Babies outnumber all

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biology, zoology, population, embryology

I couldn't think of a better illustration of the book's theme than the cover art. It shows the larval or infant form of several dozen animals, from tadpoles to veligers to baby monkeys and birds. 

"Veligers?", you ask? A veliger (soft "g": "vell-uh-jer") is the larval form of most kinds of mollusk, like this tiny snail shown at 50x.

The book is Nursery Earth: The Wondrous Lives of Baby Animals and the Extraordinary Ways They Shape Our World, by Danna Staaf. The author's enthusiasm for these small-to-tiny-to-invisible animals will soon become your own as you read.

We seldom pay much attention to baby animals of any kinds besides kittens and puppies, because they are small and mostly unseen. However, in numbers they dominate the biosphere! Think about it: we usually relate everything to our human milieu and to the most familiar animals, which are mostly domestic. These familiar animals live a long time as adults (if not slaughtered for food), compared to their lives as infants and juveniles. 

When we think "animal", what comes to mind is mainly mammals and possibly birds…and maybe lizards and fish. Mammals and birds, in particular, care for their offspring, and we were all told in a beginning science class that "other animals" such as fish and turtles and "everything else" simply leave newborns to fend for themselves. Maybe we've seen documentaries of newly-hatched, nickel-sized sea turtles struggling down the beach to reach the water. Now, step back a moment: How many of those little sea turtles will survive to adulthood and produce more baby turtles? A few out of hundreds, or of thousands? It is easy to conclude that, by numbers, the vast majority of sea turtles alive at any one time are the babies, even as they are being gobbled up by predatory fish or dying of diseases. This is true for nearly every living animals species. Most animals alive now are babies, but most are hidden.

Even for backyard birds, the nestlings may number four or five or six, like these little robins (there are four, but one had just closed its beak) in a nest outside our kitchen window. But on average, only two grow up and have their own families, from a lifetime of nesting, not just from one nest. A pair of robins may produce five or six clutches of eggs in their lifetime; only two nestlings will survive to reproduce. Birds care for their young with great diligence, but they still need to lay many eggs to ensure a stable population. It's a similar case with most mammals. Infant and juvenile mortality is very high, so they must have many cubs or kits or joeys or puggles so that the next generation will not be less numerous than the present one. 

Now, what of fishes? There are a few notable species of fish that care for their young, but only a few. Salmon may represent the opposite end of the spectrum: they struggle upstream to their birthplace and lay millions of eggs, and then die. The fry (newborns) have been bequeathed a yolk sac, which nourishes them until they learn to catch their food. They look like fish, but not much like they will appear when grown. This is because of a theme of the book, that the environment of a newborn animal is quite different from the adults' environment, so they need a different kind of body to thrive in it. This is more evident among animals that develop through stages, with partial or full metamorphosis. The conversion of a caterpillar into a moth or butterfly, or of a grub or mealworm into a beetle, are familiar examples. Even baby grasshoppers, that have "partial metamorphosis", and thus look a lot like adults, don't grow wings until they reach full size.

Most people have seen caterpillars, or inchworms, or lawn grubs. Particularly for insects, the larval stage (or stages) of life can last much longer than the adult period. A mayfly nymph grows underwater for several months, then surfaces and metamorphoses into the adult, flying form, which lives just a few days, mates, and dies. Periodical cicada larvae live underground for 13 or 17 years. When they emerge, the adults "serenade" us (really, each other) for a month or so, and die before winter arrives. Therefore, at any one time, there are trillions of cicada babies hidden away underground, and then for a short time, this year's crop emerges to amuse and irritate us while they hurry to reproduce. Crops of other years remain hidden until their time comes.

Many details about many of these baby animals fill this very enjoyable book. The author, who has children of her own, circles back to the human condition. We don't think of mammals, or humans in particular, as experiencing metamorphosis. While a human baby doesn't pupate and melt away, to be radically reorganized to a new form, we do change a lot between birth as a seemingly helpless wiggle-wormy, squirmy baby, and the competent (we hope!!) grownup we become after 15-25 years. Baby humans are actually very well adapted to the environment into which they are born. And at birth they have already undergone the greatest period of growth of their lives: from a single cell to around 3 kg, complete with all major organs, the motivation to find a nipple and suckle at it, and a brain about 1/3 adult size; everything is primed to go through the decades-long metamorphosis we call "growing up." As adults, we may not remember that much of going through puberty. It is a huge metamorphic change in both body and mind. (For neurotics, many of the outdated defense mechanisms that plague us were formed during adolescence.)

