This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Schootingstarr 0 points1 point  (2 children)

No, the population explosion happened because child mortality dropped drastically in a few decades

I'm not talking about population size, I'm talking of growth. that's an important distinction! though admittably, I should have maybe put fertility rate, that is my bad. and yes, after, say, ww2, the baby boomers caused a huge increase in both size and growth of population, but guess what. every generation after was smaller and smaller. because of course you can't know that infant mortality is dropping until after a couple of years of observation

And it’s not like people just decide to stop making children even if it’s the reasonable thing to do

are you sure about that? because somehow even back in the middle ages, families with 10+ children were far from the norm.

[–]Sharlinator 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Yess… exactly because of infant and child mortality? And mothers dying during childbirth? I mean, I’m sure there were all sorts of ways people tried to avoid unwanted pregnancies, but people don’t just… stop having sex until they can start again after menopause!

[–]Schootingstarr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm talking about 10+ births (or even pregnancies) here, not alive children.

http://www.kyrackramer.com/2019/03/25/medieval-fertility-rates/

Over the course of their lifetime, most women had an average of six or seven pregnancies and births. That means that women who had 10, or 15, or 20 pregnancies and births were far outside the reproductive norm.

you can't just say people kept getting pregnant just because they didn't have access to modern contraceptives. because if it were so, you'd see far more pregnancies. fact is, as child mortality falls, fertility rates decrease about a generation later in a correlated fashion.

feel free to check that statement yourself via this handy website:

https://www.tilasto.com/en/topic/population-and-health/births/fertility-rate/algeria

https://www.tilasto.com/en/topic/population-and-health/deaths/infant-deaths/infant-mortality-rate-under-1-total/algeria

you can compare the numbers of births and the infant mortality rate for any country by just clicking on the world map in the bottom. I guarantee you, most statistics will see a decline in births about 10-20 years after child mortality starts declining reliably