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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 239061" data-attributes="member: 1054">Actually, the consequence of doubling lifespan would be increase the already rapid *drop* in the rate of population growth. (Read that carefully) People who live longer have FEWER children. In the industrial world, population growth is alread near 0 or negative; Italy has something like 1.2 children per woman, and the rest of Europe and America is close (2.1 children per woman is replacement rate)If you could live to be 200, do you think you'd decide to have more kids when you hit 60? Once you've raised one set of brats, you sure as hell won't raise another! THINK, people! Look at your parents and grandparents! Did they have kids steadily throughout their lives? Hell, no! They had a few when they were young, and then stopped. Someone who expects to live to 80 is not going to have some more kids at 60, just because they've got 20 years left to raise them in. In the industrial world, children are an economic drain on the family. They don't produce any income. Large families are a part of agricultural society. As the third world (currently the only source of real population growth) moves from an agrarian to an industrial society, with the usual increase in women's rights and control over their reproduction, population growth there will level off and begin to decline, too.The crisis of the mid-21st century won't be a world choking on its young -- it will be world struggling to care for its old, as the population slowly, and inexorably, ages, with fewer and fewer children born to support the huge number of retirees. The aging crisis, not the population boom, is what y'all should be scared of.Forget retirement. There will not be enough young people to support you; you'll work 'till you drop, unless you planned REAL well.</blockquote>

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