ourworldindata

Yes, that is right the population growth rate started declining more than half a century ago. In 1962 the growth rate peaked at 2.2% and has halved since then: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#the-globa...

The projections from different research teams differ in when they expect the population population to peak. IIASA suggests what you say, the UN expects it later. I looked at the different projections (and what is behind the differences) here https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child

Hi rlue!

This is largely due to China's population dynamics.

Here I've made a chart that shows the number of births (and deaths) in China over the last 69 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-project... 30 and also 50 years ago China had large cohorts of newborns, these are the 'ripples' you see going through the global population pyramid.

The number of births is always determined by two factors: the number of children per woman in the reproductive age bracket (called the Total Fertility Rate). And the number in the reproductive age bracket.

Here is the Total Fertility Rate for China: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab...

The large cohort born around 50 years ago is the parent generation of the large cohort born 30 years ago.

So the question is what explains the large cohort in the 1960s? That is the cohort born right before the rapid reduction of the Total Fertility Rate (from 6.4 children per woman in 1965 to half of that 15 years later as the chart above shows; this is largely before the introduction of the strict one-child-policy by the way). And it is the cohort born after one of the largest mass deaths in history. The Great Leap Forward Famine from around 1951 to 61 https://ourworldindata.org/famines#great-leap-forward-famine... Around 30 million died and as in all famines the fertility rate declined substantially, to then jump again right after the famine.

Good questions! I should have mentioned them in the post. Let me know if you want to know more.

We were thinking of building "a news feed of research about the topics [you] care about".

What do you have in mind? Do you have an example?

We'd be curious what it is that you would expect there. Thanks!

Our main goal is what you say. I am happy to hear that. Thank you! It is exactly what we try to do.

Thank you very much!! Let us know if you are missing something to make it your go to site.

There should be many more projects like ours so I'm happy to hear that! I'd really like it if we had as much reporting on the slow long-term changes as we have media that focusses on single events in the last 24 hours.

I didn't think of that. Sounds like a good idea!

Hi betocmn, I'm happy to hear that! Yes, took quite a few years to piece everything together.

We have a long list of topics that we want to work on https://ourworldindata.org/about/list-of-all-data-entries (And further work on the existing ones.)

It's not just you, a research project on migration is on the very top of what our readers ask us. Currently we try to make the structure of the site clear and the interactive charts intuitive. But once we get back to research your topic will be one of the first ones we work on. (We are just 4 researchers doing this so it might take some months still though)

A community discussion forum to discuss research would be great. I'd be interested in hearing what you would suggest? We have discussed whether something like StackOverflow, but for global development, would be possible. I think we are too small for it though. If we'd build a platform we'd need a big group of engaged contributors and we don't think we are big enough for that yet.

I read the newspaper article and have been in a lot of contact with the author, we agree on many points, especially that higher poverty lines are needed to track what is happening and that it is surely not enough to look at extreme poverty. But low poverty lines are needed so that we see what is happening to world's poorest. One of the biggest failures of development over the last decades is that incomes of the very poorest on the planet have not risen: https://voxeu.org/article/assessing-progress-poorest-new-evi... This is not widely known because the extreme poverty line is not low enough to focus on what happens to the very poorest. So overall I think it is very important that we keep track of what happens relative to different poverty lines (and we do https://ourworldindata.org/poverty-at-higher-poverty-lines) On the particular point you emphasize, that historians have a poor understanding of poverty and prosperity in the past I do not agree that it is a 'reckless extrapolation of sketchy sources'. I think this is overstating the existing uncertainties and it's not a fair description of the careful and tedious work that historians do. And we did respond to it here https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-methods and go in some detail of this historical work. We understand our job as providing access to good, existing research and so our job is to understand the research that is out there and bring it together on the web to make it possible for everyone to understand it, and access it. A very thorough book on what we know about poverty, including the historical decline of the share living on less than an extremely low poverty threshold, is Martin Ravallion's 'The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy'. Let me know what you think!