Canadian Politics Today

Please provide a cite that the population of the earth is headed down, or projected to.

Nobody really knows. Tim is citing modernization theory which argues that less developed nations will follow the same path as more developed nations. We're seeing that this isn't necessarily the case. For example, they're beginning to suffer the long-term chronic ailments of wealthier nations (like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease), but are still faced with infectious disease problems that you don't see in more developed areas.

One counter argument to the modernization theory from Kingsley Davis back in 1963 was that people need to recognize their means in order for there to be a fertility decline. Well what does that mean? In a society that is mostly rural and depends on subsistence labour (e.g., domestic agriculture), more bodies means more help to survive. As mortality declines and people live longer, it costs more to support those people. Developed countries shifted to industrial labour in urban centres from domestic agriculture in rural settings. More children meant more mouths to feed and more expenses for the family. They're no longer adding to the family resources, but rather taking away from them.

The modernization theory that Tim's perspective is based on, whether he knows it or not, assumes that less developed countries will become wealthier, which they almost certainly will. However, that assumption is based on the idea that wealthier means they will become more industrialized and urban, which does not necessarily hold true.

Davis' argument is that people need to recognize the need to stop having as many children before a fertility decline will happen. What I am suggesting here is that people come to that recognition based on social organization. Modern fertility decline happens when societies are organized such that reproducing becomes more of a burden on families than a benefit. Developed nations have a long way to go before this is the case.

Another important thing to consider is how patterns of migration have changed and how that relates to fertility decline and the (in my opinion) wrong idea that less developed nations will follow the same path as developed nations. European crowding lead to wealthier nations branching out and settling colonies. They became crowded and then expanded. Today, on the other hand, we have more South to North migration, where people from less developed countries in the South are moving to the more developed countries in the North for economic opportunities. This is the economic inverse of the previous situation (rich countries slow population expansion by migrating to less wealthy areas versus people from less developed areas moving into more developed areas). This stream of migration makes it more difficult for the less developed areas to expand both in terms of their economies as well as populations, which makes it less likely that there will be a fertility decline in those regions any time soon.

None of this yet takes into account population ages (more developed countries have aging populations, which leads to less fertility against younger populations), population education (more educated populations have fewer children because they spend more time in school before starting families), and a number of other variables that influence fertility.