Sure, Malthus massively over-exaggerated, but that doesn't mean it can't happen, or it isn't happening already. Look at the state of places like India and Nigeria. People have enough money to deal with it, but they don't.
guys heard about the 4 step transition of population in industrializing nations? You start out with a lot of births, but also a lot of deaths. Then you have very few deaths and a lot of births. Then you have few deaths and less births. Then it balances out with few deaths and few births. Many countries have made such transitions. If the worlds population is growing quickly, its because less people are dying in poorer, less developed areas of the world. Births are already decreasing across the world. It is almost certain the 11 billionth human will not be born.
I had to look up Malthus - never heard of him. Then I realized he was my generation's Paul R. Ehrlich. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and Alvin Toffler's Future Shock were required reading for "enlightened" college students in the early 1970s. I think Toffler's book has aged better than Ehrlich's though I see Ehrlich still defends his predictions that have yet to become true even though we're well beyond the 1980s.
I suppose the only women who live there are probably nuns, and if a nun gets pregnant. Well... They probably wouldn't be living there by the time they're ready to give birth.
Gee, I wonder if some pregnant tourist had such a serious sudden medical situation that they had to be brought immediately to the small internal hospital/infirmary, and gave birth there.
What Rust said. There are no births that take place in the Vatican. The country's only maternity hospital is located a few hundred meters away in Rome.
A lot of the countries are small, and/or have a high population density. Maybe the people as a whole just feel that their country is full, even if that is not what their leaders want them to think. Romania, for example, used to have a government that forced women to have children, which led to disastrous results. Scaling back a lot to make for the overpopulation created then, makes sense.
Becomes easy when you work out what area to focus on. I found Italy the most interesting- who woulda thought a country full of Catholics would make this list?
Religion plays a role for sure, but it's much less important than things like the economy, prosperity, education, availability of birth control and family planning, cost of living, literacy, and the types of jobs available (agrarian countries will have much higher birthrates than countries where the majority of people live in cities, or where good jobs require higher education and therefore investment of more family resources).
Here in Saudi Arabia where I live, people are still as Muslim as ever, but birth rates are falling sharply because of economic development, the rising cost of living, and the migration to cities.
The point HighFidelity was making regarding Italy was that Catholics consider it a sin to use birth control. It's not that birth control is not "available", it's that it's not (supposed to be) used. I'm guessing that Italian Catholics must treat that particular decree as more of a guideline than a strict rule.
Differently to what people think, northern Italy is a fully western advanced economy, as developed as Germany, France and the UK. But the image Italy has abroad still reflects the under-developed and overly catholic south, because it is the place where most immigrants, the mafia and pizza came from ;)
There are actually a *bunch* of Catholic countries on here! Obviously Italy sticks out, but Poland, Croatia, Andorra, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Austria are all Catholic-majority countries, too!
I think the problem is when the economy and stuff is set up so that women can't easily re-enter the workforce after raising their kids for a few years, so then they can't support a family financially, even with the husband's income. And that deters women from having children.
Lower fertility rates aren't necessarily a problem, and they actually tend to be found in developed nations. One of the biggest factors is simply access to birth control and educational opportunities for women. Lower income nations tend to have higher birth rates because of the social position of women and their inability to access contraceptives.
They are a problem. Falling birth rates and increasing lifespans are leaving too many elderly people and not enough people to take care of them or make money.
I would think that if it is hard for women to be employed it is more líkely they have kids. If it is in a country were that seems to be their only available role..
Not sure that's correct @Jerry928. There are married women living in the Vatican. It's possible, that given Catholic attitudes to birth control, the fertility rate of the Vatican is the highest in Europe.
It's a pity all these people in the Slavic, Balkan, CIS/east European states aren't even reproducing enough to maintain their population. Some very good genes over there... at least in terms of aesthetic quality. A world with no Czech, Polish, Romanian or Hungarian girls would be impoverished indeed. Same goes for the Asian countries that make the top 4... also a very comely lot... but I suppose we have enough Japanese and Korean people to last a while. The population of Tokyo alone is greater than the total number of Magyars in the world.
When I hear comments saying that "aesthetically pleasing" people should be reproducing more, I feel uncomfortable. I know you didn't mean it this way, but I immediately thought of Hitler's master race of people with "good genes" and aesthetically pleasing blue eyes and blond hair - the Slavs didn't fair very well with the concept back then.
He meant there should be good-looking girls for guys to look at (and possibly available for sex..)not sure that's such a great thing either. Like it is a mans right. And a girls job to be pretty, that s what we are there for right...
I have very beautiful granddaughters but they each have special traits - some are funny, some athletic, some have kind hearts, all are very intelligent - of all those traits, "aesthetically pleasing" is the last one I would hope their future partners would think most important, and I hope it wouldn't be the first one on their own lists. That one should be how much money the men make and what kind of cars they drive. (Just kidding.)
Russian and Polish women are also some of the smartest and best educated I've encountered. But.... that doesn't mean we can't observe or appreciate their physical beauty. There's nothing at all wrong with that.
