable drive in the country due to traffic problems.
And we're crowding out other species. There's no reason humans deserve it all.
Great presentation.
Reason for optimism. Assuming, of course, that population decline will alleviate many existing stresses.
And create an economic BOMB that will devastate taxes, pension, economic growth, and elder care. All the world's economic models have been built on the assumption of a growing population creating more jobs, more economic output, more taxes, and paying for elderly care. That all is quickly going away, esp in the developed countries. Our high inflation in the US is just one sign of this drop in population growth, and there is plenty more pain to come.
@@johnpombrioyawn. F all that
Like what ? I have a few guesses....not having enough active people to make healthcare systems to function properly or not enough construction workers to fix your aqueducts.....there's plenty of "stress" incoming.
The potential rapidity of the population decline will devastate our civilization. And pop will continue to decline if TFR stabilizes between 1 and 2. The future is bleak in a world of declining population. Our modern civilization is at risk.
As with everything, the solution is to reduce the income gap.
Declining population economic effects will be mostly felt by the low income demographics. If we do not have low income demographics then there wi be a lot less economic turmoil - if that is at all possible to do.
No idea why I got you recommended in my feed but great video! Learned a lot and learned the UN’s projections are kinda whack
Declining population will wreak a fair bit of havoc on the world economy.
There's more to life (much more) than the damn economy!
Thank you for adding to the discussion on this.
That 2:04 graph... just put your phone up to the graph and make a line from the previous data. That UN projection is crazy optimistic, the line looks very steep eyeballing it
Not optimistic. Unrealistic. Look at the actual data for countries with a TFR under 2. They show no signs of returning to the magic 2.1 number the UN fantasizes.
The UN projection is irrational. They predict a change in slope without presenting a reason why birth rates would return to replacement rates after falling below. I don't think it's optimism. I think it's a failure to understand the data that is right in front of them.
Great content mate. But there is one crucial issue not addressed in the video, that has a correlation to the reason why the UN projections have this big gap with reality. Many states and institutions have plenty of reason to overstate their populations and projections since they are sustained by funds. So they deliberately overstate it. And in one specific case we can point out Butan that literally over state its population in 5x in the 50-60s, tp be able to join the UN, since they demanded any state to have at least 1 million inhabitants to be able to join in. But the same pattern happens in most countries especially from local governments. Also there is another problem counting to the Global population. The double or in some cases multiple counts from dual citizenships, most countries have no means to filter it out of its actual population, I was myself counted in Brazil and Australia for 7 years until I got it fixed due to some issues, but many people want to keep this status quo so they can manage their assets and legal rights more freely.
Great points!
The US government census does go strictly who is actually living there. They literally go door to door and count how many people live in that house. It doesn't matter what your citizenship status is. If you're there you count, if you're not there you don't count. Now is there fraud? I don't know. But at least the system seems to be well set up
The 1 million UN requirement is not correct. Many countries that joined the UN in the beginning had considerably smaller populations. There was in fact no such requirement at all.
@@jonakason4451 The league of Nations did.
Your first point makes sense, but the second one would have a very limited effect on total numbers. Especially considering that the two most populous countries and ones which send out so many emigrants (India and China) do not allow dual citizenship
People who discuss demographics always assume fertility is individual or culturally determined. But environmentalists frequently bring up concerns about declining fertility from toxic chemical proliferation and bioaccumulation since WW2. So with demographic declines that steep it seems important to know the reasons? Do couples want to get pregnant but cannot succeed, or choose not to because of economic limitations and social constraints? It would be almost comedic if plastic exposure or PFAS contamination were rapidly driving humanity to extinction, and no one noticed.
Mens spermcount is dropping like 1% / year.
It goes even further than those things you discussed. Most experts believe it’s just industrialization in general.
Over financialization, high cost of living, chemical contamination, social media, hyper-politicization, globalization, urbanism, feminism, high suicide rates, wokeism… I can’t make a comprehensive list because it just goes on and on.
All are part and parcel of industrialization at large which affects the Y variable: the birth rate.
I think chemical interruption prob has an effect… but the trends across multiple different societies (which have been happening for a long time) seem to indicate it more as one of many contributing factors than the root cause.
@@Willsmiff1985 I see high suicide rates consequence of too many people, ie more people, young adults, cant find their place in society (often that means job), thus they self delete or OD in drugs for same effect when no life prospects. I cant see any way similar situation back in 50s,60s... sure everyone can find that one example that suffered each of these issues back then but stats show different version. Agriculture previously has allowed these cycles of overpopulation (10 kids in every house) then some problems like famine taking huge chunks of lowest status people out of society and repeat.
@@effexon conclusion: society was never true a collaborative effort.
It was a competition all along. And in the end only the most successful and well adapted will breed going forward.
We’re learning that our species has a culling mechanism. And a LOT of lineages are about to be lost.
WOMEN NOW WANT A CARREER FIRST NOT CHILDREN
I hope the population doesn't rebound. Along with the phasing out of fossil fuels, the population deflation could play a big role in saving this planet from climate change as the Baby Boomers pass away.
Lol saving the planet? Are you kidding me
@@Matthew-bf2nc I suppose you think all the climate scientists are stupidly mistaken, or colluding in a giant conspiracy for some obscure personal benefit.😂
the decline in living standards is hitting child bearing really hard. of course people are having fewer children.
The standard of living is very high for many people if they don't have kids. If you do have kids, you have to sacrifice a lot of luxuries
@@nicolasgirard2808 living standard often means food and housing, basics, are very expensive. kids need food too. income is often stagnant and cost of kids is difficult to estimate especially 5- to 10 years forward. one luxury many dont have is time.
@nicolasgirard2808 luxuries? Try necessities. In America giving birth is a 30k bill if you don't have insurance. Hard to buy groceries when you are working class, can barely afford Iinsurance and get hit with a bill that high.
