World populations

I can't remember what triggered the question in my head, but I started to wonder about racial make up of the population of the whole world.

I was wondering what the world looked like back in the 1400s. Were there major migrations going on? That was on the eve of the migration of Europeans all over the world, and their forcible displacement of Africans via slavery to the Americas. Was there migration as big as the Turks to Anatolia in the 6th through 11th century?

It's incredible to think of Europeans swamping North America and Australia and New Zealand, and making a pretty big dent in South America too. Sad to think about the loss of native American cultures.

So what is the balance in the world now? It was somewhat hard to find. For one thing, racial classification is very much out of favor. However, I did find this:

Image: sciencechatforum.com

I liked that the world wasn't divided into white, black, American Indian, and Asian. It makes sense to have more divisions in Asia. Does the entry for South/Central American make sense? Maybe it does. Perhaps there are has been more mixing there of European, American, and African stocks.

I then thought of a Cambodian babysitter my kids had 20 years ago. She had lighter skin and finer features than the Cambodians at the bus stop near me. She explained that she was half Chinese, which was one reason her family fled Cambodia. The Chinese diaspora has been extensive, like the European diaspora. Then I found this graph of the Indian diaspora, which is also fascinating.

Image: commonwealthroundtable.co.uk

Then there was this list of ethnic groups. My group is there, and so is my spouse's. But no Vikings? That's sad.

As a thought experiment, what groups will be on a pie chart in 200 years or 500 years? It almost makes me hope that I'll have an afterlife and can peek in on Earth to watch.

Ssdly, I didn't save a link to a genetic study showing that if there were racial categories, there should be only three of them: pygmies, Bushmen, and everyone else. I have no trouble believing that.

Update 4/5/18. Japanese population has already peaked (in 2008) and is declining. China, even with their one-child policy, still hasn't peaked (source). By the way, I'm in favor of a stabilization and decline in world population.

Declining GDP, declining population

Japan has been mired in recession for maybe two decades now. The government has tried to spend its way out with major infrastructure stimulus, but to no avail. It's ironic, but perhaps this comment is the best diagnosis that I've read:

The reason Japan has had no economic growth over the past 20 years has nothing at all to do with the Bank of Japan and everything to do with its aging and declining population. All the monetary tinkering can't generate increases in aggregate demand in the face of decreases in aggregate human activity and population.

It's not surprising if Europe is facing this. Maybe the US is facing it too, but not yet. Maybe most countries will be facing it in time.

However, this isn't the worst thing that could happen--that growth slows to a pittance and we end up in a steady state. Endless population growth and population pressure seem much more frightening to me. But perhaps that's just a prejudice of mine--preferring a leveling off or decline in population to increasing population.  However, I think it's more than just a preference. I have to wonder whether the Japanese are suffering from their population and productivity decline, and compare that with places where overpopulation is a problem. When I look at Japan versus Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, and others, I see much less suffering in Japan. In countries with high population growth, I see a lot of current suffering and a bleak future.

Instead of fearing slowing growth, we should be figuring out how to manage it for the best outcome possible. But even without the best management, we're better off than if we were among the 40% (and growing) number of unemployed in Kenya.

Image: ipss.go.jp

Too many workers

We've come to a major turning point in history. Our economies, throughout most of the world, can no longer absorb our population increases and provide an increasing number of jobs. While there have been periods of high unemployment before in history, they've been reversed. I don't foresee that happening at all in the future. We are permanently in a situation where we have many more workers than we need, and there's no way for the extra workers to join the regular economy at the full-fledged rate.

Looking just as the US, we have the lowest worker participation rate in 36 years.

Labor Force Participation Rate 1948 - 2013

Image: businessinsider.com

We have high unemployment among our young people, and that's a worldwide problem. It's certainly possible for jobless people to be productive (cleaning, doing small repairs, gardening, teaching, etc.), but not at the going rate. So this extra labor force can work in the gray economy, work at home or in family businesses, or can volunteer, but they must be supported by others--those who are working at market rate jobs.

Why don't paying jobs exist for these people? Because our economies have become much more automated. It's been a goal in innovation to automate actions instead of having workers perform them. I go to an ATM machine instead of the human bank teller earning a wage. An ATM costs $2k (according to the ads on Google). That's a lot less than a teller's yearly salary. Ordering is automated online, saving the cost of a order entry clerk. Crops are planted and harvested with the help of huge machines, shrinking the number of farmers to 2% of the US population.

Too many workers? Yes, and too many people.

