Ending aging won’t lead to overpopulation
One the arguments commonly heard against extending life spans is that it will lead to overpopulation. However this is not the necessarily the case, without curing aging we could end up with a depopulation problem.
Whether there will or won’t be growth in population is governed by the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), this measures the number of children each couple will produce during their lifetime, if this runs at below 2.1 then population will shrink. Other factors can counteract this on a national scale, e.g. even though the U.K. has a Total Fertility Rate of less than 2.1 its population is growing due to immigration. However once a global Total Fertility Rate drops below 2.1 the world population will eventually start to drop. TFR has already dropped dramatically. In 1950-1955 global TFR was 5.0, while in 2000-2005 it had dropped to 2.65. The current rate of the developed world is 1.56, and for Europe it stands even lower at 1.38. If it were not for immigration most would have shrinking populations today. On these trends it is predicted that the total world population will peak at around 9 billion then drop.
Take as an example India, it has seen its fertility rates plummet, from 1990 where it was at 4, and only 15 years later in 2005 fertility rate is down to 2.9, if this trend continues then India will fall below replacement rate in 10-15 years. In China TFR is already below replacement rate at 1.75.
One of the major contributors to the decrease in fertility could be television. Here is a quote from Phillip Longman’s presentation at the Long Now foundation:
“Seriously, though. Demographers are paying more and more attention these days to how television affects fertility, especially in the Third World Here’s an example of why the case is so compelling. Since 1975, Brazil’s fertility rate has dropped by more than half to just 1.9 children per woman. This is not the result of a family planning program, since Brazil has never adopted one. Instead, studies show that births have declined from one region to the next coincident with the introduction of television. Today, the number of hours that a Brazilian woman spends watching television predicts how many children she will have. What’s on Brazilian television? Mostly domestically produced soap operas, called telenovelas. These soaps rarely address reproductive issues directly. Instead, they typically depict wealthy individuals living the high life in big cities.”
Actually this depopulation could lead to severe consequences as an elderly and increasingly retired population must be supported by a smaller working population. If life extension technologies where in place this would be mitigated.To read much more detail on this upcoming depopulation problem see Phillip Longman’s presentation.
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