Here's the takeaway: The vast majority, in number, of animals alive at any time are babies.

The population bomb goes PFFT

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, population, demographics, futuristics

As Yogi Berra (probably) said, "Prediction is hard, especially about the future." That doesn't seem to stop anyone. When I was growing up, projections of future gloom and doom, particularly about population, were periodical literature. Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb was a best-seller in 1968. The Club of Rome issued Limits to Growth in 1972.  As recently as 2015 we have The End of Plenty by Joel Bourne. Much further back, the "granddaddy of gloomy prophets" is probably Thomas Malthus, with An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, in 1798.

All of these based their predictions on the fact that population grows exponentially while agricultural productivity grows linearly. Each author called on us to expect disaster within a generation. However, 8 or 9 generations have passed since Malthus wrote, and about 2 generations since Ehrlich. Not only haven't we starved to death, the population has risen from just under a billion in 1798 to almost 7.8 billion today (late 2020), yet the proportion of that population who are starving is at a historic low, and there is actually abundant food for all, but corrupt governments and failed states are responsible for every food shortage that currently exists.

What happened to all the predictions? This chart, from The World in Data, sums up one factor nicely:

The curves after 2019 are a projection. Note the peak of the pink curve, which shows the global rate of population growth. That peak was in 1968, when Dr. Ehrlich's book was published. I wonder if he takes credit for the dramatic reduction in growth rate that followed. Had a growth rate of 2.1%/year (actually 2.08%) continued for the next 52 years, world population today would be not 7.8 billion but nearly 10.4 billion.

However, it is critical to understand that 2.1%, or any other figure on this chart, is not the birth rate, but births minus deaths. In those years, birth rate was around 3.7%/year, but that is not the criterion that economists use to calculate future population. That is fertility, or the number of births per woman, a lifetime figure. Projecting the chart above further into the future, its authors would conclude that the global population growth rate would reach zero about the year 2130, and then go into negative territory, meaning that population would begin to fall below a peak that they expect to be just above 11 billion.

The fertility of the whole world expected by the chart's authors in 2130 would be 2.1 births per woman, which is called "replacement rate". If nobody died before adulthood, a fertility of 2.0 would provide full replacement, but of course some do. In a much safer world, perhaps replacement fertility could be 2.05 or less.

The second factor is, I would say, a series of "white swans" (as opposed to "black swans", which are unpleasant surprises) in agriculture. In the Parable of the Soils (Matthew 13:1-23), Jesus speaks of the "good ground" yielding fruit 30-, 60-, or 100-fold. Thirty-fold harvests were good for the time, and 60- to 100-fold harvests must have seemed incredible to the disciples. Grain harvests today exceed 300-fold. That is just one element in the agri-revolution that can feed 8 billion right now. Another is factory farming; some hate it but you can't argue with the results. Land that once couldn't be farmed, is now arable, cranking out those huge harvests.

One final point before getting to the current book. The wiggles in the growth curve above represent generational trends. The upward burst after 1910 shows the effect of public health measures that led to safer water and less cholera and malaria; a steepening in the 1940's is the "baby boom" that affected mainly the West; the near-plateau about 1950-55 shows the "birth dearth" after decolonization and the breakup of the British, French, Portuguese and other empires; the "pop-up" that peaked in 1968 and then fell just as rapidly shows the twin effects of the X Generation's births followed by "the pill"; and then the blips in the 1980's and early 2000's are late "echoes" of the Baby Boom, which produced the Millennials (Y Generation) and the Z Generation. But the continuing trend of lower growth rate remains to be explained, and that is the job of today' authors.

Authors Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson are not economists, but they think like economists. Their book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline analyzes the data used by the authors of the above chart, and even more the data and reports published by the United Nations, on the population trends that the U.N. expects for the rest of this Century. To be blunt, Bricker and Ibbitson claim the above chart is incorrect, that the growth rate is most likely to fall to zero and below by about 2050, and that world population will barely exceed 9 billion in that year, and perhaps not even that. They expect world population in 2100 to be close to what it is today, or a little less, and that it will continue to fall.

