Demographics decline - sustainability or catastrophe?

[Posthumane]

Superficial (not thorough, deep, or complete; cursory) thoughts on this subject always result in an opinion of: less kids is good for the planet and everyone. A more in-depth understanding of the issue almost always results in people agreeing that this actually is a problem.

Ah, out comes the classic "anyone who disagrees with me just hasn't thought about it as much as I have." Always a favourite.

[vand]

Our family went for a walk in an open space area here in Albuquerque along the river. Over an hour or so we saw 40-50 people on but not a single child. Lots of dogs, but no kids. Plenty of couples in their 20s and 30s but virtually all of them had a dog or two instead of kids. When we got back to the parking lot there was one woman with a child and a dog at a picnic table next to the parking lot, but that was it.

It would be interesting to see a graph of households with dogs vs households with kids and I bet the former would be up and to the right while the latter would be down and to the right if graphed over the last few decades.

That would be interesting.  However your visual assessment could be massively biased.  The families with small children may not be there  The families with older children may be at children's activities.  People with dogs are going to like that kind of venue as a great place to walk the dog.

Here realtor.ca MLS listings have a section for demographics, so you can see the kind of neighbourhood you are thinking of buying in.  Does your MLS have something similar?  For a nice house (CAN $850K, near Toronto which is super expensive) in a residential neighbourhood sort of near me, the kind that families like, the neighbourhood is

68.3% Single family
0.5% Multi family
25% Single person
6.2% Multi person

Population By Age Group (%)

0 to 4  4.2%

5 to 9  4.4%

10 to 14  4.8%

15 to 19  5.7%

20 to 34  20.6%

35 to 49  21.4%

50 to 64  22%

65 to 79  13.8%

80 and over  3.1%

So lots of kids.

Lots of kids, but is it enough? Even these numbers demonstrate an aging population below replacement rate. With every 15 year bands you have:

Boomers 22%
GenX 21.4%
Millenials/Z 20.6%
Children (5-19) 14.9%

The 0-4 cohort is less populous that the one immediately above it, so its the smallest yet. If this is what a "family friendly" area looks like then it's not massively encouraging.

[RetiredAt63]

Our family went for a walk in an open space area here in Albuquerque along the river. Over an hour or so we saw 40-50 people on but not a single child. Lots of dogs, but no kids. Plenty of couples in their 20s and 30s but virtually all of them had a dog or two instead of kids. When we got back to the parking lot there was one woman with a child and a dog at a picnic table next to the parking lot, but that was it.

It would be interesting to see a graph of households with dogs vs households with kids and I bet the former would be up and to the right while the latter would be down and to the right if graphed over the last few decades.

That would be interesting.  However your visual assessment could be massively biased.  The families with small children may not be there  The families with older children may be at children's activities.  People with dogs are going to like that kind of venue as a great place to walk the dog.

Here realtor.ca MLS listings have a section for demographics, so you can see the kind of neighbourhood you are thinking of buying in.  Does your MLS have something similar?  For a nice house (CAN $850K, near Toronto which is super expensive) in a residential neighbourhood sort of near me, the kind that families like, the neighbourhood is

68.3% Single family
0.5% Multi family
25% Single person
6.2% Multi person

Population By Age Group (%)

0 to 4  4.2%

5 to 9  4.4%

10 to 14  4.8%

15 to 19  5.7%

20 to 34  20.6%

35 to 49  21.4%

50 to 64  22%

65 to 79  13.8%

80 and over  3.1%

So lots of kids.

Lots of kids, but is it enough? Even these numbers demonstrate an aging population below replacement rate. With every 15 year bands you have:

Boomers 22%
GenX 21.4%
Millenials/Z 20.6%
Children (5-19) 14.9%

The 0-4 cohort is less populous that the one immediately above it, so its the smallest yet. If this is what a "family friendly" area looks like then it's not massively encouraging.

Children (0-19)  19.1 %
The smallest cohort is the pandemic.  I would hate to make any predictions about anything based on those years.

But yes, Canada is one of the countries with low birthrates.

StatsCan is a wonderful data source for all this stuff.  Does the US have something similar?
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/population_and_demography

My point with all that was that Michael in A was talking about not seeing any kids and a lot of dogs on a walk.  I was replying that the kids are most likely in his area, just not where he was (a perfect spot for dog walking).

There are lots of kids in my area (I see them getting off the school buses) but when I walk on the trails the only kids I see are late teens on their bikes.  I get to pet a lot of dogs though.  So sampling location matters.

[vand]

Our family went for a walk in an open space area here in Albuquerque along the river. Over an hour or so we saw 40-50 people on but not a single child. Lots of dogs, but no kids. Plenty of couples in their 20s and 30s but virtually all of them had a dog or two instead of kids. When we got back to the parking lot there was one woman with a child and a dog at a picnic table next to the parking lot, but that was it.

It would be interesting to see a graph of households with dogs vs households with kids and I bet the former would be up and to the right while the latter would be down and to the right if graphed over the last few decades.

That would be interesting.  However your visual assessment could be massively biased.  The families with small children may not be there  The families with older children may be at children's activities.  People with dogs are going to like that kind of venue as a great place to walk the dog.

Here realtor.ca MLS listings have a section for demographics, so you can see the kind of neighbourhood you are thinking of buying in.  Does your MLS have something similar?  For a nice house (CAN $850K, near Toronto which is super expensive) in a residential neighbourhood sort of near me, the kind that families like, the neighbourhood is

68.3% Single family
0.5% Multi family
25% Single person
6.2% Multi person

Population By Age Group (%)

0 to 4  4.2%

5 to 9  4.4%

10 to 14  4.8%

15 to 19  5.7%

20 to 34  20.6%

35 to 49  21.4%

50 to 64  22%

65 to 79  13.8%

80 and over  3.1%

So lots of kids.

Lots of kids, but is it enough? Even these numbers demonstrate an aging population below replacement rate. With every 15 year bands you have:

Boomers 22%
GenX 21.4%
Millenials/Z 20.6%
Children (5-19) 14.9%

The 0-4 cohort is less populous that the one immediately above it, so its the smallest yet. If this is what a "family friendly" area looks like then it's not massively encouraging.

Children (0-19)  19.1 %
The smallest cohort is the pandemic.  I would hate to make any predictions about anything based on those years.

But yes, Canada is one of the countries with low birthrates.

StatsCan is a wonderful data source for all this stuff.  Does the US have something similar?
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/population_and_demography

My point with all that was that Michael in A was talking about not seeing any kids and a lot of dogs on a walk.  I was replying that the kids are most likely in his area, just not where he was (a perfect spot for dog walking).

There are lots of kids in my area (I see them getting off the school buses) but when I walk on the trails the only kids I see are late teens on their bikes.  I get to pet a lot of dogs though.  So sampling location matters.

If you are grouping 0-19 then you are counting 25% more years than each of the age groups above (ie 20 as opposed to 15).

Agree that the pandemic has had effected a further lurch lower across pretty much everywhere.

[RetiredAt63]

Children (0-19)  19.1 %
The smallest cohort is the pandemic.  I would hate to make any predictions about anything based on those years.

But yes, Canada is one of the countries with low birthrates.

StatsCan is a wonderful data source for all this stuff.  Does the US have something similar?
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/population_and_demography

My point with all that was that Michael in A was talking about not seeing any kids and a lot of dogs on a walk.  I was replying that the kids are most likely in his area, just not where he was (a perfect spot for dog walking).

There are lots of kids in my area (I see them getting off the school buses) but when I walk on the trails the only kids I see are late teens on their bikes.  I get to pet a lot of dogs though.  So sampling location matters.

If you are grouping 0-19 then you are counting 25% more years than each of the age groups above (ie 20 as opposed to 15).

[/quote]

True, just wanted to show that the children are almost 20% of the children in that area.

But I definitely don't want to imply that you would find that many children in any neighbourhood.  The area I references was mostly SFH, so where you would expect to find a lot of children.  Also a lot of older empty nesters who haven't moved out of the house. 

I can see why the older ones are still there.  They have all kinds of connections in the neighbourhood.  When the kids come to visit with the grandkids, there is plenty of space for everyone.   And lots of people stay energetic and healthy well into their 80s.  So the house is still functional for them.  Plus after the mortality rates in seniors residences and nursing homes (especially nursing homes) during the pandemic, staying in your own house sounds like a healthier option.

[afox]

Superficial (not thorough, deep, or complete; cursory) thoughts on this subject always result in an opinion of: less kids is good for the planet and everyone. A more in-depth understanding of the issue almost always results in people agreeing that this actually is a problem.

Ah, out comes the classic "anyone who disagrees with me just hasn't thought about it as much as I have." Always a favourite.

Harsh! Its true though, I mean I didnt realize how much kids were saving the world until....I had kids.

No reallly, its just co-incidence that my child bearing coincides with the point in human history when the children are needed the most.

[Sibley]

Superficial (not thorough, deep, or complete; cursory) thoughts on this subject always result in an opinion of: less kids is good for the planet and everyone. A more in-depth understanding of the issue almost always results in people agreeing that this actually is a problem.

