Re:The Fertility Implosion
by rsheridan6 on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @08:52AM
(#3698155)
In general what you say is true, but there are some exceptions. The Hasidic Jews are one of the most fertile groups in the US, and they are low income, highly religious, but urban (most of them live in New York City).
You might think they're an insignificantly small group, but the counterintuitively fast nature of exponential population growth means that they'll become surprisingly large surprisingly quickly. They're culturally immune to the influences that caused fertility to collapse in others and they're unlikely to voluntary limit their fertility.
Re:The Fertility Implosion
by lunarscape on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @07:20AM
(#3697894)
You've forgotten the role conflicts can play in birthrates, for example to ensure one group remains dominant. [1]
> Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates
No, usually what goes along with high birthrates is an agrarian peasant society that has to maintain high birthrates because 50%+ of children die before the age of 5, and if you want to have several kids of working age around to help in the fields, you need to aim for 8 or 12 newborns. Agrarian peasant societies happen to be poor and religious, but those are effects, not causes. Other contributing factors: women without independent income and therefore beholden to their husbands, no access to contraceptives, lack of basic literacy and education especially among girls.
Then what happens when places get improved sanitation and healthcare, pretty consistently everywhere we look at the data, is that there’s a demographic bubble when a generation has mothers survive all their pregnancies and all their 8-12 kids survive to adulthood. Then in the next generation or two, that falls to 4-6 kids on average because, hey, 50% aren’t dying anymore. Then by 2-3 generations after that, it’s down to 2-3 kids on average, or in some places even below replacement levels. Other contributing factors: migration to cities, access to contraceptives, and education especially of girls.
If you work in a factory or an office or a store, and live in a city, it’s just not convenient to start having kids at age 16 or to end up with 8 kids running around, even if you’re poor or religious. Already, 50% of the world population is urban, and within another generation that will be 60%.
> The speed of the change is breathtaking
The same demographic changes everywhere else in the world happened or are happening roughly at the same speed. There’s an incredible drop in fertility rate within 2-3 generations every time. For example, you see precisely the same pattern happening within the last few decades in rural Mexico, and if you look back several generations, the same pattern sweeping across Europe.
That Brooks thinks the changes in Oman &c. are surprising says more about Brooks than about the changes here.