Brookings has a good new study out on the demographic changes & trends that are visible with the new census.  Confirms Ohio is sort of declining place.

 

For example, here are the rank orders of center citys that are seeing a DECLINE in the under 45 population...the young adult/new family forming demographic....

 

Betweeen 2000 and 2010, % decline

 

1.  Cleveland:  25% decline

4.  Youngstown:  24%

5.  Dayton:  22%

7.  Cincy: 15%

9.  Akron: 15%

10: Toledo: 14%

 

...so Urban Ohio is well represented in this top ten list of core cities losing young adults.

 

For suburbs, only two Ohio metros show up in the top 10 losers

 

1.  Youngstown:  14% decline in under 45 in suburbia

5.  Cleveland:  10% decline

 

For oldsters the report IDs seniors (65 and up) and "pre-seniors (55-64)...the beginning of the baby boom wave that is heading towards retirement age. 

 

Interestingly enough Ohio metro areas rate high as the slowest growing of these populations

 

Fore seniors, the slowest growth (and negative growth) in seniors, rank and % of growth 2000-2010:

 

5.  -2% Youngstown

7.  1% Cleveland

9    3%  Toledo

 

For pre-seniors the rank in the slowest growing categor and growth %

 

4.  36%  Dayton

5.  36%  Youngstown

9  40%  Cleveland.

 

....so a decline in young adults, but also the growthr rate for seniors and pre-seniors are low, too.

 

Three Ohio metros are in the top ranks for highest %  65 or older:

 

Youngstown:  18%...

Dayton:  15%...

Cleveland 15% of the metro pop are 65 or older.

 

 

..like that old Dave Evans bluegrass song goes....

 

"Throw out that cane & start walking/Be proud of that gray in your hair"

 

:wink:

 

 

 

  Like watching a tree grow, some changes are so imperceptibly small that they are hardly noticed, but over the long term the changes are huge.

 

    For a given population, would you rather live in a society where you are expected to live to be only 40 but there are lots of young people, or would you rather live in a society with a life expentancy of 90 but you are surrounded by old people for your whole life? Ohio used to be the former but is shifting toward the latter.

 

 

 

 

45 is the new 25! 

I wouldn't mind some clarification on these numbers. We all know that many of the urban ohio areas and some surrounding suburbs lost population ... and a lot of it. Is this just taking into effect the raw hard numbers? If a county lost 100,000 people in a decade, I'd expect most age demographics to lose people in absolute numbers.

 

What would be a bit more interesting to see is the % of that city's population that was under 18 in 2000 and then the % under 18 in 2010.  It's definitely possible, especially in the rust belt to lose 1000s of people of an age group, but they might be growing as a % of the population as they are not leaving/dying as fast as another group.

This isn't surprising. Look at the demographics for the whole country from last census. Not only did the percentage of white and black children dropped, the absolute number of white and black children actually dropped too.  Ohio is mainly made up of declining ethnic and racial groups.

Bring in the immigrants.

 

^ The immigration policy of the United States was wide open until about 1905. Prior to that, any person of any nationality could come here.

 

Nowadays, legal immigration is restricted. So, instead of hiring cheap Chinese labor to work our factories, our factories have moved to China. Keeping the cheap labor out has caused the average income in the United States to go up, but the number of working class families in cities has gone down. So, there is less demand for cheap housing, less demand for public transportation, and fewer opportunities for Urban Ohio forumers to photograph ethnic neighborhoods.

 

I saw a TV campaign ad the other day promoting even more restriction on legal immigration. "Legal immigrants are taking our jobs," it said. So, I don't expect our immigration policy to become more liberal.

 

The United States as a whole would be losing population if it wasn't for immigrants and the children of immigrants. Most of the population growth is in the border states of Florida, Texas, and California.

 

 

What would be a bit more interesting to see is the % of that city's population that was under 18 in 2000 and then the % under 18 in 2010.

 

The report at the link has some maps showing this, but no percentages (maybe they are in the appendixes.  There's a map for Metros with declining under-15 population 2000-2010 in the suburbs.  Ohio has a few:

 

Akron, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown/Warren all show up on the map as suburban areas with declining under--15 populations.

 

@@@

 

This is fascinating stuff.  What it shows that these metros will soon, as we enter "The Great Die-Off", see deaths start exceeding births (in Dayton it will be around 2020 if not earlier), and the metro populations decline even further since there arent enough births to replacing the dying baby-boomer generation.

