Sex education in Denmark will teach kids how to have babies, not avoiding them

Empty and sophisticated, a Viking land no more

According to the World Happiness Report from the United Nations, Denmark was ranked as the world's happiest country for 2013. The rich and generous Danes also have one of the best child-welfare systems in the world. Their birthrate, however, has been stuck around 1.7 for a long time. There could be two reasons to explain this apparent paradox:

1. Governments can help a lot with the raising of an already existing child, by giving his/her parents more free time, convenient childcare facilities or monthly checks. Yet, there's not much a democratic government can do, in the first place, to push fertile-age people to settle down earlier or stay in stable couples. Unlike other mammals, most humans, for now, are still born into steady unions of two parents, married or not. The majority of early-formed and stable couples also tends to have more than one baby. As people settle down late in life, and their unions are less stable than their parents', the chance is now much lower that they will have, at the end of their fecund years, more than one child. The root cause of sub-replacement fertility is our modern lifestyle, not a lack of material aids for born children.

2. Regarding lifestyle choices, democratic governments are not supposed to tell voters how to live their own life. Presidents and prime ministers cannot force their citizens, who are by definition the owners and masters of the state, to settle down earlier or to avoid divorces. As respected celebrities, they can always give advice, but that may cost them votes. You don't want to tell your bosses how to live his/her life, especially when you're spending their tax money. When able-minded adults prefer parties/research/procrastination to an early marriage, that's their choice. The country and the government are theirs too, after all.

Governments around the world are increasing aid to parents in the hope to reverse low fertility. Those measures will certainly help, but only to a degree, for the two reasons listed above. The Scandinavian countries have had the best welfare systems for decades, yet their fertility rates are always below replacement. Taking out the input of the recently arrived and still prolific immigrants, and the natives' birthrate will be even lower than the averages. Immigrants will gradually become locals, with local habits... which means their outsized contribution won't be long-lasting. 

Lastly, the fact that the Danes have fewer than 2.1 kids and can still be the happiest country in the world shows that these two things are not mutually exclusive: a country with few children can still be a happy one.

From Bloomberg: "Having Babies New Sex-Ed Goal as Danish Fertility Rates Drop"

Sex education in Denmark is about to shift focus after fertility rates dropped to the lowest in almost three decades.

After years of teaching kids how to use contraceptives, Sex and Society, the Nordic country’s biggest provider of sex education materials for schools, has changed its curriculum to encourage having babies under the rubric: “This is how you have children!”

Infertility is considered “an epidemic” in Denmark, said Bjarne Christensen, secretary general of the Copenhagen-based organization. “We see more and more couples needing to get assisted fertility treatment. We see a lot of people who don’t succeed in having children.”

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“We have for many years addressed the very important issues of how to avoid becoming pregnant, how to avoid sexual diseases, how they have a right to their own bodies, but we totally forgot to tell the kids that we cannot have children forever,” Soeren Ziebe, head of Copenhagen University Hospital’s fertility clinic, said by phone. “There is a biological limit.”

Part of the problem lies in the message sent to young adults to get advanced degrees and delay starting a family until they’ve finished their studies, Ziebe said. In the meantime, a woman’s fertility diminishes as her eggs, present since birth, “have tasted every cigarette and every glass of wine that she’s ever had,” he said.

Ziebe also says men need to know that “if they want to party till they’re 45, they’re going to miss the train, because when they wake up and want a family, their wives will no longer be able to conceive.”

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“We hope to raise a discussion in society about how to advise young people,” said Christensen, whose group helps organize an annual Sex Week to focus schools’ attention on the subject. “It’s a problem that fertility in Denmark is reduced.”

Sex and Society’s new focus, unveiled on Sunday, includes information for school children explaining what fertility is, when the best times to have children may be, and what the effects of aging are.

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Health and sex ed are mandatory subjects in Denmark, with schools teaching children about puberty, gender roles and contraception from the sixth grade. Basic instruction can start at kindergarten level.

