Cross post from Facebook - Max - Population

The Sky will Fall (eventually)

My Initial Thoughts Before Starting

For some time I’ve been thinking about the fact that Susan and I are not going to have children. What impact does this have to the rest of humanity? I’m not talking about the fact that our genes will not continue on or our shared wisdom (heh) won’t be imparted to the next generation; I’m talking about the impact of not contributing to the next generation of earners, spenders, and taxpayers. I’ll admit it’s anecdotal and my sample size is small but I feel that most of the people I know who are in my general demographic are also not planning on having children or only have or want one or two (not enough to make up for us empty-nesters). I’ve read articles about other countries like Germany and Japan worrying about societal and economic issues due to falling birth rates so I decided to do a little research on my own.

I ended up finding most of my data from the CIA’s World Factbook . From the website:

“The World Factbook, produced for US policymakers and coordinated throughout the US Intelligence Community, marshals facts on every country, dependency and geographic entity in the world. We share this information with the people of all nations in the belief that knowledge of the truth underpins the functioning of free societies.

The Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.”

Replacement Level Fertility

What I did first was get the average rates of children born per woman or total fertility rate (TFR) for each country and dump them into a spreadsheet. Then I counted which countries had rates above and below the replacement level fertility. Per the World Resources Institute the “replacement level fertility” is the fertility rate (average number of children born per woman) in which a population exactly replaces itself each generation without migration. This rate is 2.1 in most counties though it varies some with mortality rates . It turns out the majority of reporting countries (119 or 53% of the countries) have TFRs below 2.1. In fact, the average TFR of the countries below replacement level fertility was 1.7. On the other side of the spectrum were 104 countries (47% of the reporting countries) that averaged 3.52 TFR. When I took into consideration the populations of the two groups I found that 52% of the population (3.8 billion) has fertility rates above the replacement level fertility and 48% below (3.5 billion). This makes sense as the world population continues to grow. Next I layered on the GDP per capita .

GDP Per Capita

I found that the average GDP per capita for countries whose TFR is below the replacement level fertility to be $31,125 which is over three times higher than the average GDP per capita for countries above the replacement level fertility ($9,200). This clearly shows that the populations of the richer countries in the world are shrinking while the populations of the poorer countries are growing. To visualize the trend I plotted the GDP per capita and TFR on a graph. What is shown is a clear pattern where countries with higher GDP per capita generally have a lower TFR.

Female Education

What causes lower TFR? From poking around the internet it seems a large part of the consensus is that increased female education levels make the largest impact. From the CIA World Factbook I found the School Life Expectancy for females . It provides the total number of years a female child is expected to receive by country. The data didn’t include all of the countries but it was enough that a chart I created comparing expected female education and TFR shows that countries that educate their females more do indeed have a lower TFR. On average a female child in a country with below replacement levels of fertility can expect to receive close to 4.4 years more education than a female in a country with fertility levels above the replacement level (15.31 versus 10.96).

Just for fun made another chart showing the GDP per capita and female school life expectancy. Unsurprisingly it shows a positive correlation between the two.

So what Causes the Fertility Rates to Fall?

Clearly there is a correlation between lower fertility rates and a higher GDP per capita as well as better educating females. Per Wikipedia there are other causes of lower fertility rates including government population policy, availability of family planning services, infant mortality rate, and more . Generally the more educated, wealthy, and democratic a country is (i.e. more American) the fewer children they produce.

What is the Point?

Well, I started out wondering if Susan and I not having kids would negatively impact society and if our choice was common. There are many articles summing up and speculating the social and economic impacts of low fertility rates on countries. In the short term low fertility rates cause an economic benefit as the costs to raise children are saved or spent elsewhere. In the long term low fertility rates mean a smaller workforce which hurts the economy and a smaller base to tax which puts strain on the existing social infrastructure. Just one couple like us not having kids isn’t a problem on its own as we are statistically insignificant. The problem is that we are not alone and are part of a growing trend in rich countries across the world.

Immigration helps to bolster the populations of countries with fertility rates below the replacement level of fertility. Immigrants generally have much higher fertility rates than even the countries they come from which raises the overall fertility rates in the country they are going to. It should be noted that the second generation immigrants essentially adopt the same fertility rates as the country their parents travelled to. Immigration is the reason the population in America has continued to steadily rise as many European and Asian countries have declined in the last two decades. It’s not all positive as lots of immigration can lead to cultural change and other strains which can upset the existing populace (i.e. Donald Trump). As the world population is currently projected to peak in 2050 immigration can only do so much and for so long.

What gets me is thinking farther out in the future. If economic prosperity, more freedom, and better education lead to negative population growth then is humanity looking at an extinction brought about not by war or a polluted Earth but ultimately by our own desire to improve ourselves?

If the TFR were an unchanging 1.7 for the entire population how long would it take to half our numbers? Using 30 years as the length of a generation and a 19% drop in population due to a fertility rate of 1.7 versus the replacement level of fertility of 2.1 it would take between 120 and 150 years for the population to half. Dropping 90% would occur in around 360 years. Similarly to the compound growth on an investment the compounding decline of the population would happen quickly. This scenario is unlikely though as the fertility rates realistically wouldn’t drop overnight or universally but it does serve to illustrate the potential issue.