Ah, out comes the classic "anyone who disagrees with me just hasn't thought about it as much as I have." Always a favourite.

Maybe, maybe not, but there IS a big difference between a quick thought without reflection and a deeply thoughtful process of research and evaluation.

Also, it's entirely possible for two contradictory things to both be true. A smaller population will be good for the planet AND fewer kids causes problems.

[Posthumane]

The world population is steadily increasing. While there likely will bear decline at some point in the future, we're not there yet. So what would make you think that now, when the population is increasing more rapidly than at many times in the past, is when more children are needed?

Anecdotally, someone in my wife's family passed away recently. He had three kids. None of them ever provided any financial support to him, or helped him with with medical issues or things that needed doing around the house. In fact one of them scanned him out of a bunch of money. None of them were willing to travel across the country for his memorial. So don't count your chickens before they hatch; having children is no guarantee of having assistance or companionship in your old age.

[afox]

The world population is steadily increasing. While there likely will bear decline at some point in the future, we're not there yet. So what would make you think that now, when the population is increasing more rapidly than at many times in the past, is when more children are needed?

well, lots of caveats there. worldwide birth rates are still above replacement rate but they are falling and will be below replacement rate soon, once they are below replacement rate population starts falling. And looking at a graph population is not increasing at a fast rate now, worldwide that is. In the US and most western countries birth rates are far below replacement rates and populations would be falling without immigration. Not sure how you expect birth rates in NIger (highest in the world) will benefit you in the US. Maybe AMericans will move to NIger and other countries with lots of young people to live out their retirements where they can afford to hire young ones to take care of them.

[deborah]

Boomers have always been from 1945 - 1964 or 1946 - 1965 ie 20 years. The silent generation was also 20 years. And historically, 20 years is a generation (so 5 in a century). But newer generations apparently are 15 years. Which doesn’t make any sense, as we’re reproducing more slowly.

[Posthumane]

well, lots of caveats there. worldwide birth rates are still above replacement rate but they are falling and will be below replacement rate soon, once they are below replacement rate population starts falling. And looking at a graph population is not increasing at a fast rate now, worldwide that is. In the US and most western countries birth rates are far below replacement rates and populations would be falling without immigration. Not sure how you expect birth rates in NIger (highest in the world) will benefit you in the US. Maybe AMericans will move to NIger and other countries with lots of young people to live out their retirements where they can afford to hire young ones to take care of them.

You answered your own question there. Populations would be falling in a number of countries without immigration*, but they aren't. Because immigration is a thing. A baby born in India or Africa which them moves to the US is just as useful to you as one born in the US (they have equal utility to me, not being an American). Unless, of course, you feel that a US born person has more value than a person from another country.

But that all hinges on your premise that population growth is required to have a good quality of life, which I reject. Many of the countries that do not have much in the way of population growth have quality of life, including for seniors, that is equal to or better than the US. Rapid decline can cause problems in the short term, although rapid decline is usually the result of poor economy or other living conditions to begin with. Rapid growth also causes problems.


*population growth is possible over a finite period with below replacement birth rates and no net immigration due to changes in life expectancy. Life expectancy is expected to increase in countries that currently have the highest youth populations, so world population is likely to keep increasing for a period of time even if global average birth rates fall below replacement levels.

[afox]

well, lots of caveats there. worldwide birth rates are still above replacement rate but they are falling and will be below replacement rate soon, once they are below replacement rate population starts falling. And looking at a graph population is not increasing at a fast rate now, worldwide that is. In the US and most western countries birth rates are far below replacement rates and populations would be falling without immigration. Not sure how you expect birth rates in NIger (highest in the world) will benefit you in the US. Maybe AMericans will move to NIger and other countries with lots of young people to live out their retirements where they can afford to hire young ones to take care of them.

You answered your own question there. Populations would be falling in a number of countries without immigration*, but they aren't. Because immigration is a thing. A baby born in India or Africa which them moves to the US is just as useful to you as one born in the US (they have equal utility to me, not being an American). Unless, of course, you feel that a US born person has more value than a person from another country.

But that all hinges on your premise that population growth is required to have a good quality of life, which I reject. Many of the countries that do not have much in the way of population growth have quality of life, including for seniors, that is equal to or better than the US. Rapid decline can cause problems in the short term, although rapid decline is usually the result of poor economy or other living conditions to begin with. Rapid growth also causes problems.


*population growth is possible over a finite period with below replacement birth rates and no net immigration due to changes in life expectancy. Life expectancy is expected to increase in countries that currently have the highest youth populations, so world population is likely to keep increasing for a period of time even if global average birth rates fall below replacement levels.

Good point about life expectancy increasing in countries with higher birth rates. I hope some of the demographic models take that into account.

I hope that US citizens realize the need for immigrants and urge their elected leaders to increase immigration.

Of course YOU can have a  "good" quality of life with  without population growth (this is completely subjective), you have to admit that services will be more expensive though. And dont be fooled into thinking that the things you pay for now are the things you will pay for later in life. Like all humans you will decline physically and need assistance.

[wageslave23]

From a purely economic standpoint, the US does not need immigration to continue to grow economically. We could just outsource more jobs to people in other countries. Economically the best case scenario is the US population is the creators and managers and owners of businesses who then hire cheap labor from overseas to do all the work. The workers don't need to be living in the US or citizens in order for GDP and tax revenue to continue to increase.

[simonsez]

Boomers have always been from 1945 - 1964 or 1946 - 1965 ie 20 years. The silent generation was also 20 years. And historically, 20 years is a generation (so 5 in a century). But newer generations apparently are 15 years. Which doesn’t make any sense, as we’re reproducing more slowly.

The social context and demographic context used to be close enough to each other that it made sense and you could refer to them interchangeably and it was fine.  They're decoupled now, though.  Socially, generations do seem to be getting squeezed into shorter timeframes as the rate of change with technology and how societies are structured is changing more rapidly.  However, on the demographic side the length of a generation is 30 years or more in many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_time

Social definition - something along the lines of a group of people growing up together with similar norms and experiences, arguably this is new idea that came about or at least was popularized in the 20th Century as a convenient way to think about progress.  I.e. I don't think people in France (or West Francia) born in 860 were socially that different from those born in 880 but someone born in 1960 compared to 1980 is VERY different.  There is no precise way to calculate this.  It was coincidental post WW2 that it was agreed upon that generations were different enough after 20 years and that it lined up with the demographic version.

Demographic definition - how long it takes, on average, for a population to replace itself.  For demographers, actuaries, and some types of biologists, this is a simple calculation on a life table.  For the vast majority of human history, this was a stable number hovering around 20 years.  Only recently has this changed, especially so in industrialized countries.

[afox]

From a purely economic standpoint, the US does not need immigration to continue to grow economically. We could just outsource more jobs to people in other countries. Economically the best case scenario is the US population is the creators and managers and owners of businesses who then hire cheap labor from overseas to do all the work. The workers don't need to be living in the US or citizens in order for GDP and tax revenue to continue to increase.

IN order to grow the companies need people to sell their products to, with a shrinking population that's harder.

[deborah]

Boomers have always been from 1945 - 1964 or 1946 - 1965 ie 20 years. The silent generation was also 20 years. And historically, 20 years is a generation (so 5 in a century). But newer generations apparently are 15 years. Which doesn’t make any sense, as we’re reproducing more slowly.

The social context and demographic context used to be close enough to each other that it made sense and you could refer to them interchangeably and it was fine.  They're decoupled now, though.  Socially, generations do seem to be getting squeezed into shorter timeframes as the rate of change with technology and how societies are structured is changing more rapidly.  However, on the demographic side the length of a generation is 30 years or more in many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_time

Social definition - something along the lines of a group of people growing up together with similar norms and experiences, arguably this is new idea that came about or at least was popularized in the 20th Century as a convenient way to think about progress.  I.e. I don't think people in France (or West Francia) born in 860 were socially that different from those born in 880 but someone born in 1960 compared to 1980 is VERY different.  There is no precise way to calculate this.  It was coincidental post WW2 that it was agreed upon that generations were different enough after 20 years and that it lined up with the demographic version.

Demographic definition - how long it takes, on average, for a population to replace itself.  For demographers, actuaries, and some types of biologists, this is a simple calculation on a life table.  For the vast majority of human history, this was a stable number hovering around 20 years.  Only recently has this changed, especially so in industrialized countries.

By definition, I’ve always seen a generation as population replacement. Australian indigenous culture is the oldest living culture. They illustrate it in generations. When I went to Lake Mungo, and saw a row of stick figures running around the walls, each of them representing a generation, it made me realise just how long they’ve been there. I’m pretty sure they took 30 years as their representation.

If you’re going for the social model, I would argue that the boomer generation is easily split into two, the defining characteristic being whether they were part of the age group that participated in war. As one of the youngest of that cohort, the younger boomers than me had completely different views. They weren’t part of the protest movements, their lives were completely normal, not predicated by whether they (or their boyfriends) were called up or not to Vietnam (and earlier battles our cohort were involved in). It was such a different group socially. There was also a difference because of when the pill was generally available to girls, which again made the split at about the same time. These things were huge.