They base their contentions on a thorough study of trends in many regions and countries. The biggest factor in fertility is education, particularly education of women. The big trend that underlies access to education is urbanization. In 2007, for the first time, more than half the world population lived in cities on in major urban areas. By 2050, this proportion could reach 2/3 (67%) or more. The US and other Western nations hit 50% in the 1920's. Quite a number of countries, mostly smaller ones, are 100% urban, which means they import all their food.

The two biggest countries, by population, are China and India. Chinese urbanization is 61.4% as of early 2020, and India's is 34.9; both are rising fast. Urban, educated people have low fertility; in nearly all nations with large urban populations, fertility is between 1.5 and 1.9. Even in rural areas, which show higher fertility, education is spreading such that there are few places with fertility greater than 3.

The authors write of many things, but emphasize just a few: educated women learn how to control the number of children they have and more of them aspire to a career, so they put off having children, which also reduces the number of children they might bear; and while children on a farm are a benefit—grow your own farm workers!—in a city they are unproductive mouths to feed and their post-secondary education is very costly. For urban people, small families are a survival strategy. Talk to ten millennials; it will be hard to find more than two who think they will have any children, and certainly not before age 30 or 35.

What will happen in the long run? Let us suppose that the year 2100 is ushered in by just 7 billion earthlings, and with a fertility well below replacement, in the range of 1.6, population will continue do decrease. It's not a bad picture, actually. There will be less pollution, global warming will be (or will soon be) a thing of the past, and less of the Earth will be needed for farmland.

Until then, for some countries at least, immigration can ameliorate the problems of an aging population. But eventually there will be few immigrants. However, is decreasing population a disaster, as the authors claim? The biggest problem with a decreasing population is that it is an aging population, and old people need more services, and not just medical. When there aren't enough younger folk available to perform those services, then what?

I expect a "gig economy" to arise for the semi-retired. The healthy ones can do things for those who need it (or are willing to pay for things they just don't want to do). For example, we have a neighbor, a widow in failing health, aged 81. She has a caretaker to lives with her part of the time, for a few days at a time, a woman aged 83 in robust good health! If my wife and I get too frail (or too fed up) to mow our lawn any more, we might employ a lawn care company, or we might look on Craigslist or a similar place for a retiree who likes mowing lawns for a fair price. He or she may be slower at it than the young fellow with a 48-inch riding mower, but I bet more careful. In their dotage, my parents employed a gardener who was older than they, but healthier. I could go on…

Every book I've read on these subjects is based on the premise that continued growth is a requirement for economic health. Where are the economists who are planning what is needed for a future in which the "growth rate" of a country's or planet's GDP is negative? We do have a couple of points of reference. One is the Black Death that removed a third of the population of Europe. Once the survivors got everyone buried and began to pick up the pieces, they found lots of land and "stuff" left behind for the taking, and there was an economic boom. The current Covid pandemic isn't likely to have nearly as great an effect (death rate overall is less than 1%, not 35%), and we don't expect any sudden drop in population to disrupt society the way the Black Death did. With a slower, gradual decrease we can adapt, and it is likely that we are adaptable enough to adjust and thrive.

One production value I must commend: the end notes are all references, with hardly any "extended explanations." I prefer that; if an author has something worth writing about, it is worth putting in the text. When I find that a book's end notes are full of added material, I put a second book mark there, so I can refer to an end note on-the-spot to see what else was written, and read it while the referring material is fresh in my mind. I prefer not to have to do that.

Political Math - Not so Clear-Cut

kw: politics, crime, population, economy, trends, charts

I have heard it claimed for years, by various "conservative" commentators, that the most crime-ridden American cities are led by Democratic administrations. I finally decided to gather some data and find out for myself.

The four pairs of charts presented below summarize data gathered from sources as reliable as I could manage to find. All were online. The basis was a table of crime statistics for 80 cities with population greater than 250,000. Based on data compiled by the FBI, it is found at this Wikipedia page. The population estimates are for 2009, and the crime statistics are mostly from 2014 (a few from 2013). Not perfect, but a usable start. U.S. population rose 4% from 2009 to 2014. Thus the numbers used are likely in error by no more then a few percent.

