(December 14, 2014 at 7:39 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(December 14, 2014 at 7:27 pm)lifesagift Wrote: Surely life expectancy is key? and number of offspring?
Well, yeah - population grows when the birth rate > death rate. That's kind of tautological.
Number of offspring isn't directly a factor, not as much as you might think. Every couple could have 15 kids, and if only three reached reproductive age, your population growth would be slower than if every couple had four that all reached reproductive age. All else being equal, of course.
It seems to me that mortality is the more important factor, all else being equal.
Except that doesn't explain the explosive population growth in countries like Niger, which have huge offspring rates yet high mortality rates as well.
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