[Metalcat]

From a purely economic standpoint, the US does not need immigration to continue to grow economically. We could just outsource more jobs to people in other countries. Economically the best case scenario is the US population is the creators and managers and owners of businesses who then hire cheap labor from overseas to do all the work. The workers don't need to be living in the US or citizens in order for GDP and tax revenue to continue to increase.

IN order to grow the companies need people to sell their products to, with a shrinking population that's harder.

Maybe the eternal growth model is a problem then??

[simonsez]

Boomers have always been from 1945 - 1964 or 1946 - 1965 ie 20 years. The silent generation was also 20 years. And historically, 20 years is a generation (so 5 in a century). But newer generations apparently are 15 years. Which doesn’t make any sense, as we’re reproducing more slowly.

The social context and demographic context used to be close enough to each other that it made sense and you could refer to them interchangeably and it was fine.  They're decoupled now, though.  Socially, generations do seem to be getting squeezed into shorter timeframes as the rate of change with technology and how societies are structured is changing more rapidly.  However, on the demographic side the length of a generation is 30 years or more in many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_time

Social definition - something along the lines of a group of people growing up together with similar norms and experiences, arguably this is new idea that came about or at least was popularized in the 20th Century as a convenient way to think about progress.  I.e. I don't think people in France (or West Francia) born in 860 were socially that different from those born in 880 but someone born in 1960 compared to 1980 is VERY different.  There is no precise way to calculate this.  It was coincidental post WW2 that it was agreed upon that generations were different enough after 20 years and that it lined up with the demographic version.

Demographic definition - how long it takes, on average, for a population to replace itself.  For demographers, actuaries, and some types of biologists, this is a simple calculation on a life table.  For the vast majority of human history, this was a stable number hovering around 20 years.  Only recently has this changed, especially so in industrialized countries.

By definition, I’ve always seen a generation as population replacement. Australian indigenous culture is the oldest living culture. They illustrate it in generations. When I went to Lake Mungo, and saw a row of stick figures running around the walls, each of them representing a generation, it made me realise just how long they’ve been there. I’m pretty sure they took 30 years as their representation.

If you’re going for the social model, I would argue that the boomer generation is easily split into two, the defining characteristic being whether they were part of the age group that participated in war. As one of the youngest of that cohort, the younger boomers than me had completely different views. They weren’t part of the protest movements, their lives were completely normal, not predicated by whether they (or their boyfriends) were called up or not to Vietnam (and earlier battles our cohort were involved in). It was such a different group socially. There was also a difference because of when the pill was generally available to girls, which again made the split at about the same time. These things were huge.

It's so wild to think that 2001-2100 will likely have more social change than 1901-2000 did*.  Those are great points about the post WW2 boomers.  My mom was born in 1960 and she strikes me as MORE than 13 years different (in social terms) to my great aunt born in 1947 even though they largely were brought up with similar values and encountered many of the same relatives. 

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

[Sibley]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

[ChpBstrd]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

[roomtempmayo]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

I've also thought that change has really slowed, but I also wonder if that just means I'm getting old and failing to see the change around me.

[Posthumane]

Of course YOU can have a  "good" quality of life with  without population growth (this is completely subjective), you have to admit that services will be more expensive though. And dont be fooled into thinking that the things you pay for now are the things you will pay for later in life. Like all humans you will decline physically and need assistance.

No, I disagree about services necessarily becoming more expensive and quality of life decreasing, for several reasons:
a) You seem to conflate population decline with the disappearance of an entire generation. If currently there are 1005 people coming into a nation (through both birth an immigration) for every 1000 going out (mostly due to death, but some by emigration), then reducing the incoming number to 1000 (steady population) or 999 (slow decline) doesn't have as drastic an impact on the workforce as you imply. Changes in workforce availability driven by unemployment, industry changes, etc. dwarf those figures.
b) Businesses come and go based on demand. A very small percentage of the workforce is currently involved in elderly care. As the population ages the demand for this service will go up and the demand for services for younger people will go down, and the services will adjust accordingly. I currently live in a town with a median age of 63. There are lot of old folks homes, hearing and vision care centres, etc. but less schools and sports facilities than other towns I've lived in.
c) There are many examples of flat (not growing) populations which run just fine. Successful businesses and service rely on a steady flow of customers. An continuously increasing customer base is not required for success.

[GuitarStv]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

I've also thought that change has really slowed, but I also wonder if that just means I'm getting old and failing to see the change around me.

Try talking to the younger generation if you want to feel old.

The other day I overheard one of my coop students saying that another student was "lowkey on fleek, no cap bra".

Not sure what language they were speaking, but both profess to be fluent in English.

[wenchsenior]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

I've also thought that change has really slowed, but I also wonder if that just means I'm getting old and failing to see the change around me.

Try talking to the younger generation if you want to feel old.

The other day I overheard one of my coop students saying that another student was "lowkey on fleek, no cap bra".

Not sure what language they were speaking, but both profess to be fluent in English.

Sigh. Yeah I had to look that up.

[afox]

Of course YOU can have a  "good" quality of life with  without population growth (this is completely subjective), you have to admit that services will be more expensive though. And dont be fooled into thinking that the things you pay for now are the things you will pay for later in life. Like all humans you will decline physically and need assistance.

No, I disagree about services necessarily becoming more expensive and quality of life decreasing, for several reasons:
a) You seem to conflate population decline with the disappearance of an entire generation. If currently there are 1005 people coming into a nation (through both birth an immigration) for every 1000 going out (mostly due to death, but some by emigration), then reducing the incoming number to 1000 (steady population) or 999 (slow decline) doesn't have as drastic an impact on the workforce as you imply. Changes in workforce availability driven by unemployment, industry changes, etc. dwarf those figures.
b) Businesses come and go based on demand. A very small percentage of the workforce is currently involved in elderly care. As the population ages the demand for this service will go up and the demand for services for younger people will go down, and the services will adjust accordingly. I currently live in a town with a median age of 63. There are lot of old folks homes, hearing and vision care centres, etc. but less schools and sports facilities than other towns I've lived in.
c) There are many examples of flat (not growing) populations which run just fine. Successful businesses and service rely on a steady flow of customers. An continuously increasing customer base is not required for success.

You Dont have to take my word for it, the BLS concludes that a labor shortage is the main reason for the highest inflation in 40 years:

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#:~:text=As%20the%20labor%20market%20tightened,firms%20begin%20to%20increase%20prices.

Im not confusing population decline with the dissapearance of a generation. Do you think I think the US is going to be like some scifi movie with empty houses and streets in 40 years? What gave you that impression? Strawmans do make this more fun! Just enough of a decline in the workforce to make things very expensive, it does not take much of an imbalance in the labor market to have pretty major impacts.

[RetiredAt63]

Re the labour market, I thought I read somewhere that the biggest impact on the availability of labour is not the low numbers of new workers, but the loss of the older workers.  The baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers, which makes sense, they are seniors now (born 1946 - 1964 means they are 60 - 78).  And companies are fairly happy to see them go, since they tend to have higher salaries and their replacements are much less expensive.

What I do expect to see is a lot of issues with companies that rely a lot on cheap teenage workers. 

Of course what this all means is that everyone aspiring to FIRE is morally wrong, they need to stay in the workforce because the workforce needs them.   /s

[Posthumane]

You Dont have to take my word for it, the BLS concludes that a labor shortage is the main reason for the highest inflation in 40 years:

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#:~:text=As%20the%20labor%20market%20tightened,firms%20begin%20to%20increase%20prices.

Your linked article says nothing about gradual population decline. It is about a large, artificial labor force disruption during the pandemic, which continued to be a period of population growth. I can't tell if you posted it with the intent to mislead, or of you genuinely don't understand the difference between the two scenarios.

Do you think I think the US is going to be like some scifi movie with empty houses and streets in 40 years? What gave you that impression?

What gave me that impression is your hand winging about the idea that without population growth there won't be anyone around to take care of me in my old age. I'm arguing against a scenario that you presented, so if that's a strawman then it is one of your creation. The only scenario I can think of where your warnings might be valid is a mass exodus, like as happened in some countries due to war or political unrest, but that has nothing to do with birth rates.

Re the labour market, I thought I read somewhere that the biggest impact on the availability of labour is not the low numbers of new workers, but the loss of the older workers.  The baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers, which makes sense, they are seniors now (born 1946 - 1964 means they are 60 - 78).  And companies are fairly happy to see them go, since they tend to have higher salaries and their replacements are much less expensive.

You're spot on. Times of rapid population growth cause large demographic imbalance. Initially you get a bubble of young people, and slowly that bubble filters through the population until they retire and eventually die. Eventually, if the rapid growth does not continue in perpetuity, that bubble disappears and the demographic curve settles out into the flatter shape that was present throughout much of history.

