while some people do well on short term trading personally I have normally done better on a longer term view one of the biggest impacts in my life time and I believe in everyone’s future lives are the changes in world population going forward and the impact on demand for commodities of all types including food and housing as well as transport etc etc
As shown in link the population of the world will increase by 80 million this year and increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years
Exactly my point countries won’t stand by and let other countries people starve Band aid was a good example and the war in Nigeria you refer to is a good example population since then has quadrupled and will double again by 2050
Your not disproving my point your making it
Berlin air lift was political west couldn’t let west Berlin starve and become part of east Germany
When it comes to Pulp they don’t have to understand economic growth just how people feel and that often there is no logic to their actions just a short term release
I spent my early life with people like that they are not thinking next week let alone 10 years out
Your not disproving my point your making it
Err, no I'm not.
The historical data clearly shows that as child mortality rates fall then economic growth rises. That's happened despite countries stepping in to feed other countries in the past.
There's no obvious reason countries continuing to operate aid programs will change the basic trend which is clearly driven by human psychology - population levels fall when child mortality drops because people are more confident their children will survive to adulthood. The data then shows this leads to greater prosperity - the reasons for which can be legitimately debated.
timarr
That has made some countries more reliant on charity rather than sorting out the problems in their countries. Also some of these countries had/have civil wars going on which makes matters worse, such as Ethiopia.
Er yes you are
So let’s see where you are saying I will be wrong then
So let’s take Nigeria
When the war that led to a humanitarian intervention the population was
1970 56 million and fertility rate was 6.35%
In 2020 the population was 206 million and although the fertility rate had dropped it had only dropped to 5.42%
Forecast for
2050 is 401 million the only thing that would stop this is a big fall in fertility rates which seems unlikely even if 400 was to high it is hard to see it being bellow 350 +
Would you not agree which of the above figures do you disagree with ?
In fact what are you saying with the whole population growth discussion that there will not be population growth that it will be less
That the model you follow can not be wrong ?
Fertility rates are dropping at over 1% per annum in Nigeria.
You could have predicted similar growth in the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand back in the 1970s but it did not happen, Thailands population is hardly growing at all and the Philippines growth has declined considerably. As mortality rates decline then there is less need to have some many children. China and India's fertility rates are declining along with most western countries.
So let’s take Nigeria
I have no idea what point you're trying to make. I've not said anywhere that I expect population growth to fall in Nigeria. Or anywhere else for that matter, I have no insight into the matter other than that provided by the worldometer predictions.
What I have pointed out is that the historical data suggests that before a country starts to experience significant economic growth its rate of population growth needs to fall a lot. That doesn't mean that the population decreases, just that it grows more slowly.
Taking Nigeria specifically it currently has infant mortality running over at over 1 in 10 under 5's. It'll need to drop significantly below that before you see people having smaller families and real economic growth kicking in. So, as it stands you'd expect to see the Nigerian population continuing to grow rapidly while economic growth stagnates.
However, Nigeria is a outlier due to its oil wealth which skews the economic figures.
timarr
So the method you put forward does not work with Nigeria does it work with any country in Africa numbers would say no fertility might even increase
https://www.worldometers.info/...
Could this be at least partly down to aid from outside countries ?
Interesting discussions about global population and growth. But they miss the real issue - the implications of an increasing population on a planet with finite resources.
As others have said, we are 'baked in' to a global population of 10-11bn by 2050ish (apparently we have already passed 'peak child' ie it's unlikely in the future there will ever be the number of children on the planet that there are now). Even with non-finite resources 2050 onwards would be very interesting with likely very significant population declines.
Of course we do not have non-finite resources. The seminal 1972 study Limits to Growth produced a very simplistic model of the impacts of a growing population in a finite world. Two of the scenarios it modelled gave what they called an "overshoot and collapse" of the global system by the mid- to latter-part of the 21st Century, while a third scenario resulted in a "stabilized world". Subsequent reviews have indicated that 45+ years later, we are not on the third scenario. It's controversial and criticised. It's a simplistic model. Sure, the timings could be off. But as a Physicist used to studying how complex systems behave, I find it very hard not to very concerned by ever growing demand inside a finite system. Something will have to give.
And when it does, none of us are going to be worrying about the value of our stock portfolio!
Have you heard the analogy about the bacteria in a bottle? These bacteria breed, and they double in size every minute - so long as they have room in the bottle. At midday, the bottle is full of bacteria and their lifestyle is over.
When do you think the bacteria realised that they had a problem? After all, the bottle was only half full at 11.59.
Fortunately the ruler of the bacteria was very far-sighted. At 11.58 he sent his best bacteria out to find more of their finite resource they needed (bottle space). And they did an incredible job. They found three new bottles, the only other bottles in existence - that's three times the space that the bacteria had ever known in the whole of their bacteria history!
So, the question is - when did bacteria civilisation end?
So the method you put forward does not work with Nigeria does it work with any country in Africa numbers would say no fertility might even increase
I haven't put forward a "method". There's just data. The data for Africa shows that birth rates are falling across the continent (including Nigeria, they're just not falling as much there as GDP growth would imply), following a trend previously seen in Asia. Populations overall are still increasing because people are living longer, not because birth rates are increasing.
Countries that a few years ago would have been labelled as "third-world" now have first-world birth rates - Bangladesh is seeing 2 children per family, Sri Lanka also. Even in Africa birth rates are falling across the continent.
Women are having less children. However, because people are living longer then the population is still growing. As birth rates drop to around 2 per woman then, eventually population growth will level out. That's what the worldometer data is telling us - birth rates are falling but people are living longer.
Whether foreign aid has anything to do with this is doubtful. But if it is, then given that much US aid is tied to blocking access to contraception, it's at least plausible that it's worsening rather than improving the situation.
timarr
It would seem people are not living longer in sub Saharan Africa at least going by this data https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b...
That was in 2005, it has gone up now: https://www.statista.com/statistics/805644/life-expectancy-at-birth-in-sub-saharan-africa/
That is a massive increase from 45.9 to 61.6 in only 14 years.
"One main element driving this is the fall in the infant mortality rate and rise in child survival."
"So what would your projection for world population growth be then ?"
A good outcome... would be stabilising at 10BN. With massive advances in engineering, technology and efficiency... we may just survive without killing the bio-sphere of anything above the bugs.
Once we go north of 20BN... read books/TV shows like "The Expanse" and "Blade Runner"... 9/10 would be unemployed on a UN minimum wage... careers allocated by lottery to a lucky 1 in 100... populating The Moon, Mars, The Asteroid Belt and Outer Planets suddenly becomes a less unpleasant choice.
The finite limit... is the size of the planet and what can work within the laws of physics and biology within the bio-sphere bubble.
The COVID scam was interesting... some thought this was the big reset event... but clearly not.
Yes great book, I picked up a copy from ebay years ago for ~ £1, now it seems to sell for significantly more:-) Essentially my entire investing thesis is based on the various findings/predictions found in this old book.
BTW: I would also suggest reading James Kunstler's "The long emergency".
For anyone interested in disease life expectancy this is the best source I could find it’s interesting
yep we will be lucky to get out of it with a decent quality of life well our children and grandchildren will