@@charlotteschnook1351 you don't actually have to pay medical bills and most people don't
I believe the opposite. Women aren't willing to compromise a high standard of living to become baby machines and housewives.
I'd like to see the correlation of population growth or fertility with the trend in median disposable income.
Child mortality plays a role, and there's an important aspect that is counterintuitive.
1) Low child mortality = If you want two kids, you can have two babies, and you'll end up with two kids (to a high certainty).
2) 50% child mortality = If you want two kids, you'll need to have about eight babies to assure (to a high certainty) two surviving kids, but the average is four kids.
That counterintuitive oddity doesn't get the attention it deserves
Cultures end up adapting to high child mortality, leading to very high population growth. Then, when health improves, you end up with huge families until the culture adapts.
It really depends on the timing for Africa's fertility rate changes since the rest of the world is already declining.
I suggest increasing the font size in the graphs for legibility, otherwise perhaps upload at 1080p resolution?
Using Prezi, which limits resolution. I eventually figured out a back door trick and new videos in Metastatic Modernity series will be 1080p starting on episode #6. Not that it helps on this video, sorry to say.
The main problem is urbanisation. Urbanisation continues and will continue for a long time until all the agricultural lands around the world are all farmed mechanically. Replacement rates in cities are typically in the 0.5-1 range and that is where the whole world will be going.
The consequences of population decline are dramatic. We see this already in Japan, where the economy has stagnated ever since their population peaked. It starts with a major real estate crisis. Now we see the same thing happening in China. Korea is a ticking time bomb.
The South Korean age pyramid is crazy. It is not a decay, it is a collapse.
You almost got it right. In rural areas where growing food is based mostly on manual labor, children are assets. Quite young boys can tend the herds and help with planting and harvesting. Young girls can help care for younger siblings, freeing up the mother to do her work.
In cities, children are economic liabilities.
Thanks, Tom, a mathematician here. I can't fathom why projections look like this. I can't fault your comments, which are what I have been saying for the last 5 years. That said, the world can change, and those projections can be altered as we can't guess what the future will hold.
Edcuated smart People will only have kids if they can provide for them it's not to have 7 so 2 can survive into adulthood. It's to have 2 so 2 can thrive and have all the opportunity others kids have.The only way to improve brith rate is have a verry good wealth redistribution system.
in west child services come after parents if they do that 7 kids and many cases put parent to jail too. iirc in many 3rd world places this doesnt happen so they can be more "careless".
Your whole position is false. People don’t have enough kids that they can provide for. People have enough kids that doesn’t disturb their lifestyle substantially. People can easily provide for 4. Easily. They just don’t because they don’t want to. It’s that simple. Redistributing wealth will make no difference. Start naming famous rich people with insufficient kids. Endless list. Money has nothing to do with it.
In the world after modern birth control, people have children based mostly on their VALUES, secondarily on economics. I know rich people with few, or no, children, and poor people with many children. This is in the same part of the US.
@@dzcav3 and elon musk with dozen children.
@@effexon person at my church with 10. Less money than my fam. And the Africans will confirm that money def isn’t the issue.
Years (decades?) ago, people were starting to talk about human population peaking at about 10B in about the 2040 timeframe. This is not new news. 8y ago Hans Rosling spoke about it.
One of the largest unknowns is WHEN Nigeria's population growth is going to calm down. They're headed to a billion by themselves, so that's the critical unknown.
Nigeria's TFR reached 6.9 in 1978. It had fallen to 5.1 by 2022.
All countries with TFRs greater than replacement rates have falling birth rates.
When you take in the demographic of an aging population, this is the drop off the cliff. No one knows for sure the population of the world in total. I have been observing this for several years now, when they were parroting the drum of over population I knew it was BS. As you spoke of, there is a lot of "assumptions" or "beliefs" not facts. I do not agree with people living longer, the boomers and their parents are going to have the longest longevity in our lifetime, and many of them are even struggling. They had cleaner lifestyle with nutritious food for a larger part of their lives than the generations after. The increase in disease in younger people proves this. I really think we go through this cycle every thousand years, it just wasn't recorded. When people are living in city's slave to a system, the want, desire, need and affordability to have children fades further with each generation.
The cost of living is the main driver of fertility rates decline, it would be interesting to see how that tracks.
The lower population curve is closer to that shown in the Limits to Growth models. (do a quick search for the graphic) The LtoG model actually shows a peak of less than 8 billion, which we have already passed. I haven't seen an explanation for that discrepancy.
Multiple LtG model runs were published, under different sets of assumptions. The doubled-resource run (BAU2) is the one most closely matching our actual trajectory, according to a 2020 paper by Herrington. BAU2 population peaks just prior to mid-century.
Thanks for such a clear presentation.
Two things:
0:17 That first chart always blows my mind. It's even crazier if you don't limit it to just the past 1000 years, but instead include the entirety of human existence.
How about the studies that tracked the steady decline of human sperm counts over decades and implied we're on track towards zero by the middle of this century. Similar trends were also found to be true in other species.
Great analysis. One linkage that I would examine more closely is how a declining birth rate impacts overall life expectancy. Hard decisions will need to be made as the number of active workers to retired workers continue to decline. In the US, we are presently at 2.9 workers per retiree. However, by 2030, this ratio will decline to 2:1. Something will need to give, and I expect it will be end of life care. If that is the case, then it would potentially have little overall impact to your analysis. However, if other solutions are adopted because older people vote at greater proportions to the young, then I might expect to see worsening health outcomes in younger generations.
i'd love to get email notifications when you publish new blogposts. any chance that might be possible? with other blogs i follow i never miss a post but with yours i often do because i can't figure out how to subscribe.
I think they dont want to talk about declining population because our economic system simply cannot handle it. Capitalism will collapse when there is no more growth. We will need a new solution
That's not the issue. We will need a new economic system because it is highly likely that intelligent robots will replace humans and human labor will have no value.