[afox]

You Dont have to take my word for it, the BLS concludes that a labor shortage is the main reason for the highest inflation in 40 years:

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#:~:text=As%20the%20labor%20market%20tightened,firms%20begin%20to%20increase%20prices.

Your linked article says nothing about gradual population decline. It is about a large, artificial labor force disruption during the pandemic, which continued to be a period of population growth. I can't tell if you posted it with the intent to mislead, or of you genuinely don't understand the difference between the two scenarios.

Do you think I think the US is going to be like some scifi movie with empty houses and streets in 40 years? What gave you that impression?

What gave me that impression is your hand winging about the idea that without population growth there won't be anyone around to take care of me in my old age. I'm arguing against a scenario that you presented, so if that's a strawman then it is one of your creation. The only scenario I can think of where your warnings might be valid is a mass exodus, like as happened in some countries due to war or political unrest, but that has nothing to do with birth rates.

Re the labour market, I thought I read somewhere that the biggest impact on the availability of labour is not the low numbers of new workers, but the loss of the older workers.  The baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers, which makes sense, they are seniors now (born 1946 - 1964 means they are 60 - 78).  And companies are fairly happy to see them go, since they tend to have higher salaries and their replacements are much less expensive.

You're spot on. Times of rapid population growth cause large demographic imbalance. Initially you get a bubble of young people, and slowly that bubble filters through the population until they retire and eventually die. Eventually, if the rapid growth does not continue in perpetuity, that bubble disappears and the demographic curve settles out into the flatter shape that was present throughout much of history.

Wow, you are so not fun!

You believe that "elderly care" is the only service that the elderly pay for and as the population shifts workers will fill the need but I think you are wrong. As people age they shift towards paying people to do lots of things that they used to do themselves. lets just agree to disagree. I think population decline will result in higher prices for everything service related due to less available workers. You disagree with me and that's okay!

[simonsez]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

So you assume at some point in the future the world will become relatively static with respect to how our species lives and interacts?

I don't and predict there will not be a unified Earth under one nation's banner with universal rights and some basic level of living accessible to most (like you see on Star Trek or whatever show set well into the future) but maybe how we are measuring/defining is different.  I think a nuclear winter or supervolcano or asteroid that sends large swaths of humanity back to the caves (if they're lucky to survive) is more likely than the Star Trek utopia coming to fruition.  Grab a human at random in 100 year intervals over the course of human history and visualize them standing in a line next to each other.  I'm saying the appearance, rights a person has, how they perform domestic tasks, what they do for a living, what they own, what they live in, what their economic opportunities are, how they structure their family, etc. of the random person you grab was fairly slow to change throughout history.  The last few centuries, though, have exploded with differences and change.  I mean, in the year 1969 there were simultaneously people walking on the moon, others still in hiding thinking WW2 is going on (Hiroo Onoda), and others living as their ancestors had for thousands of years and never encountered "modern contact".  That's wild!
 
To me, it seems like the rate of change has increased and our species* is growing apart with rising inequality instead of together toward that unified vision portrayed on future-oriented shows.  Maybe the have-nots will catch up once a technological ceiling is reached and it trickles down to how we socialize and become stable but I just don't think we are anywhere close to that ceiling (as in, many lifetimes away if there is even an upper limit on how much a species can manipulate its environment or in Earth-only terms, I never expect the Kardashev number to be 1.0) and expect the social "entropy" to continue to increase. 

* It's weird at times to think about but our current situation on Earth with respect to humans and homo sapiens is fairly unique.  I.e. For roughly 95% of the time that modern science alleges there have been modern anatomical humans, there have been multiple SPECIES not only co-existing on the same planet but also living nearby and procreating and sharing technology.  Only fairly recently have homo sapiens been the only humans.  Given a long enough window into the future, it would not be surprising to me if there is some further divergence within our species (hell, just read how fast sperm counts have decreased in just a few decades!).  However, I don't even think a major genotype/phenotype change is required to see continued rapid change and whoever is better equipped to handle the physiological, technological, and social aspects of modern living as it evolves will survive.  This used to be called 'bigger army diplomacy' but it might become 'better AI diplomacy' or something else.

Important caveat - I think on a world with scarce resources and a planet that is definitely impacted by human activities there is only so much innovation that - say, agriculture - can do to solve demographic problems.  The rich will get their food and only have 0-2 children and continue to innovate, the poor will fight over the scraps and it could get really ugly if we have some bad famines and disasters.  I do think there has been a ton of progress in terms of the demographic transition in many areas that used to have that historically high mortality rate coupled with high fertility rate so we shall see.  If we colonize or can solve resource problems off-world, that certainly changes the calculus but I'm assuming for now that our species is stuck and will have to figure it out on Earth for the time being.

[Log]

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

I meant to reply to this earlier and got sidetracked, but I’ll just say I really disagree with this take. 15 years ago puts us at 2009 - so we’re talking about the entire period of the recovery from the Great Recession, the entire Obama presidency, legalization of gay marriage and extremely fast-changing norms of acceptance around LGBTQ identity groups, the mass adoption of smart phones and social media, the election of Donald Trump and a significant rise in extremist populism, a period of escalating social fragmentation and political unrest, a global pandemic, more social and political unrest, the whole rise of the culture war around “woke”/DEI/cancel culture, the collapsing business models of legacy media companies as independent media rises on the internet, collapsing teen mental health, the rise in “doomerism,” the Boomer retirement and coming-of-age of Gen Z…

Just talking about the smart phone and social media could be a whole-ass book on cultural change in the last 15 years. Surely you can tell how wildly different the internet is today from 15 years ago. And a part of the scope of our cultural change is just how much the internet is where our culture exists now.

Maybe there hasn’t been as significant of a particular social upheaval as happened in the 20th century, where a particular youth counter-culture rises up to replace/change the elders’ mass culture. But that’s in large part because the Boomers’ mass culture was all about expanding lifestyle choice and elevating individualism above collective norms. There’s no longer a mass culture that will really tell people, “no, you’re not allowed to do that,” and so the counter-cultures no longer need to rebel. They can just do their thing in their own bubbles, and no one is stopping them. But lack of upheaval doesn’t mean lack of change - those simultaneous counter-cultures are still constantly multiplying and changing. The internet just helps them grow more numerous and more niche, as the algorithm will gladly sort people into extremely niche bubbles without the slightest worry about geographic limitations.

As far as these very specific examples you put forth about what constitutes “culture,” (cars, clothes, homes, etc.) I think those have also changed quite a lot, but those changes might manifest at different paces in different places. As Ezra Klein paraphrased William Gibson: “the future’s already here, it’s just in California.”

New construction of the 2010s and 2020s is evidently aesthetically different from what came before. The streets are covered in fully electric cars, I just saw the Hyundai hydrogen-fueled car parked on the street on one of my walks the other day. I see a fuckin CyberTruck once ever week or two. Cars are getting weird. Fashion is always obviously changing. Of course ever since the Boomers, it’s been normalized to wear whatever you want, so we’re all free to ignore changing fashions and keep wearing the same old jeans and t-shirt if we want, but it seems odd to just ignore that what is “fashionable” has obviously changed, as it always does. Saying that jobs aren’t changing just seems kind of obtuse?? Hasn’t remote work been an inescapable topic for the last 4 years??

TL;DR: it’s easier to ignore cultural change because the mass culture has already been “do whatever you want” for the last 50 years, but what people are doing under that umbrella of “whatever you want” is inexorably changing, as always. The “mass culture” is slower to change, because counter-culture no longer needs to engage in a big dramatic upheaval. “Mass culture” itself is increasingly a meaningless idea anyway, because even being a normie is the individual choice to be in a minority bubble of society. There is no agreed-upon majority worldview anymore, and there hasn’t been for a while.

[simonsez]

I grant people a fair bit of latitude if they're talking about Western culture under the microscope of the last 100 years vs someone like me who is thinking in terms of many many thousands of years and the entirety of humanity across the globe.  What I view as essentially statistical noise (the ups and 'lulls' [as there are rarely 'downs'] of various tech/social paces within a particular century) someone else focusing on a shorter span may draw very plausible conclusions that are juxtaposed to my own views just because our lenses are different.  That makes it fun!

That's an excellent point @Log about California being different and futuristic not only compared to different parts of the world but also within Western culture and even the US specifically.  It seems on this forum we have many intelligent, high-earning people living on the coasts in big cities who see firsthand new tech and social norms develop and become integrated maybe a bit faster in their own bubbles and extrapolate that out perhaps prematurely at times to other areas (be that the US, Western culture, or especially the entire globe).  It makes sense that a person living in the US in SF, LA, NYC, DC (really any big city) who has had a smartphone* since the iPhone 1 came out might feel like "hmm, not much is different in MY life over the past decade+ so I'll just assume that's the case for others".  Couple that with social media algorithms that further reinforce the bubble and I can see how many feel there isn't an ever-increasing trend of progress when viewed at the 10000 foot view because someone else's 10000 foot view might be in terms of several generations whereas mine is several orders of magnitude larger.

