From now on, every time I read a sensational report suggesting dramatic population change over the 21st Century I will keep in mind this article I just found in The Daily Mail, Saturday, November 10, 1945, which manages to get a few things right but wraps them in a completely misleading banner conclusion:
"The total population of England and Wales is likely to fall to only 14,000,000 in less than 100 years if the smaller families trend between the two world wars is not reversed. This is stated in a statistical summary issued by PEP (Political and Economic Planning) which points out that for 24 years the present generation has failed to replace itself.
The increase in marriage and birth-rates during the war, says PEP, largely represents marriages and births which in normal times would have been delayed for several years. They have led to a reduction in the numbers available for marriage so that, in the absence of new incentives to parenthood they are more likely to be followed by a sharp decline than by a rise in birth rates.
Birth control is held to be mainly responsible for the present decline of fertility, and all investigation points to a narrowing of the gap between the birth-rates of the poor and the well-to-do. Though population is still rising, the country is rapidly becoming a nation of the old, and fewer young people means fewer potential parents."
Posted by Alan Allport at February 10, 2005 07:09 AMFurther extrapolation: a guy in the National Review thinks either seriously or jokingly (hard to tell) that, because lifespans are lengthening (among the prosperous), they will just keep on lengthening indefinitely and we'll end up with 5,000-year-old Social Security freeloaders. Yeah, right.
For an alternate, much grimmer vision of longevity, has anyone else read the sad story about the "immortals" in Ursula LeGuin's *Changing Planes*?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 14, 2005 11:19 AMP.S. As Orwell fans know, presuming that trends will continue in whatever direction they're currently pointing is an old *National Review* weakness.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 14, 2005 11:20 AMP.P.S. Sorry, I should have credited that article above to A&L Daily.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 14, 2005 11:20 AMFurther extrapolation: a guy in the National Review thinks either seriously or jokingly (hard to tell)
Erm, I think the article is rather glaringly a humor piece.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 15, 2005 05:40 PM