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CNN:
The report, published Wednesday, showed that birth rates declined for nearly all age groups of women younger than 35 but rose for women in their late 30s and early 40s.
From 2017 to 2018, the birth rate dropped 7% among teenagers aged 15 to 19; 4% among women 20 to 24; 3% among women 25 to 29; and 1% among women 30 to 34, according to the report.
The birth rate rose 1% among women aged 35 to 39 and 2% among women 40 to 44. The rate for women 45 to 49, which also includes births to women 50 and older, did not change from 2017 to 2018.
On the other hand, there have been recent studies that indicate children born to older women enjoy better long term academic and professional success.
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America Just Had Its Lowest Number of Births in 32 Years, Report Finds
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 16 2019, @02:56AM (8 children)
I was unaware of Dr. Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" so I did a bit of a search for it.
Oh
Wow, Famine 1975! that sounds bad...
Oh.
So maybe Congress is well aware of Dr. Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" and have dismissed it because it's wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday May 16 2019, @03:25AM (7 children)
The timing is wrong mostly because technology made huge differences that they didn't take into account, but as long as world population keeps growing, eventually you catch up to Malthus.
If you go with nuclear power, small apartments stacked high, and a pretty bland subsistance level existence, that point may be up in the hundreds of billions. But you get there in the end.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 16 2019, @11:24PM (6 children)
"But". Everybody's fertility and birth rates are dropping. Not just Japan and Germany.
Unless, of course, your population doesn't actually grow indefinitely.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Friday May 17 2019, @01:17AM (5 children)
If a population doesn't grow until it hits its resource limits, it will be replaced by a population that does. This is simple evolution.
There is a current blip in the chart because resources have had a huge technological jump, and because humans have not yet evolved around contraception. They will soon, there are already women who desire many children. If that desire is in the slightest way heritable, then they will replace people who do not desire children.
I personally think that this is at least part of the Great Filter (the Fermi paradox). There is a slight chance that we might break out because we advanced so fast, but if history or the human race had been only slightly different we would be keeping 20 billion people alive down here with no resources to spare for an expensive space program.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 17 2019, @12:09PM (4 children)
Hasn't happened yet in the developed world. Instead more of the world has become developed world.
Why would they "evolve" around contraception? Particularly since the populations doing the indefinite growing would also be the populations doing the dying should we get to any actual evolutionary bottlenecks of that sort.
A cheap space program on the other hand, would have access to plenty of resources.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday May 17 2019, @03:40PM (3 children)
Because that's how evolution works. Pick any measurable characteristic of any species on the planet. Lets call this characteristic 'wibbleness' It will have a range of possible values. Adjust your measurement scale so that 'wibbleness' ranges from 1 to 10.
Now sterilize every individual that has a value of 9 or 10 before they can breed. Sterilize 50% of the individuals that score a 7 or 8 before they can breed. Keep doing this every generation. Within a very few generations you are going to have a species with a 'wibbleness' range of 1 to 6. You may get occasional throwbacks, but they will be statistically insignificant.
Now replace 'wibbleness' with 'effectively uses contraception'. Failing to breed is the strongest evolutionary drive there is.
I think the disconnect here is that I am talking about more generations than you are. The effect is already starting, but it probably won't flood the planet for another dozen generations. We as a species have a pretty limited launch window to actually get off this planet and survive in space.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 20 2019, @01:41AM (2 children)
Sorry, we're mostly beyond evolution. Sure, evolution still has some impact on what human traits will be around next generation. But my take is that what will influence human traits will be more based on technology and culture/knowledge than on what survives among human genes.
Or "survives population die-offs".
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday May 20 2019, @03:20AM (1 child)
We are not beyond evolution until we have full immortality. Any reproducing species is still evolving.
At the moment, all we have done is changed the selection criteria. Current major evolutionary driver is "willing to have lots of kids".
Eventually it might be "able to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and still have kids".
The only things that might avert that are strict population control as in Niven's ARM stories (not a pleasant society, but better than the alternative) or compulsory universal genetic engineering (also not a nice option, and likely to lead to nasty civil wars).
Read Dawkins The extended Phenotype for why this doesn't really matter in evolutionary terms.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 20 2019, @04:18AM
How do ideas like say capitalism or artificial wombs evolve?