The World Population Crisis NO ONE Sees Coming
if you saw this graph of the human population over the centuries you might be thinking we're heading for disaster a world with overpopulation food shortages and increasing global conflict over increasingly scarce resources we've gotten so good at maintaining human populations between modern medicine modern farming and water and waste management but as an engineer I always look deeper at the data and in this video I want to make a case for quite the opposite we're actually looking at the beginning of a population collapse and with it different but critical worldwide challenges this is a good example of where it pays to think like an engineer so let's see if we can find some Trends and figure this all out together I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci this video is sponsored by better help let's start with how we got here in the year 400 the world population was around 242 million don't ask me how they figured this stuff out it's pretty amazing it would take another 1,00 years to double the population in the year 1500 around the time Columbus sailed the ocean blue to 503 million it would double again to 1 billion in 1805 just three 300 years later in 1927 it would double again to 2 billion in just 122 years in just 49 years after that it would double again to 4 billion in 1976 the next doubling just happened in 2022 and we reached a population of 8 billion 46 years later now you might be tempted to extrapolate from here and figure the world population will break 16 billion sometime around 2070 but that won't be the case were still growing but not exponentially anymore the population is growing more slowly every day that means that to what most people think we won't grow indefinitely the world population will reach a maximum plateau and then begin to drop and it'll drop really quickly 23 countries including China Spain Italy Japan and even Russia will likely see their populations have by 2100 Japan's projected drop is particularly dramatic researchers expect Japan's population to shrink from its peak of 128 million in 2017 to just 53 million by the end of the century that's an almost 60% drop one of the first whistleblowers related to a demographic crisis was Paul erick's 1968 book the population bomb he was one of the first to propose that the population in explosion would be met by a shortage of resources later leading to war famine and finally collapsed by the year 2000 later in 1972 researchers from MIT reached a similar conclusion but set the deadline at around 2040 caused also by resource depletion pollution and social collapse these predictions not only made their way into mainstream pop culture but they also affected policy in fact China imposed a one child policy dubbed late long and few which cut population growth in half between 1970 and 1976 other countries had similar things like in India where station programs were taking foot however the following decad saw strong exponential growth and steered away from those projections which is why most people my age always seem to worry about there being too many people on earth rather than too few in fact in 2021 the United Nations forecast was that the population would increase to 11 billion by the end of the century this is why I was really surprised to find out that we're headed in the totally opposite direction a recent study commissioned by the organization the club of Rome predicts that if current trends continue the world's population which is currently 7.96 billion will Peak at 8.6 billion in the middle of the century before declining by nearly 2 billion before the Century's end another study by the University of Washington published in the lanet predicts it'll rise to 9.7 billion by 2064 then fall off to 8.8 billion by 2100 while it could drop all the way to 6.3 billion if the UN sustainable development goal are met that's a drop of 3.4 billion people in just 34 years while it took us 42 years to grow
from 4.56 billion to 7.96 billion that we're at today this means the projected drop is faster than the growth we've had for all these years so give or take a couple of billion people one thing is clear it's very likely that we're living in the time when there are the most human beings on this planet that there ever will be ever just take a minute to let that sink in it really blew my mind let me know what you think are we lucky to live in this unique time are we unlucky let's get the conversation going someone recently asked me how we go about making these videos I'm not going to lie it's a mental health battle and for me the big challenge is burnout and that's why I'm excited to tell you about our sponsor this week better help whether it's the stresses of juggling work and family or challenges like anxiety or depression mental health matters we're living in a golden age of mental health with platforms like better help that make finding a therapist easier because it's online it's remote and by filling out a few questions betterhelp can match you with a professional therapist in as little as a few days better help's mission is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible and that's huge because finding the right therapist can be tough like all great relationships you have to have that connection they make it easy so you can easily switch to a new therapist at no additional cost without stressing about insurance who's in your network or anything else mental health is something I'm valuing more and more as I get older so if you want better help with your mental health check out the link in the description or visit betterhelp.com Vinci to save 10% on your first month today huge thanks to betterhelp and you for supporting the show so the natural question is why why are all the population Trends pointing to a collapse environmentalists could be tempted to think that it was what they feared the world can't handle that many people this is commonly referred to as the petri dish Theory we're like bacteria growing in a