Crash Watcher: Major chance Europeans will starve after 2030

[featherstick]

I think boom is the right word - highest fertility rate in almost two generations. See this tool:
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov ... tions.html

Quite clearly a 'boom' around 65 years ago, another 45 years ago, one 25 years ago, and one right now.

"In 2011 there were 688,120 babies born in England, the highest number since 1971, official figures show." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21120593

Depends what you want to call a "boom". The US baby boom, from which the term is taken, was a distinct and prolonged increase in birth rate for 20 years - to the extent that if the UK had had a similar boom from 1945-65, then we'd have an extra 2 million people in the UK now.

http://ageukblog.org.uk/2011/04/04/the-baby-pop/

The UK didn't have a baby boom. What that graph shows is a series of spikes or short waves lasting a few years. The waves are getting smaller since 1965 too. I doubt whether the current wave will breach the 1965 level, there's too much insecurity and austerity around.

The attached data set shows a 0.25 increase in fertility rate since 1999. That's not a boom:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... land-wales

I repeat, I think this is a media story, made more piquant by the (shock, horror!) rise in the foreign-born contingent of women having babies.

[clv101]

Okay, we're only talking semantics. Your series of spikes or short waves are my booms.

[biffvernon]

Semantics are important, when the population does not understand statistics.

Baby booms linked, in the minds of the sheeple, with immigrants are politically dangerous.

Population statistics and dynamics are really quite hard to get one's head round; forecasting trends is a mug's game.

[Little John]

Semantics are important, when the population does not understand statistics.

Baby booms linked, in the minds of the sheeple, with immigrants are politically dangerous.

Population statistics and dynamics are really quite hard to get one's head round; forecasting trends is a mug's game.

Do you know what percentage of current UK citizens were born in the UK and the converse?

Do you know what percentage of UK citizens were born of parents who were born in the UK and the converse?

Given that different ethnic groups around the world, for a variety of religious, political other cultural reasons, have different fertility rates and given that the UK has recently experienced the highest level of inward migration in its history, do you know what the differences are between the fertility rates of UK citizens who were born here and the converse or UK citizens whose parents were born here and the converse?

I am assuming you do indeed know the answers to the above question to be in the position to make the post you just have because, to have made that post in the absence of such answers would be to deliberately diminish, via the use of rhetoric, a potential problem in the absence of any factual basis whatsoever for doing so.

So, perhaps you might share this knowledge with the rest of us?

[biffvernon]

A potential problem? Why so? You mean it's a problem if a foreigner has a baby here but not if she has it abroad? Sorry, but we're all sharing the same planet. Let's take, for example because they have a very high birthrate, Nigerians. Surely it would be better, for the whole planet, if Nigerians came here and learnt our cultural norm of only having 2.1 babies rather than staying home where they might be expected to have half a dozen.

[ceti331]

You don't need mass killings to reduce a population over 100 years. Relatively modest reductions in birth rates, increased infant mortality, reduced life expectancy etc. can be significant without any piles of bodies.

yes but i dont think people will do that.. i think they'll keep breeding and then kill eachother off.
people who dont understand the impending shrinking capacity and just breed anyway will end up spawning the majority.

people like me who fear the overshoot just go extinct.

[RenewableCandy]

It is a scientifically-demonstrated fact that people from other cultures with different typical family-sizes, will within a generation gravitate towards the family size of their new country.

Hard times can increase family size, they can also (as in the case of Russia, for example) have a spectacularly opposite effect.

[biffvernon]

Iran's birth rate drop was also dramatic. Free contraception and good women's education and health care worked wonders. See this chart:

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=ir&v=31

[Totally_Baffled]

It is a scientifically-demonstrated fact that people from other cultures with different typical family-sizes, will within a generation gravitate towards the family size of their new country.

Hard times can increase family size, they can also (as in the case of Russia, for example) spectacularly opposite effect.

Very true RC, but little consolation if migrants continue to arrive in massive numbers!! So what if the next generation have only 1.9 babies if the next wave migrants arrive and have 4 to 6 each?

The result is still a higher rate of natural increase in population due to a higher birth rate...?

[UndercoverElephant]

Iran's birth rate drop was also dramatic. Free contraception and good women's education and health care worked wonders. See this chart:

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=ir&v=31

I don't think anybody is claiming that free contraception and good women's education aren't parts of the solution. They certainly can't be bad.