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Pope Francis, child-free himself, calls other child-free people selfish

Do as I say, not as I do

Being a father myself, I think having children is beautiful (pope Francis said as much), yet choosing not to have any is also a respectable option. They are just different states of equilibrium. The pope's words are, therefore, kind of beyond me. How could someone who deliberately decide not to have kids call other people who make the same decision selfish? Does he consider himself superior, somehow? A quick Google search will show that many Catholic popes fathered children in history, before and even during their priesthood. As other Christian denominations can attest, clerical celibacy was not imposed by a divine authority or Jesus himself (who might or might not have been married and sired children). It was one of those things followers agreed, centuries later, to apply on themselves. What were just human conventions can always be undone by humans of a new era. Go have some kids yourself, dear Mr. Pope!

From the USA Today: "Pope: Opting not to have children a 'selfish choice'"

VATICAN CITY — Less than a month after sparking controversy for saying Catholics don't have to multiply "like rabbits," Pope Francis has once again praised big families, telling a gathering in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday that having more children is not "an irresponsible choice."

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A society that "views children above all as a worry, a burden, a risk, is a depressed society," Francis said.

Citing European countries where the fertility rate is especially low, the pope said "they are depressed societies because they don't want children. They don't have children. The birth rate doesn't even reach 1%."

He once again praised the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, that reiterated the ban against artificial contraception while enjoining Catholics to practice "responsible parenthood" by spacing out births as necessary.

Francis added, however, that "to have more children cannot automatically become an irresponsible choice."

"Not to have children is a selfish choice," he said. "Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished!"

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Life in the universe may be very old, as rocky planets existed much earlier than thought

Did they enjoy that summer 4.6 billion years ago?

Kepler 444, a newly discovered star, and its five rocky planets are 11.2 billion years old. For comparison, the Universe was born at the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago while our Sun and Earth are around 4.6 billion years old. The solid planets orbiting Kepler 444 are proof that this type of planets were already there in the very early days of the universe. Extraterrestrial life may, therefore, be much more ancient as it had more time to try to emerge and evolve on suitable planets. Consequently, civilizations might have already existed billions of years before our species' appearance in East Africa 200,000 years ago. Where will humanity be in another 200,000 years? In 11.2 billion years...?

From the New Scientist: "Ancient planets are almost as old as the universe"

The Old Ones were already ancient when the Earth was born. Five small planets orbit an 11.2 billion-year-old star, making them about 80 per cent as old as the universe itself. That means our galaxy started building rocky planets earlier than we thought.

"Now that we know that these planets can be twice as old as Earth, this opens the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the galaxy," says Tiago Campante at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

NASA's Kepler space telescope spotted the planets around an orange dwarf star called Kepler 444, which is 117 light years away and about 25 per cent smaller than the sun.

Orange dwarfs are considered good candidates for hosting alien life because they can stay stable for up to 30 billion years, compared to the sun's 10 billion years, the time it takes these stars to consume all their hydrogen. For context, the universe is currently 13.8 billion years old.

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"These planets mean it only took the universe a couple billion years to figure out how to build rocky planets, and they've been around for a really long time," says Travis Metcalfe at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. While Kepler 444's planets are too hot for life, its age suggests there might be cooler, older worlds elsewhere. "If life needs a long time to develop or lots of places to try to develop, having rocky planets this early in the history of the galaxy means planets with advanced civilisations should be everywhere."

"These are all little bits of good news," says Andrew Howard at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "There are still a lot of other hurdles life would have to overcome, but now we're seeing evidence that small planets are common, and here we have one from when the Milky Way was a kid and it was already forming probably rocky planets."

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Aging and declining population will make us richer more slowly, said McKinsey research

Wish I were at the mall to raise GDP!