 

Why?  Not just declining birth rates but becuase...right now...there are fewer young adults to have kids and form families because they have left the area.  So the lack of people with kids right now is going to cause a lack of a replacement population 25-30-40 years from now. 

 

And I think, with those low senior and pre-senior population growth rates in metros might indicate that weak economies have already caused people to leave, so you already have a smaller middle-age population cohort to move into the pre-senior and senior age ranges. 

Bring in the immigrants.

 

 

Columbus has too many of them for my taste. I want Americans to move here, not refugees on welfare.

^lol?

Bring in the immigrants.

 

 

Columbus has too many of them for my taste. I want Americans to move here, not refugees on welfare.

 

Really? Is that your experience with legal immigrants?? I don't think you understand what it takes to be a legal immigrant in the post-9/11 era. Perhaps you are not aware that many cities want more immigrants to re-energize their urban economies? Do you really not know why?

Go to Linden/ near Cleveland Ave. Great case study on how immigrants supposedly re-energize the city. Lets be real. The only immigrants that re-energize cities are wealthy or educated ones (or who bring with them popular native food lol!)

Go to Linden/ near Cleveland Ave. Great case study on how immigrants supposedly re-energize the city. Lets be real. The only immigrants that re-energize cities are wealthy or educated ones (or who bring with them popular native food lol!)

 

And under immigration laws, those are the only ones who can get into America legally these days.

 

I don't know what the situation is at Cleveland/Linden, but I do know what the situation is in Cleveland's 14th Ward, the most heavily Latino neighborhood in perhaps the entire state. Yes, the crime situation is not what you'd want it to be, but it's a very vibrant Latino neighborhood where lots of immigrants (legal and illegal) have started businesses or helped in the startup of others. It's what one would expect in any neighborhood heavily populated by immigrants at any time in American history. The American immigrant experience, with its challenges and rewards, is alive and well in Cleveland's 14th Ward. You probably wouldn't like it though, and that's very sad for you. But I hope you recognize that it's not much different than any urban neighborhood that's been heavily populated by immigrants at any time in American history. It should not be restrained. It should be celebrated.

All Americans are immigrants unless you're of Native American lineage.

Go to Linden/ near Cleveland Ave. Great case study on how immigrants supposedly re-energize the city. Lets be real. The only immigrants that re-energize cities are wealthy or educated ones (or who bring with them popular native food lol!)

 

Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

Personally, I really like the element a flood of nepalese refugees have brought to my neighborhood.

 

As for the age decline (or incline?) in Ohio, I think it has much more to do with our failures and short-comings from the late 90's and early 00's than what is going on right now.  Point being, I expect it to start to level out.  I don't think we will ever be a mecca for young people in the near future, but we won't be a repelent either.

 

 

Probably one of the main knocks on Columbus' immigrant population is not one of nationality or culture, but of architecture. Immigrants that aren't highly educated tend to settle in inexpensive parts of town as they begin their new lives in the States. In cities with an older form factor, they created those charming ethnic neighborhood streets full of life and unique storefronts and cuisine. Cleveland Ave./Linden is a bunch of strip malls, parking lots, old gas stations and high speed roads -- but that's what's cheap these days. It doesn't make people feel the same as a six square block enclave on a grid system like you see in Cleveland or New York City.

 

"Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

 

That aspect of America has died along with the American dream - perhaps the two are the same thing ultimately. The amount of regression in our country has got to be up there at global historical levels.

I dont think we need immigrants in places like Dayton.

 

The cliche is that "they do work Americans don't want to do".

 

Yeah, if you live "inside the beltway" in DC or Northern VA all the 'Americans' (ie college educated whites and blacks with multiple degrees) are doing the white collar work as engineers, IT, policy analyses, law, etc etc etc, and the immigrants work in the service industry, serving this educated elite meritocracy...they are the ones who work in the kitchens and short-order places and clean the hotels and do the lawn work or act as maids for the busy yuppie elite who work long hours in the office.

 

Well, there is a big enough urban underclass here in Dayton willing to do that work, all that human economic fallout from decades of de-industrialization,  so there is no need for immigrants to come here to take those service industry jobs.  Go into food places or hotels here and its the locals...the blacks and the urban appalachians doing this work.  Sometimes asians with, possibly, Air Force connections (came over after marrying an enlisted man or NCO).