People have been predicting the collapse of capitalism for over 150 years... it won't die by itself, we need to decide collectively to adopt something that's not growth-dependent
@@bobwallace9753 yes, but the question is who makes the choice of a new system? Who owns the robots? Who gets to control the robots?
Hint: it's not necessarily democratic
@@trueriver1950
Well, in your opinion, who owns the robots? You do realize that capitalism won't work if the non-owners' labor has no value, don't you?
@@trueriver1950 there has been solid economic growth over the last 150 years. New resources were discovered, and population was rising to increase demand for produced goods. What's different now is the shrinking population.
The Bell Curve strikes yet again. Your final prediction mirrors the population graph of both a bacterial infection and a locust plague. All conform to the standard distribution graph as a function of time.
Lol. I was thinking yeast in a vat of grape juice. Closed system toxification.
Wine!
We're turning into wine 🍷
that is not the 'bell curve', but an exponential, turning into a sigmoid with saturation, or decline, even collapse.
A bell curve is a distribution plot not a temporal trend. Bacteria and locust populations increase exponentially as a function of the natural exponent "e". You should run for president.
@NicholBrummer exactly. We're at the whine stage. Euphoric, disoriented and a few might be angry. 😆
@@cratecruncher4974 Sorry how does your point clash with his? The bell curve itself is an exponential function, but its exponent is not monotonic.
I became a student of UCSD in 1969. Harold Urey talked to me about physics when I couldn't find my teaching assistant. Roger Revelle had a symposium on plate tectonics which I attended (partially because they were serving food). I was just a regular San Diego kid who could do math, yet they both saw value in educating their students. Scientist are human and want the "glory" of a Nobel . The JWST has given the current science community a lesson in humility. The standard model in Physics as well as demographic projections are at best a SWAG at a moment in time.
I have to say that I commend your cautious and conservative approach to this subject. There are informed folk out there in media-land who are saying that we, as a species, are actually in serious trouble and I think they are right. The collapse that will follow the population dwindling will not be fun, even tho' there may be better times after that period. I keep telling myself that we went down to a thousand 'breeding pairs' in the ice ages so we are pretty resilient but it is still concerning that this is not getting much attention in the political sphere.
People having fewer children today than 50 years ago is not due to resource constraints; it's due to changes in values. Almost every population group on the planet is much wealthier now than fifty years ago. Today's population is more wealthy, educated, urbanized, materialistic, and hedonistic; but it is less religious. I know rich people with few (or no) children, and poor people with many children, all in the same suburban geographical area. The difference is values.
Too many people are looking at the total population size and growth. More important is the pressure each of us is putting on the planet.. Even if the population drops significantly but everyone wants to live like people in North America, the planet is in trouble. Even if the population continues to grow, but per capita consumption drops, the global economy is in trouble. How to navigate between those two is the challenge.
You might appreciate the follow-up video and associated write-up that address impact and disproportionate demands:
ua-cam.com/video/hTMjxp3Nznk/v-deo.html
dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/06/brace-for-peak-impact/
Thank you for analysis and opinion.
In John Calhoun's rat studies, the decline did not stop. The rats developed antisocial anti breeding behaviors and even though surrounded by plentiful space nesting materials and water they went extinct at the end.
Google rat universe 133 to learn more about the seminal 197o's studies.
However the decline of other species may indicate that we are poisoning our environment in a way that makes it difficult for vertebrates to reproduce.
Looks a lot like the Club of Romes 'Limits of Growth' prediction of population. But rather then driven by accelerated death rates from a collapsing food supply, it's a collapse of birth rates due to the cost of living, housing etc.
Hello tom interesting video. What is you final projection for the world?
Will you be doing a deep dive of the impacts of the places with falling population? What does it mean for GDP growth, housing, immigration and debt?
THE AMERICAN WOMEN IS ONLY HAVING 1.6 CHILDREN PER WOMEN, NOT ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN ANY CULTURE OR ECONOMY, IN THE USA, IMMAGRATION WILL SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR THE ECONOMY
Great video.
Absolutely right projections seem to have been consistently optimistic. Our population forecasting has been poor.
One thing I'd point out, in regards to your "limits to growth" comment, is that fertility is not evenly distributed. Most children being born today are not being born in OECD, or even rapidly developing countries, where fossil resorces are widely exploited. They are being born in Africa and Central Asia. In fact many of them are being bor in countries without the agricultural base to support the current population. That's why small changes in commodity prices cause hardship in these places.
I really enjoyed your video, especially how you used statistical tools to look at current models.
Have you looked into the impact of infant mortality on female fertility? There is a lot of research indicating that fertility is driven by infant and child mortality.
Nice to see a projection from more realistic fertility forecasts, in light of recent declines. I would suggest a downward revision of Latin American fertility, considering recent drops in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. Seems fertility in this region can reach the levels previously only seen by East Asia.
I would have noted the impact of the century on the racial/ethnic/cultural makeup of the world population. Africa will account for the majority of births well before the end of the century by this model, no? The number of European or East Asian people is going to see a great decline proportionally.
Falling amount of young and increasing amount of older people - is also very impactful - and is happening now - more important that peak population (if you ask me). Total Population is like counting all the monsters in a tower defence game.
Compare your last graph of population to that of a graph of bacteria growth in a petri dish. Not surprisingly they are very similar.
Hi Tom, this is an excellent video. Thank you very much. In steadily declining fertility populations population peak is 35-40 years after peak child moment. Peak child has happened in 2012 so if the fertility trend is not reversed global population peak should happen between 2047 and 2052.