I also gathered the basic economic factor, GDP per capita, from the OpenData Network, where you can ask a question like "What is the GDP per capita for New York metro area?". The result is a map showing US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) with the area highlighted that you asked for. But then you can move the map around and click on each area of interest to see a summary for it. These data are also for 2014 (mostly). The highest GDP/person is for Oakland, California, just over $100,000/yr.

I used information found in Wikipedia and various city and county web sites to determine the political environment for each of the 80 cities. This was the most time consuming. On occasion, it is pretty easy to get the party affiliation for the Mayor and the City Council, or its equivalent, but usually only the Mayor's affiliation can easily be found. So I relied instead on the voting records that are conveniently compiled in the Wikipedia page for every county, to determine the county's political leaning, and the combination of the Governor, Lt. Governor (if there is one), and the congressional delegations, to determine the state's political leaning. I used 0, ½, or 1 for Republican, Moderate/Independent/Mixed, or Democratic, for each case. Then I combined these numbers into a single factor in which the Mayor had the most weight and the county had a little more weight than the state. I bucketed these into these categories that are shown in each chart's legend:

• Strong R (Red) – City, state, and county are represented by all or nearly all Republicans
• Mod. R (Magenta) – Significantly more R than D, but R not totally dominant
• Mixed (Purple) – Somewhere between 60/40 and 40/60
• Mod. D (Light Blue) – Significantly more D than R, but D not totally dominant
• Strong D (Dark Blue) – All three represented by all or nearly all Democrats

Now to the charts. First, Violent Crime in aggregate, normalized at incidents per 100,000 persons for the whole year:

You can click on this image to see it at full size (1672x519). Right away this seems to confirm the claims of the commentators I had heard. There is hardly anything but blue to be found above 1,000 violent crimes per 100,000 persons. However, the situation with the "Mixed" group is interesting. Crime is not in the lowest range, but the average range for these is the lowest of the five groups. And the situation for Democratically-controlled and -influenced cities is more nuanced. Many of the cities with the lowest crime also lean Democratic. For this category of crime, the safest city is Virginia Beach (Strong R), with 146, and the most dangerous is Detroit (Strong D), with 1,989.

The style of the Democratic politics clearly varies a lot, and this is worth looking into. Not that I am likely to do so any time soon. One thing I do happen to know: Two cities in Minnesota are right in the middle, Minneapolis with 1,012 and St. Paul with 663. A number of Strong R and Mod. R cities are also in this range. Democrats in Minnesota belong to a party called "Democrat-Farm-Labor", jokingly called "Democrat For Life". They are more conservative than "RINO" Republicans and even most of the so-called "Republican Establishment", while Minnesota Republicans are typically staunch conservatives, well to the right of the GOP Establishment.

I had thought that crime statistics might show some trend with city size, or with economy, but I see no clear trend here. Nonetheless, both parameters serve as a way of spreading out the data so that's how they'll be shown here and below.

Such nuances demand a deeper look than just one crime statistic. Knowing that homicide trends with violent crime in general, and is the crime that gets the most news play, I charted homicides:

Other than Chandler, Arizona (0.4 homicides per 100,000), the Strong R and Mod. R points all plot in the lower 2/3 of a bubble outlines by the other three categories, particularly Strong D. The upper part of the chart is dominated by blue markers. The "killingest" city in 2014 was Saint Louis (50 per 100K), not Chicago. I don't have current statistics to determine if this was still so in 2016, the year everyone is talking about. Thus, although details vary, this chart tells the same story as the prior one, that the Reds are a bit safer than the Blues, but the Purples are, by a small margin, the safest overall.

Let's look at crimes that are less violent. First, burglaries:

This is very interesting. Here, nobody "wins", at least no political party "wins". A handful of cities come off as very safe, led by, of all places, New York City, with 186 burglaries per 100,000. The place in which your home is most likely to be burgled is, by a small margin, Cleveland, with 1,788 burglaries per 100,000. But Toledo and Cincinnati are right up there with it (maybe there is something about Ohio…), and also Memphis. If there is any trend at all, it is that the Mixed category is still the safest in general, but only slightly.