* Meaning they were probably already an adult or old enough to be somewhat established in life with regard to dating and career which further distorts the view.  To me, it seems that the change is happening even more rapidly on the age margins of humanity.  I.e. Older people and younger people are becoming more integrated with newer tech and social norms.  I didn't have a cellphone until I was 18, which was normal among my peers.  I think about how different socializing as a teenager is now with smartphones compared to landlines but also you don't have to go back that far to imagine what it was like for teenagers to socialize before houses had phones!  For first cell phones in my peer group, some were 16 or 17 and others were my age or a little older.  Depending on how old you are now, that can seem super young and what a luxury or like I lived in a Luddite household.  I'm sure the number of 85 year olds emailing was not zero back in the 90s and early aughts, but my grandfather at 85 now sends emails.  He didn't do that when he was 65 and email was already pretty ubiquitous (at least in the white collar world, which is a bubble!).

I just tend to view - in this intersecting context anyway, re: the future of demographics and associated ramifications, which are a global issue - huge concepts like progress of a species over a longer timeframe and geographic area than just a handful of generations in Western culture.  There's no correct or incorrect set of parameters. I'm just acknowledging other perspectives and attempting to explain my own since seemingly opposite views can be simultaneously true.

[ChpBstrd]

Yea, but consider how radical the changes were in the past:

• The introduction of indoor plumbing.
• The introduction of electricity.
• The introduction of the automobile.
• The introduction of airplanes.
• The introduction of radio.
• Women winning the right to vote.
• The Great Depression.
• Two World Wars.
• The introduction of Rock n Roll.
• The Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Craftsman, Art Deco, and Modern architecture / furniture movements, which were each about 20-25 years long except for Modern, which we are still stuck on.
• The introduction of television.
• Construction of the interstate highway system.
• The introduction of affordable air travel.
• The introduction of Boomer casual style (e.g. jeans and t-shirts, which is still the way we live).

All these things transformed the culture within 15 years.

So basically the closest thing to these events in terms of magnitude over the past 20 years was the introduction of the iphone in 2007, which was itself simply an interface improvement over the circa-2002 blackberry smartphone. In the past 15 years, smartphones have only gotten incrementally "better" and consume more of people's time.

This is still a radical cultural change in how people communicate and spend their time, but is seems like every other aspect of culture is very, very close to where it was 15 or 20 years ago. There's something unusual about that in the broader historical context.

I.e. If you were transported from 2024 back to 2004 wearing the clothes you are wearing right now, would you look weird? Probably not. But change the timeframe to 1970->1950, or 1930->1910 the person from the future would look weird to the people from an earlier time. Most people could go back 30 years to 1994 and neither their hair nor their clothing would look particularly futuristic. Marty McFly had a very different experience with his 30y timeframe!

I.e. Do today's snout house designs look any different than the snout house designs from 20-30 years ago? Do today's apartments look any different? Remember, in earlier times architectural styles changed dramatically within 15-20 year periods. E.g. the Victorian to Arts and Crafts transition, or the Craftsman to mass produced ranch house transition.

I.e. If you turn on the radio today (or streaming) is the music from a genre someone would not recognize 15 years earlier? Sorry but Taylor Swift is simply the next Madonna and Cher. Rap hasn't changed much in that time. Country is the same. Rock is similar. Etc.

Another candidate for cultural change over the past 15 years is the transformation of the Republican Party. However let's not forget how similar Dubya was to Trump in terms of public-facing intelligence and sophistication, how radical Rush Limbaugh was as a right-wing thought leader, how obstructive and impeachment-prone Newt Gingrich was 25 years ago, or even how unqualified Ronald Reagan was, as another rich actor-turned-politician. Compare the chaos of January 6, 2021 with the right-wing anti-government radicalization which led to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or the 1996 Olympics bombing. A case could be made that not much has changed.

[vand]

Yea, but consider how radical the changes were in the past:

• The introduction of indoor plumbing.
• The introduction of electricity.
• The introduction of the automobile.
• The introduction of airplanes.
• The introduction of radio.
• Women winning the right to vote.
• The Great Depression.
• Two World Wars.
• The introduction of Rock n Roll.
• The Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Craftsman, Art Deco, and Modern architecture / furniture movements, which were each about 20-25 years long except for Modern, which we are still stuck on.
• The introduction of television.
• Construction of the interstate highway system.
• The introduction of affordable air travel.
• The introduction of Boomer casual style (e.g. jeans and t-shirts, which is still the way we live).

All these things transformed the culture within 15 years.

So basically the closest thing to these events in terms of magnitude over the past 20 years was the introduction of the iphone in 2007, which was itself simply an interface improvement over the circa-2002 blackberry smartphone. In the past 15 years, smartphones have only gotten incrementally "better" and consume more of people's time.

This is still a radical cultural change in how people communicate and spend their time, but is seems like every other aspect of culture is very, very close to where it was 15 or 20 years ago. There's something unusual about that in the broader historical context.

I.e. If you were transported from 2024 back to 2004 wearing the clothes you are wearing right now, would you look weird? Probably not. But change the timeframe to 1970->1950, or 1930->1910 the person from the future would look weird to the people from an earlier time. Most people could go back 30 years to 1994 and neither their hair nor their clothing would look particularly futuristic. Marty McFly had a very different experience with his 30y timeframe!

I.e. Do today's snout house designs look any different than the snout house designs from 20-30 years ago? Do today's apartments look any different? Remember, in earlier times architectural styles changed dramatically within 15-20 year periods. E.g. the Victorian to Arts and Crafts transition, or the Craftsman to mass produced ranch house transition.

I.e. If you turn on the radio today (or streaming) is the music from a genre someone would not recognize 15 years earlier? Sorry but Taylor Swift is simply the next Madonna and Cher. Rap hasn't changed much in that time. Country is the same. Rock is similar. Etc.

Another candidate for cultural change over the past 15 years is the transformation of the Republican Party. However let's not forget how similar Dubya was to Trump in terms of public-facing intelligence and sophistication, how radical Rush Limbaugh was as a right-wing thought leader, how obstructive and impeachment-prone Newt Gingrich was 25 years ago, or even how unqualified Ronald Reagan was, as another rich actor-turned-politician. Compare the chaos of January 6, 2021 with the right-wing anti-government radicalization which led to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or the 1996 Olympics bombing. A case could be made that not much has changed.

I totally get what you are saying. Western culture has grown to a point where something that looks modern today has a much longer shelf life than we've seen in the past.

A simple way to look at this is to look at comtemporary Men's hair styles. We went from the 1960s, 70s & 80s where Men's haircuts gradually got shorter - and then they got to the point where you can't really go any shorter, so we are left with the contemporary "late 90s-onward length" haircut that hasn't really changed. 

Look at movies made in the 1990s - a great example is "A Few Good Men" which was made in 1992 (32 years ago!!) but still looks very modern and ageless. The stylistic and technical jump between movies made in 1960 to 1992 was huge compared to 1992 to today.

[GuitarStv]

I.e. If you were transported from 2024 back to 2004 wearing the clothes you are wearing right now, would you look weird? Probably not. But change the timeframe to 1970->1950, or 1930->1910 the person from the future would look weird to the people from an earlier time. Most people could go back 30 years to 1994 and neither their hair nor their clothing would look particularly futuristic. Marty McFly had a very different experience with his 30y timeframe!

I have a winter 'uniform' - flannel shirt, cotton undershirt, jeans or cotton duck pants.  My haircut since getting out of university is a crewcut . . . I think that I'd be good back to at least the '40s without raising too many eyebrows.  The only thing that would stick out is my running shoes - I think in the '40s leather shoes were still the norm.

[Sibley]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

I sometimes get the impression that the rate of cultural change is slowing down in the U.S. Consider how much has changed in the past 15 years (not much) versus how much changed between 1955 and 1970, or 1925-1940, or 1905-1920 or 1990-2005.

Our houses, music, cars, clothes, jobs, language, etc. is all indistinguishable from the way we did things in 2009. No new genres of music became popular. No new aesthetic in clothing or architecture took over. Everyone is still driving SUVs around. Cell phones are the main thing which changed. In comparison, several earlier 15-year periods saw rapid changes in all the ways things were done.

I've also thought that change has really slowed, but I also wonder if that just means I'm getting old and failing to see the change around me.

Try talking to the younger generation if you want to feel old.

The other day I overheard one of my coop students saying that another student was "lowkey on fleek, no cap bra".

Not sure what language they were speaking, but both profess to be fluent in English.

Sigh. Yeah I had to look that up.

I just texted a 23 year old and asked. She will be laughing at me but that's ok.

[deborah]

People themselves are more different. Take the smart phone. Before it, everyone in a household shared communications. If someone’s friend said “hi”, they would either come around and be seen by the entire household, or ring up on the phone and talk to anyone from the household at random. Even if they sent a letter, the household would know that the friend was communicating with a member of the household. There are many stories based on friends trying to keep things secret, and it not working out.

Now, communication has become much more private, leaving the household less aware of who other household members are communicating with, and having any idea about the other person. I think this is a quite profound change.

