Population in the Honorverse?

The current growth of US population is driven by immigration, legal as well as illegal, not natural increase. IIRC, we have dropped below a TFR of 2.0 and we need 2.1 to break even.

The much lower TFRs of Europe and Japan are the fast track to oblivion. A negative growth rate of only 1% (or .99 to be mathematically correct) reduces the population from 7 billion to only 7 people.

GlynnStewart wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Given the repeated statements that the aggregate human population of the Honorverse numbers in the trillions, one is forced to conclude that people have resumed procreating rather than just fornicating.

Not sure why humanity would have to suddenly re-focus on children more than we are today to really run up to trillions.

I don't recall the exact translation, but the 1900s PD are roughly 4000 AD - over 2,000 years, a meager (lower than current US) population growth rate of 1%/year turns 7 billion (7 x 10 ^ 9) into 6 quintillion (6 x 10 ^ 18)

Nobody needs to start breeding like bunnies to make humanity pretty much uncountable after two thousand years!

I suggest consulting here:

http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?t=0&v=24&r=xx&l=en

However; the use of only one significant digit distorts reality. Most of the zeros already have negative growth rates and they are headed into severely negative territory.

GlynnStewart wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Given the repeated statements that the aggregate human population of the Honorverse numbers in the trillions, one is forced to conclude that people have resumed procreating rather than just fornicating.

Not sure why humanity would have to suddenly re-focus on children more than we are today to really run up to trillions.

I don't recall the exact translation, but the 1900s PD are roughly 4000 AD - over 2,000 years, a meager (lower than current US) population growth rate of 1%/year turns 7 billion (7 x 10 ^ 9) into 6 quintillion (6 x 10 ^ 18)

Nobody needs to start breeding like bunnies to make humanity pretty much uncountable after two thousand years!

I recall the conversation well and RFCs comments. IMHO, he has the opportunity to have planets sustain themselves in spite of Lacoon or starve, whichever is useful to advance a story line.

I also perceive the core worlds and systems as being able to maintain "comfortable" populations by encouraging emigration out to the Shell and Verge worlds as well as Siletia and other regions accessible via the MWHJ. Imposing ZPG birth rates might be one of the methods to encourage emigration.

However; my primary point is that Weber's future history can not become reality if the contemporary pattern of advanced, industrilised societies having far fewer than one child per woman continues to dominate. This seems to be an unavoidable consequence of an economy that demands advanced education and delayed childbirth combined with equality for women. Prolong could change this by increasing the number of viable child bearing years that women have available to them, but prolong is a recent development in the Honorverse. The society would have to be somewhat different than Weber describes to have such a large population.

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:You might recall that I was one of the posters suggesting that many of the core worlds would be facing starvation as a result of Manticore imposing Case Lacoon I and II. My rationale was that core worlds had originally been founded with STL transports which precluded them from being too choosy about how Earthlike their new homes were and they had had nearly 2,000 years to reach and exceed naturally carrying capacity. The massive residential towers that Weber describes would enable urban population densities on the order of one million people per square mile, so urban sprawl would not become an issue until planetary populations were in the trillions. Others suggested that advanced factory farms would free industrilised planets from the constraints of arable land. However; such farming might be so capital and labor intensive that
importing food is cheaper.

Yes, I recall that. But I also recall that David stated that populations on the Core worlds were orders of magnitude lower than you suggested, and that systems would not starve as a result of Lacoon I and II.

namelessfly wrote:However; my primary point is that Weber's future history can not become reality if the contemporary pattern of advanced, industrilised societies having far fewer than one child per woman continues to dominate. This seems to be an unavoidable consequence of an economy that demands advanced education and delayed childbirth combined with equality for women. Prolong could change this by increasing the number of viable child bearing years that women have available to them, but prolong is a recent development in the Honorverse. The society would have to be somewhat different than Weber describes to have such a large population.

I agree that a different mindset is necessary to account for the overall population growth of the galaxy, but I disagree that the society Weber has depicted would have to be different. I don't disagree with you in principal, but in interpretation.

Yes, there would have to be a different mindset. And I suggest that the difference is the fact of colonization, in a couple ways. For some, the simple fact that colonization is possible could be enough to encourage larger families. The knowledge of unlimited planets to colonize can give a sense of unlimited resources. But the bigger effect is on the actual young colonies. Colonial frontiers always experience a population growth, even while the population stabilizes in the older established areas. Colonies are desperate to establish industry and growth. And in general they either grow (fairly rapidly) or they wither and die.