I do have to repeat though that it takes 60 years of one-child-policy to reach population stability. We don't have enough time for this strategy to work.

[Little John]

It is a scientifically-demonstrated fact that people from other cultures with different typical family-sizes, will within a generation gravitate towards the family size of their new country.

Hard times can increase family size, they can also (as in the case of Russia, for example) have a spectacularly opposite effect.

Yep, that's right RC. Family size of immigrants from other cultures should, all other things being equal, within a generation or so, gravitate towards the mean family size of their adopted country. However, there are some caveats that arguably need adding to the above.

For example, if there are not significant incentives/pressures to culturally integrate with the host culture, the gravitation towards the host culture's average fertility rate may not proceed as one might predict. Which leads on to what factors might mitigate against such cultural integration. Two immediately spring to my mind; Firstly, if the host culture does not strongly and positively or, even, culturally coercively assert its own identity there will be little incentive for incomers to adapt. Secondly, if the rate of immigration is exceptionally high over a short time frame, in particular if it is of one particular culture, then there can be a culturally ghettoising effect where an ex-pat community builds up that never actually feels the need to adapt.

I know of just such an effect in my own family. My sister and her husband spent many years abroad when he worked on the rigs. The ex-pats would sit in their own communities that they took with them and never really tried to assimilate with the host culture. similarly, on a much larger and more damaging scale, in this country, there are third generation immigrant families whose first language is not English. I know, I have taught them. Despite what some may suggest, this is a problem for social cohesiveness and, as times get tougher, will be a source of social division. Indeed, it already is.

In any event, quit apart from the potential cultural assimilation problems outlined above, there is the straightforward arithmetic of the population numbers involved. Even assuming a gravitation towards the mean fertility rate, first wave immigrants form some cultures will tend to have much larger families than the average, swelling an already unsustainable population level.

[biffvernon]

I do have to repeat though that it takes 60 years of one-child-policy to reach population stability.

Iran did it in half that time without a one child policy.

[biffvernon]

So what if the next generation have only 1.9 babies if the next wave migrants arrive and have 4 to 6 each?

The only countries in the world that still have those sort of birth numbers are in Africa. It is unlikely that many of their population have any aspiration to migrate to the UK and if they did there would be no expectation that their traditional fear of child mortality, maternal peri-natal mortality, insecurity in old age and poor education would migrate with them.

[Little John]

So what if the next generation have only 1.9 babies if the next wave migrants arrive and have 4 to 6 each?

The only countries in the world that still have those sort of birth numbers are in Africa. It is unlikely that many of their population have any aspiration to migrate to the UK and if they did there would be no expectation that their traditional fear of child mortality, maternal peri-natal mortality, insecurity in old age and poor education would migrate with them.

Again, you have made a sweeping statement in the absence of any evidence and the barest of logical arguments. You simply assert it to be the case. How do you know?

You can't seriously be trying to make out you are not aware of the phenomenon of cultural lag in relation to economic imperatives. That is to say, even when the economic imperative to have more children is completely removed, there will still be a period of time before the culture catches up since these cultural practices, whilst initially having an economic function, develop a cultural narrative all of their own which can then persist for their own sake. This is the reason why first wave immigrants from some cultures do tend to initially have larger families and why it then takes a generation or so before they adopt the fertility rates of their host culture. It may also by why, arguably, the fertility rates of some incoming cultural groups may persist beyond first generation at a higher level than their host culture if they do not fully integrate.

For an example of persistently different fertility rates between two non-integrated cultures existing in the same economic space one only needs to take a short trip over to Northern Ireland.

[jonny2mad]

So what if the next generation have only 1.9 babies if the next wave migrants arrive and have 4 to 6 each?

The only countries in the world that still have those sort of birth numbers are in Africa. It is unlikely that many of their population have any aspiration to migrate to the UK and if they did there would be no expectation that their traditional fear of child mortality, maternal peri-natal mortality, insecurity in old age and poor education would migrate with them.

hmm what about the traditional idea that the more children you have the more powerful your clan, in a democracy the more people you have the more political power, in a war larger army's all things being equal defeat smaller armys .

See Ive talked to lots of people who have told me they want to have kids so they can spread for example islam, you have no right to this land it will go to the group thats most powerful, and all they see is your weakness, your a mark as is western europe as is the states .