Maybe you can clear something up for me. In the past year or so, I've seen one or two articles about rises in early puberty, for example, this article: link. If this is actually a thing and it seems like it might be, is it significant enough to (eventually) have an effect on those incremental stages of delayed procreation that your paper talks about?
Early puberty may be being caused by abundance. Our abundance makes our biology 'think': "you've got all this new found stable energy! Why aren't you using it to maximize biological fitness! Have kids, have kids quicker! Have more of them!" If we weren't bio-cultural creatures - that is exactly what would happen. Whenever a species experiences a random windfall of energy - they reproduce like crazy until their population crashes. However, what we are seeing throughout the developed world is a decline in fertility. A tremendous decline. The world fertility rate is at or below 2.4. Over 90 countries are below 2 fertility rate (replacement level is 2.1). There are over 30 countries with below 1.5 fertility rate using 2013 statistics. In my explanation, what is happening is that cultural reproduction is supplanting biological reproduction. We are making culturally mediated decisions to not have kids. If we take my modified version of life history theory to account for cultural evolution, this can be easily explained. The more abundance we have and the longer we live, the less likely we are to biologically reproduce. If we take that to its logical extreme, a world of energy abundance and a world of radical life extension, will be a world without very many - if any - biological offspring.
What about these fertility programs run by governments? For example, I know that Japan and Singapore (and maybe Russia?) have created incentives to get their citizens to have kids, such as tax breaks and government support. Right now these programs don't really seem to have much traction, but let's say that job creation around the world remains sluggish and automation becomes more and more commonplace. These programs might begin to be a kind of "labor" (no pun intended, seriously) for a portion of the populace, no? I guess what I'm really getting at is, how unshakable do view this trend in cultural reproduction?
This view requires the continuation of two trends that were ignited with the Industrial Revolution (which caused the demograhic transition), that being: more energy, and longer lives. These two features fundamentally rupture human life history - and I'm arguing that it is all part of a fourth major primate life history transition (in my view particularly, I view this as one massive transition out of the animal kingdom, but that is for another paper). So, if we get abundant energy globally (which is unlikely short-term, but likely between 2050-2075), and if we extend our life expectancy beyond 80 (which is likely before 2050), than we will see cultural reproduction come to pre-dominate completely over biological reproduction (according to the Life History Theory I detail in the paper). Government programs to stop this will end in failure. The only way they could force people to reproduce is to control their lives with force - and that won't go down in a world with abundant energy (and a global brain). Governments will also worry about this less when radical life extension moves from theory to practical reality.I guess what I'm really getting at is, how unshakable do view this trend in cultural reproduction?
I was really envisioning less of a government forcing a population into re-population and more of a circumstance where people might find the programs appealing as in, "there are no jobs, but people can 'work' for the government by increasing the population in exchange for wages". I can see how repopulation might be less of an issue in a world with radical life extension, though I imagine that new problems would arise in such a society.Government programs to stop this will end in failure. The only way they could force people to reproduce is to control their lives with force - and that won't go down in a world with abundant energy (and a global brain).
Abundant energy = jobs completely redefined (i.e., you won't necessarily need a "job"). The early stages of a transition towards this type of new economy (which are still blurry), should be instituted with a universal basic income (UBI). Basically, we should have enough energy to make sure that no one goes without shelter, food, water, etc. This is possible now - if we had competent governments this would already be happening - but with abundant energy this would certainly happen. There are always problems. The point of this paper (as stated in the paper) is to identify the non-problems - one of the biggest being - overpopulation as a result of radical life extension."there are no jobs, but people can 'work' for the government by increasing the population in exchange for wages".
I can see how repopulation might be less of an issue in a world with radical life extension, though I imagine that new problems would arise in such a society.