population redux
22 Nov 2004 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouOkay, rather than extend that one page even longer (though you're welcome to reply there if I missed a point), I'm going to try again and see if I can get this clear in my head.
Found a study on China's birthrates which indicate that government control impacts birthrates only in the short term; the biggest impact on birthrates are what the authors called 'preference' - that is, things like women working outside the home (and thus choosing to do something else with their free time other than have children), higher education, better medical...basically, the more a country is industrialized, and the higher its economic position in terms of living quality, the lower the birthrate, on average.
The birthrate in Japan is dropping, and has been; China is trying to get a zero-rate point where births and deaths balance out. The theory is that eventually the US will reach this same point - low death rate, low birth rate - but I think this leaves out the issue of immigration and increasing population due to other means. But anyway.
So...if it's an industrialized nation, with pre- and post-conception birth control available (bwahaha, my mother always used to say, 'abortion should be legal to the age of twenty-one' but I digress) then it's likely that it would have stabilized with several elements: 1, low birth rate due to people marrying later and preferring to spend their free time/money on selves rather than children, 2, low death rate due to higher quality of medical care, and 3, a certain balance of production to consumption. The real issue in that scenario might be what Japan is facing (and the US, to some degree): the aging population is larger than the next population, which means things like Social Security (which require the current working generation's income to supplement the retired generation's money, for those of you not in the US) will suffer. Hell, in the US right now I already know when it's my time to collect Social Security that I'm pretty much screwed; the high percentage of elderly currently living will have eaten up all the funds by the time it rolls around to my retirement. This is part of CP's argument that reduced Social Security and reduced medicare/medicaid and benefits for the elderly are a (possibly non-intentional, but results remain the same) case of negligence with the eventual result/goal of reducing the elderly population. Bring it into balance with the low birth rate, that is.
Okay.
So. If a country has reached maximum capacity of technology-production/resource-production compared to population, and the birth rate is relatively low, with a substantially larger elderly population...well, I guess I could posit several outcomes/catastrophes that would shift everything.
1. A sudden biological disaster - natural or as the result of war - decimates the weakest members of the population. First to go would be babies and the elderly. So now the population is mostly adolescent to late 60's, with those having better health care holding up the best (whether from age or wealth). If the biological disaster only impacted people - I mean, an AIDs-like virus wouldn't destroy the corn crop - then there's plenty of resources but a need to get the birthrate up substantially.
2. Hm. If a biological disaster struck at the resources, and took out a fair bit of the raw materials, then the population would go through a bit of a jag. Starvation, mass hysteria, etc - that would be very much a short-term thing; people rioting in the streets, fighting over food, waiting long lines, etc. Once alternate resources were found and/or population decreased itself to a manageable degree, it'd balance out again, right?
So unless, somehow, in the course of say, twenty years, several things happened at once: large numbers of the population rendered infertile, resources smacked hard and don't rebound, then there might be the need to *regulate* the birth rate (not necessarily limit it) but at the same time definitely encourage those able to bear children to do so. Because a lower birth rate means as the current population ages, there's no one coming up behind to support them to any degree, so obviously you want some birth rate - but not too much, because the resources won't support it (if only temporarily).
Maybe that means that, in the decade or so after a major natural disaster - hey, Yellowstone wasn't supposed to blow its top for another 50,000 years, damn it! - then those who are fertile would be treated to a massive amount of pressure as baby-making machines... well, to the degree that fertiles exist in proportion to the neutrals population, and the required birth rate. If every fertile couple produced a child and this topped the temporarily limited birth rate...
Y'know, I'm not really sure a govt/society would put a cap on the birthrate if there was mass starvation due to lack of resources. Wouldn't that be treated as one of those things - who's going to have a baby when they can barely feed themselves, already? I mean, assuming there's a choice on the part of the parents. I'd think most potential parents would look at the world and say, "we'll wait until it's a bit better, thanks," and the birth rate would drop to ridiculously low levels? In that case, the government would be trying to *increase* the birthrate, pressuring and encouraging and offering benefits to those willing/able to have children. Hrm. Since regulation moves slower than societal changes, what if the resources did rebound, but that birthrate control was still in place?
Man, either way - baby-making machines or under strict regulation - I'd think people who have spouse and are both able to produce children - I'd bet they'd feel like they're under a frickin' microscope. And I could potentially see, if the neutrals are a majority, that the medicine wouldn't be spent on the age-old medical care for mother/father/baby (not much new there), but instead on increasing fertility or 'curing' neutrals, since the bulk of the economy and income might be from neutrals. I mean, let's be honest. If AIDs had struck 50% of the American population, and wiped out/damaged a significant number of the mainstream, middle-class workers, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we were a fsckload closer to a cure than we are currently. Who suffers from a situation - their status, their education, their production - determines a great deal who gets the attention. Like the old saying goes, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Heh.
