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Re: [Phys-L] CU-Boulder Plots To Extend Life of Al Bartlett's Famous Lecture on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy



On population growth, the glass is half-full and half-empty. Searches for
"world fertility rates" turn up various summaries, and here's one that
lists the rates in declining order from Niger (7.03) to Singapore (0.79):

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html

The rates given are this: "This entry gives a figure for the average number
of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of
their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility
rate at each age. The total fertility rate (TFR) is a more direct measure
of the level of fertility than the crude birth rate, since it refers to
births per woman."

The good news is that of the 224 countries listed, in half of them the rate
is less than 2.1, the approximate "replacement" number. The bad news is of
course the other half, many but not all in Africa. The good news is that in
the low-fertility half there are lots of surprising names -- take a look.

Bruce