I would like to see a real-time census of humanity, with measures for health and well-being for everyone who is alive right now, and with updates on births and deaths worldwide recorded each day. If we make sure everyone has an adequate standard of living, the number of people will take care of itself.
Since our economy depends on growth of population this is gonna be very interesting.
I don’t want to be one of “those guys” but if we ever do progress AI to the point of AGI we will be able to take care of an aging population without infinite population growth.
(Whether or not the oligarchs who control that AGI will decide to help people instead of hoarding that power is a different problem.)
The key number here is the dependency ratio. So the number of retired and underage people to working age. The intressting part is that there are fewer younger people and the old ones tend to die. The other part is built up infrastructure. If you are a country with a falling population, you do not need to built a lot of housing, as there is already enough around. Public transport infrastructure just has to be maintained and things like the electricity grid work as well. Even many factories do not need massive upgrades all the time.
So for the most part it tends to work rather well, unless you have a really bad ratio. Obviously innovation helps as well.
Great! We have plenty of productivity to go around, and too many humans!
Now we need a government to make it worthwhile
Whats the point of this? One third of the population that now regularly lives to over 75 is under 25??? SHOCKER!!! EDITED - and it just gets stupider the more I look at it. The actual data is record highs and the losses are all projections. max eye roll.
Did you really believe that any news with we are at the peak is not a prediction?
We do know the number of future parents for the next two decades pretty well, as most of them have been born already. So the only variable is how many children does the average women have. That has been falling every single year for the last 60 years with only a single year seeing a small increase. So this projection is most likely pretty good.
As for why it matters. It means the global workforce will stop its fast growth rate in two decades, increasing competition for workers. It means many countries are aging with all the consequences that brings. It means economic growth is not pushed as much by population growth as has seen before. Clearly there are other factors, but demographics matters a lot.
I do. I remember peak numbers in the single digit billions and now its pushed off and in double digit. Its like that always 20 year out thing.
Not very well articulated but your comment does point to an issue with this article. Peak anything is very difficult to verify until it’s long past. Is this the start of a reversal or just a small downward blip in continued growth? There’s no way to know for sure.
Hallelujah.
Just as planned.
Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.