You might think that pyramid-building ended in Mexico more than half a millennium ago with the demise of the Aztec ruler Montezuma or even longer ago in Egypt with the death of Pharaoh Khufu. But no, we have our own modern-day pyramid-builders. Well, they might be better designated “pyramid modifiers.” The pyramids they seek to reshape aren’t made of earth or stone, but rather of people. Three modern leaders have pharaonic desires to reshape their countries’ population profiles or population pyramids.
More than a Century Ago
My maternal grandmother had nine children. Those were the days, weren’t they? The days of large families! The population pyramid actually looked like s pyramid with lots of kids at the bottom and a few old people, their numbers thinned by a hard life and ineluctable aging. Then those nine kids had just 19 offspring, more, obviously, than the number needed for simple replacement, but in no way individually matching the output of their mother. That second generation averaged 2.1 children. Keep in mind that 2.1 just barely adds to that second generation’s combination with spouses. The point is that the population pyramid, even that of one family, changes through generations.
And in North Korea and Russia, the changing shape of the pyramid has the dictators calling on women to increase the birth rate, obviously with the help of men. *
Both dictatorships have seen a decline in birth rates. To the decline in Russia that economic conditions imposed, one can add those tens of thousands—maybe many more than a hundred thousand—killed in the Ukraine invasion and those tens of thousands who emigrated from the country to avoid conscription. So, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin want more kids; in the instance of the latter, the suggested number is eight or more per woman, matching the birthrate of my grandmother’s generation. And why?
Why? For more soldiers, I assume. Can’t fight wars with a top-heavy or upside-down pyramid. War is for the young, not for the old. For Putin, it would mean more bodies to throw into HIMARS explosions and drone strikes. More bodies to dig and fill the trenches of warfare and to occupy tanks. More bodies to end their lives in needless aggression.
What Happened in the Good Old Days?
Barring war, famine, epidemic, and the indifference of affluent peoples, a population pyramid actually looks like a pyramid. Those events that reduce populations of given age groups change the shape. Wars decimate the 18-40 year-olds. COVID decimated the senior citizens. In countries where lots of kids are useful, the bottom of the pyramid is a substantial and wide base. In populations of affluence and high tech, fewer kids are needed to run things, and the pyramid looks more like an obelisk.
The world pyramid for today’s eight billion people sits on a foundation of 337,082,468 toddler males and 319,557,714 toddler females (ages 0-4). At the very top of the pyramid sit 130,481 centenarian males and 547,105 centenarian females (no doubt those numbers change as you read this). **
Apparently, city living and affluence combine to make our species less fertile, but no doubt there are many controls on fertility and longevity. Apparently, also, Russia and North Korea find themselves in a population bind, and China, which recently rescinded its one-child policy, now finds itself headed to an increasingly older profile. (Is that the reason COVID killed mostly old people? Sorry, that’s too much conspiracy-thinking, but killing off the old certainly saves the resources of the declining numbers of young)
I remember reading in my youth that American families had 2.8 children, Tom, Dick, and Harr. Well, of course Harry with a “y” did exist, but we’re talking averages here. At any birthrate, look around. How many women of child-bearing age are bearing? How many families have six, seven, or eight children?
When times were tough on the farm, farmers had more children. When times are tough in a modern urbanized society, urbanites practice birth control. It’s economics both ways.
The Baby Boom
We’ve seen the baby boomers of post WWII grow and age. If one was born in 1946, he or she is now 77 and near the top of the pyramid. But that burst of newborns was not the product of dictators dictating. Returning soldiers settled into family life. But in 2023, Kim and Vlad see a need for more bodies, probably because the former has starved the general public and the latter has sent the young to die in a particularly useless war.
Will they force a baby boom in their countries? And if they do, will both dictators live to kill their young in war and once again radically alter in a short time their population pyramids?
And What of America?
On October 6, 2023, 12,000 migrants crossed the American southern border. During the Biden Administration more migrants (illegal, by the way) have crossed into the United States than any time since the surge into the country brought my teenage grandmother to America’s shores.
