http://www.metafilter.com/tags/declining Posts tagged with 'declining' at MetaFilter. Sun, 06 Jun 2004 14:56:06 -0800 Sun, 06 Jun 2004 14:56:06 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://www.metafilter.com/33514/The%2DEmpty%2DCradle%2Dglobal%2Dpopulation%2Ddecline <a href="http://afr.com/articles/2004/05/06/1083635275666.html">The Empty Cradle</a>. Our everyday personal experiences with traffic, sprawl and other irritants of modern life tell us there are too many people in the world and the problem is getting worse. However in truth world population growth <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3560433.stm">peaked 40 years ago in 1963</a> and has been trending downward since. Demographers predict that absolute human population will peak at <a href="http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP/index.html">9 billion by 2070</a> and then contract. Long before then, many <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5615/1991?ijkey=.NrDLVQzNDTaI&keytype=ref&siteid=sci">nations will shrink</a> in absolute size and the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203630799.html">average age</a> of the world's citizens will <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/">shoot up dramatically</a>, including the fastest aging part of the world: <a href="http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/05/30/b4.ed.col.agingworld.0530.html">developing countries</a>, where for example Iraq is aging 2.5 times faster than the USA and Mexico 5 times as fast. Having averted the danger of overpopulation, the world now faces the opposite problem: an aging and declining population. tag:metafilter.com,2004:site.33514 Sun, 06 Jun 2004 14:56:06 -0800 brokenlink declining demographics overpopulation population world stbalbach