One more thing - there is decent amount of coverage in Nigerian press that their population numbers are seriously inflated. National budget is distributed per head so each regional leader is presenting inflated population estimates to get a bigger chunk of the money pie. Based on the voter registers and number of mobile phones they estimate that the population maybe as much as 100mln smaller than official. If this is a common problem across some other fast growing countries, population decline maybe happening much faster than 2040s.
Agree that peak births was 2012, according to UN WPP from 2022. The amount of demographic delay to peak depends on how close to replacement TFR is. If TFR stays as low as it is now or continues to decline a bit, the peak happens sooner (something my model allows me to track, given present age distributions).
This topic is soooo fascinating, and I've been following it for a while now.
I think there are a lot of unknown unknowns that are going to make everyone wrong, myself included. But here are some of the things that I am watching out for.
1) life extension tech is coming. I think that it is going to blow a lot of estimates away. It will be too late for boomers, but a lot of GenX and younger will be living and extra 5-10 years past our expected experation date, and younger generations will likely live progressively longer. There is evidence that there will be a natural limit around age 120, so extension beyond that will have social and moral questions of engineering ones self rather than just maintaining for longer... But even what can be done with "natural" life extension methods will throw a lot of wrenches in a lot of metrics.
2) the weaponization of kids. This goes 2 directions.
The first is what Russia is trying right now with government, media, church, and every voice screaming at their population that having lots of kids is theit patriotic duty to keep their national existence in the fight against "the west". But it isn't just a push to keep the front lines full of young blood to literally fight for esistance. There are economic benefits to being the growing population in a shrinking world will be palpable. And it isn't just nationalistic countries doing this. Japan and South Korea are pushing hard for their population to have more kids... And it's just not working.
But the flip side to this is what China effectively did the last 20 years. Everyone assumed that China was the inevitable coming leader of the world. This prevented fights, and attracted business... But last year we found out that a chunk of their 25 and younger crowd simply never existed. Extra benefits for would be parents who could spend those resources on themselves. Localities that get extra funding from government and world support organizations for humanitarian aide... Lots of reasons to do this. And China largely did it on accident, but others have taken notes and will do it on purpose.
3) the great wealth transfer. Boomers take a lot of flack for things that aren't totally their fault... But they did break the norms of social expectations and have soaked up a lot of resources. Previous to the boomers there was an expectation that you have a lot of kids, and give them your all, move in with one of them as part of your retirement, and help take on some of their domestic front. No generation built much wealth, and what wealth existed wasn't as siloed within a generation. Boomers are the first large generation with a lot of wealth, and they intend to be independent through retirement... But also intend to horde the bulk of their wealth until the end to remain independant.
Not saying that this is any better or worse than previous sociatal expectations... But what happens when the boomers eventually die? Their own kids will be well onto retirement when they get their inheritance, and the next generation won't be planning on an inheritance so they will be well onto their own retirement plans. My assumption is that a lot of that inheritance will trickle down to the grand kids in one way or another.
With so many complaints of increasing inflation, lack of housing, etc... What happens when those resources are focused on a much smaller generation at a much younger age? With a lot of those economic stresses alleviated, will they start having kids younger? And by extension have more of them?
4) automation will play a massive role. AI is largely Over-hyped... It's coming, but that revolution is largely 10-20 years away. But physical automation and robotics (with or without AI) is rolling out quick. On the one hand, it is coming before population decline, which will make for interesting times when the largest ever working population starts being less needed. But then as populations start declining in earnest, automation will be a requirement for economic survival as smaller populations have to provide goods and services for larger retired populations. Less of an issue on the US where out population chart looks more like a smokes tack than a collapse. But for many countries, automation will be essential.
Anywho, I'm not sure how these will play out, but I think these will likely be a lot of the biggest things to shape the coming decades as demographics change quickly. Going to be interesting times!
4) AI humanoid robots are already a reality. Tesla has a small number working in one of their factories right now. Progress is likely to be extremely fast. The 'revolution' may be over in 20 years.
There is a monstrous amount of money to be made by the companies that produce good AI robots. A humanoid robot should cost well under $10k to produce and have at least a ten year useful life. It should be able to work close to 24/365.
$10k / 10 years / 365 days / 24 hours = $0.11/hour. Plus a couple pennies for electricity. Capital will get thrown at companies working on human replacement robots. Some of the very smartest people will be very well paid to speed the process.
Financial markets will not respond like a gradual deflation to gradual population decline. We have a boom and bust cycle. So, instead, we will get more financial crises that either have to be papered over by central banks or governments or will devastate the housing markets, stock markets, and auto markets.
Population decline will quite a problem for agriculture too. We have become incredibly good at growing food, but if we produce too much, a long term price crash will result, causing widespread collapse of farms as they will be unable to sustain the payments on capital and inputs. Unless the decline is gradual enough.
a log scale on the y coordinate would make the graph easier to see the lower tfr
"Trust the science". The science: "I have no f idea"
Projections are really tenuous in times of rapid change. Will the rapid declines in fertility since 2008 continue, return to the slower declines of the previous 20 years, or do something else? Tom assumed the first alternative, and the UN assumed the second. Official projections by their nature don't assume rapid change.
(All of the following comments are just my uninformed speculation - so take it as a theoretical possibility).
One factor that seems to be at play is the redefinition of childhood. Back in the 1920's (and before), children in rural areas were seen as a necessary resource (in addition to being loved offspring). More children meant more economic output and potentially greater wealth. Basically an additional child brought in more economic wealth than they cost. They were also less likely to survive.
So in an effort to increase family wealth (nobody was wealthy, just trying to survive) and to account for the possibility that some of the children would not survive, it was in the best interests of a family to have many children.
Fast forward to later generations and children are no longer a part of the workforce. This started in urban areas but since the 40's has started to creep into rural areas as well (child labor laws in the U.S. began in the late 30's). By the late 50's children basically no longer worked (or if they did, it was not enough to overcome their expenses making them a net negative in terms of family wealth). By the turn of the century this has only accelerated. Children now are meant to play, learn, and grow up as slowly as we can let them (with obvious, often tragic exceptions).
