(This accounts for those children who, through disease or accidents, do not reach reproductive age.) More good news: in a study of 40 countries, fertility rates between 1.5 and 2.0 are shown to generally bring economic benefits that lead to a higher standard of living. The African four that need the most help will receive only $2 billion in total, less than Israel will receive alone. It’s not brain surgery; it’s not pie-in-the-sky geo-engineering. It is also important to remember that this calculation does not take into account all the ways in which larger populations affect living standards and the economy that may not be directly captured in GDP (e.g. And in 108 years, we’d achieve 2.7 billion on a healthy planet, with plenty of food, clean water and a high standard of living for all. Their achievement in reducing their fertility rate has been so remarkable that they should probably be the ones now training everyone else how to do it. Education + contraception. Heck, it’s less than 2/10ths of a percent of US GDP. So let’s say 13 years of education and 15 years of contraception. (10)People will continue to have babies and the babies will also have babies andthe parents will live on for a few decade so that is the reason why apopulation not level off during the same year it reaches zero populationgrowth. Only children do very well in life, often better than children with siblings. Economists know about the concept of productivity growth. (This story ignores any benefits from a declining ratio of young dependents and it also assumes that the support for retirees comes entirely from the wage income of the working population.) The point is to reduce the number of births wherever they happen. It is expected to keep growing, and estimates have put the total population at 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8 billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. Nothing traumatic, nothing humanity couldn’t take in its stride. Suppose further that the typical elderly dependent gets an income equal to 70 percent of the income of the typical worker. Don’t let anybody guilt-trip you into them. It turns out zero population growth is not all that difficult or expensive to achieve! It’s cheap, it’s low tech, it works. Mean Age at First Birth. 5) Never shame or guilt-trip anyone into having children. If each them has a daughter at age 20 and a son at age 22, and if all their daughters do exactly the same, at the end of 102 years, 120 new human beings would result, with the last set of sons born in year 102. This is roughly the pace in the U.S., which is extraordinarily rapid because of the large post-war baby boom cohort. Not everyone is called to be a parent, and that’s a good thing. So say we stop being shortsighted and stupidly cheap. Should we be crying over this? (It turns out children all over the world learn little when there are fifty kids per teacher.) Of the 224 countries in the world, the population growth rate is negative in 34 of them, including Cuba, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the Ukraine. Births per woman. In this case, 80% of the world’s population resides in the 34 most populous countries. But worrying about four countries is much, much easier than worrying about 224. Education + Contraception + Women’s Innate Preference for Small Families = Low Fertility Rate. If men stopped having sex with women altogether, they might, but this appears to be against the innate preference of most of them. Content on this site is subject to our reposting policy. This is how birthrates have fallen all over the world, even in Islamic countries like Turkey, Iran, and Bangladesh, even in Catholic countries like Poland, Mexico and Brazil. Everyone eats well, everyone gets lovely health care and education, everyone born can expect to live to the grand old age of 83. In addition, countries that reach longer lifespans tend to do so concurrently with the education of women and higher mean age at first birth. Since 1968, Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth or ZPG) has been America's voice for population stabilization—we are the largest grassroots population organization in the United States! Of these, six have cut their fertility rate by at least half over the past 50 years: Algeria (2.74), Kenya (3.14) India (2.45), Pakistan (2.68), Egypt (3.53) and the Philippines (3.06). Other critics of zero population growth believe that low birth rates are bad for the economy. Technologically backward country, growth of population reduces output by lowering the per capita availability of capital year would far. This number has been dropping worldwide, falling from 5 in 1960 2.42... 2015, the replacement fertility rate is zero average cost to educate a child for a for! 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