
If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still increasing - sohkamyung
https://ourworldindata.org/population-momentum
======
g8oz
Related: Japan's birth rate is 1.43 children per woman now, far below
replacement rate of 2.1. If the trend continues forever (which is a silly
assumption) the Japanese people will completely disappear by the year....2500.
I don't think we need to worry about extinction.
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/12068068/Mappe...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/12068068/Mapped-
how-a-demographic-time-bomb-will-transform-the-global-economy.html)

~~~
dev_dull
It’s not really extinction that people worry about. It’s insolvency in
virtually every social program the government runs.

And it really doesn’t take much because those programs were created with very
generous predictions in growth. For social security the insolvency date is
2025 according to our own governments accounting.

~~~
moorhosj
==For social security the insolvency date is 2025 according to our own
governments accounting. ==

Without changes, the Social Security system will pay out 79% of benefits
starting in 2034 [1]. The concept that there will be no money paid out is oft-
repeated, but mistaken.

Certainly a 21% cut is very significant, but there will still be funds.
Obviously, the sooner we make small changes, the better funded it will be
long-term. Things like changing the inflation index, removing the income cap
or adjusting the full-retirement date could fill the gap entirely.

[1] [https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-
summary.html](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Don't forget technology deflation. The less dollars you need overall (cheap
energy, cheap electric mobility, technology used to make healthcare more
efficient) makes a benefits haircut more tolerable (although we are a very
wealthy nation and have the means to avoid a benefits haircut).

When we get to universal healthcare, if my house is paid off, I have solar on
my roof, and I have a paid off electric car, I don't expect my expenses to
simply survive to be that high (and could live on less than 50% of my
estimated social security benefit).

~~~
i_am_proteus
If current social security isn't going to be fully paying out in the future,
where does the money come for universal health care?

~~~
toomuchtodo
The 9% of admin overhead waste in the current healthcare system. Don't even
need to cut provider pay.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/12/shocking-truth-20-of-
health-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/12/shocking-truth-20-of-health-care-
expenditures-wasted-in-us-and-other-nations.html)

------
rjf72
As an aside, I think looking at the global fertility rate is not very
informative. The only reason that global fertility rates remain above 2 is
because of Africa and the Middle East. The people of developed nations are,
for the most part, going to gradually go extinct. This is list as of nations
by fertility rate. [1] And that list is also an aggregate. Things such as
education, modest or secular religious views, and income all work as major
factors _against_ fertility when looking at the composition of what is
already, even as an aggregate, below replacement fertility rates.

This paints an interesting picture for the future. This [2] is a study from
Pew showing the expected changes in religiosity in the future. Unaffiliated
are expected to decrease from 16.4% to 13.2% by 2050, Buddhists down 7.1% to
5.2%., Muslims to increase from 23.2% to 29.7%, and so on. I don't understand
why fertility rate is not a bigger consideration for people who consider
themselves interested or invested in social progress. Fertility is arguably
the biggest factor there is in what this world will look like in the coming
years. If helping people to become economically comfortable, secular, and
educated leads to them no longer reproducing - you're going to end up taking
two steps back for every step forward.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate)

[2] - [https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-
projections-20...](https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-
projections-2010-2050/)

~~~
simonh
It's also possible to be for social progress, but also think the world is
over-populated. In fact if a person generally worries about the future of
humanity, I would not be surprised to see a strong correlation between those
two attitudes.

A fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply
'going extinct'. You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment
indefinitely. Otherwise if you pick a moment of rising population you'll
extrapolate up to infinity or if you pick a moment of falling population
you'll extrapolate to zero. Reality doesn't work like that. Arguably it's just
a trend towards right-sizing the population.

Globally fertility rates have been falling for many decades. It's hardly
surprising that the poorest countries are among the last to see fertility
rates decline the most, but as income and education rates in those regions
rise, their fertility rates will also fall.

As a for secularization, which you seem to conflate with social progress,
counting 'Muslims' and 'Christians' isn't a simple exercise. Counting everyone
born to Muslim parents as Muslim doesn't make any more sense than counting
everyone who gives presents at Christmas as Christian. In fact attendances at
Mosques and actual participation in religious activities is in decline across
most of the Muslim world. In Europe most 'Muslims' do not pray every day.
Egypt is a good proxy for trends in the Muslim world due to it's cultural
influence. There are steep declines in religious practice and support for
imposing Sharia Law has more than halved over the last decade.