Couple this with the time and physical impacts having a child has on a woman, and you start to see disincentives to having multiple children. Especially as women gain more political and economic power. Having a child now becomes a product of wanting one (or more) more than the necessity of having them.
This incentive to not have as many children might have had to fight with a cultural expectation to have many children. I am guessing that that explains why we didn't fall off a cliff in the 50's. If a woman of (typical) child-bearing age is roughly 20-40 years of age, then we have had between 2 and 4 generations since the incentives changed. I can see where it could take that long for cultural shifts (responding to economic realities) to change.
Africa is still on an earlier part of this trend line. But their shift is happening faster than happened in the western world. I expect that as the role of children (and the corresponding role of women) changes there, we will see a rapid progression to a lower birth rate there as well.
TLDR: We used to need children as an economic resource. So more children meant more wealth. About 80 years ago (in the west) that role shifted to be one where children are an economic burden (at least till they reach maturity, though sometimes beyond as well). This has happened quickly and will continue to permeate throughout the world, hitting Africa last (though their trend lines seem to indicate it is happening faster there).
It's hard to understand how a diligent assessment of future population trends could be done without considering climate change and ecosystem collapse.
Read the Meadows report on limit of growth for such projections
Are you referring to the 1976 book "Limits to Growth" co-authored by Donella H. Meadows and Dennis L. Meadows?
We're likely to see a big hit on population numbers due to climate change as some parts of the globe become uninhabitable. We already know how much resistance there is to immigration in most countries. Climate refugees will have a problem and many will die in place.
How many might perish, we can't predict. But it might not be very different than what we see with major pandemics.
About 7 million people died in the COVID pandemic. That's 0.01% of the global population. This pales compared to the loss of life we can expect from global warming. Think in terms of the bubonic plague that killed between 30% and 60% of the population of Europe, then make it worldwide. Tipping points and interacting variables make it impossible to predict with certainty the number of early deaths we can expect but fossil fuel emissions and ecosystem destruction continue to accelerate, making it likely that conditions will be worse than we imagine.
@@fr57ujf
If we stopped greenhouse emissions today the planet would continue to heat for some number of years until the extra carbon was removed from our atmosphere. That's physics.
We are replacing fossil fuels with EVs and renewable energy. EVs are now about the same cost to manufacture as ICEVs and cheaper to operate. The price of EVs should rapidl decrease over the next few years. Wind and solar are our least expensive ways to generate electricity. Battery prices have massively dropped making reliable 24/365 renewable energy less expensive than extracting and burning fossil fuels. That is driving a shift from oil, coal, and natural gas to non-carbon emitting energy. That's economics.
It's not unreasonable to think we will have largely transitioned from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2040. The issue we need to tackle is removing carbon from our atmosphere faster than just letting natural processes doing it at nature's pace. We need some smart people working on this problem.
A lot of people may well die during the human-caused hot period. We need to work on limiting the number of deaths and cooling down the planet right now.
As civilisation we tend to create a new pyramid of power and money because social networks caused acceleration opposite to altruistic expectations: everyone chases wellbeing upon empathy and living for others. I mean this egoism is declining humanity in overall. Active woke distortions, passive and forgotten ethical life. Life is pricy? It's all about greed. We can hope life will be long and content even without children, but sometimes it's clear it won't.
YES, ALL LIVING STANDARDS WILL BE GOING DOWN, NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FACTORIES, BUT IMMAGRATION WILL PROLONG THE PROBLEM IN THE USA
@@domcizek I love immigrants street vendor food in california
They make it illegal to have children of you're poor
I agree with you that there are many factors that decide the future population. I think the world oil production will rather soon start to permantely decline. By 2100 there will be very little oil left. So a lot less than 10 billion people.
Renewable energy technologies are making rapid advances.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug its a lie that we have infinite free energy all this conspiracies are bull shit god did not design this planet so there can be infinite human been in a finite planet with finite resources
Obviously there will be a point where oil production will decline. In a sense we're almost there, because Russian oil will fall off the market, and the only real new oil play is Guyana offshore, but that pretends that people without oil won't double down on using coal, since the choice between no energy and dirty inefficient energy is barely a choice at all.
Honestly though, population decline may precede all of that, especially if large parts of Africa and Asia lose access to cheap petroleum based fertilizers which made the Green revolution possible in the first place.
@@darkfool2000 yup
Technically OIL production has already started to fall a few years ago.
"Barrels per day" numbers have been propped up with "equivalents" such as bio, hydrogen, recycled fuels added into the charts as of they were actually "oil". And we are using a higher ratio of natural gas vs oil, finding new applications of the cheap gas replacing the oil based process. If you actually look at the amount of oil extracted per day it is already declining.
As many above have mentioned our thurst for constant energy growth is being answered by "green" alternatives to petroleum and coal.
If we are looking at data in 2040 that allows us to determine that population growth has declined to zero, the reality will be that it actually declined to zero sometime ten to twenty years earlier. When we are able to see it in the numbers, and be certain, it has already happened sometime in prior years. Based on the way these population numbers are behaving it is possible that population grown has already declined to zero but our counting systems are inaccurate. They are inaccurate within a reasonable margin of error, but it is possible we are already at zero population growth, and the major economies of the world are starting to realize it. All that is needed is for an economy, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Ukraine, Russia - to go below replacement fertility and stay there for a decade or longer. We should be contemplating what could be happening if the global population is on a trajectory that has already peaked and is declining. USA population if immigration is taken out, is declining. Consider what happened repeatedly in John B Calhoun's experiments. On a very practical level, what happens across Europe and North America when over the next 10 years Boomers go to sell a home they have owned for decades, and there are no buyers. This is what we will very likely be facing in a few years.
