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by aaron695 2119 days ago
The Gates foundation has a interest in keeping estimates of the population down low.

It's important to help promote global community now, today when it matters.

And given how rich countries progress, extrapolation to poor countries make sense.

But it's not how it will go down, look at attempts 80 year ago what they thought 2020 would be

Not a great example, but it's well under -

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study033.pdf

There are massive changes coming, and they won't be in the negative direction.

Longevity will mean increased fertility.

UBI means things other than money will matter, like it or not when jobs start decreasing.

4 comments

> The Gates foundation has a interest in keeping estimates of the population down low.

The paper says:

Role of the funding source The funders had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. All authors had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

> But it's not how it will go down, look at attempts 80 year ago what they thought 2020 would be

> Not a great example, but it's well under -

> https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study033.pdf

They estimated 2025 US population to be between 225M and 392M depending on the projection methodology used. The current population of the US is 328M, so this seems pretty good for an estimate 70 years ago!

> Longevity will mean increased fertility.

This would seem a bold claim. It hasn't anywhere in the world so far, and the correlation between increased longevity and decreased birthrates is very strong.

> The funders had no role in study design,

The Funders know how it'll come out.

Studies don't take into account the leaps that will happen because we don't know what they are. Things don't just continue as the previous 80 years. These jumps happened even when we didn't have the internet to super charge stuff.

> 2025 US population to be between 225M and 392M

That's 2050 in the document.

2020 is 210 - 305 million estimate. (pdf p29)

> decreased birthrates is very strong.

But not fertility. You won't be living to 120 without being a healthy and fertile 60 year old. It's fun to have work as number one for 20 years, but if it's easy to have kids in your 40's without IVF things will change.

>> 2025 US population to be between 225M and 392M

> That's 2050 in the document.

Yes, you are right, my apologies.

2025 predictions are between 221M and 318M (table, page 16) which makes their "projection B" scenario almost exactly correct.

>2020 is 210 - 305 million estimate. (pdf p29)

Page 29 is a table called "Relative comparison of dependant and productive groups in the United States". There are no population numbers.

Page 25 has a graph which you maybe referring to. That doesn't have numbers, but they seem to be plotting the numbers from page 16.

> But not fertility. You won't be living to 120 without being a healthy and fertile 60 year old.

What evidence do you have of that? Increased life expectancy for women so far hasn't been matched by an increase in fertility beyond 40 years old.

> Increased life expectancy for women so far hasn't been matched by an increase in fertility beyond 40 years old.

You've said this with some certainty, were are you getting this from? This doesn't fit with all current data about general health and longevity, so I'd like to see who's saying this and what their case is.

The ovarian reserve doesn't somehow increase with increased longevity. The chart from Wikipedia is as good as anything on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_reserve#/media/File:Wa...

The ovarian reserve only decreases from birth, so it becomes less and less likely for a woman to conceive as they get older.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility also notes: A review in 2012 came to the result that therapeutic interventions to halt or reverse the process of reproductive ageing in women is limited, despite recent reports of the potential existence of stem cells which may be used to restore the ovarian reserve

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_maternal_age has some further good reading on this.

How can longevity mean increased fertility?

Women biology cannot support birthing a child very well passed ~35. At 40yo heaving a child for a women becomes very hard.

So what good is increased longevity if biology prevents women from having more children at a later age.

Bringing up UBI is way more important than longevity imo.

There's two major forces that we could see UBI have when applied on a lifetime scale:

1) if citizens get it when they are born then having children could be economically rational again for some non trivial income bracket

2) if we actually do see more and more content unemployed citizens they could have the time and interest in having kids

> Longevity will mean increased fertility.

I don't see how. We already live long enough to have a dozen kids per family. It's just that our society is structured such that raising kids is an expensive nightmare.

It’s not just about money, the enjoyment/benefits of having a child decreases dramatically with each child you have. Having more than 1/2 children is really tough on, particularly on the mother, both physically and mentally. If you have the choice most people will not opt for more than 2 or 3.
I heard the opposite, directly from people who have a lot of kids (one person I know has 13): it doesn't matter all that much in terms of labor how many you have if you have 3 or more. The first one is a lot of work, after that the increase is marginal. They begin to take care of each other more, which I think you will agree is a desirable thing for any human to learn early on. It's _slightly_ easier in terms of _marginal_ cost, too (younger kids can re-use clothing, toys, etc), but only marginal, the cost largely goes up linearly due to the impacts of daycare, tutoring, extracurriculars, and higher education, all of which are expensive AF in the US.
The cost of housing also goes up significantly...