The Wednesday Letter #206 - 2/7/2024

THIS WEEK: Peak Child; US Military Readiness; Ferrari.

PEAK CHILD

How many children aged under 5 are there in the world? And is that number growing or falling? According to the UN’s “medium variant” estimate, it rose until 2017 when it reached 690.4 million, and has been falling ever since. The late Hans Rosling called this ‘Peak Child’.

The UN has several demographic scenarios for the future. The most probable is what it calls the “medium variant”. There are also, among many more, a “high variant” and a “low variant” derived from assumptions of higher and lower fertility. Here, in the first chart, is the global number of children aged under 5, with each of the three variants. According to the most probable scenario (the medium variant), that number will more or less flatline above 650 million until 2060 after which it will fade down gradually to 560 million in 2100. The less probable high and low variants are also shown, with the first racing to nearly 1.1 billion and the second falling to 250 million by 2100.

It is important to underscore …