For the fourteenth year running, Japan's population has slumped to a record low. The non-foreign population dropped by nearly 900,000 — an unprecedented fall.
More importantly, you’re not looking at the derivative, that is, the growth rate:
The growth has very much peaked, the last large countries are currently undergoing demographic transition (from having many kids, few survive, over having many kids, many survive (growth spike), to hawing few kids, of which pretty much all survive), e.g. Nigeria will be done by 2100. And societal collapse because people either can’t do anything but care for the elderly, or social cohesion is failing because the elderly aren’t cared for, does not depend on absolute numbers, it depends on the raw growth rate, because young people from 1900 aren’t going to care for the elderly in 2100. And the growth rate it depends on is the local one how many Nigerians do you think fancy caring for Chinese elderly.
Oh and those projections above are with a moderate estimation of future fertility, that is, when the average country turns out like France. Not if the average country turns out like Japan or Korea.
Also, just to make this clear: There’s nothing wrong with the population shrinking again. Or growing, the earth is far from its carrying capacity if we’re doing it right. The trouble is shrinking too quickly, or for that matter growing too quickly. We should pine for two kids per woman, ±0.5, thereabouts: Don’t veer too far off replacement levels. And all that can be done by proper social policy, parental leave, good schools, work/life/family balance, sex ed, etc.
His graph is still valid, as the exponential growth doesn’t really matter if we start from 0 BCE or 10000 BCE.
Here’s
Even if we would loose 60% of the population now, we would still be 1.5 times the population of 1900 (9miljard x 0.4=3.6 >2)
That’s still not a graph of Japan.
More importantly, you’re not looking at the derivative, that is, the growth rate:
The growth has very much peaked, the last large countries are currently undergoing demographic transition (from having many kids, few survive, over having many kids, many survive (growth spike), to hawing few kids, of which pretty much all survive), e.g. Nigeria will be done by 2100. And societal collapse because people either can’t do anything but care for the elderly, or social cohesion is failing because the elderly aren’t cared for, does not depend on absolute numbers, it depends on the raw growth rate, because young people from 1900 aren’t going to care for the elderly in 2100. And the growth rate it depends on is the local one how many Nigerians do you think fancy caring for Chinese elderly.
Oh and those projections above are with a moderate estimation of future fertility, that is, when the average country turns out like France. Not if the average country turns out like Japan or Korea.
Also, just to make this clear: There’s nothing wrong with the population shrinking again. Or growing, the earth is far from its carrying capacity if we’re doing it right. The trouble is shrinking too quickly, or for that matter growing too quickly. We should pine for two kids per woman, ±0.5, thereabouts: Don’t veer too far off replacement levels. And all that can be done by proper social policy, parental leave, good schools, work/life/family balance, sex ed, etc.