Review: Storia minima della popolazione del mondo

Storia minima della popolazione del mondo by Massimo Livi Bacci
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is all new to me and much of it is a tad too technical for me. There were some fascinating tidbits, however (for example, apparently in the year 0 the world population was 252 million).

There were parts that reminded me of Yuval Harari (the paleolithic had a lower mortality rate than the subsequent neolithic age, mainly because the former was a hunter/gatherer society while the latter was a farming society, so viruses and sicknesses could spread), as well as Matt Ridley (in the short and medium term demographic changes cause problems, but in the long term they tend to get solved).

Also, I had always heard that the world population would peak at around 10-11 billion, and then, as fertility rates decreased worldwide, they would drop somewhat. Now I'm not as convinced.

On the other hand, parts of it were just outdated (it was written in 1989), and other parts seemed to be wanting. It mentions how, as societies tend to get richer the fertility rate seems to decline, although sometimes it doesn't (sub-saharan Africa's GDP / capita in the 1950's equaled that of France 100 years prior, but the fertility rate hadn't dropped accordingly) and so we can't be sure if an increase in population is good or bad for well-being (??). This seems to be confusing cause and effect. When countries have high fertility, as in bigger families, resources are used up more quickly, but when countries start getting better off, their population increases (through higher fertility in general, not bigger families, and through immigration), which tends to be good. As it mentions, 4 million people are more likely to produce a genius than 400 people. But once again, this isn't my field so maybe I missed something.

Some of my notes:
The diet of hunter-gatherers was probably more complete than that of settlers.
Malthus's theory becomes less compelling when taking into account industrial advances and technological innovation
Population growth can be both dependent and independent. e.g.: better land leads to more people moving there, but more people moving there can improve the land through new methods of cultivation.
Black death caused less vegetable consumption (fewer fields being farmed)
Long distance emigration occurred from countries with an increase in agricultural employment
There is no reason to believe that poor country fertility will decline to rich country levels, even once they attain the same level of richness.
Abortion was widespread and easily attainable in China in the 1970s.

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