Worldwide Demographics

[JManc]

The US is never going to push for a zero immigration policy. The demand is too high for workers (skilled and unskilled) and economic opportunities no matter the political climate. We're an immigrant country. Longevity has shrunk but not enough to where people in their prime earning years are being cut short en masse.

[pip]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I brought up Detroit region as an example of how a given geography could physically look like when facing population decline. I compared it negatively to Japan as Japan is emptying out their outskirts while keeping their core viable where all their massive infrastructure is already located.

As the human population will shrink at some point in this century, I guess it's productive to look at societies, places, geographies that's already experiencing or experienced population decline.




There are many misconceptions here. "Native births" in the US are not stagnating. Births in the US (native or otherwise) are declining and declining good. It fell from 4.32 million in 2007 to 3.59 million in 2023. Deaths are naturally always rising (from 2.42 million to 3.07 million in 2007 and 2023 respectively) and baby boomers haven't started dying off yet. When that time arrives (within less than 10 years), deaths in the US will soar to 4 million/year and will remain at this level for a very long time.

I don't know where you got this "Japanese marrying with robots" thing (cartoonish misconceptions about foreign countries are so dated), but you realize fertility rates in the US and Japan is not that different anymore right? 1.64 children per women vs 1.33. One could argue they're actually converging: as recent as in 2005 fertility rate was at 2.06 in the US and 1.26 in Japan. Basically fertility rate plunged by 0.5 children in the past 15 years whereas in Japan it remained more or less on their same (low) level, with an actual promising small recovery back on the 2010's.

So yeah, an American woman today has 1.6 child while a Japanese has 1.3. It's not dramatically difference. Americans are not having five children in big suburban compounds while Japanese are marrying to robots. Low fertility rates, below population replacement level, is now present over the entire American and European continents, Oceania and half of Asia. It's not a small thing restricted to "weird foreigners".

Can you really compare metro Detroit to Japan? It is easy to leave metro Detroit for another city and a lot harder to leave a country

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Yuri

What exactly makes “no sense”?

The forumer made a wrong statement about Detroit and it’s been corrected. I made no comments whatsoever about Japan’s or Detroit’s future population projections.

This is the whole point of the conversation. Demographic future. Detroit doesn't have an inverted population pyramid nor a baby bust so it makes no sense. 2060-era Detroit won't be anything like China, S. Korean and Japan, with a gigantic population of pensioners and relatively few workers.

Originally Posted by Yuri

Regarding the US, however, the country will also face their own demographics challenges ahead.

No rich, western country faces a demographic challenge as long as they have the immigration lever. The U.S. has the strongest immigration lever on earth, so the U.S. will only have a population problem if it chooses to have one. The U.S., more than any other country, is "choose your population characteristics".

And, despite all the right-wing rhetoric, there's no indication there's a serious constituency advocating for such demographic collapse.

[Acajack]

Another thing that strongly favours Yuri's argument that we are soon going to have to seriously rethink the full-throttle-growth-at-all-costs economic model is... the environment.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Another thing that strongly favours Yuri's argument that we are soon going to have to seriously rethink the full-throttle-growth-at-all-costs economic model is... the environment.

I don't see why. Movement from developing world to developed world reduces global population (affluence stunts birthrates) and there's no reason humans, even affluent humans, can't radically reduce global footprint.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't see why. Movement from developing world to developed world reduces global population (affluence stunts birthrates) and there's no reason humans, even affluent humans, can't radically reduce global footprint.

Population growth is far from the only factor in the environmental crisis.

Moving 500,000 or 1 million people a year from low resource consumption India to high resource consumption Canada also has a huge impact on the environment.

Canada's per capita CO2 output is almost 10 times that of India.

(Even if intergenerationally those Indian immigrants to Canada and their Canadian descendants eventually have fewer kids.)

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Yuri

And talking about Brazil, I haven't updated the 2022 Census numbers:

Brazil 2022 Census: 203,080,756 inh.

