Discussing population dynamics in elite (or is that elitist, let's just call it Wall Street) circles has always had an aura of taboo about it, due to the inevitable degeneration of any conversation into Malthusian rhetoric, especially if one of the speakers had had a little too much to drink. And for better or worse, name-dropping Malthus does not garner brownie points, nor will it lead to another horrendous straight to HBO faux morality tale about this or that. That stigma, however (and luckily) has not prevented Deutsche Bank's Sanjeev Sanyal (yes, there are people at DB who do think originally and whose day is not taken up by trips to and fro Englewood Cliffs) from penning a must read macro analysis titled 'The End of Population Growth' which we will discuss more in depth shortly, but wanted to bring readers' attention to one particular chart: namely that comparing world fertility rates in 1950-1955 and 2010-2015. The surprising implication of the below chart leads Sanyal to declare that the period set to begin in just 10 years 'will be one of the most important turning points in history' simply because: 'the human race will no longer be replacing itself by the early 2020s. Population growth will continue for a few more decades because of momentum from the age structure and people living longer but, reproductively speaking, our species will no longer be growing.' And since global reproduction will not be net additive, it will be net subtractive... and on a long-enough timeline the world's population will drop to zero...
From Deutsche Bank:
From Deutsche Bank:
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