2.1 kids per woman might not be enough for population survival

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-kids-woman-population-survival-reveals.html

7•geox•9mo ago

Comments

eimrine•9mo ago

"Survival" word is not correct, according to the article the correct word is "growing".

yawpitch•9mo ago

On a closer reading the article’s use of “survival” is pretty correct, since it’s looking at what’s required to keep a particular lineage functionally immortal.

quantified•9mo ago

Each lineage is just bragging rights and ego. The species as a whole doesn't care a lot about lineages. A very long time ago, there was a population bottleneck that reduced Homo Sapiens to a few families. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487] Those few lineages are thriving.

The species could go on reducing the population for a long time. Who's to say we wouldn't be vastly better off with 500Mm overall humans? The population could shrink down, then expand again. Shrinking now is not a bad thing, it's just a change from what we had been doing.

techpineapple•9mo ago

Something that’s always confused me about this concern is that like —- species adapt to their environment right? So we’re organically probably feeling like the environment can’t sustain more population, and as the population shrinks that will start to reverse. If the population shrinks back to the point there’s wide open spaces and we’re living on homesteads, we’ll probably be having nine kids again.

almosthere•9mo ago

Almost all of the individual decision to have or not have kids is 100% economic. It's too expensive, and internally we rename that to "not ready", "need a house", "want to try a career first".

I do personally think globalists have caused this entire issue. We need to rid the world of them. Kick out the ability for foreign entities to own land/homes in the US.

yawpitch•9mo ago

Right, everyone who can’t draw their ancestry back to before Columbus stumbled on what he thought was India, out!

damnitbuilds•9mo ago

"this figure doesn't account for random differences in how many children people have—as well as mortality rates, sex ratios, and the probability that some adults never have children."

Surely a figure that is an average of 2.1 children per woman DOES account for the probability that some adults never have children ?

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