Finally, let's look at auto theft. This is usually nonviolent, but I suspect carjacking was included in the statistic:

This resembles the first two charts a little bit more, in that Strong R and Mod. R cluster below Strong D and Mod. D. But, again, Mixed clusters below the average of all the others, though two such places crept above 500 thefts per 100,000: Bakersfield (621) and Dallas (524). The safest place to park your car is Virginia Beach (80) and the least safe is Oakland (1590).

These charts broadly support the contention that the most crime-ridden cities do tend to be led by Democrats, and in the few cases I looked into, the Democratic party has been entrenched there for decades. However, clearly not all Democrats are created equal! Several of the cities with overwhelming Democratic environments are among the safest cities in America.

I just had to devise one more chart. I normalized and combined the four statistics used above into one number. A dangerous generalization, to be sure, but here it is:

I know, I ought to have swapped the horizontal axis to put the R's on the right, but perhaps it is healthier for our mind to reverse such a convention once in a while. First, the five cities with the lowest Index scores:

• Virginia Beach, Virginia (0.331): P.E. = 0.25, Mod. R
• Plano, Texas (0.343): P.E. = 0.5, Mixed
• Chandler, Arizona (0.369): P.E. = 0, Strong R
• El Paso, Texas (0.465): P.E. = 0.55, Mixed
• Chula Vista, California (0.503): P.E. = 1, Strong D

And the five cities that "top the chart" with the highest Index scores:

• Detroit, Michigan (3.55): P.E. = 0.8, Strong D
• St. Louis, Missouri (3.22): P.E. = 0.8, Strong D
• Oakland, California (2.78): P.E. = 1, Strong D
• Cleveland, Ohio (2.62): P.E. = 0.8, Strong D
• Memphis, Tennessee (2.57): P.E. = 0.65, Mod. D

Is there any point in drawing further conclusions?

OK it is full already - now what?

kw: population, religion, demographics

From time to time I read that this or that international body "expects" human population to peak at some number, such as nine or ten or eleven billions. I wonder if those respected experts have consulted with people in sub-Saharan Africa or in the Middle East, or with the strongly religious of every culture, whether Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Christian (and others): all are trying to out-breed the competition.

I can't speak for any of the world religions, but I do know Christianity, particularly the strongly Biblical variety such as Evangelicals. In the U.S. as a whole, the rate of population increase is just over 1%. Among Evangelicals it is much, much higher. A great many families in the churches I know have 3-5 children. Most of them think they have a divine mandate to have many children. Halfway through the first chapter of the Bible we find God's command to Adam: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28, NIV).

I have never heard a sermon on Revelation 11:18, "The nations were angry, / and your wrath has come. / The time has come for judging the dead, / and for rewarding your servants the prophets / and your people who revere your name, / both great and small— / and for destroying those who destroy the earth." (NIV, emphasis supplied). So here is a mini-sermon: Listen up, people, are you among those who destroy the earth? If so, you are NOT among His servants the prophets, nor those who revere His name. That verse about multiplying until you fill the earth? It has been more than fulfilled. It is time to stop!

The earth is groaning under seven billions of us, even though half of them are in poverty. By far most of the burden on the earth is the top two billions. The "green revolution" is pretty much over, and nearly all fisheries are decreasing. If another two or four billions are added, nearly all of them will be miserably poor. And many of the 3-4 billion who are not poor today, will become poor. That doesn't sound like what God wanted in Genesis chapter 1!

So, Evangelicals, if you truly believe in God, stop trying to outbreed the Muslims and Catholics and everyone else. Do whatever you can to improve worldwide education! The birth rate drops, the more educated the population is. There is a young Pakistani girl, recovering from being shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls. Support her cause! The best kind of missionary is an international teacher. Do you want to serve God? Raise up a giant outcry for better education everywhere, and prepare your kids to teach everywhere!