[GuitarStv]

People themselves are more different. Take the smart phone. Before it, everyone in a household shared communications. If someone’s friend said “hi”, they would either come around and be seen by the entire household, or ring up on the phone and talk to anyone from the household at random. Even if they sent a letter, the household would know that the friend was communicating with a member of the household. There are many stories based on friends trying to keep things secret, and it not working out.

Now, communication has become much more private, leaving the household less aware of who other household members are communicating with, and having any idea about the other person. I think this is a quite profound change.

Not in households without smartphones.  :P

[Sibley]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

So you assume at some point in the future the world will become relatively static with respect to how our species lives and interacts?

I don't and predict there will not be a unified Earth under one nation's banner with universal rights and some basic level of living accessible to most (like you see on Star Trek or whatever show set well into the future) but maybe how we are measuring/defining is different.  I think a nuclear winter or supervolcano or asteroid that sends large swaths of humanity back to the caves (if they're lucky to survive) is more likely than the Star Trek utopia coming to fruition.  Grab a human at random in 100 year intervals over the course of human history and visualize them standing in a line next to each other.  I'm saying the appearance, rights a person has, how they perform domestic tasks, what they do for a living, what they own, what they live in, what their economic opportunities are, how they structure their family, etc. of the random person you grab was fairly slow to change throughout history.  The last few centuries, though, have exploded with differences and change.  I mean, in the year 1969 there were simultaneously people walking on the moon, others still in hiding thinking WW2 is going on (Hiroo Onoda), and others living as their ancestors had for thousands of years and never encountered "modern contact".  That's wild!
 
To me, it seems like the rate of change has increased and our species* is growing apart with rising inequality instead of together toward that unified vision portrayed on future-oriented shows.  Maybe the have-nots will catch up once a technological ceiling is reached and it trickles down to how we socialize and become stable but I just don't think we are anywhere close to that ceiling (as in, many lifetimes away if there is even an upper limit on how much a species can manipulate its environment or in Earth-only terms, I never expect the Kardashev number to be 1.0) and expect the social "entropy" to continue to increase. 

* It's weird at times to think about but our current situation on Earth with respect to humans and homo sapiens is fairly unique.  I.e. For roughly 95% of the time that modern science alleges there have been modern anatomical humans, there have been multiple SPECIES not only co-existing on the same planet but also living nearby and procreating and sharing technology.  Only fairly recently have homo sapiens been the only humans.  Given a long enough window into the future, it would not be surprising to me if there is some further divergence within our species (hell, just read how fast sperm counts have decreased in just a few decades!).  However, I don't even think a major genotype/phenotype change is required to see continued rapid change and whoever is better equipped to handle the physiological, technological, and social aspects of modern living as it evolves will survive.  This used to be called 'bigger army diplomacy' but it might become 'better AI diplomacy' or something else.

Important caveat - I think on a world with scarce resources and a planet that is definitely impacted by human activities there is only so much innovation that - say, agriculture - can do to solve demographic problems.  The rich will get their food and only have 0-2 children and continue to innovate, the poor will fight over the scraps and it could get really ugly if we have some bad famines and disasters.  I do think there has been a ton of progress in terms of the demographic transition in many areas that used to have that historically high mortality rate coupled with high fertility rate so we shall see.  If we colonize or can solve resource problems off-world, that certainly changes the calculus but I'm assuming for now that our species is stuck and will have to figure it out on Earth for the time being.

I made an observation about sci-fi or futuristic movies and tv shows that are set in the far future. Some of which reference a period of history after our current day and before the fictional current day that was comprised of massive disruption/change (war, disease, technological advancement, etc), but the events of the fictional present day reflect much more stability. Star Trek is a perfect example. The pre-history of Star Trek (which is at least partially shown in one of the movies) starts with a world war which knocked the world back considerably, then a crazy guy built a ship with a warp drive and attracted the attention of the Vulcans. All that is in the background of the tv shows.


"So you assume at some point in the future the world will become relatively static with respect to how our species lives and interacts?" <--- I didn't say that, or anything like that, and the rest of your comment is fanfiction which attempts to draw me in. If I choose to share any visions of the future that I may have, I will do so myself and will not ask your permission or involvement.

[simonsez]

* I always get a kick out of movies or TV series that take place in a future where social change has largely stabilized instead of continuing to rapidly evolve.  It might be convenient for plot on a galactic scale but I'm not sure how "realistic" that will be when it comes to our planet.

Often those movies/shows are in a far future, so they're skipping over the period of massive change.

So you assume at some point in the future the world will become relatively static with respect to how our species lives and interacts?

I don't and predict there will not be a unified Earth under one nation's banner with universal rights and some basic level of living accessible to most (like you see on Star Trek or whatever show set well into the future) but maybe how we are measuring/defining is different.  I think a nuclear winter or supervolcano or asteroid that sends large swaths of humanity back to the caves (if they're lucky to survive) is more likely than the Star Trek utopia coming to fruition.  Grab a human at random in 100 year intervals over the course of human history and visualize them standing in a line next to each other.  I'm saying the appearance, rights a person has, how they perform domestic tasks, what they do for a living, what they own, what they live in, what their economic opportunities are, how they structure their family, etc. of the random person you grab was fairly slow to change throughout history.  The last few centuries, though, have exploded with differences and change.  I mean, in the year 1969 there were simultaneously people walking on the moon, others still in hiding thinking WW2 is going on (Hiroo Onoda), and others living as their ancestors had for thousands of years and never encountered "modern contact".  That's wild!
 
To me, it seems like the rate of change has increased and our species* is growing apart with rising inequality instead of together toward that unified vision portrayed on future-oriented shows.  Maybe the have-nots will catch up once a technological ceiling is reached and it trickles down to how we socialize and become stable but I just don't think we are anywhere close to that ceiling (as in, many lifetimes away if there is even an upper limit on how much a species can manipulate its environment or in Earth-only terms, I never expect the Kardashev number to be 1.0) and expect the social "entropy" to continue to increase. 

* It's weird at times to think about but our current situation on Earth with respect to humans and homo sapiens is fairly unique.  I.e. For roughly 95% of the time that modern science alleges there have been modern anatomical humans, there have been multiple SPECIES not only co-existing on the same planet but also living nearby and procreating and sharing technology.  Only fairly recently have homo sapiens been the only humans.  Given a long enough window into the future, it would not be surprising to me if there is some further divergence within our species (hell, just read how fast sperm counts have decreased in just a few decades!).  However, I don't even think a major genotype/phenotype change is required to see continued rapid change and whoever is better equipped to handle the physiological, technological, and social aspects of modern living as it evolves will survive.  This used to be called 'bigger army diplomacy' but it might become 'better AI diplomacy' or something else.

Important caveat - I think on a world with scarce resources and a planet that is definitely impacted by human activities there is only so much innovation that - say, agriculture - can do to solve demographic problems.  The rich will get their food and only have 0-2 children and continue to innovate, the poor will fight over the scraps and it could get really ugly if we have some bad famines and disasters.  I do think there has been a ton of progress in terms of the demographic transition in many areas that used to have that historically high mortality rate coupled with high fertility rate so we shall see.  If we colonize or can solve resource problems off-world, that certainly changes the calculus but I'm assuming for now that our species is stuck and will have to figure it out on Earth for the time being.

I made an observation about sci-fi or futuristic movies and tv shows that are set in the far future. Some of which reference a period of history after our current day and before the fictional current day that was comprised of massive disruption/change (war, disease, technological advancement, etc), but the events of the fictional present day reflect much more stability. Star Trek is a perfect example. The pre-history of Star Trek (which is at least partially shown in one of the movies) starts with a world war which knocked the world back considerably, then a crazy guy built a ship with a warp drive and attracted the attention of the Vulcans. All that is in the background of the tv shows.


"So you assume at some point in the future the world will become relatively static with respect to how our species lives and interacts?" <--- I didn't say that, or anything like that, and the rest of your comment is fanfiction which attempts to draw me in. If I choose to share any visions of the future that I may have, I will do so myself and will not ask your permission or involvement.

All I'm saying is Star Trek depicts 22nd Century Earth/galaxy to 32nd Century Earth/galaxy and less happens across these 11 centuries in terms of how humans change, what rights they have, the tools they use, and how they live in societies compared to what's occurred in the past 11 decades of real human history alone.  I'm calling that relative stability.  It seems for plot convenience, the humans on Earth and across the galaxy in the Star Trek universe have just magically "figured out" for the most part politics, demographic stability, energy, ecosystem sustainability, human rights for all (including commercialized warp drive access to all and not just the elite), etc. and operate as a single planetary unit rather than hundreds of independent nations and autonomous areas.  I don't expect that to happen (at least not anytime soon and possibly never) and think we are devolving into the haves and the have-nots instead of: staying the same, uniting, and then fighting Romulans or Klingons or Species 8472 or whatever/whoever is out beyond our planet.

