| Lisnaholic |
06-01-2018 11:17 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteater
(Post 1957195)
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From Anteater's article:-
Quote:
The idea that we're heading toward a population crisis might seem frighteningly feasible to anyone who has ever visited a shopping mall, but the problem isn't as dire when you look at the data. Economists like Max Roser point out that across the world, fertility rates are in fact shrinking. Today, the average household has around 2.5 children, as opposed to the five or six that our horndog ancestors had on average during the 1960s.
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^ It's very misleading to quote fertility rates without mentioning a couple of caveats that invalidate the conclusion the writer is trying to draw:-
Caveat #1: the fertility rate may be decreasing, but as the infant mortality rate is also decreasing, this reduces the significance of the reduction in fertility.
Caveat #2: (Using the figures in Anteater's article and reading off my graph):
If, in 1 A.D., 0.5 billion people had 6 children each = 3 billion new babies
If in 2018, 7.5 billion people have 2.5 babies each = 18.75 billion new babies.
Of course those birth totals aren't real statistics: I've made no adjustment for the number of fertile women per capita because I didn't want to get bogged down in math, but the trend of the figures is clear enough, I think.
Quote:
If a little thing called "history" is to be believed, this (in conjunction with increased modernization, lower poverty rates, and a rise in education levels across the world) means population sizes will level off fairly soon.
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^ Aside from the patronising tone of the phrase, "a little thing called history", the writer compounds his inability to understand the significance of fertility rates for an expanding population and goes on to make a completely unfounded statement, "population sizes will level off fairly soon." Again, refering to my graph, the only significant "levelling off" ever was at the time of the Black Death, when the world pop briefly went down.
Sorry, Anteater. I find your article very unconvincing but I'm too tired to refute its other points right now. |