Petri dish and there will be a point when no more people will fit and there'll be no more food available however that's not really the case at all because human beings have engineered the environment since we stopped being Nomads we just made a video about new technologies that are feeding the world and we still have plenty of room to grow no the problem is that birth rates and fertility rates are collapsing the birth rate is the total number of live births per every thousand people in the population during any given year if birth rates decline then there won't be enough children to offset the number of people who died during the same year leading to A reduced population if you don't count immigration to be fair the decline in birth rate is nothing new it started around around 1760 at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution this was caused mainly by modernization and then urbanization as people moved into big cities women started studying and working and pursuing life goals other than becoming moms leading to A reduced fertility rate another important factor that drove birth rates down was the fact that the rate of kids survival into adulthood increased dramatically at the beginning of the 20th century half your kids were likely to die as children however in those times when most people had Family Farms they needed those kids to work the fields and to help provide for the family so families needed to have plenty of children now almost all kids reach adulthood so families don't need to have so many kids it's almost unimaginable today but it would be like thinking hey I need four kids to help me around the farm so if half are going to die we should probably have eight kids as quickly as possible today if you wanted four kids you would have four kids and they'll probably all reach adulthood the fertility rate is the average number of children a woman of child rearing age will have as you can see in this graph fertility rates have been dropping consistently in the last century and are projected to keep dropping there's a critical fertility rate that defines when populations start to collapse it's called the replacement level fertility which is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces from one generation to the next leading to a stable population in developed countries replacement level fertility is 2.1 children per women remember this is an average it's not like you're going to have 2.1 children it's more like out of 10 women of childbearing age nine will have two kids and
one will have three so the population starts to fall once the average fertility rate drops below approximately 2.1 right now it's around 2.27 and according to projections from the UN it'll fall below 2.1 by around 2050 and Below 1.7 by 2100 but that's the global average at a country level things are far worse in most Nations 183 out of 195 countries including the US already have fertility rates below replacement levels the lowest of the low is Korea where women are having 78 children on average this implies that over 20% of Korean women are childless if you're wondering in the US the fertility rate is Just 1.66 4 way below replacement levels the only reason
why our population hasn't started collapsing yet is because of immigration this puts things into perspective doesn't it the highest fertility rate is in the African country Niger where every woman has 6.82 children on average it's no wonder Niger also has the highest birth rate in the world with 45.2 births per 1,000 people every year I don't know if you know this but China is no longer the largest country in the world by population India overtook China for the first time in history last April even though their birth rate fell below their replacement levels in December 22 10 years ago India's fertility rate was 3.5 and today it's approximately two now there is a long list of reasons but one of the main drivers for the fertility drop today is that women enjoy a better quality of life they're more educated and have better job opportunities in many cases women today partise their careers over having a family or if they do have children it'll be much later on in life because the more you go to school the more you study the later you start your family some other reasons according to experts are one many families and couples are delaying having children because of how expensive raising children is however across the board women who reach 30 without having a child only have a 50/50 chance of becoming mothers in the future according to one survey as many as 80% of women who end up being childless didn't intend to be childless they just delayed motherhood for too long many people today genz men in particular simply decide not to have children at all also people don't seem to be dating as much anymore many people have delusions and unrealistic expectations that hold them back from relationships which may explain why in China approximately 240 million people that's almost 20% of the population are single Digital entertainment social media only fans have all created distractions from dating making people less likely to want to have children in fact it surprised me to learn that young people today are simply having less sex then there is access to condoms and birth control pills which is arguably the greatest factor in lower birth rates in Britain for example from 1950 1960 60% of married couples use condoms 60% some of those causes have become highly politicized topics of debate between conservatives and liberals why don't you hit pause for a second and leave a comment answering some of these questions I think the cultural aspects are fascinating and I'd love to know what all of you think okay so those are some of the facts but what does it matter if there are fewer of us on Earth isn't that a good thing I mean wouldn't cutting the population down by 20% or more come with an equivalent drop in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and water usage wouldn't that kind of save the world that is not