It will be interesting to see what happens when large countries start to decline in population. I don’t think we really understand what that’s going to look like
Japan may provide insight into thus question.
Nothing will really happen in my opinion. Won't have much effect. Nothing diasastrous has happened in Japan. Depopulation is just doomer nonsense.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug I agree that we don't know what's going to happen and all projections are fantasies, as the video made clear. But I do think the 1340s, and later decades, in Europe, North Africa and Asia (a world very tightly connected thru trade) hold many important lessons for us globally now.
Good video.. Agree with the analysis that population might peak much ahead than UN estimates.. If not 2040, surely around 2050.. But surely not 2080, that is way off mark
All the models around population growth are likely to be mistaken. They all just assume Africa is going to follow the trend and there is no reason to think that it will. There is survey data from within Africa where women are asked how many children is the ideal number and in some places the average answer was 13.
It's not a matter of theoretical preference, but of resource limits. Africa, at 1.5 billion, imports 85% of its food from outside the continent. A declining population in the rest of the world is unlikely to somehow continue ramping up agricultural production to support arbitrary growth in economically-challenged and resource-poor Africa. The U.N. projection would have Africa rising to 4 billion by 2127, but how is that supported, biophysically? The continent probably can't get there on its own volition.
@@tommurphy2694 I agree, but I just don't think we will stop feeding them unless we ourselves face shortages.
OTOH, when X changes, a change in Y usually follows. IOW, people change their behavior, whatever that happens to be when the status quo changes. This is why I think TFR will go up in the future. A lowering of TFR was a great response to the huge increase in population all across the world. But when the world population drops, people will change their behavior.
China is proactively making changes. Not only did they get rid of the OCP, they now offer small financial rewards for a 2nd and 3rd child. Since it is a one party state, it is likely to get draconian, just like they did with the ocp. Forced pregnancy termination was a thing. There are people in China called "black" because they don't exist on paper. They were born at home and never registered. If you are forcing termination, how much of a leap is it to outlaw termination and the most effective form of bc?
@@tommurphy2694 The "population correction" in Africa (and parts of West and South Asia) will likely be horrific. Those countries badly need a one child policy.
Maybe they will be like all other peoples and move to the cities though, chinese money is flowing into projects in and this is different to US aid like grain and free clothes that destroy industries, in my opinion Africa could be over the next 80 years that same as the rest of the world has been the last 80
@@antonyjh1234 I wouldn't count on it. Also, the B&R project is worse than anything the West ever did. At least the infrastructure we provided actually worked.
We need to starting planning for a degrowth economy now! Economic models that rely on never-ending growth in our finite world are doomed to failure.
As with everything else in the world the best way to avoid economic disaster once growth turns to reduction is to have relatively balanced distribution of income before it happens.
As long as we have a large income gap between demographics, we will have massive starvation and civil collapse as the economy starts to reduce. The wealth elite with lie and cheat to maintain their wealth and growth, the working poor will starve, which will lead to a quick fall in demand making the reduction even faster in a doom feedback loop.
If we have more equal income distribution, then the overall economy can shrink slowly with very little impact to prosperity for anyone. The economy can ebb and flow with organic demand as population and efficiencies change over time.
Of course humanity cannot achieve improvements to income distribution so we are doomed. But at least we know we are doomed.
Why wouldn't human behavior change when circumstances changed?
If population fell back to the 1980 level, why wouldn't some populations change their norms etc to deal?
Those conversations are already starting, but unfortunately from a position of complete ignorance.
It's plausible more deaths and low fertility continue to accelerate.
An economic recession is underway in many places and with a globally synchronized monetary system it will catch up everywhere and it could be worse than 2008. We could have more war break out and with the dying off of old white men we could see competency plummet. Not only could infrastructure crumble, we might not be able to feed all those Africans. With shrinking population economic/funding systems stop working. Healthcare, pensions, taxes all plummet. Maybe hormone disrupters like micro plastics continues to get worse, women and men ideologically continue to drift apart, fertility continues to free fall with no bottom other than an asymptotic 0.0.
Oh, my white savior I'm hungry. Please, give me food 😂. Come to Ghana, and see if some white man is feeding us over here. Stop misbehaving.
Such arrogance in your statements. Dynamics that are currently driving the system will change. Change is the only constant. I am cautiously optimistic that humans will be able to overcome whatever challenges we face.
@@yashwardhansable5187 what arrogance? I hedged the entire statement with "its plausible"... not "it's certain". My point was its within the realm of possibility that things spiral towards the downside, that there are a lot of risks that could cause feedback loops that could feed into each other causing things to accelerate towards the worse. It's important to at least be cognizant of that possibility and hopefully prepare a little for that outcome.
Starvation cults in Kenya should be an indicator that we cannot feed all those Africans, already.
I am waiting for the day that the world population clock starts going backwards.
Frankly, I think it already is, and most of the clocks we see on the Internet aren't accurate.
The world has rapidly urbanized which has driven up the cost of having children. It is expected to continue to urbanize.
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug You have obviously never been to the US midwest and west. People are not have fewer children due to resource constraints. People all over the world are more wealthy today than they were fifty years ago. People are having fewer children because they value children less. Part of that is education, part is urbanization, part is decline of religion, and part is materialism and hedonism.
@@dzcav3People are having fewer children because they are waking up to the brainwashing that tells them life has no meaning if they don't reproduce. They also are waking up to the immense destruction and degradation of the planet and don't want to contribute to that. Not everyone is a simpleton.
Urbanization seems to be one of the drivers of lower birth rates. The reason, apparently, is because in rural settings children are an asset. At a very early age they can start to do useful labor and all one has to do is feed them.
In urban settings there are very few ways for children to bring resources into the household and you generally have to not only feed them, but to educate them. In urban settings children become a liability.
