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Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 14:19:22 -0800
To: PROGRESSIVE POPULATION NETWORK <ppn@csf.colorado.edu>
From: "Les U. Knight" <les@vhemt.org>
Subject: Re: One Child, Two, None?
Christopher, I would love to see projections for an average birth rate of
one. None I've seen are that optimistic. Maybe demographers feel that there
isn't much point in creating projections which are so unlikely.

China has yet to achieve zero population growth, even with their
restrictions, due to momentum. The projection will have to take into
consideration that one third of Asia's and Latin America's people are under
the age of 15, as are half of Africa's.

A projection of global population trends if total infertility were achieved
would also be fun to see. This might seem simple: just divide six billion
by the number of people who die each year and we'll have the number of
years until Homo sapiens is extinct. However, death rates would drop
dramatically if no more of us were born, and would continue to decline as
we re-prioritized health care.

So, I hope your efforts to find unrealistically optimistic projections are
more successful than mine. I look forward to seeing them posted if you find
them.

Les U. Knight