 

There are some Mexicans here but I think they work in grounds keeping...maybe lower level construction work (and we know how THAT business is doing.  Hah!) 

 

The way I see it if manufacturing gets automated and off-shored away, so what if we have a declining population.  Taking the long view here....the die-off of the baby boomers & declining birth-rate combined with this automation/offshoring trend "solves" both the potential labor shortages (which would require more immigration) and technological unemployment problem.  So there might finally----long term---be a match between work and population.

 

 

"Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

 

That aspect of America has died along with the American dream - perhaps the two are the same thing ultimately. The amount of regression in our country has got to be up there at global historical levels.

 

The American dream is dead? 

Go to Linden/ near Cleveland Ave. Great case study on how immigrants supposedly re-energize the city. Lets be real. The only immigrants that re-energize cities are wealthy or educated ones (or who bring with them popular native food lol!)

 

And under immigration laws, those are the only ones who can get into America legally these days.

 

I don't know what the situation is at Cleveland/Linden, but I do know what the situation is in Cleveland's 14th Ward, the most heavily Latino neighborhood in perhaps the entire state. Yes, the crime situation is not what you'd want it to be, but it's a very vibrant Latino neighborhood where lots of immigrants (legal and illegal) have started businesses or helped in the startup of others. It's what one would expect in any neighborhood heavily populated by immigrants at any time in American history. The American immigrant experience, with its challenges and rewards, is alive and well in Cleveland's 14th Ward. You probably wouldn't like it though, and that's very sad for you. But I hope you recognize that it's not much different than any urban neighborhood that's been heavily populated by immigrants at any time in American history. It should not be restrained. It should be celebrated.

 

I think this has been pointed out a few times before, but nearly all of the Latinos (Hispanics? Oh god protect me I can't remember which is correct) in Ward 14 are Puerto Rican and American citizens from birth. 

It's pretty simple.

 

The achievement of economic growth, at the highest level, is a function of two things: increases in the number of working age adults & increases in productivity.

 

Making immigration easier will do nothing but boost the economy.  The entire history of our country stands as proof.

 

On the other hand this anti-immigration sentiment is also nothing new.  The English hated the Germans, who hated the Irish, who hated the Polish etc.. etc...

 

God Bless America, and all those who want to come here.

All Americans are immigrants unless you're of Native American lineage.

 

I don't agree. Cause by that logic, than even "native" Americans are infact immirgrants, granted they immigrated 10,000 years before everyone else. I believe you are only an immigrant if you were born in amother nation and moved here later in life.

You both are correct, depending on how you look at it.

Probably true. But it's also where you will probably find more foreign-born people living in that small area than anywhere else in Greater Cleveland.

 

While immigrants may be willing to take jobs lifelong Americans won't, they also will populate neighborhoods many lifelong Americans won't. And I also think immigrants (or their children) are more willing to take risks with new ideas and businesses than Americans whose ancestors have lived here for decades. And that's why city leaders who want their communities to grow and innovate want immigrants.

Go to Linden/ near Cleveland Ave. Great case study on how immigrants supposedly re-energize the city. Lets be real. The only immigrants that re-energize cities are wealthy or educated ones (or who bring with them popular native food lol!)

 

Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

I still largely believe in that ethic, but I'd also like to have their doctors, their scientists, their engineers, entrepreneurs, architects, lawyers, and executives, too.

 

The U.S. has a fantastic opportunity to increase legal immigration, which would coincidentally work very well for Ohio: automatic citizenship or a fast track to citizenship for every employed foreign-born graduate of an accredited American institution of higher education.  Granted, I say this from no small amount of self-interest, since my girlfriend is an Indian-born graduate student at Akron and already has another graduate degree from there.  Nevertheless, I think the underlying logic is sound notwithstanding my admitted personal bias: Ohio has a large number of colleges and universities.  Almost all of them have significant numbers of foreign exchange students.  Some really do just want to study here and then go home (I was actually stunned to see that phenomenon in action, given the number of my girlfriend's friends that have returned to India), but others would make outstanding American citizens (or resident workers), and we make the process just to get a work visa, let alone a green card or citizenship, a bureaucratic morass.  That has real social and economic consequences.  The populist rhetoric about "American jobs" is detached from reality.  Microsoft, for example, based in the greater Seattle area, has greatly expanded its Vancouver, BC operations because it found it much easier to hire workers there, including technical experts from Asia, than in the U.S.  Those jobs might very well have come to Seattle otherwise.