@@dzcav3
Part of the reason. In rural settings where agriculture is not mechanized, children are an economic asset. In urban settings children are an economic liability.
I doubt the decline in religiosity has much, if anything, to do with it. It's more about the time and money cost of children in urban settings and access to effective birth control.
Population decline is strongly aligned with urbanization. In a city it's very hard to raise a big family and you have to provide for them instead of children helping out.
Now, an average person in the city pollutes in an order of magnitude more than a person living in a rural area especially in a developing country. That means that though we think that curbing population is a good thing, in fact it is due to urbanization and thus will only accelerate emissions and global warming...
And yet our civilization is built around continued growth which was always a preposterous notion.
A very important point: it simply cannot continue, and was always a flawed premise that will soon be slapped down.
You still can growh,in quality!
@@BrunoHeggli-zp3nl Ha! That's a twist. But even with that there is a maximum that you hit very quickly.
@@luciusblackwood2640 The quality maximum is FAR above what most of the world's people are living with every day now.
@@Winspur1982 It doesn't matter what most people get. All that matters is what is left.
Unfortunately this analysis aligns with what my "gut" (I know...) has been telling me after years of digging into the dire situation humanity appears to be heading into. Digging into all sources I could find for the numerous issues impacting global society my gut has told me we have ~20 year until societal collapse (I do not exactly know what that means) and about 50 years until humanity is essential done being the dominant species (I feel like it means the end of humanity as we know it, but that could be my interpretation - personal bias is really hard to filter out) . I think (hope?) those are sequential, giving us ~70 years.
And yes, I am well aware that a "gut" feeling is far from science but it isn't that kind of a thing. It's more of a subconscious synthesis of all the data I've been taken in being processed at a more fundamental level. All I can say is my "gut" has been right way too many times in telling me things that I only come to understand *fully* much later. Again, it's not simply a "feeling" although I wish it was.
Some scientists say that the planet's ability to sustain human life is between 3 to 5 billion people. We're currently over 8 billion so many of us will exit the scene if this is correct.
Under estimated factors:
- The degradation of our environnement is accelerating and will put more and more pressure on our health which will eventually lead to reduce the life expectancy.
- The fear of the futur is growing amount the population which will lead to not want to have a baby in these scaring future
- The cost of living is increasing a lot and the power of purchase for the young generation is rather low comparatively to the young baby boomer time. In 1990 I bought my house for twice my salary, today it is 10 times my salary (in Canada). When your purchase power is low then you do not want to add another expense as a child
- The cost of raising a child today is way higher than in the 70s so why have a child you can not afford
So that is why I think that the earth population will peak sooner than forecasted and will decrease more rapidly than forecasted.
Indeed, one might call these early-peak projections "conservative" for the reasons you detail, which would put the U.N. projections way out to lunch.
Glad i was born in`62 mate and won`t live to see the shit hit the fan
@Tom Murphy I completely understand why you changed the assumptions in the birth rates. However I believe you might have inadvertently made an assumption you have not even realized you were making in the death rates. It is understandable why you can imagine no new medical technology in the developed economies, and therefore no increase in life expectancies in the developed economies.
It makes no sense however to assume zero reduction in infant mortality, zero reduction in child mortality, and zero implementation of existing medical technology in the less developed economies and least developed economies.
The country of Romania had zero economic growth from 1980 to 2000 ( when analyzing GDP in constant dollars, or accounting for the inflation).
Even with zero economic growth, the country reduced infant mortality, reduced child mortality, and implemented existing medical technology to increase total life expectancy over that 20 year period.
The implicit assumption you are making by assuming zero growth in life expectancies in lesser developed economies and least developed economies is a continuous global recession lasting until the end of the century.
Assuming unsustainable consumption and populatiions can be sustained is a modern form of faerietale. Biodiversity loss, top soil loss, radically unsustainable agribusiness aka "green revolution" required to feed today's world which basically boils down to converting petro chemicals and a few other inputs applied by industrial machines into food. None of these can be sustained.
It's safe to say the further beyond sustainable limits we push the lower the long term population will and can be, since we will be using up non renewable, or very slow to renew (like topsoil and aquifers) resources to maintain or expand our numbers. And that's barely touching on the pollution we are generating to do this. One part of which we focus on, namely greenhouse gas emissions leading to global heating, but that's just one symptom of the larger artempt to convert the planets finite resources into an infinitely growing human population.
Formula is somewhat basic: each region that can produce its own food and water sustainably is probably going to do ok. Warning signs are desalinization, declining water tables, top soil loss, farmland loss due to soil degradation, import of food staples.
In terms of further expansion numbers it's common to ignore the massive amounts of toxins being released by industrial practices, plus the increasing stresses of living in an overpopulated world. Of course birth rates are decling, depending on your optimism levels, we are easily 3-8x over the Earth's carrying capacity. Insect collpses in industrial world are all you need to see. Or desert nations with populations easily 20x over their carrying capacity converting oil exports into population expansion. Each region is different in this regard.
With regard to all the climate data, including the aerosol masking paradox, we'!! be lucky if we make it to 2030!
In Victorian times it was not unusual for a woman to have a dozen children or more
So even an average of 5 is a drop compared to (say) 1850
It's been apparent for the last decade that the UN is WAY behind the curve in its population assumptions. The UN seems to think that industrial revolutions and transformations today will happen at the same pace they did a century ago, and that, in the long term, everything will return to "normal", as defined by the UN. The IIASA projections and those from more independent sources such as the book Empty Planet (by Bricker and Ibbitson in 2019) have shown lower peaks and much earlier than the UN projections.
A large bunch of old people sitting around, having to care for each other, and live simply, with the youth needing to live caring for themselves, or the old, and not enough young people capable of filling conscription ranks such that, border conflicts will be smaller and more localized due to fewer bodies available for large armies. Food will need to become more locally grown and transported. Sounds a more positive future.