Because of population decline, economic growth in the world's 20 largest economies will be reduced by 40% over the next 50 years. Does that mean that those societies will see their living standards falling dramatically, as the alarmists imagine the aging future? The answer is no. GDP per head will keep rising higher, aka people will still be getting richer every year, only more slowly than without population aging. What if that's exactly what they want: a comfortable but slower life? Who cares about GDP if there will be more time at the park?

From the Wall Street Journal: "Declining Population Could Reduce Global Economic Growth By 40%"

"Declining population growth that shrinks the pool of available labor over the next 50 years will reduce by 40% the rate of growth in global economic output for the world’s 20 largest economies compared to the past 50 years, according to a new study.

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Among the 20 nations studied, only Nigeria will see employment growth and GDP growth increase over the coming 50 years, based on recent demographic patterns, says McKinsey. (On a per capita basis, Turkey, Argentina and South Africa will see GDP growth increase.) Several nations will see outright declines in employment, including Japan, Germany, Russia, Italy and China.

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What’s the practical impact of a 40% decline in global growth? It means the global standard of living would rise 2.3 times in the next 50 years, down from 2.8 times over the past 50 years

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The Mexicans are not coming anymore, as fewer of them are made every year

Head north for the parties!

Remember all the talks about how an exploding Mexican population will reclaim the territories lost to the USA in 1848? It turns out very soon they will have the same sub-replacement birthrate south of the border. Humans will act the same everywhere when their conditions converge.

From the USA Today: "What Mexican immigration problem?"

"President Obama's executive action on immigration enraged Republicans, but has also widened the split between two camps within the GOP.

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Underlying this debate is at least one shared assumption: There are — and always will be — millions of Mexicans ready to move permanently to the United States. What if that assumption is now completely wrong?

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But in 2001, the number of new residents (based on U.S. Census Bureau data) started to drop. In 2005, it began to plunge, bottoming out at 140,000 in 2010 and has flat lined since then. Most analysts attribute the steep drop of the last decade to the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2006 and the lingering recession following the financial crisis in 2008.

But a bigger factor has been at work in Mexico that will drive net migration numbers to very low levels — close to zero — for at least the next one or two generations and probably much longer. Mexico, known for massive and rapid population growth for most of the 20th century, is now on the same downward demographic spiral as the rest of the developed world, including most of Latin America.

In the early 1960's, the total fertility rate for Mexican women was around seven children. By 2013, the rate was down to 2.2, just above the replacement rate of 2.1. The absolute number of live births in Mexico has fallen every year since 1994, and a UN population analysis projects that Mexico will sink below the replacement rate around 2025. Once countries go below the magic fertility number of 2.1 it isn't long — about 30 years — before their population growth completely halts and then starts to shrink.

In the meantime, those steep fertility declines already have shown up in the falling immigration numbers, as the pool of Mexican 15-39 year olds — the prime age to migrate — grows smaller and smaller year after year.

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Meet Kepler 438b, the most Earth-like exo-planet discovered so far

And they are looking too?

Exo-planets are very new to humans. The first one ever found by mankind, 51 Pegasi b, was only declared in 1995. Two decades later, we have discovered more than 1000 verified planets orbiting other stars. The more we look, the more we find planets that increasingly resemble our Earth: small-sized, rocky, similar distances to their respective stars as Earth is to the Sun, same temperature range... Are we getting closer to finding the first signs of primitive life on those distant worlds? The trend looks promising as for all the newly learnt knowledge, humans have just searched a super-minuscule area of this galaxy, which is likely made up of 200 billion stars. And there might be 200 billion other galaxies in our observable universe. Could life be exclusive to Earth?

From the Guardian: "Kepler 438b: Most Earth-like planet ever discovered could be home for alien life"

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The small size of Kepler 438b makes it likely to be a rocky world, while its proximity to its star puts it in the “Goldilocks” or habitable zone where the temperature is just right for liquid water to flow.

