
The world might run out of people (2019) - WheelsAtLarge
https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-might-actually-run-out-of-people/
======
quicklime
> The United Nations predicts that the global population will soon explode.

No, they don't. They predict it'll plateau at 11 billion by 2100, and believe
that the fastest growth is behind us.

[https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Lin...](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/900)

~~~
timerol
The text has the same number, but interprets it, ah, interestingly: "By 2100,
that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green
scenario."

This is a pretty ridiculous statement from the article, considering the
history of population growth. Growing from 7.8B humans to 11B in 80 years is a
significantly reduced growth rate compared to historical data. It's even
reduced growth on an absolute scale. Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B
humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few
generations. I think we'll be able to handle to slow, steady population growth
of the 21st century.

We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century, and population
growth isn't even on the list.

Edit: I finished reading the article. I would not recommend that course of
action. The so-called "running out of people" scenario is that the world has
between 8 and 9 billion people in 2100. While that is a significant change to
the model, calling it "running out of people" is clickbait garbage.

[1]: [https://www.worldometers.info/world-
population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)

~~~
curo
> We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century

I've been on the hunt for an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest
challenges are. Anyone know where this body of work might be?

Copenhagen Consensus is an interesting one as a list of economists ranking
cost-to-impact ratios. Something similar or adjacent?

[1]:
[https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/](https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/)

~~~
nicoburns
> an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are

No such thing exists. Such an assessment would be inherently political.

~~~
curo
True, although I think we can all smell the difference between a work intended
for discovery vs. one that begins from a preset position.

------
hn_throwaway_99
> Once that decline begins, it will never end.

I always roll my eyes at researchers who take a trend and then expand it to
its infinite conclusion. The forces that are causing a change in the rate of
growth may look very different once the dynamics inherent in a large
population with lots of resource competition go away.

Also, if you look at the UN numbers, as another commenter said, they are NOT
expecting a "population explosion". Indeed, they are seeing the rate of
decline accelerating pretty much everywhere. The big difference is that the
proportion of young people in places like Africa is enormous, so there is
already a lot of "population momentum". It will take time for those huge
cohorts to pass their way through the population pyramid.

~~~
imtringued
I think it is pretty lazy to think that this is irreversible. It only took a
century for the growth to happen in the first place. Having lots of children
is much easier than not having children.

------
chiph
Something they didn't mention is the rise of personal wealth. As people enter
the middle class, they start having fewer children. As to why - I'm not a
economist or sociologist, but I expect it's partly because they aren't family
farming anymore and don't need the free labor, and partly because they have
access to birth control.

~~~
AdrianB1
In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have
little left for their own kids. When the government takes more than half of
your income to give it to others and when the healthcare is free, but kind of
missing, having your own kids is sometimes an economic challenge, especially
when the fertility age is when people are also juniors and financially
lacking; pushing childbirth to later in life is challenged by reduced female
fertility rate over 30 years old.

~~~
boomlinde
_> In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have
little left for their own kids._

If that's anywhere like where I live, "lower class" means people that don't
pay as much taxes but on the other hand end up having even less money left.
Yet, lower class people tend to have more children and fertility has a
negative correlation to income. Perhaps it's a matter of education and
ambition rather than the economic challenge.

~~~
quantified
Maybe it’s that offspring are a form of survival wealth that become less
necessary when you have more material wealth in your house and your community?
Pure speculation as I read this.

~~~
sukilot
What is "survival wealth"? Is that "savings and investments for future"?

~~~
quantified
Essentially. I just coined that while writing it, glad someone made sense of
it. “How do I survive when I’m unable to fully provide or do for myself?” If
my children are likely to be successful I don’t need to spread my luck out
among 12 of them. As others have pointed out, they are labor-intensive and if
you buy into certain socio-economic structures they’re fairly capital-
intensive too.

I wonder if some if it is also the capital intensity of children, the higher
the monetary investment you bring (clothes, gear, schools, activities) the
harder it is to have lots unless you have the money.

------
usrusr
Not all educated women who are in control of their lives decide against
children, far from it.

If all women are educated and in control, every child of the next generation
will have an educated mother who decided to have children and those mothers
will likely pass on the cultural traits that lead to this decision. The result
will be a generation whose reproduction rate is much less impacted by
education and being in control than previous generations who to a large part
had mothers lacking education and control. Reproduction rates will stabilize
as motherly role models adapt.

------
benja123
I didn't read the entire article. I take issue with any article that uses
female education as a reason for the decrease in family size.

I understand where it is coming from, but I think it is oversimplified...
Increased female education happens when a society is more educated. That is
you could probably switch female with male and get the same results (which is
also over simplified).

The reality is so many things are changing that is causing the birthrate to
decrease and it's way to hard to blame it on one factor over another. You
could probably argue that technology, wealth and what is the social norm in
the society we live have a massive effect on the decrease in birthrate in
western countries.