 

With respect to lower-class/blue-collar immigration, I have more mixed feelings.  Jeffery does have a point about the existing glut of unskilled labor in the marketplace today.  The increasing specialization of white collar industries has given high-skilled white collar workers a degree of pricing power, though competition for elite white collar jobs obviously remains fierce.  In the unskilled labor arena, however, where minimal education is required before the job and minimal training is required on the job, allowing in a flood of unskilled immigrants would simply depress already-depressed wages in that sector.  The most market-friendly way of increasing the bargaining power of unskilled labor is to restrict the supply of unskilled laborers.  (Obviously, we'd much prefer to see such laborers eventually move out of the unskilled labor pool entirely and into the skilled labor pool, where there *is* a shortage, in case you haven't seen what a good mechanic can charge these days.)

 

Maybe Ohio's declining demographics really will simply reach a balance with a reduced number of jobs necessary to perform the essential functions of the economy in the future, due to automation and outsourcing.  If that continues to be the long-term trend, then obviously a lot of those declining cities are going to have to jump on the shrinking cities bandwagon, to the extent they haven't already.

 

"Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

 

That aspect of America has died along with the American dream - perhaps the two are the same thing ultimately. The amount of regression in our country has got to be up there at global historical levels.

 

The American dream is dead? 

 

 

You better believe it. In a sense, the American dream comes down to one thing: your offspring will do better than you. Your sacrifices will result in their having opportunities you never had. 

 

This is now, for all intents and purposes, a joke. The next generation, barring some massive technological revolution that can provide middle class jobs for 10s of millions of Americans, is pretty much screwed for a plethora of reasons. Parents are seeing their children struggle in ways that runs contrary to this American dream. These struggles are pretty much a way of life. Generation Y is to some degree a lost generation, and just imagine what happens to the subsequent ones. Realistically, what do you think is going happen? What are 350 million people going to be doing with their lives - not what will they want to do with their lives, but what exactly will happen? It's not pretty.

 

Our country is being assaulted at every level imaginable, and there is no reason, no indication, outside of blind faith, that we will somehow get back on the right path. Certainly not in this, the next, and near future generations.

 

 

"Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

 

That aspect of America has died along with the American dream - perhaps the two are the same thing ultimately. The amount of regression in our country has got to be up there at global historical levels.

 

The American dream is dead? 

 

 

You better believe it. In a sense, the American dream comes down to one thing: your offspring will do better than you. Your sacrifices will result in their having opportunities you never had. 

 

This is now, for all intents and purposes, a joke. The next generation, barring some massive technological revolution that can provide middle class jobs for 10s of millions of Americans, is pretty much screwed for a plethora of reasons. Parents are seeing their children struggle in ways that runs contrary to this American dream. These struggles are pretty much a way of life. Generation Y is to some degree a lost generation, and just imagine what happens to the subsequent ones. Realistically, what do you think is going happen? What are 350 million people going to be doing with their lives - not what will they want to do with their lives, but what exactly will happen? It's not pretty.

 

Our country is being assaulted at every level imaginable, and there is no reason, no indication, outside of blind faith, that we will somehow get back on the right path. Certainly not in this, the next, and near future generations.

 

 

 

Speak for yourself, the American Dream is alive and great for me, with the exception of marriage equality on a federal level.

Maybe Ohio's declining demographics really will simply reach a balance with a reduced number of jobs necessary to perform the essential functions of the economy in the future, due to automation and outsourcing.  If that continues to be the long-term trend, then obviously a lot of those declining cities are going to have to jump on the shrinking cities bandwagon, to the extent they haven't already.

 

I think there's a lot of denial about this. 

 

Yet, if you look at maybe Akron and Dayton, the economic activity that remains and is adding work are professional, scientific, and technical.  Then there's "Eds and Meds" but, in Daytons case, Feds, too.  In Akrons case I think there is some sort of scientific/chemical engineering specialization around polymers, too?

 

So you see concentrations in this type of emigration, what Graymayre is talking about re science and technology.  I think you see this with those stats I posted about Dayton having a relatively high concenration of high-skilled/high-education immigrants.  More of this would be necessary if there is indeed an increase in demand for technical professionals.

 

A place that is seeing this issue is Germany.

