Population of the United States

They were off by 6 years, just under a 6% error. Considering considering they didn't know about Roe V Wade, not too shabby

....um, yeah, and they had no idea about the 'new' math people would start using either...

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How did you arrive at 6 years/6% again? Perhaps you could show your work....

Don't know what I was thinking, too much time in the sun today. For some reason, I used 300 million

I do things like that sometimes.

According to the US Census the population of the US is approx 318,000,000.

Since we haven't reached 385,000,000 yet, how did you arrive at the estimate being off by 6 years?

even then they knew Obama couldn't control illegal immigration

Well they probably didn't factor in the losses from wars that have been fought...probably if you included all those lost and their offspring and their offspring's offspring, well, you would be over their estimate, by some counts we have lost around 170 mil people in all wars...

I doubt that they didn't know. Up to that point in time war was not uncommon. It's possible they had the arrogance or maybe ignorance to think that society had advanced to a point where there would be no war and thus chose not to factor it in or underestimate it.

It wasn't long after that prediction President Wilson used the phrase "the war to end all wars" in reference to WWI.

Interesting, nobody mentioned the 300 lb elephant in the room,... or should I say elephants. Namely, the invention of birth control, and the legalization of abortion.

300lb is pretty light for an adult elephant, even a pigmy elephant. 300 lbs isn't even heavy for an adult male gorilla.

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Solar Eagle had pointed out the true 800lb gorilla (is that the usual reference?) in the room: war. War has ended far more lives than abortion has prevented. While war was known in 1900, the extent and timing is never simple to forecast even over 100 years.

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I'm not sure how to quantify various forms of birth control, but there were forms of contraception around in 1900, so it isn't something they wouldn't have been aware of.

Spot me another zero and call it 3000. Is that still too light? I'm too lazy and disinterested to google it. I forgot I was addressing engineers,... the pill!?! female contraception.. It caused the sexual revolution!.. Kind of a big deal,really. It was in the papers and everything!

Right... a sexual revolution, meaning many women were abstaining from sex less. That sexual revolution of ideas about sex meant that although women were taking the pill, it didn't cause a large decrease in fertility rates. There were some minor changes in fertility rates in the short term, but longer term, the effect on overall fertility rates was minimal.

Adult African (bush not forest) elephants are in the range of 10,000 to 13,000 lbs for males and 5,000 to 7,000 lbs for females......just in case one happens to be in the room with you, you'll have an idea about an appropriate weight.

You should have just said that women had more children in 1900. Some around here get rattled fairly easily. The CDC summarizes your point nicely:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4847a1.htm

They didn't know about WWII, but they also didn't know about the baby boom that came afterward, so those might cancel each other. I'd say that, if not for the shrinking size of the family unit, they would have been very close.

"...Some around here get rattled fairly easily....."

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It is weird to talk about yourself in the third person like that, Kramarat.

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The baby boom following WWII may have compensated some for the decrease in births during the war, but aren't you forgetting overlooking ignoring some very significant changes to population brought about by war?

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Let's consider just two:

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1. If everyone delays having a child by ten years, then all those children won't be having children till ten years later on average themselves. Certainly puts a damper on population growth, especially in the normal perspective of how large the population has grown by a specific year.

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2. People killed in war pretty much always get removed from the 'population' figure.

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As far as fertility rates and the pill; you can link to an article, but you still have to read it.

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"... In 1928, the timing of ovulation was established medically, but the safe interval for intercourse was mistakenly understood to include half the menstrual period (13). Nevertheless, by 1933, the average family size had declined to 2.3 children..."

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The supports the well understood trend that as countries have become industrialized and less rural, both mortality and fertility rates decline. This trend was apparent long before the WWII baby boom peak and the introduction of steroidal contraceptives in 1960 or Roe v Wade roughly a decade later.

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So, I suppose we get to hear you play your 'fairly easy rattle' now. Joy.

If you don't like the CDC link on population, write them a letter.

There have been approx. 57,000,000 abortions since Roe V Wade. Without getting into the morality of it, it doesn't make sense to pretend that it hasn't affected our population numbers.

Kramarat,

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I want to start by acknowledging that my comments of recent towards you have been less than honorable. I apologize for allowing frustration to become an excuse for making ad hominem attacks. I hope you will accept my apology.

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Back to the point at hand. I respectfully (yes, I remember how) disagree with your assertion that any conclusions can be drawn about affects to population based merely on the number of abortions. This is not a non-dynamic system under consideration.

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Factors like lower childhood mortality rates post Roe v Wade, lower rates of mortality among women for things like self attempts at illegal abortion, and lower violent crime rates (i.e. less homicide) years later all can have positive effects on population growth, without being indicated by higher fertility rates.

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But even suggesting that fertility rates decreased significantly as a result of Roe v Wade can't be established.

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When you look at the following graph, remember Roe v Wade ruling occurred in 1973

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First of all, you owe me no apology.

Secondly, this is yet another thread that has no right answer; it is merely a topic of discussion...so we should enter it knowing that no one is "right".

I would appreciate it if you would stop attempting to define my point of view.

For example: I did not attempt to draw conclusions based merely on the number of abortions. I provided a link to the CDC that was bragging about our achievements in population control. I don't care about any of the dead; they are numbers.

