from Hacker News

Peak Population Projections

by sjmulder on 6/18/24, 9:05 AM with 64 comments

• by bkandel on 6/18/24, 4:51 PM

  It's a bit strange that the author doesn't mention the population projections published in The Lancet a few years ago (https://www.thelancet.com/infographics-do/population-forecas...). They note a lot of the problems with the UN projections, which include the modeling but also include other factors, like the effect of female education. In the few years since their study came out, their numbers appear to be more accurate than the UN approach of assuming fertility ends up at 1.69 everywhere.

• by cl42 on 6/18/24, 4:19 PM

  I was just emailing a few folks in the insurance industry about demographic decline. I can't find any good economic analyses on what will likely happen to our economies when populations start to decline. This will happen given the projections and the fact that we can't force people to have babies 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago. Has anyone come across anything good that isn't a 'popular press' book? I'm looking for deep analysis.

• by fred_is_fred on 6/18/24, 5:24 PM

  The UN has done nothing but downward revisions in the last 10+ years. They consistently overestimate birth rates and underestimate how quickly they are falling especially in the developing countries. This itself is a trend that says the UN is overly optimistic here in terms of population growth and max/max year. The 2019 to 2022 revision went from population max of 10.88B in 2100 to 10.4B in 2086. I didn't find the 2024 data yet but would expect another "our numbers were too high" again.

• by AtlasBarfed on 6/18/24, 6:53 PM

  Population does not matter .what matters is population and the average resources footprint.

  China and India having 2.5 billion if they are subsistence farming is a much faster different thing that China and India with some approximation of western lifestyles.

  Demographic decline does seem endemic to urbanization, but urbanization is hand in hand with western consumption rates.

  Net economic activity will probably increase in net, but with, uh, bumps.

• by PKop on 6/18/24, 4:38 PM

  We live in a finite world, with finite resources, and particularly finite space.

  Take a look at the massive population increase especially in some countries in 50 to 100 years, even ones without huge amounts of land..population density has skyrocketed vs historical norms. It is no wonder that eventually this puts pressure on birth rates, and some of the lowest birth rates are found in places with some of the highest population densities.

  Cost of living and real estate has risen, and it will be a good thing for this to reverse or slow. And some foolish leaders want to short circuit this natural correction by importing new people to compete with local citizens for real estate and resources. Not smart. It will only depress domestic birth rates further.

• by xnx on 6/18/24, 4:54 PM

  It seems none of these projections are expecting people to start living to 120 or longer, which seems like something that could happen in the next 50 years.