After watching this video I am left with this question.
The video ultimately claims that humans will not disappear, but doesn’t do a great job explaining why.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but for the (or a) population to be and remain stable, the total fertility rate needs to be equal to the global replacement rate (which recently was 2.3).
And since the total average fertility rate appears to be currently at this 2.3, any drop in the fertility rate in place A would have to be compensated with a rise in the fertility rate in place B (assuming that, at some point, we would like to stop population decline)?
I guess one way for a population to remain stable, while women are having fewer than 2.3 children, would be to have fewer men? If a population has 100 women and 10 men, each woman would only have to have on average (a bit more than) 1.1 child? (Which would of course also require a collective form of prenatal sex selection.)
I realize that would be bonkers and unethical. Just wondering out loud.
If it stays there forever, yes.
It won’t though, as there become fewer humans it’s likely it will become easier to have more children again (fewer people for the same amount of finite resources) and the rate will increase.
Funny way to think…
Actually it is poor countries (less ressources) that have the higher birth rates.
I’d say, having children is hard work, but people in rich countries are lazy :-)
Blaming this on “laziness” is a really naive and unfair take on why rich nations have less kids. The more likely reasons, and more commonly accepted reasons are:
better career opportunities for women
better education
costs of children
challenges with child care
easier access to contraceptives
I like how we phrase this as “better education” and “better career opportunities for women”. While technically true relative to poor countries, these explain nothing about why fertility rates are so low. But they are related, but framing them differently will help us understand.
Why do people have fewer kids? Because economic life in most developed countries is relatively unstable, and to ensure economic stability, we require people to develop years of education and work experience to receive a comfortable salary. In many places we now require two such incomes. This mean women really don’t have a choice but to pursue advanced education and work, whether they want to or not. And we are not willing to accommodate children during education or work. This means women (and increasingly men too) are severely penalized economically for having children, and so of course people will have far fewer on average.
If you look at the very wealthy,
In developing countries, children often mean free labor and form the basis of your retirement through elder care, so while the economic conditions are of course worse overall, the opposite incentives exist.
Yea I completely agree with everything you said. Life in rich countries doesn’t mean that everyone is rich and lazy and fat. I mean just look at the US. So many people live in poverty and literally cannot afford kids.
Well I’m glad it made sense since I put my phone down and accidentally posted while I was still drafting it lol
I’m going to make a few edits to complete my train of thought.
In poorer countries, the investment into each child is minimal. By the time they were 8 or 9 years old they were expected to contribute to the family. Higher child mortality rates also plays into this, as most families lose a few kids to disease etc. Children are seen as a commodity that they control to make the parents/grandparents lives better.
In industrialized societies the amount of resources dedicated to each child is more than the the resources dedicated to 5 or 6 families in poorer countries. Children are dependent on their parents well into adulthood. As the cost to raise the kids increase the average family size decreases because of limited resources.
Good points. Hard to cover everything on such a multi-faceted issue but those are all important factors as well.
The retirement plan goes for rich countries too. But different. With elder care going the way it’s going, you’d be happy to get someone to help you shower once per month. Children can help you with a lot once you’re old and fragile.
You’re thinking about the resources wrong. I mostly mean land availability.
Even in first world countries the birth rates are higher outside cities than inside. In undeveloped counties the birthdates are lower in crowded cities.
I think it’s more an issue of the relative importance of labor vs material resources. Where labor has been more important, a family’s economic power increases with its size. Where resources are the more important factor, a larger family means resources are spread thinner and consumed more quickly.
While rich countries have been outsourcing labor to poor countries, it’s been incentivizing them to have larger families.
People from poor countries that move into wealthy countries adopt the birth rate almost immediately.
It isn’t about laziness, it’s about education and wealth.
You are contradicting yourself. By moving into a wealthy country you neither gain education nor wealth. Its about culture and environment.
My guess is: in wealthy countries people are living more isolated. Without help from friends and family you have to invest a huge amount oft time into rising a child, which many can’t afford.