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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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The global total fertility rate was 2.4 in 2019, and has been falling since. The global replacement rate (ie. the number of babies needed to maintain the population as is - if the fertility rate is above that the population is destined to grow, if it's below it's destined to fall) was estimated as 2.3 at the same time, slightly higher than the usual 2.1 rate mentioned in these discussions since it accounts for increased baby mortality in Third World countries. As such, it's very possible that the global TFR is below replacement rate already - which would mean that we are destined to have a global population peak in the coming decades, unless the fertility rates reverse themselves.

That 2.4 also included a Chinese figure of 1.7 which is far above the true figure of 1.2-1.3 and would lower the global TFR by 0.1. Also worth mentioning that African fertility is terribly measured and could be off by a very large margin, especially recently where mobile internet penetration has increased from essentially zero to a third of the population.

We could very easily be below replacement now with no end in sight.

I find the general claims that Chinese population is overcounted by some 200 million (ie. it's 1.2 billion, not the currently stated 1.4 billion) plausible, and suspect that many other countries overcount their populations as well, particularly the African ones where population statistics are basically often more guesstimates than hard numbers and the various regional administrators have an impetus to make higher than lower guesstimates to get more funding from the central government. I wouldn't be surprised if the global population was, perhaps, 500 million lower than currently given, or even more.

Do you have a source for that China claim?

China 2020 census

Have you read Karlin's Age of Malthusian Industrialism? The argument is essentially that, absent a singularity, there'll be a demographic explosion as culture selects for those who reproduce quickly, with genes doing the same on a deeper level.

I'm familiar with this general argument, but it bears mentioning that this reproductive selection effect is not yet in sight, even though many Western countries have been hovering around or under the replacement rate for decades, if not a good part of a century.

It's fairly plausible that we'll solve aging in the next century. Statistically people will still eventually die of other causes, but if you assume an average lifespan 20x what it currently is (ballpark based on accidental death rate, probably conservative since this will likely decline), then holding TFR constant the population will nonetheless be 20x as large.

And probably lifetime TFR will be substantially higher if people have centuries in which to have children. Have a 30 year career, then spend 20 family-focused years raising two kids, then 'retire' for 20 years… then do it all over again! That's a TFR of ~22 if you repeat this over a 1600 year lifespan. And that assumes people don't decide to have larger families given artificial wombs, robot childcare, and lots more material wealth.

This is a possible future, of many. I hope it goes this way.

If fertility rates remain sub-replacement forever, that's an X-risk. I doubt this will actually happen, though.

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