With all this equipment, we just don't need as many workers. So what should we do? There's a logical answer, but most people don't want to admit it: we need fewer workers, thus we need fewer humans. We should be shrinking our birth rates. Our birth rate should be lower than the replacement rate--yes, lower. Not zero growth, but negative growth, meaning contraction of the human population. If we don't do this, we will continue to have too many workers for the rest of foreseeable future, barring global cataclysm.

What are the downsides of fewer children and lower human population? Many people don't like the policy. Their cultures emphasize having children to carry on their legacy and take care of elders. It's hard to counter the cultural norms, but that doesn't mean that the cultural norms are logical or well-adapted to our current situation.

We'll have fewer people paying into Social Security, but we have to face that anyway. The huge baby boom generation is an anomaly that shouldn't become the norm just due to worries about how pensions are going to be paid. Besides, if there aren't enough jobs, those unemployed people aren't contributing anyway.

Suppose we underestimate the number of workers we need, and we create labor shortages due to a labor pool that's too small? That's not a big problem. We can either import workers or we can increase our birth rate to correct the problem. As we've seen, we can increase our population very quickly when we want to.

I'd like every country to decrease their birth rates, and they are. Two decades ago, few countries were reproducing below replacement rate. At that time it was considered a dire situation, but it no longer looks that way. Now many more countries are running below replacement rate. That's a good thing ... especially if we want to avoid more of this.

The lucky one has a metal roof (Bangladesh).

Image: paveldospodinov.com

They pray for a rectangular shack instead of a lean-to (Bangladesh).

Image: theguardian.com

Apartment blocks don't solve the problems (Cairo).

Image: ahlu-sunnah.com

Update 12/26/14. An article from The American Conservative pointing out that no one (despite political parties' claims) seems to know what to do about these economic problems.

Short: Hooray for fewer teen moms

When I was growing up middle-class, white, and college-bound, I knew to  be terrified of unintended pregnancy. There was no faster way to derail my plans for life, not to mention get either kicked out of the house or permanently locked in the attic.

Somewhere in the last few decades, teenagers lost their fear of pregnancy. This was definitely not a good thing. These days kids aren't usually 1) forced into marriage, or 2) locked away or sent away for the duration, or 3) blackened forever by the shame they bring on themselves and their families. However, life plans are definitely derailed, at least for a while. Shouldn't this be enough to make them very careful? Apparently not.

The good news is that teen pregnancy has dropped dramatically since 2009. This article discusses some of the possible reasons, but nothing is definitive. Maybe it's the use of IUDs (previously not recommended until after the birth of a child). Maybe it's the reality shows like Teen Mom which show the heap of troubles involved with trying to manage a baby, high school, parents, and a barely-committed baby-daddy. Maybe it's the recession, which has been so hard on families that teens actually figure out that they shouldn't make it worse.

Whatever made teens think harder about being careful, I'm grateful for it, and I hope the teens are too.

Image: msnbc.com

Painful realization: Too many immigrants

Here is yet another painful realization. We have too few jobs and too many immigrants taking them. This is painful to say because I love immigrants and identify with them. My immigrant grandfather inspires me, and I'll never be half the man he was. I love the cultural diversity that immigrants bring, especially the differences from American norms. It's good to see how other people do it.

So it is with visceral pain that I acknowledge that the level of immigration, particularly illegal immigration, needs to be curtailed. We need to tighten up the borders, but more than that we need to crack down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants (and legal immigrants with special visas). This is going to be painful, especially to immigrants who have built better lives for themselves. They had very American hopes to work and prosper, and it's going to end for some even though they are good people. Yes, this will hurt good people. Make no mistake about it. However, good people are also being hurt by the lack of jobs, so it's not as though no one benefits.

I won't give a detailed proposal because I don't know the numbers well enough and, heck, any detailed proposal from an amateur wouldn't get a second look. However, I think we should have a certain number of guest workers. We definitely need immigrant workers for agriculture if we want abundance on our grocery shelves. We should also allow some of the 12 million illegal workers in the US stay to prevent a humanitarian disaster that would occur from throwing so many out of work all at once.

Many people don't want to face this. We hope everything will work out OK. Maybe we'll have amnesty for those hard workers who have been in the country for so long, or maybe we'll keep the status quo, which is better for the immigrants than returning to their home countries.

However, some groups support amnesty or the status quo for reasons baser than love for immigrants. Business owners like cheap, reliable labor. Democrats look forward to more Dem-leaning voters. Too bad. What they want isn't for the overall good of the country, so it shouldn't matter.

Image: zimbio.com