I'm rambling.
Found a study on China's birthrates which indicate that government control impacts birthrates only in the short term; the biggest impact on birthrates are what the authors called 'preference' - that is, things like women working outside the home (and thus choosing to do something else with their free time other than have children), higher education, better medical...basically, the more a country is industrialized, and the higher its economic position in terms of living quality, the lower the birthrate, on average.
The birthrate in Japan is dropping, and has been; China is trying to get a zero-rate point where births and deaths balance out. The theory is that eventually the US will reach this same point - low death rate, low birth rate - but I think this leaves out the issue of immigration and increasing population due to other means. But anyway.
So...if it's an industrialized nation, with pre- and post-conception birth control available (bwahaha, my mother always used to say, 'abortion should be legal to the age of twenty-one' but I digress) then it's likely that it would have stabilized with several elements: 1, low birth rate due to people marrying later and preferring to spend their free time/money on selves rather than children, 2, low death rate due to higher quality of medical care, and 3, a certain balance of production to consumption. The real issue in that scenario might be what Japan is facing (and the US, to some degree): the aging population is larger than the next population, which means things like Social Security (which require the current working generation's income to supplement the retired generation's money, for those of you not in the US) will suffer. Hell, in the US right now I already know when it's my time to collect Social Security that I'm pretty much screwed; the high percentage of elderly currently living will have eaten up all the funds by the time it rolls around to my retirement. This is part of CP's argument that reduced Social Security and reduced medicare/medicaid and benefits for the elderly are a (possibly non-intentional, but results remain the same) case of negligence with the eventual result/goal of reducing the elderly population. Bring it into balance with the low birth rate, that is.
Okay.
So. If a country has reached maximum capacity of technology-production/resource-production compared to population, and the birth rate is relatively low, with a substantially larger elderly population...well, I guess I could posit several outcomes/catastrophes that would shift everything.
1. A sudden biological disaster - natural or as the result of war - decimates the weakest members of the population. First to go would be babies and the elderly. So now the population is mostly adolescent to late 60's, with those having better health care holding up the best (whether from age or wealth). If the biological disaster only impacted people - I mean, an AIDs-like virus wouldn't destroy the corn crop - then there's plenty of resources but a need to get the birthrate up substantially.
2. Hm. If a biological disaster struck at the resources, and took out a fair bit of the raw materials, then the population would go through a bit of a jag. Starvation, mass hysteria, etc - that would be very much a short-term thing; people rioting in the streets, fighting over food, waiting long lines, etc. Once alternate resources were found and/or population decreased itself to a manageable degree, it'd balance out again, right?
So unless, somehow, in the course of say, twenty years, several things happened at once: large numbers of the population rendered infertile, resources smacked hard and don't rebound, then there might be the need to *regulate* the birth rate (not necessarily limit it) but at the same time definitely encourage those able to bear children to do so. Because a lower birth rate means as the current population ages, there's no one coming up behind to support them to any degree, so obviously you want some birth rate - but not too much, because the resources won't support it (if only temporarily).
Maybe that means that, in the decade or so after a major natural disaster - hey, Yellowstone wasn't supposed to blow its top for another 50,000 years, damn it! - then those who are fertile would be treated to a massive amount of pressure as baby-making machines... well, to the degree that fertiles exist in proportion to the neutrals population, and the required birth rate. If every fertile couple produced a child and this topped the temporarily limited birth rate...
Y'know, I'm not really sure a govt/society would put a cap on the birthrate if there was mass starvation due to lack of resources. Wouldn't that be treated as one of those things - who's going to have a baby when they can barely feed themselves, already? I mean, assuming there's a choice on the part of the parents. I'd think most potential parents would look at the world and say, "we'll wait until it's a bit better, thanks," and the birth rate would drop to ridiculously low levels? In that case, the government would be trying to *increase* the birthrate, pressuring and encouraging and offering benefits to those willing/able to have children. Hrm. Since regulation moves slower than societal changes, what if the resources did rebound, but that birthrate control was still in place?