So say you start with one planet, with relatively stable population. Now you colonize 100 planets, each starting with maybe 50,000 colonists. Each of the new colonies experiences the usual growth of frontiers, while the homeworld still putters along at fairly stable population. Eventually the young colonies become industrialized, first world star nations in their own right. Their populations stabilize, just as the homeworld's did.

Now the 100 worlds colonize 1000 planets. The whole thing repeats. The old established worlds have stable populations and attitudes with much in common to modern first-world countries. The young worlds experience massive growth in population, industry, and standard of living, until they approach the stability of the old worlds. And now you have gone from a single world with a population in the billions to many worlds with a total population in the trillions.

So you see, the different attitude you are looking for is in the new colonies. All of the societies we have seen depicted are established, stable worlds, including Manticore. Even the Talbott Cluster worlds are well-established. They don't have the levels of technology and economy that Manticore and the League have, but they are old enough that their mindsets have shifted from that of colonists.

So I agree that the attitude which leads to the apparent massive growth must be present, but it is present on the young colonies which we have not seen. Though we do see some of it in the Star Kingdom novels, in the early days of Manticore.

SWM wrote:So I agree that the attitude which leads to the apparent massive growth must be present, but it is present on the young colonies which we have not seen. Though we do see some of it in the Star Kingdom novels, in the early days of Manticore.

It probably isn't possible to attribute any specific attitude to Human Occupied Space because there is simply too much variance.

For example, Beowulf has a strict quota system for new births (the reason Jacques and Allison are twins but decades apart in age) and Grayson averages a half-dozen or so children per family.

We really can't even say what attitudes are regarding population growth -- except for Beowulf and Grayson we don't even have a sense of typical family size.

Starvation seems really unlikely in any society with reasonably advanced technology.

Rationing possible to implement if starvation were to be a foreseeable problem, but it is extremely unlikely it would be needed.

It would be simple for Honorverse societies to mass produce sufficient quantities of vat-grown 'meatloaf', 'porridge' and 'vegetable soup' to satisfy everyone's nutritional needs (if not their palates).

As for that quote about humanities population being uncountable - it reminds me of Warhammer 40,000.

Now that's got me thinking about the potential for WH40k/HH crossover fanfic...

I will eagerely concede that a relatively modest growth rate of only 1% for only an initially small subset of humanity could result in a population measured in trillions of people after 2,000 years. An initial breeding population of only sixteen thousand people would get you there.

However; maintaining a growth rate of only 1% results in a doubling of population about every 70 years. If your generational spacing (average age of mother at time of birth) is 35 years, then you need a TFR of about 3 children per woman. Except on Grayson, and Honor's late in life, accidental and politically motivated fecundity, we do not see anywhere near this type of birth rate in Weber's books.

I definitely agree that humanity could reach a multiple trillion population in 2,000 years if only a small subsegment of humanity went to the stars then procreated at a much higher rate than is normal for contemperary, industrialized societies. The "Greens" government described in BY THE BOOK would undoubtedly impose limits on births which various subsets of the major religious groups might object to. Emigration might be offered to them as a means to maintain the peace. However; given the probable cost of $million$$$ per colonist, only the wealthiest could afford unsubsidized emigration. I can see congregations taking up offerings to fund a few of their members emigrating to have freedom to procreate knowing that those left behind woll be allowed to have few children or none. There might even be deals reached with the green government where large numbers of people submit to sterilization in return for subsidized emigration of a select few.

I guess my point is that if this ways the experience, the Honorverse in Harrington's time would be dominated by families with multiple children. I don't see it.

namelessfly wrote:I will eagerely concede that a relatively modest growth rate of only 1% for only an initially small subset of humanity could result in a population measured in trillions of people after 2,000 years. An initial breeding population of only sixteen thousand people would get you there.

However; maintaining a growth rate of only 1% results in a doubling of population about every 70 years. If your generational spacing (average age of mother at time of birth) is 35 years, then you need a TFR of about 3 children per woman. Except on Grayson, and Honor's late in life, accidental and politically motivated fecundity, we do not see anywhere near this type of birth rate in Weber's books.

That's why I am saying that the large families are mostly on young colonies. By the time they get up to the billions of people, the family sizes usually drop.

Suppose a typical young colony has a TFR of 4 children per woman. How long would it take to reach 500 million? After that, it wouldn't matter if the growth rate dropped to near zero--you would still have added another 500 million people to the galactic population. And since this has happened on around 10,000 worlds, you have a galactic population well into the trillions or tens of trillions, even though at this point the population growth on almost all of those worlds is fairly stable. We just have not seen a young colony world (except for Sphinx in the Star Kingdom series, which does have a lot of large families).

