Federation Populatoin Levels

[TrailerParkJawa]

If human population doubles every 30 years then there'll be over 24 trillion by TNG era. If there is no catastraphic war or plague.
I think the show implies closer to 24 billion though.

The Star Trek timeline does include at least one and possibly two or more catastrophic wars. It is not entirely clear if the Eugenics Wars were the direct precursor to the nuclear exchange that brought on the "post-atomic horror" that Picard referred to as being the model for Q's kangaroo court, or if it might not have been all part of the same tangled snarl of alternate history. Whichever it was, though, the human species obviously suffered a definite population drop.

Another consideration is that the human population does not necessarily have to double every 30 years. If the world of the Federation is as stable and comfortable for its citizens as it is made out to be, just maintaining a stable population base might be difficult. If a child is nearly certain to survive to reproductive age, and if that child is not needed as cheap labor on the family farm, there would be no real incentive to have more than one or two children, or an average of 1.5 children per couple. Averaging that out to the total population and assuming that all humans in the Federation enter into relationships for the sake of reproduction, one would end up with a replacement rate of just 0.75 offspring per capita. The Federation could actually be facing a long-term population crunch. There is just no incentive to have more children, unless one brings in religious reasons to have many children (unlikely in the Federation) or a sense of duty to the state (also unlikely in the Federation and far too reminiscent of Hitler's medals for "hero mothers" who received medals based on the number of children they produced).

In fact, if the Federation achievements of free housing, clothing and food for all were around for any length of time prior to the era of TNG, the population likely achieved some steady-state level. Colonists on new worlds might well have more children than average for the first few generations, but soon they would settle down to the same replacement-oriented birth rate as on Earth and other long-settled worlds. Some return mirgration of colonist children to Earth and the other long-settled worlds could serve to boost the flagging population levels there.

The above is strongly supported (if only in my mind) by the fact that shots of Earth urban and rural areas, especially in the TNG, DS9 and Voyager eras, appeared to show a lightly populated world in which even the urban areas are far from crowded, and are very parklike.

Patrick did a better job than I did of explaining why I think the Federation is probably a zero growth society. Question is how long has it been like this? And how are they colonizing new planets when the average citizen only having enough kids to replace themselves.

[SPOOFE]

Another thing to remember is that human population growth would be stymied by the constant (relatively) stream of new admissions into the Federation. Population growth has long been dictated by "need"... that is, well-developed countries with a comfortable living (such as the US) have a lower population growth (ours is quite low). Third-world countries, however, have ballooning populationg growths.

In the Federation, the "need" for any new population would be filled by aliens... and as such, human population growth would be negligible.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

At the risk of being chided for a comparison to Star Wars in the Pure Star Trek forum....

It would appear that Gilad Pellaeon's status as the most excruciatingly slow riser-through-the-ranks has been usurped. He, at least, was promoted from captain to vice-admiral in his fiftieth year of service. It would appear that Jean-Luc Picard has spent nearly as much time as a captain as Pellaeon had spent in naval service, in all grades, by the time he finally received his flag.

Publius

Maybe, maybe not. Pellaeon may have advanced 4 ranks in an instant after HTTE (which marked his 50th year of Imperial service,) but we also have to remember that Picard actually got the Stargazer at 28 (and for some reason held the position for 20 years till Stargazer got busted) and was apparently put in a some kinda staff job for eight years before he gets the E-D.

Meanwhile, Pellaeon's career was a crawl in comparison. He only got his captaincy at Endor (which was about his 45th year of service.) And that wasn't even a proper captaincy - he merely took over from his dead CO and no one could find a replacement for him.

Picard's delay in making the jump from captaincy to flag rank can be attributed to a reluctance to leave a ship-level commnad. Pelleaon's can only be attributed to a less than brilliant career...

I suspect the utter lack of experienced leaders by the post Thrawn era was the real reason for Pellaeon's fast promotion, not particular competence...

[Jetfire]

Another thing to consider is how many human colonies are out there.

Earth itself (and probably Mars and Luna) likely have pretty stable populations, if not decreasing populations, but the colonies out there all seemed to very much be in a growth mode. (at least from what I remember, most colonies we have seen have had kids in them somewhere, which is more than we usually see for Earth families).

The colonies are probably the closest thing (growth wise) to the 3rd World countries we have today.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

45th year of service as of Endor? The Empire was 45 years old!

[Galaxy]

Damn SPOOFE i think you're misinformed about United States population growth.

[Galaxy]

i thought i mentioned the misinformed part.

[Gil Hamilton]

i thought i mentioned the misinformed part.

Since I'm aware you are a troll, I don't know why I am bothering, but no you didn't. You just told him that he was misinformed but never said where. As it happens, he's right, the birth rate as compared to death rate in Western nations is actually shrinking while in 3rd world nations it's booming.

[Alyeska]

Indeed. The average US family has 1.9 kids. That is below replacement level IIRC. The only reason the US population keeps growing is because of imigration.

[Gandalf]

In TWOK, they were adressing problems of overpopulation.

[Setesh]

In TWOK, they were adressing problems of overpopulation.

True, mostly because at the time the number of uninhabited M-class planets was very small. Virtually every M-class they came across in TOS was either inhabited (by natives ot colonists) or had something wrong with it that made it unappealing.

IIRC the vast majority of colonies the Ent-D comes across are 50yr old or less and beyond the federation borders in the Kirk-era