As the continent fills

kw: census records, population, trends

I've been waiting for the results from the 2010 U.S. Census to be compiled. Some are ready now, but my wait is still not over for county-by-county data, as only 945 counties are completed. I have begun to learn to use the Census Factfinder. At least state data are ready, so I can do basic analysis. Chart 1 shows the total population by state (including D.C. and Puerto Rico), in a lognormal distribution.


The total U.S. population counted was 312,471,327. More than a tenth of these are in California; the top four populated states (millions) are California (37.3), Texas (25.1), New York (19.4) and Florida (18.8). The bottom four are Wyoming (0.56), D.C. (0.60), Vermont (0.63) and North Dakota (0.67). California is having both water and electricity supply problems, and Texas is perennially short of water. This will have worrisome implications in the future.

Chart 2 shows percent change in population, analyzed as a normal distribution.


Both this and the following chart, which shows numeric change, reveal trends we need to watch. The top four percent growth states are Nevada (+35%), Arizona (+25%), Utah (+24%) and Idaho (21%). The four with the most loss or the least growth are Puerto Rico (-2.2%), Michigan (-0.6%), Rhode Island (+0.4%) and Louisiana (+1.4%). Compare with the national total percent change of 10.0%.

Nevada is a small state; the relatively huge percent growth represents less than a million people. But it shows the continued popularity of Las Vegas and Reno, plus an influx of retirees that are picking the drier climate, since Arizona now has so many watered lawns. The growth of Utah has a similar cause. Xeriscaping in Arizona could change this and shift the trend back their way. Idaho is strongly recruiting retirees also. The losses in Puerto Rico and Michigan are job-related. Whoever can afford to move away is doing so. For Louisiana, the low growth is a lingering effect of the hurricane six years ago. Rhode Island? I don't know.

Chart 3 shows the change in numerical population, shown as the lognormal distribution of the data with a threshold subtracted; subtracting -110,100 means adding 110,100 to bring all values above zero so logarithmic analysis can work.


On the growth side, it is worth looking at the top six: Texas (+5.18), California (+3.73), Florida (+3.31), Georgia (+1.77), North Carolina (+1.76) and Arizona (+1.57). The bottom four are Puerto Rico (-0.082 = -82,000), Michigan (-0.059), Rhode Island (+0.004) and Vermont (+0.018). It is again worrisome that the top two growth states have serious water supply problems, as does Arizona. The loss or lowest-growth states would be good places to move to, climate-wise, but there are job shortages. I consider the growth in Georgia to be job-related, and in North Carolina and Florida to be retiree-related.

The two biggest trends in the country are first, the continued retirement of Baby Boomers (my generation); this has slowed some since the crash of 2008-9, which worsens the second trend, which is the frustrated job aspirations of the X and Y generations. Most of the Y generation, those who graduated from high school after 1999, meaning those born after 1981, are also called the Millennial generation. If the retirement rate of Baby Boomers had not scaled back by some 30%, there would be more jobs opening up nationwide. But the loss of a couple trillion dollars held in IRA's and 401-K's has led many people, including me, to conclude it is better to work a few more years.

This has placed a big bottleneck on the jobs available to younger people. But it is helping the Social Security picture. The longer a Boomer works, at a typically higher pay rate than a younger worker, the more money gets sent into the SSA budget, and the less it taken out (temporarily). But as slowly as the economy is recovering, the Millennial generation is going to have to field more entrepreneurs, because existing businesses are simply not adding enough jobs to satisfy the demand for employment.

Businesses that hire across generations will do the best. The youngest ones are the most tech-savvy, living in a FaceBook and LinkedIn world. Although I use both FB and LI, I know I don't take advantage of them to the extent that the Millennials do. But the Gen Xers and Boomers aren't going anywhere just yet, and we add balance to an enterprise. We typically have better BS detectors, for example. The oldest Millennials are starting to produce offspring, so they need jobs. Their kids were once expected to be called Gen Z, but are now more likely to inherit the moniker Post-Millennial, because most of them were born after 2000. They'll hit the job market in eight to ten years. Will it be ready for them?

When will US population reach one billion?

kw: analysis, population

World population reached one billion shortly after 1800 AD, probably in 1804. It took just over 120 years to double to two billion, by about 1927. The next doubling was quicker, 47 years to 1974. The eight billion point, another doubling, will probably occur in 12-14 more years, for a doubling time of 48-50 years. The current rate of average world population growth is about 1.25% per year, which implies a doubling every 56 years. But there are pockets of higher growth, such as a major portion of Africa, where the yearly population growth is 2% or greater, just as there is a major portion of Europe in which population is actually declining. That's the world.

