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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 26 2015, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the On-a-Pale-Horse-vs-Being-a-Green-Mother dept.

The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.

A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:30PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:30PM (#188061)

    First off, a major driver of tapering population growth is widespread and easily accessible contraception, along with the training for using it. That's still a very big issue in a lot of places in the world.

    The next biggest change you can make to reduce population growth is mandatory schooling up through age 18 and strong enforcement of child labor laws. These kinds of measures flip the economic incentives for would-be parents: Without child labor laws or mandatory schooling, extra children mean extra family income, which means parents will have more kids. With child labor laws and mandatory schooling, extra children mean extra family expenses and no extra income, so parents will have fewer kids if they can (i.e. have birth control and know how to use it).

    If those first two moves aren't enough, then you might have to look at more oppressive laws like China's one-child policy.

    Those two factors are the reason why Europe has mostly a stable or even slightly declining population, and the US grows fairly slowly.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:36AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:36AM (#188411) Journal

    and strong enforcement of child labor laws

    You also end up with people largely incapable of working for months to years until they figure it out which I doubt is going to cut your fertility rate. I don't think create a large class of useless people will depress the fertility rate as much as expected.

  • (Score: 1) by albert on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:55AM

    by albert (276) on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:55AM (#188441)

    This being SoylentNews, I'll assume you accept the idea of evolution. Yes? I hope so.

    OK, all this stuff for reducing population is massively selected against. This isn't some minor selection bias that would cause a bit of the usual snail's-pace evolution. This is absolute win-or-lose selection. Anything and everything that defeats population restraints will rapidly become near-universal in the population, no matter how distasteful we may find it.

    Contraception tends to be defeated by a desire for kids, religious feelings, stupidity, inability to think ahead, rape, and irregular/misleading cycles. Economic incentives tend to be defeated by petty crime (pickpocket kids) and abuse of welfare, including the fact that our society is currently unwilling to let kids actually starve. A one-child policy generally relies on contraception and economic incentives, so the same things defeat it, plus you can add corruption.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:12AM (#188549)

      So you are saying (among other things) that creationists often have large families because they evolved that way?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:40PM (#189274)

        DUH. Religious wacos despite their whining and maximum misinterpretation about evolution in practice tend to be very good servants of Azathoth. Other horsemen of atheist apocalypse keep them at bay most of the time thou.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:48PM (#188863)

    Mandatory schooling is awful. You don't want to "school" people, you want them to be educated. The truth is, public schools are almost always horrible prison-like one-size-fits-all environments that encourage only rote memorization. Homeschooling and self-education are alternatives.