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I will eagerely concede that a relatively modest growth rate of only 1% for only an initially small subset of humanity could result in a population measured in trillions of people after 2,000 years. An initial breeding population of only sixteen thousand people would get you there.

However; maintaining a growth rate of only 1% results in a doubling of population about every 70 years. If your generational spacing (average age of mother at time of birth) is 35 years, then you need a TFR of about 3 children per woman. Except on Grayson, and Honor's late in life, accidental and politically motivated fecundity, we do not see anywhere near this type of birth rate in Weber's books.

That's why I am saying that the large families are mostly on young colonies. By the time they get up to the billions of people, the family sizes usually drop.

Suppose a typical young colony has a TFR of 4 children per woman. How long would it take to reach 500 million? After that, it wouldn't matter if the growth rate dropped to near zero--you would still have added another 500 million people to the galactic population. And since this has happened on around 10,000 worlds, you have a galactic population well into the trillions or tens of trillions, even though at this point the population growth on almost all of those worlds is fairly stable. We just have not seen a young colony world (except for Sphinx in the Star Kingdom series, which does have a lot of large families).

I think Torch may also qualify as a young colony world.

IIRC, in Torch of Freedom, when the two security officials were asking questions of the original tongue bar-code holder (the ex-slave that was freed by the Havenites), he and his wife had at least one child and another on the way.

I don't understand how having a Young colony has anything to do with family size. All of the data on declining birth rates and TFRs on real world Earth reveals that there is no correlation between how long a particular region has been settled verses birth rates. There isn't even a good correlation between birth rates and population density.

One startling development that offers insight into why birth rates are declining is the profound decrease in TFRs that has occurred in the Islamic world since the 9-11 attacks. The most notable exception is Afghanistan. What seems to be driving the decline in birth rates is female literacy and education which results in the opportunity to have a career that enables women to support themselves. There is an extremely strong, inverse correlation between literacy and birth rates. The correlation is so profound that women who have too many children are presumed to be uneducated and stupid. As evidence I offer the liberal hostility towards Representative Michelle Bachmann and Governor Sarah Palin.

The examples of Palin and Bachman point to another correlation that offers insight. Women who are well educated and have careers still tend to have children if they are devoutly religious with the correlation being most evident with women who are Christian or Jewish rather than Muslim or other religions. It would seem that historically, religious women have always had some reproductive advantage over irreligious women that has been obscured by the fact irreligious women have been sexually active but with no modern contraception which results in them getting pregnant. The development of modern contraceptives has allowed a more profound destination in birth rates to develope.

Given the hints revealed in BY THE BOOK, it is likely that most of the early interstellar colonies were founded by dissidents from the secular Green Government. Many if not most of them would have been religious. Religious people tend to inculcate their children with their beliefs, but they are not 100% successful. In a society that never looses it's technology base so that birth control remains available, the religious will continue to have a profound reproductive advantage over the irreligious. (It could be that young colonies founded by STL ships might ban birth control to maximize their population growth rate so that their population can reach a level that can sustain technological civilization so the religious would have no reproductive advantage, but this practice would cease once the colony was secure.).

Given this probable pattern of population growth, I would expect to see most Honorverse societies dominated by either a theocracy such as Grayson, Masada or may be Zanzibar, or at least a secular government that represents an ecumenical collection of various faiths. Modern Manticore should be having similar birth rates as it had during it's founding, but we don't see it.

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I will eagerely concede that a relatively modest growth rate of only 1% for only an initially small subset of humanity could result in a population measured in trillions of people after 2,000 years. An initial breeding population of only sixteen thousand people would get you there.

However; maintaining a growth rate of only 1% results in a doubling of population about every 70 years. If your generational spacing (average age of mother at time of birth) is 35 years, then you need a TFR of about 3 children per woman. Except on Grayson, and Honor's late in life, accidental and politically motivated fecundity, we do not see anywhere near this type of birth rate in Weber's books.

That's why I am saying that the large families are mostly on young colonies. By the time they get up to the billions of people, the family sizes usually drop.

Suppose a typical young colony has a TFR of 4 children per woman. How long would it take to reach 500 million? After that, it wouldn't matter if the growth rate dropped to near zero--you would still have added another 500 million people to the galactic population. And since this has happened on around 10,000 worlds, you have a galactic population well into the trillions or tens of trillions, even though at this point the population growth on almost all of those worlds is fairly stable. We just have not seen a young colony world (except for Sphinx in the Star Kingdom series, which does have a lot of large families).