A rocky surface and flowing water are two of the most important factors scientists look for when assessing a planet’s chances of being hospitable to life.

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The scientists do not know if the planets have atmospheres, but if they are cloaked in insulating layers of gas, the mean temperatures of Kepler 438b and 442b are expected to be about 60 and zero degrees Celsius respectively.

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In the meantime, scientists plan to look for other, indirect signs, that a planet may be well-suited for life. Kipping is searching through the Kepler data for hints that some planets have moons, which can improve their odds of being habitable. Our own moon stabilises Earth’s tilt, making the temperatures far less erratic than they would be otherwise. Alien planets that share a solar system with a gas giant like Jupiter are also interesting, because the vast size of the planet acts as a shield against devastating asteroid and comet impacts.

MIT professor thinks life in the universe might be thermo-dynamically inevitable

Elsewhere in the universe...

Life in the universe may not arise out of sheer luck if Mr. England is correct. As energy naturally dissipates overtime, life becomes unavoidable as organic matter is better at dissipating energy. Whether life happens at this or that exact point in space and time is random. But it has to happen somewhere, probably in tons of places at the same time, given the size of the universe.

From the Daily Mail: "Life on Earth wasn't down to luck, its development was as inevitable as ‘rocks rolling down a hill’, claims physicist"

"It has often been said that one of the reasons we are yet to find life elsewhere in the universe is that it is rare; most think the development of life on Earth was a fluke.

But one of the most prominent young physicists in the world has claimed otherwise, saying that he thinks life is as inevitable as inorganic matter... The theory has been presented by 31-year-old physicist Dr Jeremy England from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Dr England’s idea is based around entropy; namely, energy spreads out or dissipates over time. For example, a cup of coffee left in a room will eventually reach the same temperature as the room itself.

Energy will always seek the path of least resistance if left to its own devices, which is why things in the universe - including the universe itself - tend to ‘spread out',  also known as an increase in entropy.

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the underlying aspect of his theory, is that while all matter - from rocks to plants - absorbs and dissipates energy, life is much better at redistributing it.

This means that, taking the coffee cup example but this time using molecules swimming in an ocean, the atoms will reorganise themselves into life because it is better at dissipating the energy in the water.

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If true, the implications of Dr England’s theories are vast. Perhaps most importantly, it may suggest life elsewhere in the universe is not as rare as once thought, but rather is as common as planets and stars themselves.

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India to reach replacement fertility by 2020, Africa next in line?

Those were the days...

It looks like another bastion of high fertility is falling fast. Indian fertility used to be 5.5 births per woman in 1970. What will happen after 2020? What if Africa is to follow India in the decades ahead? What if humans are the same everywhere, they will act the same when put in similar conditions?

From The Hindu: "India to reach replacement levels of fertility by 2020"

Fertility is falling faster than expected in India, and the country is on track to reach replacement levels of fertility as soon as 2020, new official data shows.

The 2013 data for the Sample Registration Survey (SRS), conducted by the Registrar General of India, the country’s official source of birth and death data, was released on Monday.

The SRS shows that the Total Fertility Rate – the average number of children that will be born to a woman during her lifetime – in eight States has fallen below two children per woman, new official data shows.

Just nine States – all of them in the north and east, except for Gujarat – haven’t yet reached replacements levels of 2.1, below which populations begin to decline. West Bengal now has India’s lowest fertility, with the southern States, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Among backward States, Odisha too has reduced its fertility to 2.1.

“At 2.3, India is now just 0.2 points away from reaching replacement levels. Fertility is declining rapidly, including among the poor and illiterate. At these rates, India will achieve its demographic transition and reach replacement levels as early as 2020 or 2022,” Dr. P. Arokiasamy, a demographer and Professor at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, explained to The Hindu.