Now I live in Israel. The religious have an extremely large number of children
and it has nothing to do with the female education level and everything to do
with religion! In fact the females are often more educated than the men and
are the ones with Jobs!. What is interesting though is the secular Jews, like
my wife and I, usually have 3+ kids (we are at number 2). It's just the norm
here and society caters to families with children

------
carapace
The Amish win.

Among the best farmers in the world, with huge families, a healthy lifestyle,
and they're non-violent.

Their biggest problem is that they are so good at farming that land prices
around their communities go up and their children have to move farther and
farther to afford their own farms.

~~~
dahdum
Eh, I'm not strongly against the Amish but I wouldn't hold them up as an
ideal. They are theocratic communities with strictly gendered roles, harsh
discipline, and practice shunning and excommunication of their undesirables.

~~~
carapace
> I wouldn't hold them up as an ideal.

I'm not.

------
polycaster
While I didn’t read the article, telling from the title this talk by Hans
Rosling could be a resourceful addition to the topic:
[https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg](https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg)

------
dannykwells
Population decline is very well documented. The global trends hide countries
like Germany, South Korea, and Japan where the numbers have sunk as low as 1.3
births / female, far below replacement.

The world might have more people by 2100 but many countries, including US,
Europe and others will be shrinking, unless they take aggressive action on
immigration reform.

My personal belief is this is ultimately how humans will go extinct. Not with
a bang (apocalyptic global warming, war, famine, etc) but a whimper (gradual
fade out into black over the next 1000 years).

~~~
toast0
Barring any of the fun post-apocolyptic fertility problems, if people are
simply chosing not to reproduce in response to their environment, I would
expect many would change their choice as the population shrinks. Especially if
there are strong government incentives.

------
1e-9
> Based on his analysis, the single biggest effect on fertility is the
> education of women.

Although it's not surprising that controlling for education of women would
provide a better model fit, it seems unlikely to me that this is the main
causal relationship. I think logic and evidence suggest that the main driver
of fertility is child mortality.

Humans appear to adjust fertility to maximize the probability that their
offspring will successfully reproduce. Higher child mortality in a population
tends to result in higher fertility as insurance against loss of a child [1].
Lower child mortality tends to result in lower fertility.

The human species would not be around today if we lacked a natural tendency to
place utmost priority on offspring reproduction success. Parents must trade
off the number of children they have versus the quality of care per child. Our
current rate of child mortality reduction is shifting the optimal strategy to
fewer children and higher quality of care per child. I see improved education
of women (and men) as largely a consequence of this trend. I expect this will
continue until disrupted by high-mortality events such as natural disasters,
disease, or major wars.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411230/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411230/)

------
makerofspoons
Has anyone plugged Lutz's education variable into scenarios for climate
change? It could be one of the silver linings is we have more runway than
anticipated.

Edit: It doesn't appear that it would make a difference, the low-end emission
scenarios already have population growth similar to what is described in the
article:
[https://skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3](https://skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3)

------
CodesInChaos
Educated people voluntarily choosing to have fewer children is an important
effect in the short term.

In the long term, sub-populations which choose to have more children will
outgrow sub-populations which have fewer children. Until the growth is
eventually stopped by external factors, like limited resources, famine, war,
or strictly enforced government policies.

------
rexgallorum2
In agrarian societies, children are economically productive. In urbanised
industrial/post-industrial societies, children are expensive and thus an
economic liability.

Many of the conditions that accompanied falling fertility rates in Europe and
America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are now evident in the
developing world.

------
hirundo
"All he was doing was adding one new variable to the forecast: the level of
improvement in female education."

This may be a bit of a trolley problem. If population were indeed controllable
by this one variable, where too little female education resulted in
overpopulation and too much resulted in population collapse, would it be
ethical to impose an upper and lower limit on it? Would it be ethical not to?

As a libertarian my default position is, that should be left up to those
women. I don't believe that authoritarian measures are useful for human
flourishing. But if I were convinced that this is an existential issue for the
species I'd have to struggle between 1) maybe an authoritarian species
shouldn't survive, and 2) ethics are ultimately in service to our survival and
must adapt to that end.

~~~
strken
The ethics of it are irrelevant in a world where genes and memes[0] are under
intense selective pressure. Wait long enough and the infertile will weed
themselves out.

[0] In the original sense of the word.

------
dctoedt
Totally anecdotal: When my wife and I were having kids 30 years ago, we
stopped at two, as did many or even most of our friends. Now, however, on our
block in our upscale neighborhood, with educated professional women, just
about every one of the young families has three kids, and I can't think of a
single young family that has just one kid.

(Nowadays during the recent COVID-19 lockdown, pretty much every afternoon we
see hordes of kids, roughly ages three to ten, riding bikes and scooters and
skateboards back and forth on the street, although that's slowing down as the
Houston summer weather sets in.)

~~~
paulcole
Kids today are a status symbol. Everybody can finance the same iPhone and
luxury sedan. So how do you show you’ve made it?

It’s a real flex to have a gaggle of kids filling up a giant house.