 

They have the demographic problem with declining birthrates and a shrinking German population, so are now tryingh to recruit engineers and maybe other technical professionals.  I can see this becoming the case in Urban Ohio.  Where you'd see a lot of what TiBedeon is talking about...the growth of a poorly educated underclass (representing widespread downward intergenerational mobility), but also shortages of people with high quant skills to staff the science/engineering/IT jobs.

 

One can envision a real viscious cycle developing as population declines, meaning even less services work.  But there will probably be a big demand for terminal care/palliative care/assisted living as we move into an era of the Great Die-Off. 

 

So your going to see much smaller urban areas...population wise.  And after the Great Die-Off less demand for medical and nursing home and hospice type facilities and jobs.

 

 

 

I think its fun to cogitate on this stuff.

 

Its what Stewart Brand (who is one of those baby boomer types) writes about in his book "The Clock of the Long Now" .  The clock is sort of hair-brained in and of itself, but the concept of very long term thinking isn't...fortunatly the book is more about long term thinking not that clock.

 

But in this case im thinking what it would mean for Ohio, for the cities here, as we move into this demographic transition.  We're getting early warnings of it with these census stats. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speak for yourself, the American Dream is alive and great for me, with the exception of marriage equality on a federal level.

 

Boy, did you miss the point of that or what? The American Dream may not be dead, but upward mobility in economic class has grinded to a halt for most Americans. I believe you are more likely to fall a class from your parents, than move up.

 

Even for myself; I will count myself lucky to do as well as my parents, and I am taking over his business.

Well, of course this generation is going to be worse off than the previous generation.  They borrowed from us to pay for their lifestyles.  We'll have to pay for our own and pay for theirs.  There may come a breaking point when enough younger people vote often enough and reliably enough to restructure the debt the previous generation wrote in our name, but I doubt it.  The elderly are massively numerous (and that number is still growing) and vote reliably.  The young may even understand what's being done to them at some level, but many can't bear the thought of reducing elder-care entitlements that they hope to force the next generation to pay for.  Others accept the rhetoric that the previous generation "deserves" the lifestyle that they've borrowed for a generation to fund, and therefore cannot countenance voting inconsistently with that belief, regardless of what the numbers say.

 

Even if the Chinese and our other foreign creditors eventually cut us off, one of the last things that will get cut are the transfer payments from the young to the old.  That is simply a reality of our modern politics.

 

If the previous generation was so concerned with the American Dream of intergenerational progress, they would have collectively committed to living within their own means, rather than all of their own means plus a good slice of their children's.

I dont think we need immigrants in places like Dayton.

 

The cliche is that "they do work Americans don't want to do".

 

Yeah, if you live "inside the beltway" in DC or Northern VA all the 'Americans' (ie college educated whites and blacks with multiple degrees) are doing the white collar work as engineers, IT, policy analyses, law, etc etc etc, and the immigrants work in the service industry, serving this educated elite meritocracy...they are the ones who work in the kitchens and short-order places and clean the hotels and do the lawn work or act as maids for the busy yuppie elite who work long hours in the office.

 

Well, there is a big enough urban underclass here in Dayton willing to do that work, all that human economic fallout from decades of de-industrialization,  so there is no need for immigrants to come here to take those service industry jobs.  Go into food places or hotels here and its the locals...the blacks and the urban appalachians doing this work.  Sometimes asians with, possibly, Air Force connections (came over after marrying an enlisted man or NCO).

 

There are some Mexicans here but I think they work in grounds keeping...maybe lower level construction work (and we know how THAT business is doing.  Hah!) 

 

The way I see it if manufacturing gets automated and off-shored away, so what if we have a declining population.  Taking the long view here....the die-off of the baby boomers & declining birth-rate combined with this automation/offshoring trend "solves" both the potential labor shortages (which would require more immigration) and technological unemployment problem.  So there might finally----long term---be a match between work and population.

 

 

Anybody want to crunch Census numbers on metro areas and immigrants? I suspect that we'd find the cities with the greatest immigration have better economies than those with low immigration.

Anybody want to crunch Census numbers on metro areas and immigrants? I suspect that we'd find the cities with the greatest immigration have better economies than those with low immigration.

 

 

Brookings has this that might be relevant:

 

The Geography of Immigrant Skills

 

...you can infer by this report that the two cities in the lower Midwest that have been doing well, economically (Columbus and Indy) have also been getting more immigrants of all types. 