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Older world, greener world

I could be here forever

Environmentally, an aging human species will be a greener one. Median-age-46-and-rising Germany may, at the end of this century, see its CO2 emission quantity returning to pre-1950 level. This will be quite an achievement as so far emission-cutting efforts only dare to have timid-but-realistic targets of slowing down emission growth, not a returning to lower levels of the past. The coming older world should deliver a better living environment: less pollution (elders consume less), fewer crimes (older humans are less violent), more housing space (Japan's house price has been trending down for 24 years now while purchasing power remains stable)... It's not all gloom and doom at a closer look.

From the New Scientist: "Ageing societies will be better for the planet"

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Amid fears of rising healthcare costs, soaring pension bills and a declining workforce, it seems that ageing could return Germany to carbon dioxide emission levels not seen since before the 1950s.

The average age is rising in most nations, as people live longer and birth rates fall. This process is most advanced in industrialized nations. Germany has a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman and a life expectancy of 80. Half the population is aged 46 or older, a world record shared with Japan.

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Fanny Kluge of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and colleagues found that per-capita CO2 emissions in Western countries rise steadily as children become adults and as adults become more affluent. But after the age of 60, emissions decline by roughly 20 per cent when individuals retire and travel less.

As a country's population as a whole ages, it will follow the same pattern, says Kluge. As baby boomers grow into middle age, the country's emissions soar, but when the proportion of pensioners becomes greater, emissions fall. The dip will be accentuated by any drop in population, if death rates exceed birth rates.

Kluge calculates that since 1950, ageing has caused a 30 per cent increase in German CO2 emissions. But, after 2020, "as the proportion of people older than 80 continues to increase and the population size shrinks, emissions will decrease and reach pre-1950 levels by 2100"

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Pope's astronomer believes in alien life, will welcome extra-terrestrials to church

Church? Mine is rasta.

Pope Francis himself said on May 9 this year that should aliens visit Earth and want to join the church, they would be welcome. Now the new boss at the Vatican Observatory Foundation says something similar. He states his belief in life beyond Earth and how he doesn't see any conflict between extraterrestrial life and God.

The big question, in my view, is not whether aliens exist. Within our cosmological horizon there may be up to 40.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 stars and many times that number of planets, and you think we are alone? The question we should ask ourselves is rather why alien civilizations would want to meet us? Those aged species may be like many of our 70-year-old blasé humans who prefer wild life TV shows to a picnic. A general awareness of our existence somewhere out there may be enough for those mellow oldsters. See our own aging society and you may get some ideas of their much older civilizations.

From cruxnow.com: "Vatican astronomer: No surprise when we find life elsewhere"

"Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, the new president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, has no doubt that life exists elsewhere in the universe. And when humanity discovers it, the news will come as no big surprise.

He suggested that the likely discovery — whether next month or a millennium from now — will be received much the way that news of planets orbiting far-off stars has filtered in since the 1990s."

“The general public is going to be, ‘Oh, I knew that. I knew it was going to be there,’” Brother Consolmagno told Catholic News Service prior to a presentation at a NASA/Library of Congress symposium on preparing for the discovery of life in the universe Sept. 18-19.

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"A planetary scientist who has studied meteorites and asteroids as an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory since 1993, Brother Consolmagno said he hopes the questions about life on other planets will focus more on how humanity sees itself.

“When we say human, human as compared to what?” he asked.

While the discovery of life elsewhere will not prove nor disprove the existence of God, Brother Consolmagno expects that it will open the door to ponder what form salvation history may take in other intelligent societies."

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How would a much older society look like?

Simple, I'll still be a glamorous gal

From the Atlantic Monthly, "What happens when we all live to 100?"

A long article with many interesting nuggets, covering many aspects of an aging society:

- How life expectancy has risen so much over the last century and how that may continue into the near future:

"The typical person was fortunate to reach 40...Beginning in the 19th century, that slowly changed. Since 1840, life expectancy at birth has risen about three months with each passing year. In 1840, life expectancy at birth in Sweden, a much-studied nation owing to its record-keeping, was 45 years for women; today it’s 83 years. The United States displays roughly the same trend. When the 20th century began, life expectancy at birth in America was 47 years; now newborns are expected to live 79 years. If about three months continue to be added with each passing year, by the middle of this century, American life expectancy at birth will be 88 years. By the end of the century, it will be 100 years."