an easy question to answer especially not without stepping on some toes you see the problem isn't just the population itself it's also how the population is made up the problem is that life expectancy has been on the rise at the same time as birth infertility rates have been declining so it's not just fewer people are being born it's also that people are living a lot longer so the population is generally getting older population demographics by age have been a pyramid for most of human history with more young people on the bottom than older ones on top today in countries like China Russia the US Japan and Korea that has changed into almost a square for example here in the states we have a roughly equal number of baby boomers 69 million Gen X 67 million Millennial 72 million and gen Z 69 million and things are projected to get worse all over the world the fastest growing demographic in the world today is people over 85 years old to give you an idea of how bad this is by 2100 the number of kids under five is expected to shrink from 681 million in 2017 to 400 million while at the same time the number of people 80 plus years of age will Skyrocket from 141 million in 2017 to 866 Million by 2100 we're gonna end up with an inverted pyramid at some point which is why Elon Musk quote civilization ending in adult diapers the effect is a massive drop in population that's already happening and that's fed by a negative feedback loop this generation is having fewer kids so there'll be fewer people of reproductive age in the Next Generation who will also likely want to avoid having kids and so the cycle gets stronger and stronger let's look at some specific examples of countries that will have it rough before the end of the century Russia is the first example it has seen a double dip in birth rates caused by the fall of Soviet Union and again by the war in Ukraine this drop has been met with an increase in death rates and massive immigration both caused by the war in Ukraine and the co 19 pandemic as well as the bad economic climate this graph shows Russia's population from 1960 to 2050 as you can see Russia's population has been shrinking for some time now remember in your high school Calculus class when you were thinking what on Earth am I ever going to do with derivatives in my life well here's a perfect example of mathematics and application you see to find the exact maximum on a graph all you need to do is look at at the graph for its first derivative that's because the first derivative shows the slope of the original curve when that slope is zero that means you've got either a peak or a trough if the derivative passes through zero going down from left to right then you're in a peak and vice versa notice how the green line crosses the horizontal zero line three times so when the slope is zero you have a maximum or a minimum and that's kind of what I've been looking at if you just looked at the raw numbers you might be thinking oh my gosh the population is going up but the derivative tells a different story in 1950 China had 500 million people it's a lot but in 70 years they jumped to 1.4 billion that was massive growth that drove their economic Prosperity but China peaked at
1.41 billion people in 2021 and projections now point to losing 700 to 800 million people by the end of the century two big causes for China's population collapse are a plummeting fertility rate and reduced birth rate coupled with an increased death rate without immigration adding an increase in life expectancy which is already 81 and you have a perfect population aging storm but here's where the big difference between the US and China is the Chinese population drop is big news because as their aging population is no longer in the workforce they have a smaller and smaller Workforce and their GDP numbers are starting to decrease other countries like Vietnam where there's much more of a young population is now seeing that uptick in GDP but the Saving Grace for the US is its high desirability for immigrants to want to come here that is what keeps the US relevant and keeps our population numbers very healthy it also brings in new young people who join the workforce pay taxes and start contributing to the GDP most people don't fully understand the risk of a major population collapse on things like infrastructure goods and services business and I didn't either until recently the problem is that our system and infrastructure are designed to be built for a growing population they're not built for decline for example every city or town that has a fire station and a police department is funded for from all of those citizens what happens if the town's population dwindles and there's not enough income from taxes to fund those systems we might see a system where cities can no longer afford to have police or firefighters and it might kind of fall into collapse and Chaos this kind of happened in Detroit which is one of the thriving cities of the 50s after World War II Detroit was Motor City it was the manufacturing headquarters of the world but as people started to move out entire neighborhoods became abandoned and police stations had to shut down and the City kind of fell into ruins now there's some recovery happening now but that could happen at a large scale Social Security or pensions or other retirement plans are kind of a pyramid scheme now that kind of has a negative connotation it's probably the most beloved pyramid scheme of all time but that's kind of what it is the average Social Security payment in the US is $171 which means for a retired couple that's $3,400 the average salary in the US is around 55,000 now 12.4 4% of your paycheck goes to Social Security but you only pay half that your employer pays the other half that means that if the average American is making $4,600 a month at 12% that's $574 per worker you would need nearly six workers to pay for one retired couple or three workers to pay for a single retiree with a healthy perent of more younger people than old that's doable