Thinking about how one could reverse the trend of falling TFR is interesting to think about. If positive change leads to unsustainable fertility rates does that mean we’d need to implement negative change to save ourselves? Like we’d make it law that women couldn’t be educated or use birth control. Perhaps we’d just need to make sure a few totalitarian countries with large and poor populations stay that way while we would accept their immigrants.

It all makes me wonder if, at its extreme, our pursuit of liberty, happiness, and a better life will ultimately be the end of us.

Oh yeah, Merry Christmas!

Cross post from Facebook - Max - Short Story - Industry People

Industry People

In the near-future the populations in many of the prosperous countries are shrinking to the point where their economies and social structures are being threatened. The problem is that many of the people in these countries find the prospect of raising a child to be daunting and not worth the strife. As the populations drop so do the markets and outlooks of the world leaders.

In an effort to avert disaster the governments meet and decide to use industry to artificially create babies and raise them to supplement their populations. These industry babies are created using the best combination of sperm and eggs possible. They are raised via the best childrearing methods experts can agree on. These methods evolve over time based on the outcomes of the industry children.

The industry babies grow into industry people. They were raised and educated to maximize their genetic tendencies and the economic needs at large and thus are generally brighter and more successful when they go out into the world than those raised by a traditional mother and father. The number of natural births drop significantly and more industry babies are created to fill the void.

After two generations religious people are essentially the only ones still having children naturally. The churches preach that the industry people as missing some part of their humanity and are an affront to God. It doesn’t help that the industry people are not raised with religion at all. The industry people refer to those from natural birth as “naturals”. The naturals refer to the industry people as “industry people”.

As a means to improve the next generation the industry people use technology to increase the size of their neocortex which has the side benefit of improving Dunbar’s number significantly. Now the industry people aren’t just being raised in the most ideal conditions but are also actively improving their innate abilities. In two generations the industry people are universally brilliant. During this time the naturals have mostly been relegated to working for the industrial people performing menial labor or they live in societies entirely separated from the industrial people. Many of the naturals view the industry people as abominations and evil. While not illegal generally the industry people don’t form relationships with the naturals. Obvious reasons for this are obvious.

A newly-raised industrial guy falls in love with a beautiful natural girl. Over time and using certain physical wiles she convinces him that the industrial people are evil and should be stopped. Together they come up with a plan to permanently shut down an industry baby-making facility. They would have succeeded but by chance they fail and are apprehended. It turns out that the natural girl is part of a network of naturals actively trying to sabotage the industry people for political reasons (she thinks it’s a religious movement (she’s a genuine fanatic) but in actuality the organization is funded by a naturalist government).

After the industrial guy learns the natural girl’s background and the overall plot he becomes a staunch anti-naturalist and helps pass laws banning the association between industry people and naturals. Through much effort and hardship the industrial people forgo utilizing naturals for labor and work to completely isolate themselves from the naturals.

The industrial people own much of the world’s land and decide to centralize themselves on the Asian and Australian continents. The naturals are forced to leave these areas and are not allowed to return. Naturally the naturals are uneasy about this but they can’t really do anything about it as the industry people use advanced technology to block passage into their new country which the naturals cannot circumvent. The industry people cease all contact and communication with the naturals. The satellites orbiting Earth were created by industry people and are made to not transmit any images or data about the industry country. New satellites sent up by the naturals are easily hacked and made inoperable by the industry people. All electronics flown over the industry country fail. The naturals don’t know what the industry people are up to.

The naturalist governments secretly prepare to invade the industry country. They engineer terrible devices of war and chaos. Through the government-controlled media the people are told fabricated stories about atrocities committed by the industry people. A rumor emerges that the industry people’s land contains a miraculous mineral that cures cancer. This rumor becomes an alleged fact when a television personality on a morning medical show refers to an imaginary study which says that, when combined with coconut oil, the mineral eliminates cancerous moles.

As the rhetoric grows to a fevered pitch two disasters occur which devastate the naturals. A massive solar flare destroys much of their technology and shortly thereafter a new deadly flu wipes out 90% of their population. The surviving naturals suspect the industry people caused the flu epidemic and possibly the solar flare but they can do nothing in retaliation as the very act of survival becomes difficult (the industrial people were, in fact, responsible for both disasters). Tin-pot kings emerge and much of the natural population is subjugated by one ruler or another. In five years the naturals are largely isolated from each other and in 30 years they have technologically regressed to the Bronze Age.

The industry people were able to shield their technology from the solar flare and continued in their self-improvements. They decide to venture into outer space to further expand their comprehension of the universe. To accomplish this goal the industry people find a way to blend their consciousnesses into their technology which will allow them to survive the long and radiation-saturated journey through space.

Their technology has advanced to the point where much of it is biological. Thus when they do blast off into space they actually grow their space ships around large asteroids in order to utilize their gravities and raw materials. This takes many years but eventually the ships are finished and the industry people leave the solar system to explore the galaxy.

The naturals left behind have forgotten much of what occurred in the past. To most the industry people are myths and legends. Some religions arise based on writings about the industry people from before the sun punished the people for their wicked ways. Time eventually eliminates all traces of the industry people and the technologies of old.

Over three thousand years pass and the world is now completely inhabited by the naturals. Their society has advanced to the point where some of the richer county’s populations begin to shrink due to the burden of raising children. In an effort to avoid social and economic disaster they get the idea to create babies artificially and raise them to supplement the population.