Yes! Some people will say "this isn't civilization," but it is. It is the kind of civilization that built Stonehenge and which kept the human species going for millennia across the planet.
Peter Zeihan's book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" is a good place to start on the impacts of population decline. In some cases, deglobalization can lead to worse outcomes for the environment. For example, as Russia depopulates, they could lose the ability to keep their natural gas outputs up, leading to countries switching back to coal. We have already seen this happen due to the Ukraine war. There are other population models. The Wittgenstein Center predicts global population to peak in 2070 at 9.4 billion.
China's birth rate plunged after 2000 because a generation had grown up in the cities where most of the people around them were an only child. Being the only child had been normalised. The government no longer had to restrict births. Having one child had become people's expectation. Now the government finds it can't get most people to consider having more children. Is this a cultural trend that can ever be reversed, to stabilise the population? I suspect it would take a generation of higher birth rate compulsion, like the one child policy.
At a certain baseline human-nature level I think governments can't control their citizens' childbearing behavior EITHER WAY, no matter how much they want to. Mormons and certain other Christian & Jewish sects in the US have defied the general downward trend in fertility rates for many decades. And this holds even for people who live their entire lives in dictatorships like China's. There is a limit to how much bodily tyranny / social engineering they will tolerate.
Never in all of history have we not had a population that was growing: handling this change is going to be one of the biggest challenges of this century 🤷♂️
We've already got the solution. We have AI humanoid robots doing work in factories right now. We're in the very early stage of developing the AI but progress should be rapid. We know how.
I call bullshit on that assumption about history. From 1340 - 1540 it is quite likely that world population shrank.
Thank you for explaining your model in detail ... I think you may need to make some changes to this model as a result of the COVID vaccine ... I think that will affect the birth rates but only time will prove (or disprove) this possibility!
If some geopolitical analysts are correct, the pullback from globalism, the collapse of Russian exports of both grain and fertilizers could cause a huge drop in the productivity in the subsaharan Africa farming region and drive a famine throughout Africa that could reduce African populations by nearly 1 billion.
Dont worry everything will be fine!
This is a good perspective. UN projections are very optimistic...
One person's optimism is another's nightmare. Ecological health (important for human health) would call the UN projections alarming.
@@tommurphy2694 That is a good flip as well. On your video on energy I wanted to ask you what you think will happen after the rapid reduction in demands in energy due to reduction in population. Could what we are seeing in China a harbinger of what to come?
28/06/2024 India's population 1.5 billion in government record 1.45 billion life is very difficult because the population explosion here
Links to the blog?
posts related to population: dothemath.ucsd.edu/tag/population/
@@tommurphy2694 Thank you!
The dowry system along with the Ultrasound has actually contributed to a reduced birth rate. Since male babies were considered favourable, many female babies were aborted but now in many countries there is a larger proportion of males to females. In parts of these same countries, young women have actually become scarce leaving them to choose their male mates instead of the other way around. These young women are chosing men who are wealthier and want less children.
countries need to encourage people to clusters in particular areas stop spending money on long range infrastructure, look at countries with really livable cities as best practice Amsterdam, Tokyo for eg. Less sprawl makes them more livable and cheaper to run. Less roads. less distance for buses etc. let some areas of your country return to nature imagine a vibrant Singapore type city surrounded by nature , look Ottawa Canada awesome setting,
Population collapse wont be the issue. Debt will be. Debt, fueled by fiat currency currently runs the global economy. Eventually some nation will have its working population shrink to the point where it can no longer service its nations debt. At which time it will implode. Now if its a small nation like Sri Lanka in 2022, no big deal, unless you live there. But if its a major nation, and US debt starts getting dumped. Its over.
Not just for the US, but for all the dollar denominated debt contracts, which are how most nations do transactions, are done. Global trade stops over night because why am I giving you food for worthless fiat currency that has zero value.
Then billions more die. Most nations outside Nigeria in Africa are not self sufficient for food supplies. Some of them import 90% of calories. Even Nigeria would take a massive hit, but might endure. The average person has no idea. Its nightmare fuel.
Housing and dating / social media. Mostly. I mean the drop after 2010.
I.e. Tinder set fire to the Western birth rate - nice irony that
I really want to live to see world population park and decline. That is a planet I want to explore, even though we have no economic model for it.
HUMAN EXTINTION IS IN THE FUTURE, HUNGARY IS ALREADY PAYING 90 THOUSAND DOLLLAES TO EACH WOMEN THAT HAS 3 CHILDREN
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug AS LONG AS YOU HAVE BIG MONEY TO PAY, BUT THERE WILL NOT BE NURSES TO TAKE CARE OF YOU , BUT THERE MAY BE SOME 80 YEAR OLD NURSES STILL ALIVE
@@JustinWilliams-ed2ug THE GOV MUST PAY WOMEN TO HAVE CHILDREN, HUNGARY IS ALL READY PAYING 90 THOUNSAND DOLLARS FOR ANY WOMEN TO HAVE 3 CHILDREN, PLUS THE GOV MUST GIVE FREE CHILD CARE, AND FREE HEALTH CARE , ITALY IS GIVING AWAY FREE HOUSES, IF YOU MOVE THERE,
It is all Africa. The rest barely matters. Africa projected to add 600 million by 2040 and another 800 million by 2060, and another 600 million by 2080. Those assume high fertility rates don't come down quickly, but even if they do the % of young people in these countries is very high, so even with lower fertility lots of women in the child bearing ages. Nigeria alone is projected to add 100 million by 2040, another 100 million by 2060 and another by 2080. Is this possible ...???? Similar with Ethiopia. If these do not happen, a peak at 2040 is quite likely. What can stop them??? Hopefully something. A world population back at 2 billion would make the survival of humanity a much safer bet ... and much better for the planet.