1872: 9,930,478
1890: 14,333,915 -- 44.3%
1900: 17,438,434 -- 21.7%
1920: 30,635,605 -- 75.7%
1940: 41,236,315 -- 34.6%
1950: 51,944,397 -- 26.0%
1960: 70,191,370 -- 35.1%
1970: 93,139,037 -- 32.7%
1980: 119,002,706 -- 27.8%
1991: 146,825,475 -- 23.4%
2000: 169,799,170 -- 15.6%
2010: 190,755,799 -- 12.3%
2022: 203,080,756 --- 6.5%

Brazilian Statistical Office (IBGE) released today more data regarding the census, this time focused on gender and age. Highlights:

--- Number of people 65 y/o and over reached 22,169,101 (10.7%) in 2022 up from 14,081,477 (7.4%) in 2010. A staggering 57.4% growth on the past 12 years. In 1980, the population with 65 y/o and over was 4% of total. A 3 point increase between 1980-2010 and another 3 pt increase between 2010-2022.

--- Number of children (0-14y/o) went from 45,932,294 (24.1%) in 2010 to 40,129,261 (19.8%) in 2022, shrinking by -12.6%. Children (0-14 y/o) were 38.2% (45,460,763) of population in 1980. 5.3 million more children than today.

--- Median age jumped by 6 years, from 29 y/o in 2010 to 35 y/o in 2022.

--- 104,548,325 women and 98,532,431 men. 94.5 men to 100 women (2022). In 2010 it was 96 to 100.


Brazil had been the world's 5th most populated country (and it's also the 5th largest in land area) since the early 1990's (taking Russia's place) but it's now confirmed to have been eclipsed by both Pakistan (241 million on 2023 census) and Nigeria (217 million, 2022 estimate).

Brazil will inevitably start declining by the early-mid 2030's.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Race stats

Mixed: 92,083,286 (45.34%)

White: 88,252,121 (43.46%)

Black: 20,656,458 (10.17%)

Indigenous: 1,227,642 (0.60%)

Asian: 850,130 (0.42%)

--- Whites are no longer a plurality in Brazil, but Mixed. It was 47% vs 43% in 2010, and now Mixed are 45% and Whites are 43%. The lowest number of Whites was registered on the first census (1872), where they were 38% of population. After the Great European Immigration, that number climbed to 60% in 1940 and started to decline ever since. Even though racism is perceived as a lesser issue compared to the US or South Africa, the social gulf is massive: Whites still have twice the income of Mixed+Black, much more years of education, longer life expectancy, etc.

--- Number of people declaring themselves Blacks soared and now they're 10% of population. Cultural changes regarding empowerment made many people to declare themselves Black instead of Mixed, specially young people in big metropolises. Even before this Black awareness, self-declared Brazilian Blacks, unlike the US ones has a massive amount of non-African ancestry due a much stronger miscigenation in the country. Several genetic surveys showed they're just above 50% African average.

--- 850,000 Asians, mostly Japanese heavily centered in São Paulo and Paraná states. São Paulo metro area (332,000 Asians) is by far the largest Japanese city in the world outside Japan. Although that's not measured by the Brazilian Census, out of those 850k, about 150k-200k are Chinese and Koreans. Unlike Japanese, they started to arrive much later, from the 1990's.

--- Indigenous population also soared to 1.2 million, also result of affirmative actions. There are many Mixed people who declare themselves Indigenous.

--- The most White state is Rio Grande do Sul, comprising 78% of local population; Asians are 1.2% in São Paulo state; Mixed+Black are 80% in Bahia and Indigenous are 14% in Roraima.

Great post and Data but imagine a county so large in population if east India 170 million people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh

and west India 241 million people never did not separate from India!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_Pakistan

India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

1.43 Billion and growing! Sounds like a children's liquid vitamin commercial I have seen on TV.


Plus Nepal !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal
27 million

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh
170 million people!

So let me run my calculator and figure at least 6% are not counted. India alone is well known for its unreliable and low actual real Numbers and an official count and has not accurately done so from 1960 easy.

So, the back of my wet cocktail napkin says that's roughly 1,770,000,000 billion people. Thats easily 4 times the number of USA people and not one single Chinese person was included in that rough count. Who else like to double check math works? Hell in a few years if you include the entire planet, it's pretty close to 2 billion and not moving down that much in the next few decades.


That would put the population any much more than China and just singular India alone has already pasted China a few years back. Yes, India is also lowering birthrates but not below replacement and not to the extreme China is going to have deal with down the road.

