After watching this video I am left with this question.

The video ultimately claims that humans will not disappear, but doesn’t do a great job explaining why.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but for the (or a) population to be and remain stable, the total fertility rate needs to be equal to the global replacement rate (which recently was 2.3).

And since the total average fertility rate appears to be currently at this 2.3, any drop in the fertility rate in place A would have to be compensated with a rise in the fertility rate in place B (assuming that, at some point, we would like to stop population decline)?

I guess one way for a population to remain stable, while women are having fewer than 2.3 children, would be to have fewer men? If a population has 100 women and 10 men, each woman would only have to have on average (a bit more than) 1.1 child? (Which would of course also require a collective form of prenatal sex selection.)

I realize that would be bonkers and unethical. Just wondering out loud.

  • notsofunnycommentOP
    1·
    4 months ago

    Thanks all for your replies. Interesting.

    I’m a bit surprised that nobody comments on the matriarchal speculation at the end. You’re all fine with that?

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 months ago

      I think if you hadn’t described it as bonkers and unethical you might have had some views on that! ;-)

    • Deestan@lemmy.world
      1·
      4 months ago

      I’m a bit surprised that nobody comments on the matriarchal speculation at the end. You’re all fine with that?

      Mathematically, I am not fine with that. The only way to have fewer men would be late-stage abortion or to murder newborns. Each woman would need to have 1.1 (surviving) children but still 2.3 born or nearly born children. While this may raise some ethical questions by itself, the greater crime is that it artificially inflates a metric without achieving the stated goal. It is lie by misapplication of statistics.

      • notsofunnycommentOP
        1·
        4 months ago

        That’s why I said:

        Which would of course also require a collective form of prenatal sex selection

        If the goal would be to have a stable population size but with fewer births per woman, I think a collective form of prenatal sex selection (of the kind I describe above) would work.

        What this sex selection would look like would be another issue. Whether externally fertilized embryos are selected before they are placed in a womb, or whether it would involve forms of abortion (or even infanticide): it’s up to your imagination.

        But there are no lies, nor any misapplied statistics?