Unlike the current surge, however, that surge between 1880 and 1920 took people through places like Ellis Island and Fisher Island and eventually through the naturalization process. And much of that population adopted American culture and language. Neither of my grandmothers who were born outside the US spoke with an accent that I could detect, and their children spoke idiomatic American English tinged by a western Pennsylvanian dialect.
But no doubt my grandmother’s generation did much to rapidly change the pyramid of her era. She had, after all, nine kids. Those kids then worked their way to a more affluent lifestyle in the 1940s and 1950s and had fewer kids each than their mother. My third generation of family members on my maternal side, my cousins, were born shortly before and during the Baby Boom. Both first-generation and second-generations are gone now, no longer part of the pyramid, the last of those dying several years ago, but many of them living into their nineties. On the other side of the family, my paternal grandmother had four children, three surviving into adulthood and producing with their spouses a total of five, counting, of course, yours truly.
In the third generation’s average four score years, the population of the world rose to its current eight billion and the country into which we were born rose from under 150,000,000 to over 330,000,000. And now that population is rising because of migration’s addition to the 3.791 million kids born every year. (By the way, that rate of 2.8 kids per mother in the 1960s has dropped to 1.9 kids, or Tom, Dic….)
So, Khufu Joe has altered the American population pyramid through his open border policy. And he’s adding more every day—12,000, as I said, in a single day. And his legacy of pyramid-building will last as long as Khufu’s as those 12,000 added in one day will on another day add more to the pyramid, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will….And in all these additions, those coming into the country will fit into the age layers where others have died so much so that, depending on the migrants’ ages, they will replace or add to the pyramid’s layers.
Generations from now, nay millennia from now, Earth’s population will look back in amazement at the pyramids Joe, Kim, and Vlad have built. They are each modern pharaohs.
*https://mothership.sg/2023/12/kim-jong-un-crying-national-conference-mothers/ and https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-putin-urges-russians-8-kids-amid-demographic-crisis-2023-11
** You can see the world’s pyramid at https://www.populationpyramid.net/ if you put your cursor on the blue or red bars, you’ll see the population.
More than a Century Ago
My maternal grandmother had nine children. Those were the days, weren’t they? The days of large families! The population pyramid actually looked like s pyramid with lots of kids at the bottom and a few old people, their numbers thinned by a hard life and ineluctable aging. Then those nine kids had just 19 offspring, more, obviously, than the number needed for simple replacement, but in no way individually matching the output of their mother. That second generation averaged 2.1 children. Keep in mind that 2.1 just barely adds to that second generation’s combination with spouses. The point is that the population pyramid, even that of one family, changes through generations.
And in North Korea and Russia, the changing shape of the pyramid has the dictators calling on women to increase the birth rate, obviously with the help of men. *
Both dictatorships have seen a decline in birth rates. To the decline in Russia that economic conditions imposed, one can add those tens of thousands—maybe many more than a hundred thousand—killed in the Ukraine invasion and those tens of thousands who emigrated from the country to avoid conscription. So, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin want more kids; in the instance of the latter, the suggested number is eight or more per woman, matching the birthrate of my grandmother’s generation. And why?
Why? For more soldiers, I assume. Can’t fight wars with a top-heavy or upside-down pyramid. War is for the young, not for the old. For Putin, it would mean more bodies to throw into HIMARS explosions and drone strikes. More bodies to dig and fill the trenches of warfare and to occupy tanks. More bodies to end their lives in needless aggression.
What Happened in the Good Old Days?
Barring war, famine, epidemic, and the indifference of affluent peoples, a population pyramid actually looks like a pyramid. Those events that reduce populations of given age groups change the shape. Wars decimate the 18-40 year-olds. COVID decimated the senior citizens. In countries where lots of kids are useful, the bottom of the pyramid is a substantial and wide base. In populations of affluence and high tech, fewer kids are needed to run things, and the pyramid looks more like an obelisk.
