Vintage Radio Construction 1955

[Yorkie]

Yes, an interesting lecture by Hans Rosling. However, I think it was somewhat over-simplified by his choice of topic: religion and population growth; the relationship between them. His arguments were valid: but far too narrow in the determining factors that he chose - of which he chose only one: religion.

Just my hap'worth, FWIW.

Al.

The basis of his talk was to debunk the widely held myth that there's a strong correlation between certain religions and the number of babies that women have. In other words, there is no relationship between religion and population size. Secondly, the erroneous belief that the population would continue to grow inexorably, it having more than doubled since 1960 from 3 billion to 7 billion now, and predicted to be 10 billion by 2020.

At the outset, he asked the question how many children on average would women have in 2020 - would it be 4,3,2 or 1?

His conclusions were that there are four factors that have a bearing on the number of children that women have, and that they have fewer children when:

1) Children survive into adulthood.
2) Many children are not needed for work to support the family.
3) Women get educated and join the labour force.
4) Family planning is available.

The statistics he showed, with the decline in birth-rate over recent years almost all over the world were startling. His prediction, based on factual data, is that in 2020, the average number of children per woman would be 2. Bearing in mind that not all of those children will survive to adulthood, and not all of them will form relationships and have children of their own, the outcome - which we see already in the developed world, will be an aging population, with few younger children to support themselves and the elderly.

As he put it - 'Peak Oil' may still be with us, but 'Peak Population' will not.

As to wars, famine and disease, the Rev Thomas Malthus has become widely known for his theories about population and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. In his ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ from that late 1700s – early 1820s he observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine and disease, which – as a clergyman - he saw as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour, concluding:

“Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist”:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

It’s easy to see how he formed these views, but they’ve proved to be ill-founded. He made the mistake of assuming that the future would be just like the past. The means of subsistence in the developed world are now so bountiful that not only is famine non existent – the reverse is so – obesity is commonplace. Yet the population has been kept in check not by’ misery and vice’ by a whole range of socio-economic factors that he could never have foretold.

Malthus was highly regarded and even today his views are thought provoking and will find support in many circles, so I certainly wouldn’t dismiss him out of hand. The problem of staring into crystal balls has always been that we see more balls than crystal, and that of course applies to Hans Rosling too. I’ll count myself lucky if I’m still around in 2020 to see if his predictions come true!