Man, either way - baby-making machines or under strict regulation - I'd think people who have spouse and are both able to produce children - I'd bet they'd feel like they're under a frickin' microscope. And I could potentially see, if the neutrals are a majority, that the medicine wouldn't be spent on the age-old medical care for mother/father/baby (not much new there), but instead on increasing fertility or 'curing' neutrals, since the bulk of the economy and income might be from neutrals. I mean, let's be honest. If AIDs had struck 50% of the American population, and wiped out/damaged a significant number of the mainstream, middle-class workers, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we were a fsckload closer to a cure than we are currently. Who suffers from a situation - their status, their education, their production - determines a great deal who gets the attention. Like the old saying goes, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Heh.
I'm rambling.
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no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 11:06 pm (UTC)I don't think so. People are amazingly stupid when it comes to things like this. The birth rate, I think, would stay almost constant...it's the infant/youth mortality rate that would skyrocket.
no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2004 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2004 12:06 am (UTC)In a country like the US - it's rather different. America is a debtor country right now - high current account and fiscal deficits - so a high dependency ratio it would affect us much more rapidly than Japan. The nice thing is that our birth and immigration rates mean that our dependency ratio won't rise to Japan's levels and therefore we won't have the problems that Japan will have - fewer tax-payers and more dependents. Additionally, if we fund social security adequately now, we can get through the next 2-3 decades without too much economic or social upheaval. The countries you are talking about where things are more extreme are Japan and Italy, followed by other European nations. The new world is less prone to these problems right now.
Not sure what this does to your worldbuilding but I hope it helps. The OECD does a lot of this work - go to oecd.org and look around their online publications.
no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2004 12:39 am (UTC)You need to get AIM, so I can yammer at you directly.
Hrm, Japan's situation...very low birthrate, high # of dependents, but pretty advanced in terms of industrialization - except that it exports ideas, and those ideas are mostly manufactured in other countries, right? I know a number of massive Japanese corporations have factories outside Japan; how does that affect their GNP - does it count as theirs, or someone else's? Uh, never mind (unless it has impact on what would happen if natural disaster struck).
Boy, I guess the numbers would have to be MASSIVE for the US to either a) cap immigration for reasons other than political/ornery, and b) cap birthrate by immigrants. It does seem that lower-income women and first-generation immigrants do have higher child-rate numbers than higher-class, long-term women in US, generally speaking. Hrm. Fewer taxpayers, more dependents.
Well, getting back to world-building: if taxpayers = people who cannot have children, and dependents = people who can have children + children + few elderly, and the taxpayers outrank the dependents, then economically things would be balanced in that sense, producing a stable economy? Assuming all other things being as they are now, what would it do to our economy to suddenly have biological damage that renders, say, 75% of the population unable to have children? Would the effects be more drastic short-term, or long-term?
Gyah. Woo! Pumping the economist for in-fo-ma-shun. ;D
no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2004 05:02 am (UTC)If things are going along well and then boom - only a few people can have babies - the economic effects would take a longer period of time to flow through. There's the initial thing of people not buying pregnancy and child-related goods and services - hospitals, beds, clothing etc. But further down the track, there'd be serious dislocation as people die and noone is replacing them in the workplace. Similar effects to a high dependency ratio but more rapid and dramatic (ie one decade instead of 3-4). This effect would come about if no other physical resources are pulled out of the economy - e.g. infrastructure, factories etc still functioning and the problem comes from a virus or microbe that only effects human reproduction (kinda like myomitosis for rabbits). If there is physical destruction, then the short-term effects of that destruction could potentially be massive economically.
More likely the social policy effects would flow through first - increase immigration, increased medical research to fix the problem and in the meantime find people to donate eggs and sperm, grow babies outside the womb etc, cloning. Encourage the 25% who are fertile to have many babies through some type of financial incentives. Depending on the political and social climate of the time, you could get any number of permutations of policy and I'm sure that there are some scenarios that would be less-than-respectful of individual rights.
Gotta go to class but will check in when I can.
no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2004 05:25 am (UTC)Ah, as for aim, you've got a PC, so go to http://www.aim.com, I think it is. It's an AOL-based prog but you don't need AOL (thank the stars) to run it. D/l, install, register your user name, and track me down. I give you one big huge guess as to what my AIM is (other than the fact it's listed on my LJ user info). Heh.
Hmmm. Then I suppose part of the question is also whether the biological damage is contagious, or a one-time thing. Assuming it's a one-time thing, then the issues of exposure and contamination (and yes, I do remember the stupid posters about getting AIDs - and later, NOT getting it - from toilet seats) wouldn't be as big of a factor. If it's a disease that spreads, then there's also the questions of separating the areas of society.
I'm starting to think I should move over into scifi - I do prefer when there's a hard science explanation for things, Why Stuff Is, rather than just the old 'shut up it's magic' clause. ;D