 

 

The aging of Ohio isn't a surprise to me. Everyday here in Cincinnati, I see a lot of depressed, worn down looking old people (older than 50) wandering the streets and riding the bus. I notice much of the same thing whenever I'm in Cleveland. Both cities have the feel of having significantly older residents than many other large cities. Although I really do not care for Columbus, I will say that the city has a youthful energy to it and a notable presence of younger people that the other two C's lacks.

The aging of Ohio isn't a surprise to me. Everyday here in Cincinnati, I see a lot of depressed, worn down looking old people (older than 50) wandering the streets and riding the bus. I notice much of the same thing whenever I'm in Cleveland. Both cities have the feel of having significantly older residents than many other large cities. Although I really do not care for Columbus, I will say that the city has a youthful energy to it and a notable presence of younger people that the other two C's lacks.

 

And that reason is solely because Ohio State is located in C-Bus.

The aging of Ohio isn't a surprise to me. Everyday here in Cincinnati, I see a lot of depressed, worn down looking old people (older than 50) wandering the streets and riding the bus. I notice much of the same thing whenever I'm in Cleveland. Both cities have the feel of having significantly older residents than many other large cities. Although I really do not care for Columbus, I will say that the city has a youthful energy to it and a notable presence of younger people that the other two C's lacks.

 

And that reason is solely because Ohio State is located in C-Bus.

 

Other Ohio cities have universities, too.  They may be half OSU's size or less, but there are a lot of them.  Akron has both KSU and UA, for example.  It doesn't seem to be enough.

 

The emphasis on the presence of schools can be overstated.  It's important, but not critical (and I say this as a proud Buckeye grad).  Columbus has positioned itself well as a white collar, reasonably forward-looking 21st century city.  If you build the vibe that young professionals are looking for, they will come from out of the state or out of the region while they are still young and mobile.  Chicago has some good schools, but it draws a lot of people from outside Illinois, too.  New York even moreso, notwithstanding the presence of many colleges and universities there, some of them among the world's elite.  I'd much rather see Cleveland produce an additional 40,000 jobs for college graduates per year than an additional 40,000 college graduates per year.

The good ole population paradox. The earth can't really sustain any more added people, but yet it seems so many places are vying to add new residents. The economy seems to run on growth = success, but there aren't enough resources on this planet to sustain it much longer. Cleveland.com had a nice table the other day that shows projected population growth to 2050. That table should be very alarming to anyone. Makes you almost feel glad to live in a region/state with decline/slow growth.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2011/06/india_to_replace_china_as_worl.html

 

Look at Nigeria and Ethopia! Think of the strain on food production/oil consumption this will have. I can only imagine the types of wars and conflicts that would arise from such a population explosion.

 

It just seems inevitable that with a finite number of resources and exponential population growth that the quality of life for the average world person would be hard to increase. Sure, there will be millions of people who will find themselves into a middle class, but millions more finding themselves in poverty.

 

Where exactly is the happy medium in this scenario? What is the world carrying capacity for humans? Even here in Ohio what is the ideal population and age stratification?

What matters is the planet's level and trajectory of economic and technological development, which in turn affects the infrastructure we can build to manage and protect larger populations.  The raw population numbers tell very little.  The carrying capacity of the planet is not static, due to advances in civil engineering, public health, and so on.  Metro New York City could not have held 19 million people in the Revolutionary War era.

 

I sincerely believe that the theoretical maximum carrying capacity of the planet is well over a trillion.  Note "theoretical," not current, actual, developed capacity as of June 30, 2011.  There is enough volume of the building blocks of life here, however, to support a population that size, and enough energy reaching this planet from the sun and existing within the Earth's core to power a civilization that size.  Would it take science-fiction-level advances in environmental engineering to handle the sanitation demands of such a population, in architectural engineering to design the kinds of buildings that would be necessary to house a population that size (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology">arcological</a> structures, for example)?  Absolutely.  But we'd also have billions of people working on designing and building such infrastructure, too.

 

In less sci-fi terms and time horizons, I would never advocate trying to add residents just to add residents.  However, I think that one should generally view population growth as a sign of successful policies and a healthy culture and economy, unless it's a population growth of refugees or other dependent populations.  Metro Cleveland alone could easily add another million people without expanding the land boundaries of the metro area.  Heck, even Cleveland proper alone could probably add a few hundred thousand just by refilling or replacing vacant houses with fully occupied ones and partially restoring household sizes so that each bedroom in the houses it already has actually has an occupied bed in it.