Pro Tip, learn English if you want to relocate or live a western lifestyle or envision someday moving to the west. I think there are more English speakers In India alone than all of the rest of the entire English-speaking countries in the rest of the world combined. Thank your British colonialism in uniting countries and peoples even if you treated your subjects and ripped them off as much as you did even less than 100 years ago. UK even got into Nepal too and use Gurka's in the UK military and immigration even for a small country at the footholds and unto the deep Himalayas a remarkable number of young Nepali's also can speak English well. And who does not just adore an English language sound so wonderful from a native Indian from so many different states with their third language being the native one they grew up with and also had to learn Hindi.


India is still growing for a few more decades and China is not. BTW both countries immigrate to other global counties I would expect roughly the same amount of people yearly, but because the global English-speaking countries are more numerous, I suspect even more Indians become ex pats more immigrate to global countries than the Chinese. I know a lot of Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalis where I work in a Chicago hospital, but it was little difference even over 20 years ago with the ethnicity of the Doctors and surgeon's back then and one of the best hospitals in the NW suburbs. The best of the 2 hospitals in Elgin of Kane County 45 miles away from Chicago always has Indian/Packi High level specialists in their own field. Honestly, I do not see Chinese doctors in any but a rare example. I figure anyone with interest and time could look this up and share.

So let me run some rough numbers

https://www.un.org/development/desa/...ulous-country/

1,4300,000 Billion in India

240 million people in Pakistan

127 million in Bangladesh

and 27 million Nepalis.






Whereas 34 languages have long term potential in order. I will only mention the top tier.

English India in a century IMO can transition from Hindi the majority of hundreds of other languages most likely will almost fully transition to English. Same for the Philippines.

Mandrin

Spanish/Portuguese/Italian Yes, I know they are not the same language but it's in the Romance family and pretty damn ass close, the same as the Savic languages.

Russian, also their Slavic derivatives

German

French

Then the multiple forms of Arabic, but there are a lot of dialects and different sects that are not mutually understandable if I was told that, and I'm wrong please tell me why? Because one never stops learning.

Japanese

Korean

Modern Greek and ancient medical and legal Greek and Latin use words and I don't see these languages going anywhere other than the super educated in medicine and law will continue to use this easy to learn language for a very long time. Hell, lots of them are accepted in English in their pure form already.


Then there must be a drop off. Let me know if I missed one language you care, and think will survive for more than 100 years or even a thousand years from now. New languages will not be accepted as an answer BTW. ! Unless AI creates their own language which they did a few years ago and we literally had to cut off the electric cord to stop them because we did not know what exactly they were talking about other than our possible extermination in the not-too-distant future. Skynet and their better versions are not too far away if we do not create a toggle switch to turn it off ASAP if needed. But if it gets that far it might be too hard to stop anyway. So as some would say, just sit back and try to enjoy the ride.


....

So, my suggestion to be to any human alive or will be born in the future is to learn the English language very well and become fully immersed in it at take it as if not your second Tonge for the better of anyone in your family you make it the primary language to be spoken and taught. It will only get more extreme in the future.

While I appreciate Celtic Irish or Welsh, it's really not going to be a future language anytime ... like never in a century. Sad to lose this stuff but it's just reality.

...

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by pip

Can you really compare metro Detroit to Japan? It is easy to leave metro Detroit for another city and a lot harder to leave a country

You can compare everything you want.

I was not comparing the reasons that led Detroit population shrink with Japan's. It's completely different.

I was talking about the physical signs depopulation would leave behind and how one could be more harmful than the other. Basically it's me saying: depopulation is not the end of the world and could be dealt with.

[Acajack]

At least in Canada, Chinese immigration has plummeted in recent years whereas immigration from India has skyrocketed.

They used to be fairly comparable in terms of numbers.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is the whole point of the conversation. Demographic future. Detroit doesn't have an inverted population pyramid nor a baby bust so it makes no sense. 2060-era Detroit won't be anything like China, S. Korean and Japan, with a gigantic population of pensioners and relatively few workers.

As I stated countless times, I didn't state Japan and Detroit declined due the same reasons, so I don't understand why you direct this post to me.

Detroit metro area experienced population decline and the results were near apocalyptical for vast areas of it due the way it occured. Japan, 40 years later, is also experiencing population decline and I just argued the way their population declining is occuring won't be as destructive for the reasons I stated several times. That's it.

I don't think Detroit metro area will be more populated in 2060 than it's today (not even the US for that matter), but that's another subject that I haven't touched so far.