100,000 years ago there were at least 6 human species wandering around numbering no more than 6 figures max (combined). Virtually all had excellent and wide-ranging survival skills and could live permanently without grocery stores or a house with doors that lock.  It was survival of the fittest.  100,000 years later there is only ONE species that numbers over 8 billion, of which the vast majority would perish in a matter of weeks were it not for modern infrastructure and amenities.  Now MANY besides the fittest survive.  It's unclear just how big of a role demographics played in that change nor how clear the role of demography (fertility, mortality, migration) will be moving forward.  Will there be 0, 1, or >1 human species at various points in the future and how integrated will any surviving species be with technology/AI/virtual reality?  At what point do we mine/colonize extra-terrestrial locations, if ever?  What is the human carrying capacity?  Are we over it?  Can new tech and new exploration change the carrying capacity?  Who the hell knows, we certainly manipulate our environment more than any species so predictions about what and how this advanced bonobo/chimp species armed with nuclear weapons will live in the future come with low levels of certainty.

When you respond to me and say that Star Trek and other shows and movies bypass the period of large change, doesn't that imply the landing point of when the show/movie takes place is NOT rapidly changing?  I thought so but seems I was wrong, I didn't mean to offend.  Anyway, I expect the opposite and think we will only increase in a technocratic direction and that economic inequality will continue to rise in spite of overall trends that individual rights are getting better.  It's unknowable tavern-talk for fun.  Again, sorry to have mis-extrapolated from what you were saying.

[RetiredAt63]

simonsez, you wrote "100,000 years ago there were at least 6 human species wandering around numbering no more than 6 figures max (combined). Virtually all had excellent and wide-ranging survival skills and could live permanently without grocery stores or a house with doors that lock.  It was survival of the fittest."

I'm sure a modern human, transported to those societies as a baby and able to survive whatever diseases were floating around back then, would have learned the survival skills of the day during childhood. 

That modern humans need different survival skills is obvious.  I'm sure you know the modern survival skills - gardening/farming/harvesting, livestock care and butchering and tanning hides, making tools, cooking, preserving food, processing fibres (animal and plant fibres require different skills and tools) to make yarns and weaving them into cloth, making pottery, etc. etc.  Well these are not super modern skills, but they were necessary skills for most of human civilization. 


You seem to be using the term survival of the fittest as meaning survival of the most competent, or something along those lines.  That is a social use of the term.  Like social Darwinism, which is a piece of crock.

Biologically, all that survival of the fittest means is that an individual manages to reach adulthood and reproduce.  In a broader sense it means having lots of offspring for generation after generation, technically increasing the proportion of your alleles compared to other alleles in the population.  There was a study on the Galapagos where they found an old male bird who seemed very fit, lived to old age, survived famines, had quite a few offspring.  But he had no great-grandchildren.  None of his genes were in the younger population.  So in the biological/ecological/evolutionary sense he was NOT FIT!!!  Any individual who dies before reproducing is also not fit.  In species where not all males breed, the males who never breed (I am thinking deer here) are not fit.  Individuals who die young, before breeding, are not fit.

So fitness includes surviving diseases, not being eaten by predators, managing to have the energy reserves to reproduce and managing to have those offspring also manage to grow to adulthood and reproduce.  This may include successful competition, in social species (like us) it very often involves cooperation.  Do the members of the group protect and feed an injured member, or a member who for various reasons can't go out and get their own food?  Do grown offspring help parents rear the next young?  These are not just human behaviours.  They are not even all vertebrate behaviours.  They are successful (therefore "fit") behaviours in lots of species.  A lot of being "fit" is behavioural.

Presently humans have changed the cultures they live in.  So judging what is fit also changes.

[simonsez]

simonsez, you wrote "100,000 years ago there were at least 6 human species wandering around numbering no more than 6 figures max (combined). Virtually all had excellent and wide-ranging survival skills and could live permanently without grocery stores or a house with doors that lock.  It was survival of the fittest."

I'm sure a modern human, transported to those societies as a baby and able to survive whatever diseases were floating around back then, would have learned the survival skills of the day during childhood. 

That modern humans need different survival skills is obvious.  I'm sure you know the modern survival skills - gardening/farming/harvesting, livestock care and butchering and tanning hides, making tools, cooking, preserving food, processing fibres (animal and plant fibres require different skills and tools) to make yarns and weaving them into cloth, making pottery, etc. etc.  Well these are not super modern skills, but they were necessary skills for most of human civilization. 


You seem to be using the term survival of the fittest as meaning survival of the most competent, or something along those lines.  That is a social use of the term.  Like social Darwinism, which is a piece of crock.

Biologically, all that survival of the fittest means is that an individual manages to reach adulthood and reproduce.  In a broader sense it means having lots of offspring for generation after generation, technically increasing the proportion of your alleles compared to other alleles in the population.  There was a study on the Galapagos where they found an old male bird who seemed very fit, lived to old age, survived famines, had quite a few offspring.  But he had no great-grandchildren.  None of his genes were in the younger population.  So in the biological/ecological/evolutionary sense he was NOT FIT!!!  Any individual who dies before reproducing is also not fit.  In species where not all males breed, the males who never breed (I am thinking deer here) are not fit.  Individuals who die young, before breeding, are not fit.

So fitness includes surviving diseases, not being eaten by predators, managing to have the energy reserves to reproduce and managing to have those offspring also manage to grow to adulthood and reproduce.  This may include successful competition, in social species (like us) it very often involves cooperation.  Do the members of the group protect and feed an injured member, or a member who for various reasons can't go out and get their own food?  Do grown offspring help parents rear the next young?  These are not just human behaviours.  They are not even all vertebrate behaviours.  They are successful (therefore "fit") behaviours in lots of species.  A lot of being "fit" is behavioural.

Presently humans have changed the cultures they live in.  So judging what is fit also changes.

Sure, I've never said that a modern human couldn't have been plopped as an infant at some point in the anatomically-modern human past and been able to figure it out, or at least as reasonably well as any other infant growing up at a particular time.  But like, of those modern skills you mention, how many humans living today can do all of them or are self-sufficient?  We've specialized to such insane degrees which has brought remarkable societal changes not to mention prosperity for many.  We're much stronger as a collective now (and can handle group sizes well above Dunbar's number, or at least there is some level of cooperation possible today that was impossible for the majority of human history) but I think as individuals, we're pretty fragile and because of that fragility, fundamentally have changed the way most of us live and organize.

Right, the term fit has evolved and just to be clear, I don't view more competence="better" or at least not required in many senses to have a successful life, whatever that subjective term means to someone.  Pre-agriculture nomadic days, if you weren't physically fit, you'd often be left behind to die by your clan or were given a mercy death.  You had to carry everything with you as you followed the seasons to gather fruit, collect mushrooms, follow wild game patterns, etc.  There weren't great mechanisms for hunter-gatherer societies to care for their elderly and/or their sick that could not contribute to the survival of the group.  Now, we have mechanisms in place and while they're far from perfect, we do a great job at keeping more humans alive at various points regardless if someone is unable to make their own clothing or hunt their own food.  So someone in a modern culture doesn't need to be as fit as someone from a hunter-gatherer society in the same sense of the word.  We've changed and will continue to do so, and IMO, at more and more rapid paces as we continuously innovate and specialize further.  Our social change has far outstripped our biological change as a species, but even still that amount of biological change is not zero.  I already mentioned the sperm counts that have plummeted in just the last few decades.  We're still able to reproduce enough naturally and with ever-increasing medical intervention (and fully expect artificial uteri and lab-made sperm to remove more and more of the necessity of natural procreation as time goes on) but again, I do not view modern "fitness" in strict terms of fecundity.  So many ways to contribute to the human tapestry other than just having your genes survive and that's a wonderful thing!

[deborah]

At Lake Mungo in Australia they found trails of footprints that were more than 20,000 years old. One of them was of a man with one leg and he was one of a group of hunters. Obviously, at some stage of his life he lost his leg and was cared for enough by the group to survive to the point where his footprints were recorded. They were hunter gatherers who moved around. They obviously didn’t leave him behind to die or give him a mercy killing.

I recently read that they’ve reviewed the prevalence of male vs female hunters in such societies, and realised that there has been a considerable gender bias in the archeologists and anthropologists, and that in most societies both men and women hunted to roughly the same extent, similar sorts of animals (there had been a consistent view that women only hunted small animals, but this was wrong). I suspect that the leave behind to die/mercy killing might also be a modern day bias.

[RetiredAt63]

People have always specialized.  No-one can be good at everything.  What I found really interesting is that based on finger and thumbprints, all the earliest potters were women.  For any activity there will be the competent, and the artisans.  Some of the cotton cloth woven in Egypt well over 2000 years ago is finer than we can produce now.  Almost of the knitting yarn now is not suitable for truly warm sweaters, that would keep a fisherman on the North Atlantic warm.  If a knitter wants that kind of yarn, they need to find a spinner or learn to spin.

Some jobs may be divided by strength.  Preparing flax stems for linen has some parts that require a lot of strength.  Those jobs were historically done by men.  Parts that required less strength were done by both. 

Looking at wool prep in colonial times, different stages were done at different seasons.  Less skilled tasks that required little strength were often done by children.

