Good sir, I am intrigued.
Do you have any links I could take a look at?
I was under the impression that the population was under a continual exponential increase, both nationally and globally, and that medical advancement keeping people alive would only make it worse.
The population bombers have bombed in the face of reality.
A couple good books on the subject:
Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben Wattenberg
http://www.amazon.com/Fewer-Demography-Depopulation-Shape-Future/dp/1566636736/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206391793&sr=1-2Newt Gingrich wrote this review on amazon.com:
Ben Wattenberg's "Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future" is a remarkable book and, in terms of its importance for our country and the world, it should attract a great deal more attention than most of the presidential campaign advertising.
Mr. Wattenberg reports conclusively that the world will have far fewer people than was expected even a decade ago, that in numbers and age and gender patterns this smaller population will be distributed in ways that will be significant, and that the implications for the environment, the economy and national security will be quite profound.
The biggest news is that in sheer numbers the human race is now likely to peak at 8.5 billion people instead of the United Nations projection of 11.5 billion. Even the U.N. demographers now agree that the population explosion will never reach the numbers they had once projected.
The biggest reason for this dramatic decline was captured in an earlier book by Mr. Wattenberg, "The Birth Dearth." Women are simply having fewer children and the result is that in some countries population is already starting to go down.
As Mr. Wattenberg notes, in order to sustain the current population, the average woman would have to have 2.33 children. Falling below that average will result in a population decline. Today some 40 countries are already below the replacement rate and Mr. Wattenberg expects virtually every country to be below the replacement rate by the end of our lifetime.
Fascinatingly, after all the focus on Chinese compulsory population control, it is not China that has had the most rapid change in birthrates among Asian countries. That honor goes to South Korea, where women now average only 1.17 children (even lower than Japan). China has dropped to 1.825 and is still declining.
Mr. Wattenberg makes so many fascinating points in this thin book that it is impossible to cover them all in a review. However, a few deserve to be singled out.
Europe is going to lose population dramatically by mid-century and therefore become significantly older. This will almost certainly entail a significant shift in power and in economic competitiveness away from an aging and shrinking European Union.
Mexico is on the verge of dropping below the replacement rate; over the next generation this will almost certainly slow the rate of migration to the United States. Russia is facing a demographic crisis, with the shortest lifespan for males of any industrial country and a catastrophic decline in women willing to bear children.
Mr. Wattenberg highlights the intellectual dishonesty of the Paul Ehrlich, left-wing environmentalists and their factual mistakes over the last generation. Mr. Ehrlich had predicted famines beginning in the 1970s. They simply haven't happened. The global warming projections all assumed a population of 11.5 billion. If the human race peaks at only 8.5 billion people - 3 billion fewer than predicted - and then starts a long-term decline, how that changes all those gloom-and-doom predictions.
Mr. Wattenberg highlights the unique role of the United States as the one industrial country that will keep growing. American population growth is a combination of the highest birthrate of any industrial country (2.01 children per female) and our willingness to accept immigration. Mr. Wattenberg projects that the United States will continue to grow in economic and other forms of power, while Europe and Japan decline dramatically. Indeed, in the Wattenberg vision of the future, there are only three large nations by 2050: China, India and the United States.
This is a book that should lead to very profound discussions, given its implications for pension programs in Europe and Japan, its implications for economic development throughout the world and its implications for environmental management and an honest assessment of the future.
Finally, this book is a tribute to the continued, persistent willingness of Mr. Wattenberg to take facts as they are presented and follow them without an ideological or political agenda. Hopefully it will lead many policy-makers to think deeply about how much the future will differ from their current expectations and then to ask how those differences should change American and world policies.
That book came out of the following article by BW, "It Will Be A Smaller World, After All."
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.16549/pub_detail.aspAmerica Alone by Mark Steyn examines some of the consequences of the slow-motion civilizational suicide:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Alone-End-World-Know/dp/0895260786/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206392195&sr=1-2Western civilization, if it has a future, lies with America alone, since the Euros won't be around, as America is the only country in the West to have a replacement birth rate.
Here is one amazon.com review:
Regular readers of Mr. Steyn will not be unfamiliar with his central points:
1) In the ongoing conflict between the West and Islam, both the demographics and the will to power favor the Islamists. That a country like Spain, with a birth rate of 1.15 children per adult women, will extinguish itself in a few generations, while immigrants from countries such as Pakistan (birth rate 4.53) will move in to fill the vacuum.
2) That as an aggressive, unassimilated minority edges closer to a majority (as in France, with an estimated 30% Muslim population in the under 20 age group), the character of the democratic institutions will become more closely aligned with Islamic law and culture.
3) That the post-Christian welfare state is largely to blame for the pessimism and failures of will demonstrated by Europe.
4) That America represents the primary exception to this trend, if only by degree, and that only a concerted effort to save our society stands a chance of reversing these trends.
UN Population stats, as of 2006, with med, high, & low variants, as well as a constant-fertility variant (least likely). Most demographers think these numbers are somewhat padded, too.
http://esa.un.org/unpp/World
Population (thousands)
All Variants
1950-2050
Year Medium
variant High
variant Low
variant Constant-
fertility
variant
1950 2 535 093 2 535 093 2 535 093 2 535 093
1955 2 770 753 2 770 753 2 770 753 2 770 753
1960 3 031 931 3 031 931 3 031 931 3 031 931
1965 3 342 771 3 342 771 3 342 771 3 342 771
1970 3 698 676 3 698 676 3 698 676 3 698 676
1975 4 076 080 4 076 080 4 076 080 4 076 080
1980 4 451 470 4 451 470 4 451 470 4 451 470
1985 4 855 264 4 855 264 4 855 264 4 855 264
1990 5 294 879 5 294 879 5 294 879 5 294 879
1995 5 719 045 5 719 045 5 719 045 5 719 045
2000 6 124 123 6 124 123 6 124 123 6 124 123
2005 6 514 751 6 514 751 6 514 751 6 514 751
2010 6 906 558 6 967 407 6 843 645 6 944 634
2015 7 295 135 7 459 289 7 127 009 7 416 822
2020 7 667 090 7 966 382 7 363 824 7 919 765
2025 8 010 509 8 450 822 7 568 539 8 443 704
2030 8 317 707 8 913 727 7 727 192 8 996 239
2035 8 587 050 9 368 004 7 828 666 9 597 117
2040 8 823 546 9 829 962 7 871 770 10 265 189
2045 9 025 982 10 297 036 7 857 864 11 014 053
2050 9 191 287 10 756 366 7 791 945 11 857 786
I would also suggest you read accounts of Russia's and E Germany's depopulation.