Originally Posted by Crawford

No rich, western country faces a demographic challenge as long as they have the immigration lever. The U.S. has the strongest immigration lever on earth, so the U.S. will only have a population problem if it chooses to have one. The U.S., more than any other country, is "choose your population characteristics".

And, despite all the right-wing rhetoric, there's no indication there's a serious constituency advocating for such demographic collapse.

Yeah, the US is great, it's the best place ever, everyone is dying to get inside it (not me, surely), I know your feelings on it.

The answer is your post: if they choose. And the US has been very consistent on this choice for the past 10-15 years. You can hope it changes, but that's only your wish.

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't see why. Movement from developing world to developed world reduces global population (affluence stunts birthrates) and there's no reason humans, even affluent humans, can't radically reduce global footprint.

People do get richer on developing countries as well and usually faster than on developed countries (e.g. China), hence reducing their TFR. Even Brazil: one cannot compare living standards in 1980's Brazil with 2020's Brazil, despite all the horrible 1980's and the 2015-2016 crisis. Living standards rose dramatically.

Moving to Canada or the US won't save mankind.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Another thing that strongly favours Yuri's argument that we are soon going to have to seriously rethink the full-throttle-growth-at-all-costs economic model is... the environment.

Environment is a big thing as well and help me to stop worrying about population decline. We're in a very difficult situation right now, we all know it and our emissions are higher than ever.

In such scenario, population decrease and even economic degrowth (if we learn how to do it) is it that bad?

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Yuri

In such scenario, population decrease and even economic degrowth (if we learn how to do it) is it that bad?

You're acting like you're the first person to think of this and that you alone ought to lead this conversation.

I started a thread on population decline on another forum in 2007. It's not like this is a new idea. Here is the story I linked to on my first post from that thread:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-new-girl-order

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

You're acting like you're the first person to think of this and that you alone ought to lead this conversation.

What?! How did you get this idea from? Thomas Malthus, anyone? An ever growing population is source of anxiety since forever. Do you really think I would be the forumer starting a thread on world demographics not knowing that?

[isaidso]

Yes, Yuri is doing nothing of the sort. Are people supposed to quote every person that's come before (a number likely in the millions) that's made the same point? That's an absurd expectation.

[pip]

Originally Posted by Yuri

You can compare everything you want.

I was not comparing the reasons that led Detroit population shrink with Japan's. It's completely different.

I was talking about the physical signs depopulation would leave behind and how one could be more harmful than the other. Basically it's me saying: depopulation is not the end of the world and could be dealt with.

The point being that in Detroit it is easier to leave to another part of the US where in Japan it is harder to leave the country.

The people with the means, education and wealth left Detroit. That is not the case in Japan, people stay in Japan, so while the population declines it retains the more educated and wealthier. So it is easier to deal with decline if the population with 'money' remain.

That's why you can't compare the two.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by pip

The point being that in Detroit it is easier to leave to another part of the US where in Japan it is harder to leave the country.

The people with the means, education and wealth left Detroit. That is not the case in Japan, people stay in Japan, so while the population declines it retains the more educated and wealthier. So it is easier to deal with decline if the population with 'money' remain.

That's why you can't compare the two.

Again, I'm not discussing the reasons that led to depopulation: 1970's Detroit was about people leaving the city (and the metro area) in droves. In 2020's Japan is deaths exceeding births. It's different, obviously.

In Japan, they might as well be leaving their big cities and clustering into far away exurbs on the edges, near the mountains, or moving to sparsely populated regions (as Americans do) but fortunately for them that's not happening: as population decreases, people there are moving into the biggest cities centers which is the smartest thing thinking of logistics, infrastructure, economy.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Moving 500,000 or 1 million people a year from low resource consumption India to high resource consumption Canada also has a huge impact on the environment.

Right, but this can be fixed. A developed society has no need to consume great quantities of resources.

Also, this isn't really an argument, unless you consider humans to be fungible bits of carbon matter. Yes, keeping humans as impoverished as possible is the ideal (or just killing everyone), but not a public policy prescription.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Again, I'm not discussing the reasons that led to depopulation: 1970's Detroit was about people leaving the city (and the metro area) in droves. In 2020's Japan is deaths exceeding births. It's different, obviously.