Let's consider the U.S., where I live. When I was born, the population was about 145 million. Today it is more than double that, just under 310 million. But population growth rates have declined since the founding of the Republic in a stepwise fashion:

• 1800-1860, 3.05%/yr
• 1860-1910, 2.26%/yr
• 1910-1960, 1.31%/yr
• 1960-2010, 1.09%/yr
  

The current rate is about 0.98%/yr. Will this rate continue to fall? It must, sooner or later. If social measures do not induce people to reduce their family size, the environmental arsenal of disease and starvation will eventually do so. We have all benefited from improved medical care and improved farm yields for about a century. It is time to return the favor, or our needs will finally outstrip the best our technology can do.

I found this graphic in the Wikipedia article Demographics of the United States. Go there to see an active graphic that shows the population pyramid for each year from 1950 to 2010 (you'll need to scroll a bit).


The 2010 graphic shows a mature population, for which each 5-year cohort is about the same size (~20.5 million), until nearly age 60, then there is a steady decline to about age 90, with a small number of extreme elderly to age 100+. The raw shape of that pyramid indicates that the U.S. population is near stability. However, until the death rate matches the rate of birth plus immigration (minus emigration), the whole pyramid will slowly fatten.

Do you think the U.S. population will ever reach one billion? Can we feed that many? We are feeding that many now, because we export so much food. We'd have to reduce our exports dramatically, absent a significant improvement in farming technology. That may happen, but don't bet your life on it.

At the present growth rate of 0.98%/yr, in 100 years, U.S. population would grow by a factor of 2.65, to 820 million, and it would reach one billion in about the year 2130 (in 120 years). Can we push that date out to 200 years away, to 2210? We can, by immediately reducing population growth in the U.S. to 0.59%/yr. Ask your friendly local politician just how drastic that is! If we could somehow reduce population growth to 0.12%/yr, the one-billion point would be staved off by one thousand years. The trouble is, immigration is presently about 0.33%/yr, so if we could achieve genuine zero population growth among U.S. residents, we'd still have to reduce immigration to about a third of its present level. Your local politician won't even answer that one!

The fact is, we're in for hard times no matter what we do. Everyone with any power (and most of everyone else) is addicted to growth. We need a growing economy to avoid recession, so they say. But keeping this planet a habitable place will, sooner or later, require permanent recession.

The UN and other "world bodies" project that world population will peak in fifty years or less and then decline or hold steady. They are probably right, but it is quite unknown whether all the world's families can be convinced to confine their reproduction to two children per couple (or one per wife/husband in polygamous families). If they cannot, total world population will grow beyond whatever "sustainable" bounds the "world bodies" promote, then be held in check by starvation and disease.

A significant portion of the human race has had a hundred-year run of great prosperity. It can't last.

The P07 Indices of Investment and Prosperity

kw: opinion, finance, population, investing

One investment guru I listen to is Peter Lynch. In One Up on Wall Street, published in 1989, he wrote (I paraphrase) that in the thirteen decades since the financial markets were founded, stocks outperformed bonds in every decade except 1921-1930. Therefore, he reasoned, don't "diversify" by buying both stocks and bonds; a long-term investor ought to diversify into different kinds of stocks.

As it happens, it is a little hard to find out just what "different kinds" of stocks there are. Of a dozen or so indexes out there, the only one that significantly differs from the others, long-term, is the EAFE index of "world non-US" stocks. I have found it better to diversify by looking for mutual funds having differing stated strategies, as found in their prospectuses ("prospectus" is Latin, but irregular, or I'd pluralize it "prospecti").

However, as an aside for the purposes of this post, I've had a long, hard look at the Dow Jones Industrials index (Symbol ^DJI in Yahoo Finance). This chart, from Wikipedia, shows the index from 1901 onwards, on a logarithmic scale (so you can see the first 60 years above the axis).

