Europa Population 1,5 Billion with this POD
- Thread starter Berus
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Errr...he doesn't need one. It's math. 50 million European dead between two wars. Three additional generations (possibly four for some now) for the WW1 generation and two additional generations (possibly three for some) for the WW2 generation. That's easily an additional 150 million Europeans at the least not counting the 50 million that didn't die.
d32123
Banned
This is assuming birth rates and immigration wouldn't be affected, though, even though it certainly would be.
Even using a modern birth rate of 1.4 children per family (which is even less than what it is on average in Europe right now, 1.59 as of 2009) you're looking at an additional 200 million by 2012. No problem. Even assuming that modern European birth rates would still drop dramatically to where they are now due to no WW1 or WW2 you'd still have those numbers.
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d32123
Banned
How would a birth rate of 1.4 children per family cause an increase? That's below replacement level (2.0).
Well, yeah, obviously not at the outset. I'm under the assumption that European birth rates were not at their historically low levels in the 1910's and 1940's.
Without the Second World War, I'm fairly confident there would be no Baby Boomer period, which would compensate for a lot of that demographic switch. Bear in mind that a lot of countries - the UK, France, Italy - are all at the point where experts say their populations are approaching critical mass, and natural demographic occurences are causing their populations to go into decline instead of increase. If you add another 200 mill from removing the two world wars, all you're going to do is have those countries reach critical mass earlier, and by this stage they would already be in population recession.
But arguably, without Europe descending into its "rage of self-mutilation" like OTL, the culture would be very different. There would not be the same crisis of faith and civilization, and birth rates would remain consistently higher than they were historically.
There are dozens of developing countries that are overpopulated and are still growing, even though some through government intervention have slowed their growth. Population does not always match carrying capacity. In the case of an overpopulated Europe, they would just import food from the United States. But Europe actually still has a big food surplus.
I don't understand what you're saying.
It's not just about food surpluses. It's about having situations like we have here in the UK right now, for instance, where there is very little land which has not been used for housing, and which the government is willing to let be used for building new houses. Consequently, the price of houses absolutely sky-rockets - even the financial crisis has barely impacted the growing cost of buying houses - and you get a situation where the average age at which a child can afford to stop living with their parents is about 27-28. In fact, many just give up and surrender themselves to a lifetime of renting rather than buying.
Then you get other situations, such as what the economy can actually support, what parents can afford to support - more and more people in the UK, again, are opting to have fewer children because the cost of upkeep for children is growing beyond what even some middle class families are willing to pay - etc etc. There's other things too but it's 4.30am on New Year's Day and I just can't motivate myself to think them through (sorry, hope you understand). It's not just the point at which demand outstrips supply and, to frame it in the "animal food chain" way, the less-able run out of food and die to rebalance the population. It's equally about the point at which the average mindset of the average person is that they don't want to have big families any more - in fact, the point at which the mindset of many people is that they are quite happy not having kids full stop.
It's hard to sustain 1.5 bil people with an economy analogues to India/Mideast or Africa....
The people will die to fast for you to hit 1.5 bil.
I propose you butterfly away contraception somehow, therby preventing parents from not having children. It also forces the government to dealwith the rising population, and makes it a non-ignorable issue. you can have contraception later on, if you need to hold down the population(and raise the GDP/c).
I think the big thing that needs to be looked at is where their are populations this large as it is, China has a population of 1.34 billion while India has 1.21 billion and the entire continent of Africa has 1.02 billion.
Now when we look at the places with the closest populations we see that they all have three things going for them;
1. They're large; India is the only one that's not larger than Europe West of Russia.
2. They have large, very fertile areas of land that are capable of supporting very high pre-modern carrying capacities.
3. They've all had historically large populations that have allowed for the even larger growths in population of the modern era, China itself having had the largest population of any country on Earth throughout the entirety of Human history.
Now when we look at the places with the closest populations we see that they all have three things going for them;
1. They're large; India is the only one that's not larger than Europe West of Russia.
2. They have large, very fertile areas of land that are capable of supporting very high pre-modern carrying capacities.
3. They've all had historically large populations that have allowed for the even larger growths in population of the modern era, China itself having had the largest population of any country on Earth throughout the entirety of Human history.