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Old Posted Feb 24, 2016, 4:21 PM
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Spocket Spocket is offline
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This sort of statement about sky-high population projections comes up from time to time and basically it's all at odds with statistical trends.

The developed world is losing people. The developing world is seeing major drops in fertility rates and in some cases while the population is still rising decline is inevitable over a longer period.

Africa is the only continent where the majority of the nations are predicted to see fertility rates remain stable and high. However, Africa is also finally starting to stabilize politically and social and education systems are in their nascent stages. It's a reasonable bet that while Africa will see a major rise in population, growth will slow there too.

As for the U.S. hitting a billion...well, unless there are a few huge changes between now and then, it's not going to happen. It's obviously possible but there are only two ways it can happen.

1- Immigration. There's just no way that the U.S. government is going to increase immigration to levels so high that the economy is destroyed. The reach a billion under present economic realities, there's no way to do it without catastrophically damaging the economy. That's suicide and who's going to vote for that ?

2- Birth rates. Well, while they may rise dramatically, they'd have to do so to such a degree that something else radical would have to be at play. Like Mormon's suddenly having a hundred babies each and all of them surviving and reproducing at the same rate. Without a collapse of the education system there's pretty much no way that the birth rates will rise that much. In fact, the biggest predictor of population growth is education. Ignorant people tend to have more children because without an education the children are meant to act as their retirement savings plan.

Obviously religion plays a role but again, education affects the religious too. Even if they believe in having hordes of children as part of their religious practices they know that they won't be able to keep them without the money to support the kids. No education plus the reality of modern economics rules that out too.

So, in summary, not gonna happen.
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