The world pyramid for today’s eight billion people sits on a foundation of 337,082,468 toddler males and 319,557,714 toddler females (ages 0-4). At the very top of the pyramid sit 130,481 centenarian males and 547,105 centenarian females (no doubt those numbers change as you read this). **
Apparently, city living and affluence combine to make our species less fertile, but no doubt there are many controls on fertility and longevity. Apparently, also, Russia and North Korea find themselves in a population bind, and China, which recently rescinded its one-child policy, now finds itself headed to an increasingly older profile. (Is that the reason COVID killed mostly old people? Sorry, that’s too much conspiracy-thinking, but killing off the old certainly saves the resources of the declining numbers of young)
I remember reading in my youth that American families had 2.8 children, Tom, Dick, and Harr. Well, of course Harry with a “y” did exist, but we’re talking averages here. At any birthrate, look around. How many women of child-bearing age are bearing? How many families have six, seven, or eight children?
When times were tough on the farm, farmers had more children. When times are tough in a modern urbanized society, urbanites practice birth control. It’s economics both ways.
The Baby Boom
We’ve seen the baby boomers of post WWII grow and age. If one was born in 1946, he or she is now 77 and near the top of the pyramid. But that burst of newborns was not the product of dictators dictating. Returning soldiers settled into family life. But in 2023, Kim and Vlad see a need for more bodies, probably because the former has starved the general public and the latter has sent the young to die in a particularly useless war.
Will they force a baby boom in their countries? And if they do, will both dictators live to kill their young in war and once again radically alter in a short time their population pyramids?
And What of America?
On October 6, 2023, 12,000 migrants crossed the American southern border. During the Biden Administration more migrants (illegal, by the way) have crossed into the United States than any time since the surge into the country brought my teenage grandmother to America’s shores.
Unlike the current surge, however, that surge between 1880 and 1920 took people through places like Ellis Island and Fisher Island and eventually through the naturalization process. And much of that population adopted American culture and language. Neither of my grandmothers who were born outside the US spoke with an accent that I could detect, and their children spoke idiomatic American English tinged by a western Pennsylvanian dialect.
But no doubt my grandmother’s generation did much to rapidly change the pyramid of her era. She had, after all, nine kids. Those kids then worked their way to a more affluent lifestyle in the 1940s and 1950s and had fewer kids each than their mother. My third generation of family members on my maternal side, my cousins, were born shortly before and during the Baby Boom. Both first-generation and second-generations are gone now, no longer part of the pyramid, the last of those dying several years ago, but many of them living into their nineties. On the other side of the family, my paternal grandmother had four children, three surviving into adulthood and producing with their spouses a total of five, counting, of course, yours truly.
In the third generation’s average four score years, the population of the world rose to its current eight billion and the country into which we were born rose from under 150,000,000 to over 330,000,000. And now that population is rising because of migration’s addition to the 3.791 million kids born every year. (By the way, that rate of 2.8 kids per mother in the 1960s has dropped to 1.9 kids, or Tom, Dic….)
So, Khufu Joe has altered the American population pyramid through his open border policy. And he’s adding more every day—12,000, as I said, in a single day. And his legacy of pyramid-building will last as long as Khufu’s as those 12,000 added in one day will on another day add more to the pyramid, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will….And in all these additions, those coming into the country will fit into the age layers where others have died so much so that, depending on the migrants’ ages, they will replace or add to the pyramid’s layers.
Generations from now, nay millennia from now, Earth’s population will look back in amazement at the pyramids Joe, Kim, and Vlad have built. They are each modern pharaohs.
*https://mothership.sg/2023/12/kim-jong-un-crying-national-conference-mothers/ and https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-putin-urges-russians-8-kids-amid-demographic-crisis-2023-11
** You can see the world’s pyramid at https://www.populationpyramid.net/ if you put your cursor on the blue or red bars, you’ll see the population.
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