Post-1970 Northern stagnation is really about the lack of inmigration, not outmigration. Basically the end of the Great Migration and the rise of the Sunbelt. Air conditioning, improved conditions for blacks in South and the postwar military-industrial investments in Sunbelt America.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Post-1970 Northern stagnation is really about the lack of inmigration, not outmigration. Basically the end of the Great Migration and the rise of the Sunbelt. Air conditioning, improved conditions for blacks in South and the postwar military-industrial investments in Sunbelt America.

Foreign migration has also passed over Rust Belt cities in favor of the Sun Belt and Northeast. Detroit's foreign-born population peaked in the 1930s and pretty much never rebounded* after that. NYC also had a peak in the 1930s but it eventually rebounded after a plateau in the 1970s. Since 2000 NYC has been above its previous 1930 peak. The 1930s peak in foreign-born population in NYC and Detroit coincided with a nationwide peak in foreign-born population.

New York

• 1900 foreign-born pop.: 1,270,080 -- pct. total pop.: 36.95% -- % 1930 peak: 53.8%
• 1910 foreign-born pop.: 1,944,357 -- pct. total pop.: 40.79% -- % 1930 peak: 82.4%
• 1920 foreign-born pop.: 2,028,160 -- pct. total pop.: 36.09% -- % 1930 peak: 86.0%
• 1930 foreign-born pop.: 2,358,686 -- pct. total pop.: 34.03% -- % 1930 peak: 100.0%
• 1940 foreign-born pop.: 2,138,657 -- pct. total pop.: 28.69% -- % 1930 peak: 90.7%
• 1950 foreign-born pop.: 1,784,206 -- pct. total pop.: 22.61% -- % 1930 peak: 75.6%
• 1960 foreign-born pop.: 1,558,690 -- pct. total pop.: 20.03% -- % 1930 peak: 66.1%
• 1970 foreign-born pop.: 1,437,058 -- pct. total pop.: 18.2% -- % 1930 peak: 60.9%
• 1980 foreign-born pop.: 1,670,199 -- pct. total pop.: 23.62% -- % 1930 peak: 70.8%
• 1990 foreign-born pop.: 2,082,931 -- pct. total pop.: 28.45% -- % 1930 peak: 88.3%
• 2000 foreign-born pop.: 2,871,032 -- pct. total pop.: 35.85% -- % 1930 peak: 121.7%
• 2010 foreign-born pop.: 3,066,599 -- pct. total pop.: 37.51% -- % 1930 peak: 130.0%

Detroit

• 1900 foreign-born pop.: 96,503 -- pct. total pop.: 33.78% -- % 1930 peak: 23.8%
• 1910 foreign-born pop.: 157,534 -- pct. total pop.: 33.82% -- % 1930 peak: 38.8%
• 1920 foreign-born pop.: 290,884 -- pct. total pop.: 29.27% -- % 1930 peak: 71.7%
• 1930 foreign-born pop.: 405,882 -- pct. total pop.: 25.87% -- % 1930 peak: 100.0%
• 1940 foreign-born pop.: 322,688 -- pct. total pop.: 19.88% -- % 1930 peak: 79.5%
• 1950 foreign-born pop.: 278,260 -- pct. total pop.: 15.04% -- % 1930 peak: 68.6%
• 1960 foreign-born pop.: 201,713 -- pct. total pop.: 12.08% -- % 1930 peak: 49.7%
• 1970 foreign-born pop.: 119,347 -- pct. total pop.: 7.9% -- % 1930 peak: 29.4%
• 1980 foreign-born pop.: 68,303 -- pct. total pop.: 5.68% -- % 1930 peak: 16.8%
• 1990 foreign-born pop.: 34,490 -- pct. total pop.: 3.36% -- % 1930 peak: 8.5%
• 2000 foreign-born pop.: 45,541 -- pct. total pop.: 4.79% -- % 1930 peak: 11.2%
• 2010 foreign-born pop.: 36,000 -- pct. total pop.: 5.1% -- % 1930 peak: 8.9%

*Detroit did experience a slight rebound in the 1990s due to an influx of immigrants from Mexico and the Middle East, but the rebounded wasn't sustained.

[Steely Dan]

^ Chicago falls somewhere in between those two extremes (~20% foreign-born last time i checked).

nowhere near as "immigranty" as NYC these days, but light years healthier than Detroit on that front.