Well Kal, I haven't seen any of your comments about beautiful men on other quizzes, now, have I? Or about the smartness and education of women, for that matter. Which reinforces the argument that you've been objectifying women on this site for years now. In fact, I just commented about the very same thing on another quiz before taking this one and seeing yet another of your comments of this kind. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. Just that what you consider harmless banter and interesting conversation starters isn't shared by a lot of people here.
Something else interesting about these figures... if you go to the wikipedia page on population projections into the future and look in the talk section, there are some really thick people there trying to say that the numbers are made up for political reasons. They interpret it as some kind of insult to say that a country has a declining population. I find this incredibly ironic since, really, if you look at all the data the countries with sharply rising populations are the ones that have the most poverty, illiteracy, unskilled workers, and underdeveloped economies. Having a low fertility rate is a good thing. It usually means people in that country have a high quality of life, are well-educated, and appreciate the impact that their reproductive decisions have on themselves and the world in general. It could also be a sign of a stagnant economy or poor outlook on life- but still, I'd rather live in Eastern Europe than Sub-Saharan Africa.
My parents originated from Romania and when I visited the country last year most people had 2-3 kids. Which was surprising because usually poorer countries have more kids.
Fertility is quite different from birthrate. I can be fertile like a bunny rabbit, but choose not to act upon it and remaining happy & childless. Therefore birthrate tells very little about actual fertility, except if they really are all medically infertile.
Overpopulation is the greatest problem for the future. Any country that keeps its population down will anyway be eventually swamped by people from overcrowded countries. The Earth does not have enough resources to constantly find an increasing amount. We can all play the ostrich game and stick our heads in the sand but there is no denying that too many people at present are going without just the bare essentials at 7+ Billion. At 8 Billion, 9 Billion ......... 10 Billion etc. The human race will be in a heap of trouble.
But these countries have below replacement rate fertility, which will present a multitude of problems for them, such as 1 in 4 Japanese will be over 65.
I hardly got any for the longest time and then I got south korea, taiwan, and singapore. Then I just started guessing in Europe and got them all with 0:29 to spare!
i had already wasted half of my time trying to input the microcountries of the world before i realized i was doing it completely wrong and that most of them were in central asia/ the balkans. interesting...
My Italian colleague is incensed by this quiz! He is of the belief that a woman only has to sit on a chair - recently occupied by a red-blooded Italian male - to immediately fall pregnant with triplets!
Poor countries often have poor education systems and widespread ignorance and religiosity, in addition to low standards of living and bad healthcare systems which all combine to produce very high birth rates. However, in Eastern Europe, while most of the countries are relatively poor and the standards of living are relatively low, they also have reasonably high standards for education and healthcare. This produces a population with a low standard of living that is aware of their lot and less interested in reproducing, subjecting their offspring to the same. At the same time they are more aware of and have better access to effective birth control.
Just a theory. There's also widespread alcoholism, depression, and a lot of economic migration which has led to large gender imbalances.
Wasn't there a report recently that said that birth rates were falling basically everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa? And even in Africa, I'm predicting that sometime in the next few decades birth rates will start falling with more development, increased education, and wider access to birth control.
I'm not sure which report you're referring to, but you are right. Some countries with formerly high birth rates, such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have fallen so much they are now below replacement levels. The only country in the developed world with a birth rate above replacement is Israel.
I wanna say I was talking about this when I wrote that comment (I initially read about it in a BBC article).
This, along with another source from the UN seem to indicate declines in fertility rate in Africa are already happening, it's just taking longer than in other parts of the world.
In less than a century, it's estimated Africa will have 5x the population of Europe. We will start to see the mass emigration into Europe/North America/Arabian Peninsula just to fill the needs of their existing societies. We will all be the same color at some point :)
That does not make me happy and I'm not talking about the colour. Im talking about the culture what these people take with them to Europe. It will ruin the European peoples and their cultures.
It's funny how the technologically advanced countries will die out for failing at the simplest task of natural life, which is to survive and reproduce.
I personally don't mind one bit, I will be long dead and have zero concerns about the world and the changes that affect it.
According to their own studies, around half of the Vatican population have tried real hard with each other and some random dudes in thematic bars in Rome, but the holy spirit has refused to appear. It must be the end of times.
Here in Saudi Arabia where I live, people are still as Muslim as ever, but birth rates are falling sharply because of economic development, the rising cost of living, and the migration to cities.
oh, and why isn't china on here?
1. Is the country not run by religious fundamentalists?
2. Are there things to do to keep the people occupied?
Only missed Cyprus and Singapore
Just a theory. There's also widespread alcoholism, depression, and a lot of economic migration which has led to large gender imbalances.
This, along with another source from the UN seem to indicate declines in fertility rate in Africa are already happening, it's just taking longer than in other parts of the world.
I personally don't mind one bit, I will be long dead and have zero concerns about the world and the changes that affect it.