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posted by mrpg on Friday November 16 2018, @02:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-so-many-men-are-having-children-either dept.

'Remarkable' decline in fertility rates

There has been a remarkable global decline in the number of children women are having, say researchers.

Their report found fertility rate falls meant nearly half of countries were now facing a "baby bust" - meaning there are insufficient children to maintain their population size.

The researchers said the findings were a "huge surprise".

And there would be profound consequences for societies with "more grandparents than grandchildren".


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Blymie on Friday November 16 2018, @02:41PM (4 children)

    by Blymie (4020) on Friday November 16 2018, @02:41PM (#762699)

    We are no where, even remotely or closely near that sort of situation.

    There is no overcrowding, unless people chose it. Canada, for example, has enough room that the entire world could settle here -- and all live in a rural landscape!

    In fact? Take the world population, 8 billion, divide by 4. Now you have a somewhat "family" group.

    Now give each family group a 1/4 acre of land. That's 500M acres, or 781k square miles. Exclude Alaska, and take the top 3 largest US states after that.

    You can now fit the entire world into that landmass, each family group with a 1/4 acre of land. Think that isn't much?

    You can easily sustain yourself on a 1/4 acre of land, minus housing, in temperate areas. I can get into all the logistics, how beans have a crop in 40 days, or how if you stack groups of families 4 per acre, it's even nicer.

    You could put the entire planet in Australia, and those family groups would have 7 acres each or so. You could put them all in Canada, and give them 10 acres each. The list goes on and on and on.

    People *choose* to live close together. In places where there are cities, even if there are jobs in the country, people prefer the city. Here, where there is lots of rural land around cities, and people can get in/out of the city fast, people STILL choose the city.

    "I'd be bored", people say.

    We have loads of resources, and no overcrowding as far as I see it. It's environmental.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @03:02PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @03:02PM (#762709)

    I'm always amused by these "the world is not overpopulated because if you look at people per square mile there is plenty of room". But yours surpasses all previous, thanks, made my day :)

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 16 2018, @04:04PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 16 2018, @04:04PM (#762722) Journal

      Instead of giving everyone a plot of land, stuff them in an arcology.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 16 2018, @06:14PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 16 2018, @06:14PM (#762773) Journal

        I don't think we can yet build a real archology. We're getting closer, if you don't care about livability, but without that "stuff them in" is the correct description. How, for instance, do you ensure a trustworthy governance? Consider Brasilia. I don't know what it's like now, but for a long time it was a place nobody wanted to live.

        Artificial environments are tricky. I agree that we should be building them, but we should acknowledge from the start that each one is an experiment.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:22AM (#762934)

    I thought the world was going nuts when they reduced the average size of land from around 700 square meters to around 500.
    Then they started selling blocks of 350 square meters with double story houses on them just to get the same footage inside as a house on a normal size block for the same price paid for a 700sm block.
    Now they want a similar price for a unit with 80sm living space kilometres out of the city!

    Absolutely insane and not getting any better.