Even nomadic people don't move around all the time.  They may be in one spot for spring foods, another spot for summer foods, again another spot for fall foods, and then move to a wintering area.  If they have a rich food source that preserves well (like salmon in the Pacific North-west) they may be quite sedentary in their life style.

There have been so many groups of people in so many different geographic areas with different resources, that we really can't generalize.

Re modern life, things have changed but not that much.   People still sew and knit and weave and spin and do wood-working and black-smithing.  It is just that in the western world these are generally hobbies, not life skills.    But look at English surnames - Smith and Potter and Cooper and Chandler were all occupations.  They were specialists.

My opinion (for free, you get what you pay for) is that we have so many people and so much automation that we are making up jobs.  All the fast food places and nail salons and gyms and so on are things that give people something to do or "need" and give others jobs.

[dogboyslim]

The wheel always turns, it's just that it is getting faster and it won't be fun at the bottom.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. ..."

I thought you were going in a different, very long-winded direction there for a second.

[jrhampt]

The wheel always turns, it's just that it is getting faster and it won't be fun at the bottom.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. ..."

I thought you were going in a different, very long-winded direction there for a second.

Hahahahaha!!!!  Nicely done.

[jeninco]

<snip>

I just texted a 23 year old and asked. She will be laughing at me but that's ok.

My 22-year old and his roommates agreed that "that isn't a sentence that anyone would construct for any reason other than to mock the listener." Sorry!

[simonsez]

At Lake Mungo in Australia they found trails of footprints that were more than 20,000 years old. One of them was of a man with one leg and he was one of a group of hunters. Obviously, at some stage of his life he lost his leg and was cared for enough by the group to survive to the point where his footprints were recorded. They were hunter gatherers who moved around. They obviously didn’t leave him behind to die or give him a mercy killing.

I recently read that they’ve reviewed the prevalence of male vs female hunters in such societies, and realised that there has been a considerable gender bias in the archeologists and anthropologists, and that in most societies both men and women hunted to roughly the same extent, similar sorts of animals (there had been a consistent view that women only hunted small animals, but this was wrong). I suspect that the leave behind to die/mercy killing might also be a modern day bias.

Oh, sure.  I'm not trying to paint the pre-ag human culture (which of course is not going to be homogeneous) as killing everyone for the smallest whim nor that on a societal level there was any less compassion.  But we do have accounts of infanticide, child sacrifice, senicide, etc.  We have myriad evidence of this and it could be for a variety of reasons.  A greater % of humans met violent ends whether that be from wartime, predators, or your own tribe compared to today and it's not really close.  It is/was common for 15%-40% of male deaths to involve a violent end (Dani, Enga, Waorani, etc.) and numbers are much lower for females (but certainly not 0%!).  Anthropological bone studies find consistent results in the sparse number of hunter-gatherer cultures that have been studied that no longer exist.  I have no reason to think that primarily hunter-gatherer groups in recent/current times would be fundamentally different when viewed on the whole compared to hunter-gatherer groups 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k years ago.  I accept I could be wrong on that as we find more and more hunter-gatherer cultures to paint a more representative picture.  I'm sure some groups are/were more violent than others.  You don't even get % that high looking at German men overall during WW1 or WW2 if you allow military deaths as an admittedly not-perfect proxy (which is NOT to exclude that there could've been violent death %s in certain sub-groups - just the point is that was one of the more violent times in recent human history compared to talking about what is/was perhaps typical for hunter-gatherers). 

Even with more modern post-ag societies there are horrific accounts of people being left behind, murdered, or even cannibalized (e.g. traveling west across the US in the mid-19th Century).  When times get ruthless, humans do what it takes to ensure group survival.  That doesn't mean it was the norm.  That also doesn't mean every broken bone or even missing limb was a death sentence.  We just know it occurred.  There was the account of one of the last members of the Ache band from Paraguay in the 1960s that talked about his experience as a warrior and the elder women he called his aunts (not sure if biological or a colloquial term) were terrified of him (because of that culture of killing off elder women at a certain decrepit point).  I'm not trying to impute that to all pre-ag cultures nor that only old women were killed (and the old men were somehow safe from the same fate) but we can't ignore the facet of mercy killing* entirely.

* There are also plausible theories that the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian made humans even MORE violent, or at least for a time.  Early humans fought for valuable territory (just like modern ones do) but we do not have strong evidence that they preferred fighting/going to war over other options.  If you see trouble brewing on the way to hunt mastodon or fish or collect berries, maybe you can go to your backup spot and avoid trouble or if a scout from your group of 50 sees a group of 100 approaching in the distance, maybe you can pack up and get out of Dodge.  But if someone is coming to your garden/field that you worked hard on to plow, sow, water, and harvest - now fleeing has a bigger penalty so you stay and fight.

We're dealing with pre-history so much of it is admittedly fuzzy and a great deal of bias is unavoidably injected.

[Cranky]

At Lake Mungo in Australia they found trails of footprints that were more than 20,000 years old. One of them was of a man with one leg and he was one of a group of hunters. Obviously, at some stage of his life he lost his leg and was cared for enough by the group to survive to the point where his footprints were recorded. They were hunter gatherers who moved around. They obviously didn’t leave him behind to die or give him a mercy killing.

I recently read that they’ve reviewed the prevalence of male vs female hunters in such societies, and realised that there has been a considerable gender bias in the archeologists and anthropologists, and that in most societies both men and women hunted to roughly the same extent, similar sorts of animals (there had been a consistent view that women only hunted small animals, but this was wrong). I suspect that the leave behind to die/mercy killing might also be a modern day bias.

Oh, sure.  I'm not trying to paint the pre-ag human culture (which of course is not going to be homogeneous) as killing everyone for the smallest whim nor that on a societal level there was any less compassion.  But we do have accounts of infanticide, child sacrifice, senicide, etc.  We have myriad evidence of this and it could be for a variety of reasons.  A greater % of humans met violent ends whether that be from wartime, predators, or your own tribe compared to today and it's not really close.  It is/was common for 15%-40% of male deaths to involve a violent end (Dani, Enga, Waorani, etc.) and numbers are much lower for females (but certainly not 0%!).  Anthropological bone studies find consistent results in the sparse number of hunter-gatherer cultures that have been studied that no longer exist.  I have no reason to think that primarily hunter-gatherer groups in recent/current times would be fundamentally different when viewed on the whole compared to hunter-gatherer groups 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k years ago.  I accept I could be wrong on that as we find more and more hunter-gatherer cultures to paint a more representative picture.  I'm sure some groups are/were more violent than others.  You don't even get % that high looking at German men overall during WW1 or WW2 if you allow military deaths as an admittedly not-perfect proxy (which is NOT to exclude that there could've been violent death %s in certain sub-groups - just the point is that was one of the more violent times in recent human history compared to talking about what is/was perhaps typical for hunter-gatherers). 

Even with more modern post-ag societies there are horrific accounts of people being left behind, murdered, or even cannibalized (e.g. traveling west across the US in the mid-19th Century).  When times get ruthless, humans do what it takes to ensure group survival.  That doesn't mean it was the norm.  That also doesn't mean every broken bone or even missing limb was a death sentence.  We just know it occurred.  There was the account of one of the last members of the Ache band from Paraguay in the 1960s that talked about his experience as a warrior and the elder women he called his aunts (not sure if biological or a colloquial term) were terrified of him (because of that culture of killing off elder women at a certain decrepit point).  I'm not trying to impute that to all pre-ag cultures nor that only old women were killed (and the old men were somehow safe from the same fate) but we can't ignore the facet of mercy killing* entirely.

* There are also plausible theories that the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian made humans even MORE violent, or at least for a time.  Early humans fought for valuable territory (just like modern ones do) but we do not have strong evidence that they preferred fighting/going to war over other options.  If you see trouble brewing on the way to hunt mastodon or fish or collect berries, maybe you can go to your backup spot and avoid trouble or if a scout from your group of 50 sees a group of 100 approaching in the distance, maybe you can pack up and get out of Dodge.  But if someone is coming to your garden/field that you worked hard on to plow, sow, water, and harvest - now fleeing has a bigger penalty so you stay and fight.

We're dealing with pre-history so much of it is admittedly fuzzy and a great deal of bias is unavoidably injected.

Child abandonment is super common in Western society right up to the point where there is reliable birth control.

[vand]

I find S Korea a fascinating real life case study; at their current replacement birth rate of 0.78:

For every 1000 people today the will be 371 children
From those 371 children there will be 138 grandchildren
From those 138 grandchildren there will be 51 great grandchildren

That just blows my mind..
Of course the birth rate trends can change, but there is really no sign of it doing so. No country would survive another generation at such a sharp rate of decline, never mind another 3 or 4, and the effects will probably be catastrophic within a single generation.  N/S Korea "unification" event on the horizon?

[vand]

https://theconversation.com/south-korea-has-the-lowest-fertility-rate-in-the-world-and-that-doesnt-bode-well-for-its-economy-207107

Interesting concept of the "demographic dividend" how it can provide an economic boost to a country over a single generation but has deleterious effects over the very long term. Very interesting concept.