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"This isn’t a prediction about the future of the United States, but rather a description of Japan right now. The Land of the Rising Sun is the world’s grayest nation. Already the median age is 45 (in the U.S., by comparison, it is 37), and it will jump to 55 by 2040. As Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, has noted, median age in the retirement haven of Palm Springs, California, is currently 52 years. Japan is on its way to becoming an entire nation of Palm Springs residents."

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"In a 2009 study, Olshansky projected future demographics under the “hit a wall” scenario. The number of Americans 65 or older, 43 million today, could reach 108 million in 2050—that would be like adding three more Floridas, inhabited entirely by seniors."

- The science of longevity:

"Felipe Sierra, a researcher at the National Institute on Aging, says, “Evolution doesn’t care about you past your reproductive age. It doesn’t want you either to live longer or to die, it just doesn’t care. From the standpoint of natural selection, an animal that has finished reproducing and performed the initial stage of raising young might as well be eaten by something, since any favorable genetic quality that expresses later in life cannot be passed along.” Because a mutation that favors long life cannot make an animal more likely to succeed at reproducing, selection pressure works only on the young."

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“Constant interaction with other people can be annoying, but overall seems to keep us engaged with life"...For years, the American social trend has been away from “constant interaction with other people”—fewer two-parent homes, fewer children per home, declining participation in religious and community activities, grandparents living on their own, electronic interaction replacing the face-to-face in everything from work to dating. Prosperity is associated with smaller households, yet the large multigeneration home may be best for long life. There are some indications that the Great Recession increased multigeneration living. This may turn out to boost longevity, at least for a time."

- How big changes are coming as society's median age rises:

"In the wild, young animals outnumber the old; humanity is moving toward a society where the elderly outnumber the recently arrived. Such a world will differ from today’s in many outward aspects."

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"Today, Medicare and Medicaid spend about $150 billion annually on Alzheimer’s patients. Absent progress against aging, the number of people with Alzheimer’s could treble by 2050, with society paying as much for Alzheimer’s care as for the current defense budget."

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"With Japan at the leading edge of lengthening life expectancy, its interest in robotics can be eerie. Foxconn, the Asian electronics giant, is manufacturing for the Japanese market a creepy mechanized thing named Pepper that is intended to provide company for the elderly. More-sophisticated devices may be in store. A future in which large numbers of very old, incapacitated people stare into the distance as robot attendants click and hum would be a bad science-fiction movie if it didn’t stand a serious chance of happening."

- How the future could be better, not worse, as societies age:

"People in their late teens to late 20s are far more likely to commit crimes than people of other ages; as society grays, the decline of crime should continue. Violence in all guises should continue downward, too. Horrible headlines from Afghanistan or Syria are exceptions to an overall trend toward less warfare and less low-intensity conflict. As Steven Pinker showed in the 2011 book Better Angels of Our Nature, total casualties of combat, including indirect casualties from the economic harm associated with fighting, have been declining, even as the global population has risen. In 1950, one person in 5,000 worldwide died owing to combat; by 2010, this measure was down to one person in 300,000."

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"Older people also report, to pollsters and psychologists, a greater sense of well-being than the young and middle-aged do. By the latter phases of life, material and romantic desires have been attained or given up on; passions have cooled; and for most, a rich store of memories has been compiled. Among the core contentions of the well-being research of the Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman is that “in the end, memories are all you keep”—what’s in the mind matters more than what you own. Regardless of net worth, the old are well off in this sense....Should large numbers of people enjoy longer lives in decent health, the overall well-being of the human family may rise substantially."

A bit time-consuming, but well worth the read!