I wasn't attempting to define your point any further than what seems fairly obvious by your statement:

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"...There have been approx. 57,000,000 abortions since Roe V Wade. Without getting into the morality of it, it doesn't make sense to pretend that it hasn't affected our population numbers....."

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It is hard to reasonably interpret statement as anything but with the exact meaning you are protesting.

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It is kind of an unfair trap to dangle such low hanging fruit only to complain I am 'attempting to define your point of view'. Sure, when I read your comments, I attempt to define what you are saying your point of view is. That wasn't an unreasonable interpretation of the message you wrote.

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Now if you are just asking that I simply don't read your remarks or perhaps don't challenge the assertions that seem misguided, while I would understand that motivation, that probably isn't going to happen. I don't think that would be very in-character for you anyway.

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As for your second point; before we can claim that there are no right answers in the discussion, we have to define the questions being discussed.

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If the questions are things like, 'What are the short and long term effects off oral contraception or legalized abortion on population and other demographic traits within a certain confidence level?', then it isn't just not unreasonable, but there is a mild moral imperative to discriminate severely among the various proposed answers, because some are indeed likely to be far more correct than others.

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There is a large confusion in many parts of popular society today, that I think does significant harm. You can hear it in statements like "All beliefs deserve respect" or "All views have equal merit and as such it is intolerant to consider some better than others".

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When presented in this context, most people will easily identify the lack of self consistency that troubles with statements above. But when their guard is not up, many people will reinforce such silly ideas.

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It seems that many people confuse the important need for tolerance of, and acknowledgement of basic rights of people holding ideas at odds with our own, with an imperative to grant various ideas equal status. This can be dangerous for a myriad of reasons.

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Peter Kreeft put it rather suscinctly:

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"Be egalitarian regarding persons.""Be elitist regarding ideas."

Wow. You're already back it.

Stop over thinking.

A new member brought up abortion and birth control as being factors in our population, and somebody marked his post off topic. Not only was it NOT off topic, but he was correct in pointing out that those things have impacted our population numbers.

That's the whole enchilada. Anything beyond that, is happening within the confines of your own mind.

I understand that people get uncomfortable, talking about abortion; but in the context of this conversation, it's nothing more than a numerical statistic as it relates to the US population.

I'm not uncomfortable with the topic. This also isn't a matter of over-thinking, though it may take some people a moment or two of genuine concentration to move beyond a reactionary first guess and arrive at an understanding of how legalized abortion did not have a huge effect on population.

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You seem to be reading into my comment some slight toward you. There is no slight intended or suggested. This is merely a disagreement about the facts of the matter.

Roe vs Wade did not enable abortions, it just brought them out of the back rooms....when I was a kid, women went to Cuba to get abortions, if you had the money...or the Doctor just referred to the procedure as a DNC, if you had a lot of money....If you were poor, you went anywhere you could get help...or tried any number of home remedies, the outcomes were a crapshoot...and many suffered unspeakable horrors...it was the dark ages....

Right. It was nasty business.

I wasn't protesting abortion. I didn't think the guy deserved an OT for bringing it up, since the averages after R V W have been 1 miilion plus per year. On a thread about population, those are significant numbers, and I don't think they were foreseen in 1900; which is all the guy was pointing out.

If you guys want to get deeper into the subject, we should head to the breakroom.

If you don't like abortions, don't be one.

At the time of that prediction the doors to Ellis Island were wide open. They were taking in almost 1 million immigrants a year. I sure that they figured the immigration numbers into the prediction. With the vast land they had to fill with people. The person or persons that made the prediction most likely saw no reason to curtail that immigration number. they may have even set it higher then the rate of that date. So 1 million a year for a hundred year is pretty close to the discrepancy.

Good point. At first I was incorrectily thinking that the effect would probably be muted because immigration didn't fall immediately to zero after the prediction and because the people making the estimate surely knew that few of the early immigrants would be alive in 100 years, but with large family sizes common then, it wouldn't have taken a huge reduction in immigration in the early years to lead to large disparities between actual and estimated population.

Dear Mr.ronseto,

During the Presidentship of Mr.Lyndon Johnson (He became President after the assasination of John.F.Kennedy in 1963-64, and got elected in the 1964 elections) in the middle of June 1966, the BIRTH of a Child has been identified as 2,000,000,000th MILLION (Two Hundredth Million) or 20 Crores.

In India we use CRORE denoting 10 MILLION as one Crore and Crore is in between MILLION and BILLION.

If this is taken as basis, the population of USA should have been less than 200 Million Population, during 1900. The population during 2000 indicated by you is correct, and this suggests error in Estimation/Census Account during 1900.

Data posted by by Mr.Kramarat (vide Posting No.13 above and) the link given by him provides much information, may be useful to statistically analyse though linear/proportional variation will not be correct.

DHAYANANDHAN.S

The 2,000,000,000th million would be the 2nd quadrillion.

There is a lot of strange capitalization in that post, as well.

if you consider that the population was ~76 million in 1900, tey overestimated the growth by almost 50%.

There are way too many factors that affect population growth and must be re-evaluated constantly. it is not possible to really estimate growth from one year to the next with any amount of accuracy. Factors can be abortion, birth control, famines, disasters, the holocaust, etc.

Yep. It's just as impossible as predicting future climate.

They actually didn't do a bad job though. You also have to consider that a lot more people ran farms back then, and it took a lot of kids to milk the cows, tend the fields, feed the chickens, etc.