(Click on any image to see a larger version)The biggest visible feature is the 1929 crash, which actually took four years to play out. The single biggest drawback to this image is that each datum is in current dollars. Thus the following image is the DJI divided by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The downloadable data I was able to get dates from October 1928, when the DJI was finally settled on thirty stocks.

After 1934, we see five generation-long trends:

• 1934-1950 – A "flat" market, with lazy swings in a 2:1 range. This is what pink noise looks like. These are the Roosevelt-Truman post-Depression years.
• 1950-1966 – A rising trend with more structure. The intervention in Viet Nam began early in this period, but was unknown to most. The Eisenhower highway system and other infrastructure creation set the stage for "the good life" that ended during the Johnson adminstration.
• 1966-1982 – Dividing by the CPI shows that these "flat" years were actually a slow market fall of magnitude equal to the 1929 crash. Johnson, Nixon, and Carter each failed in his own way to reverse the slide. America was now alert to Viet Nam, and prosperous enough to focus more on the war than on the economy. The somewhat structured look continued; it was during 1950-1980 that the concept of a "business cycle" was developed. Such cycles vanished after 1984 (just when you think you've figured it out...).
• 1982-1999 – A strong rising trend, interrupted briefly in late 1987, with the sharpest (i.e. quickest) downturn ever. Reagan prosperity, which the policies of Bush "41" and Clinton could not reverse. Note the "cycles" are absent. This is now white noise.
• 1999 and later – A 3-year downturn and a 5-year recovery. Is this a return to 1932, or even 1966? No way to know. The Baby Boom generation is getting ready to retire, so their (our) narcissism will drive everything.

What do we make of it? I call this the P07 Investment Index, because it shows when it has been favorable and unfavorable to invest in stocks. Had you owned a lot of stock in 1966, by 1982 your portfolio's dollar value would have been just about the same, and you might have reaped dividends, but its real value became a third of what it had been.

Now, if somebody could have foreseen the strong upticks in 1967, 1970-1, and 1975-6, they could have made enough to stay closer to par, or perhaps show a minor profit. Back to Peter Lynch. He managed the Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990. He had enough success prior to 1982 to stay on board, and after that, only an idiot could have lost money managing a mutual fund...and many idiots did! This era spawned the rise of index funds. Today an index fund is considered more of a hedge than as a way to make buckets of bucks.

There are two other factors to consider about the DJI. The increasing popularity of mutual funds after 1980 greatly increased the amount of money invested in the markets. There was also a great increase in population, which required more "stuff", and that drives an economy all by itself. I can't easily quantify the popularity factor, but I can get population figures. The following chart shows the US population and the DJI/CPI together.


Without further comment, let us divide these two. The following chart shows DJI/(CPI*Pop), scaled by taking the population in millions into my Investment Index. The result I call my Prosperity Index.


Why do I call it a Prosperity Index? It is a rough measure of the total value of the 30 DJI companies per capita, normalized to inflation. It is quite revealing. We've had three major "good times" periods since 1900: the 19-teens-20s, the 1950-60s, and the early 21^st Century, since about 1985.

What does this mean for an investor? There are two relevant factors. From 1950-1966, the Depression-era, now prosperous, parents of the Baby Boom generation spent gobs of money raising their kids and sending them to college. Huge numbers of new schools, colleges and universities were built during this time. Then the combination of Viet Nam's second phase (overspending and increased inflation) and the bad feelings (especially anti-establishment) of that era made everyone over-cautious, and actually reduced, for the first time in history, most people's economic focus. Money wasn't the only bottom line for a generation, and it showed.

After 1982, many Boomers had become the establishment, and began spending gobs of money, not only on their kids, but on their "lifestyles." I don't recall ever hearing the term "lifestyle" when I was young.

Now, although the "Bush years" have been America's most prosperous period in history, there is an increasing "feel bad" atmosphere and huge numbers equate the Iraq war with the Viet Nam war, though the analogy is atrocious.

My father had the bad luck to spend his 40s and 50s trying to invest profitably, in a time when it wasn't possible. Had he known what would happen from 1966-1982, he'd have bought land. I had the good luck to invest profitably when it was easy to do so. I think I need to reconsider my strategy. 2007 looks too much like 1966 for my comfort. Stay tuned.