~~~
dctoedt
> _Kids today are a status symbol._

Out of curiosity, do you have kids? They're a pretty labor-intensive "status
symbol." <g>

~~~
paulcole
Lol no way would I ever have kids. Got a vasectomy as soon as I could find a
doctor to do one.

But I also don’t have to own a Porsche to know why people buy them.

Status symbols aren’t just expensive to buy, they’re expensive to own, too.
You think the orthopedic surgeon mows the lawn on their vacation cabin upstate
every weekend? Or the big law litigator does the mechanical work on their
Cessna?

No, those things cost a ton to store, maintain, fuel, and use. Same as kids.
But then the status comes from putting in as little work as possible (through
hired help) and only showing them off when you want. Send ‘em to boarding
school, hire an au pair, etc. etc.

Another way to think of it. Look at things the working classes have out of
need/desperation and that require tremendous amounts of work. The upper
classes want those things for recreation/enjoyment/status and to do as little
work as possible themselves.

------
rishav_sharan
How come we never consider the climate catastrophe as a variable for any of
these studies?

If some of the forecasts are correct, we will hit a 5'C increase in overall
global temperatures. the mass famines, dieoffs due to logistics breakdown,
water scarcity, insane human migrations, wars over scarce resources etc. will
be far bigger factor making most of these variables look like non factors.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01125-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01125-x)

I think it will be lucky if even half/4B of humans survive 2100

~~~
pluto9
Because those forecasts are outliers, if you can even call them forecasts. Is
this quote from your linked article what you're referring to?

"Despite a temporary drop in carbon emissions from the 2020 outbreak,
countries turned to cheap fossil fuels to revive their economies after the
crisis. Carbon emissions soared and temperatures followed, setting the stage
for 5 °C of warming by the end of the century."

That's not a forecast, that's speculation. Might as well factor in WWIII while
we're at it.

------
econcon
Educated women have more options and they do not marry guys just because they
happen to have some comfy jobs and can pay for living expense for her.

A lot of women are adopting "all or nothing" approach, aka "I'd rather live
alone than with someone I am not attracted to".

There are various articles where women are interviewed and they report
shortage of "attractive males" for relationships. Also others where women
claim, "men no longer chase" (my personal opinion is that it's because of
metoo men are afraid of pursuing and asking out unless if some woman displays
explicit interest)

Meanwhile there are lots of women who have children with the guys they deemed
attractive but that guy never commited as a husband or father, some of those
are now struggling to pay their bills and raise kids as a single parent.
Society has to come forward and help them raise their kids.

Maybe we should get done with traditional marriage and assume every country
man or woman is father or mother to every kid existing within the borders of
the country and pay for their maintenance and good upbringing as a community
as a whole.

Maybe the cost of having kids is too high? And we need to lower it through
incentives?

If we choose to not do this - where will the future tax payers come from when
the present ones will be on retirement? We borrow from future. Today the taxes
you are paying have been used already in past for the welfare of the previous
generation. Tomorrow when you'll need welfare, you'll want to have fresh
population supporting it.

You can bring in the immigrants but will they have the values which your
community needs? Will it require a period of time before they are able to
contribute to your society in a positive way?

~~~
qeternity
> Also others where women claim, "men no longer chase" (my personal opinion is
> that it's because of metoo men are afraid of pursing and asking out unless
> if some woman displays explicit interest)

I really don't think it has anything to do with #metoo. I'm a very outgoing
millennial male, and I think this all boils down to a decrease in sociability,
largely centered around mobile phones. When I go out, I never think about
pulling my phone out, but I see countless people in social settings on their
phones...not socializing. Men used to have to get over the fear of rejection
but now there are countless apps that put that fear to rest and let people
pursue behind the comfort and safety of a screen, even if it means lower
success rate.

------
bkirkby
wired was instrumental in educating me about the "vertical knowledge" on this
subject over 20 years ago with this article:
[https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-
doomslayer-2/](https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/)

until then i had never been exposed to any of the evidence countering the
"population bomb" hypothesis. not in education, not in media, not in personal
discussion.

------
novalis78
It will be interesting what the fertility rate of new frontier worlds might
look like. Technologically advanced but in constant need of humans to build
and push further.

------
hamilyon2
Clearly author did not read enough sci-fi. If by 2100 we had any shortage of
humans, we will clone just enough of them.

------
cesaref
The website subscribe banner that keeps appearing makes it unreadable for me.
I wonder if anyone at these companies actually tries to use their websites?

------
info781
These guys are wrong. The population needs to find a stabilisation point.
Right now it's still heading much higher. Nigeria is expected to go to four
hundred million people from 200 million now. Once we find that stabilization
point we could start having more kids, as women will get more support to do
so. projections more than 30 or 40 years into the future are extremely
difficult.

------
archived22
Writer didn't accounted for covid or something more dangerous coming up in
future.

