Re: Historical population of Genertela

From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_q7fOlOCofEBE9-CeFe-Swx1P_Ie9GGghxyWWSADQc28IQPPnRRPDvIMA5w1UDVu7>
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:33:29 -0000

A 2% growth rate in population is extremely unhistorical in the real world as an entire-world population growth rate. Now that's not to say that you can't have locally sustained period of population growth well above 2%.

Typical in the real world would be the period from 1 to 1650, where population went from about 200 million to about 500 million, which works out to a growth rate of 0.055%.

The population of the world then doubled by 1804, then doubled again by 1927. That works out to a growth rate of about 0.47% from 1650 to 1804 and about 0.58% from 1804 to 1927. Both of those were during comparative good times in much of the world due to technological change.

World population growth rates reached 2% only twice that I know of -- the late 1950's and the late 1960's. And it did not last in either case.

One can compare magic to technology, so one could say that the growth rates of the early industrial revolution might be appropriate generally. And the first age specifically might resemble the times in Europe immediately after the Black Death, when birth rates soared. But a sustained world population growth rate of 2% during the second and (especially) third ages strikes the economic historian in me as implausible.

Chris Lemens