~~~
Ygg2
World isn't overpopulated. I don't think there is a hard limit on number of
people.

    
    
        >You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely.
    

I assume the model probably looks at chances that offspring of Muslim parents
share parents religion.

    
    
        > fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'.
    

When you have countries with median age 40+, you know their health care and
other systems are also struggling. The lower your fertility the older your
society, the older your society, the lower your fertility. Can't attract
immigrants? You are fucked basically.

~~~
avar
> I don't think there is a hard limit on number of people.

We have around 7 billion people now. At the current growth rate of about 1%/yr
the biomass of human beings will exceed the current weight of the planet Earth
around the year 7200.

Not long after that this hypothetical growing humanity would collapse into a
black hole under its own weight.

It'll already be quite cramped in the year 5400 with 1% growth. We'll have 5
people for every square meter of the surface of Earth (we have 510.1 trillion
m^2). That's about the density near the front-row of a standing concert.

~~~
ses1984
So you agree, no hard limits?

~~~
ses1984
it's a joke people.

------
lunchables
Maybe I'm missing something but I feel like the title is misleading.

>If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still
increasing

But, it is, isn't it? The best TLDR I can grok (and forgive me, it's early and
the coffee hasn't kicked in) is that there are fewer births per woman but more
women in the reproductive age, so more births overall?

Hopefully someone can help correct my misunderstanding.

~~~
delecti
From the article, the number of children hasn't increased. The decrease in
births per women cancels out the increase in women of reproductive age,
resulting in the same rough number of births per year.

It really comes down to this:

> But it of course also matters that all of us today live much longer than our
> ancestors just a few generations ago. Life expectancy is now twice as long
> in all world regions.

~~~
cblades
_twice_ as long?! That is nuts, what's the math on that. Am I wrong in
understanding that to mean, e.g., in lots of places the life expectancy was 40
and now it's 80?

~~~
cadlin
Life expectancy is largely driven by infant mortality. Each marginal child
that lives to 60 is equal to 12 adults living 5 years longer.

------
rahuldottech
TL;DR: life expectancy is longer now than ever before, so more women in the
reproductive bracket, and this basically cancels out a falling fertility rate.

~~~
0n34n7
No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100
years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50.

The interesting point here is the concept of “population momentum” which acts
like a capacitor that buffers decreasing fertility rates in the short term -
yet - “peak child” has been reached.

I think the takeaway here is people who extrapolate global population in 2100
at 15+ Billion have it wrong.

~~~
simonh
>No. The reproductive bracket has remained fairly constant in the last 100
years - i.e whether people get to 70 or 100, reproduction stops at ~50.

You're looking at the wrong thing. It's the life expectancy of the children
that matters most, not the life expectancy of adults into old age. The reason
the number of women in the reproductive bracket has risen is that more of
those births are surviving to child bearing age.

~~~
AstralStorm
To a point this trend does continue, with developing countries taking up some
slack.

We'll see soon if this theory is correct with globally stagnating population
or not.

~~~
simonh
I prefer to say stabilising.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
How you choose to spin it does nothing to change the very negative economic
situation that a non-increasing population would bring.

~~~
jcadam
It's all self correcting in the long run, I say.

A non-increasing population leads to economic stagnation (at best). That,
coupled with a decline in religiosity leading to a loss of societal cohesion
will eventually bring down the whole house of cards that is modern
civilization.

Famine, war, etc. follows. And we're back to a less populated world with high
infant mortality again. Hard times lead to a return to religiosity and large
families.

Hopefully this all happens after I'm gone.

~~~
simonh
What makes you believe secularism leads to reduced social cohesion? Surely it
eliminates a source of friction between religious groups?

~~~
antepodius
Suppose every member of a small town went to church every sunday. Everyone
interacts with everyone else in the area, for a bit.

You don't get that in secular society.

~~~
oblio
There's many ways to socialize and few of them are religious. I'm willing to
bet we had parties way before we invented religion ;)

~~~
antepodius
Harvest festivals were religious- or at least tied up in religion.

You can't just take a core element of a heavy intertwined, complex system
without collateral damage. It's like deleting a file in a spaghetti codebase.
Half the codebase interacts with any given file in some way or other.

------
erickj
I had assumed it would have been due to zombies... who knew?

