Population Bombing – Increase by that?

Kip Hansen news summary – April 6, 2022

NATURE magazine has published a Book Reviews of a new book from Jennifer D. Sciubba titled: “8 Billion and Count: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shaped Our World“.

Quoting the Nature review:

Jennifer Sciubba writes in her book 8 Billion and Counting: “Japan is aging so rapidly that if current trends continue, the country could eventually disappear altogether.”

Nearly eight billion people live on Earth; Sciubba, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, argues that their futures are very different. “The 21st century,” she writes, is not a story of exponential population growth but a story of growing disparities—marked by a stark divide between the richest and most populous nations. poorest in the world”.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America, Australia and New Zealand, the total fertility rate (TFR), or the average number of children a woman can have in her lifetime, is below change. (about 2.1 children per woman) by 2020. In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa’s population will increase sixfold this century; Its TFR is 4.72, down from 5.88 two decades ago. In Nigeria, children and adolescents make up half of the population. In rural towns in South Korea, primary schools closed for lack of students, while urban areas of Lagos were “buzz with the sound of children playing”….

The book is intriguing, but there are no real surprises to be found for those who actually follow population trends. [ I certainly hope that the book reviewer is misquoting the book author about Japan “eventually disappearing.” ]

You might want to see some actual data:

Two things stand out: 1) This is the actual number of births. Focus on the right side of the graphic and the width of the color area. We see Asia responsible for the greatest total births but the width of this bar is narrowing – fewer births per year. For Africa, on the contrary, the blue strip is getting wider and farther away, with more and more births. Harder to see, but Europe is shrinking with fewer births, while North America remains more or less stable. Births in Latin America and the Caribbean are on the rise.

The second most interesting thing is that the number of births fell sharply in the 1970s and 1990s. One could speculate that the widespread use of oral contraceptives after 1965 caused the first decline. The decline of the 1990s is best explained by the graph of fertility by region:

In this study, we found that fertility rates were falling sharply in East Asia to below replacement level in the 1990s. Note that Africa is not included in this graph. China’s “one-child policy” was not implemented until 1980.

Our data world provide this speculative version:

The top two places are Africa, where the TFR is above 4, while the rest of the world is 2.5 or less. The breakout box shows the number of regions already below the alternative, including North and South America and Europe.

Later, readers can discuss the news:

Here we see that the increase in world population (the highest) reflects the growth of Asia (dark red, second and below). However, the sharp slowdown in growth in Asia is clearly being offset by accelerated growth in Africa, the only region that is growing substantially.

And as for the Total World Population? The numbers are growing and will continue as human lifespans increase and reproduction doesn’t stop. The United Nations predicts it will peak at around 11 billion around 2100.

What are the reasons for this pattern? What are the causes of population growth and decline?

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Author’s comment:

Don’t ask me – I don’t know. I know that birth rates fall as standards of living rise, historically at least.

Worldwide, the number of births has leveled off. In the region, fertility rates are falling, except in Africa. Many advanced countries have birth rates below replacement level, and these countries can be said to be importing labor from other less fortunate nations. The agricultural sector of the US economy has been doing so for decades and is now doing so because of the lower skills of the construction industry.

I don’t know what this will mean for human society in the next 50 years – but it’s as clear as morning light that no Ehrlich-ian Population Bomb will ever go off.

Include the name of the person you’re talking to in your comment – if not just a generic statement.

Thanks for reading.

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