and we've Managed IT for all this time but what happens when we stop having babies and there are no longer people working to pay for that this system would fundamentally collapse in fact the Social Security program is expected to run short of cash in 2033 while a key trust fund for Medicare will run out of funds by 2031 assuming no hardcore policy changes then a shrinking and aging population means fewer people will pay taxes more people will be on long-term care there will be higher pressure on all nation's Health Care Systems there'll be a reduction in the workforce in countries like the United States Germany and China will have to rely on immigration to recover jobs to keep their economies aoat consequently labor demand will go unmet and when that happens everything starts to fall apart however it's more than likely that countries will make strong policy changes that will affect you and me some examples of such policies include making people work longer this means raising the retirement age or increasing the number of days to work you need to put in to access a pension countries like Greece Denmark Iceland Israel and Italy have all increased their retirement ages to 67 the highest in the world in France the retirement age was recently raised from 62 to 64 because of the demographic crisis and that decision was met with riding in the streets they burned Paris to the ground that's how up in arms they were with Just 2 years imagine how bad the news will be when more and more countries start jacking up the retirement age countries like China will absolutely have to raise their retirement age the problem with this is that you were working your whole life with a promise that at a certain age you would retire comfortably but if there aren't people behind you to take up the Realms in the workforce your country might not be able to honor that promise and that's what's so unfair about it if you were told work until this age and then you'll get this money the rest of your life and they change it on you that can make you Furious and that's one of the things I'm most worried about in the near term is some of the policy changes that are going to happen but the big policy change that I want to see happening around the world is an incredible incentive to have children in China with only having one child everyone wanted boys and so it was horrible what they were doing to baby girls in the hope that you would have a son and as a result now there's way too many men there's way too much competition it's hard to find people to get married it's kind of a nightmare playing games like this the unintended consequences a theme you'll hear on my Channel all the time will always catch up to companies and countries that do things that they probably shouldn't ultimately the better thing is to incentivize good good behavior in the US we have a decent child tax credit but it's not very much and honestly compared to the cost of daycare and diapers and formula and food and nannies and babysitters and clothes and shoes it's not even close and that's the problem we should make it absolutely wildly incentive for people to have children especially for people who have higher incomes and can support those children and the best way would be tax credits for higher earning people to get some of that money back if they have children we got to get out in front and try to do everything we can to make it easier for children companies are also to blame a little bit here because in the US we have pretty horrible mother and father time off policies when you have children that kind of stuff should be deeply improved for me I used to work at Salesforce and as the father for my second son Salesforce gave me I think it was 75% of my salary for 6 months while I was on paternity leave that was a huge blessing I saw my kids grow up I was able to help my wife and that was one of the big things that made it so much easier but on average in the US I don't even think you get a week and that is incredibly taxing imagine telling a mother who just had a child to go back to work how do you breastfeed how do you take care it is kind of a problem and countries around the world are way behind on this the US for example God Bless America I'm I'm a huge fan of a lot of things but the way we treat having children is horrible and ultimately we have to figure this out because otherwise we're going to fall below that retention number and we're going to see the population slowly Decline and that would be a true shame right because everything is tied to this you want to make a new iPhone app you want to make a new business you want to sell product make a YouTube video and try to reach as many people as you can all those things require customers that would be like the total addressable market and if that's shrinking and there's more people with fixed incomes with less disposable like in retirement you're going to see businesses and the stock market crash too everything foundationally is tied to populations now what's the exact right number of people on earth I don't know the answer to that but I will tell you that what we're looking at is a monster about 30 years away that no one is talking about and no one sees coming but it is absolutely on the horizon and it's something we should be concerned about we have to try to do everything we can to make it easier for people to have children incentivize it tons of PID time off and honestly Better Tax incentives for people who have the income to take care of extra children and hopefully we can reverse this but honestly I do believe that as Society gets more and more advanced and more luxurious and there's more luxuries in life I do think generally family sizes will shrink so it's hard to know if this is a problem that can be overcome but I do know one thing I would love to know what you think sound off in the comments below and let us know what you think all right until next week if you thought that was an interesting video you got to check out this one next
2023-09-13 23:05
