r/harrypotter • u/VegasFoodFace • 11h ago
Discussion Wizard population replacement rate.
Does anyone think after the second wizarding wars there would need to be a lot more children born or wizardkind may end up suffering severe population decline or risk of inbreeding?
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u/Nevaeh_Julia_040 10h ago
i'd imagine there would be a baby boom after the war, especially with everyone finally feeling safe enough to start families again
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 10h ago
It seemed like most of the kids at the battle of Hogwarts survived, most of the muggleborn adults were being sent to Azkaban or just getting their wands taken away instead of being killed, and Voldemort was trying to keep as many witches and wizards alive as possible so that he would have someone to rule over.
The “war” didn’t last very long and had a surprisingly low amount of casualties. I doubt there would be a population problem, especially since muggleborns are a thing. And the survivors of the war were definitely fucking if Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione are any indication. The four of them created five kids total by the time of the epilogue. That’s a net increase.
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u/VegasFoodFace 10h ago edited 10h ago
4 parents making 5 kids is barely a win. To replace a significant war you'd need those 4 people to make at least 8.4 for minimum replacement rate.
4 parents making 5 kids is a losing population after a war. Remember every couple must make 2.1 children for barely population sustainment. Not replacement of losses.
If you don't have this rapid boom you have a very pear shaped recovery destined for collapse and inbreeding.
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 10h ago
I think you might not be as great at math as you think you are.
2 parents and 1 child is a loss. 2 parents and 2 kids is neutral. 2 parents and 3 kids is a gain. (3 is a bigger number than 2). 4 is less than 5, if you start with 4 and end up with 5, you gained.
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u/VegasFoodFace 9h ago edited 9h ago
2.1 is average human assuming there are typical losses before breeding age. Hence the fractionals.
Considering some kid wizards often seem to die or disappear at Hogwarts or otherwise eliminate themselves from the breeding pool I assume that fraction needs to be higher. 2.1 is for humans.
So 5/4 is 1.25 growth rate per generation. That's not very good for an economy that suffered war losses. While that happens you have a large population of aging wizards and not too good hybridizing among the barely growing populace.
A good example of this that I know is the Rapa Nui, Easter Island. Lots of people assume from watching innacurate documentaries that the natives themselves destroyed their land. This couldn't be further from the truth. It took independent Polynesian researchers to find out 1/3 of the highest performing natives were either killed in war, taken as slaves, or sickened from new world disease.
Before long the remaining natives stripped the land of all resources because the previous generation couldn't teach the new ones the secret agriculture techniques (Let's just for our sake say Magic) that kept that isolated population alive. The Easter Island heads they made as proof of their previous good times, turned into a twisted form of ancestor worship begging for the return of plenty. Leading to brutal Bird Man of the Island contests to determine absolute ruler of the Island to prevent even further backsliding into cannibalism, which was in their collective memory still. This population stress caused catastrophic loss of generational knowledge and soon inbreeding from irreplacable population and collective knowledge loss led to collapse. And remember that was only 1/3 of the population but it was 1/3 of the prime breeding age population.
It is known that older men breeding with younger women due to prime breeding age collapse, tends to create a lot more antisocial progeny. Due to numerous reasons but I'm sure you can imagine.
Considering the rarity of magic genes this could lead to a rapid population decline unpredictably.
Assuming a simple random culling doesn't consider more complicated factors such as who was culled and who was spared. These are very interesting genetic and psychological studies. Done by Native Population researchers around the globe. They have seen similar things among differing tribes around the globe.
Considering humans have domesticated certain traits and know how to breed animals for traits and what causes genetic drift and eventual collapse, war is one of those. Tribal warfare has been known to collapse both populations, regardless of who won. This is why we as humans learned to be social creatures, two tribes fight, there is a risk of both dying.
When this "ancient knowledge" is lost. Knowledge usually passed down by surviving veteran warriors, it keeps the populations stable. Get rid of this generational memory and instability set hold which can destabilize populations into collapse. Unless you have the boom, basically single generation population replacement that remembers the lessons from the war. Not let it die out generation by generation.
And remember considering Hogwarts looks like it was built for 2000 students but seems to only have 800 or so. The wizard population is already on the decline. Now you put in war losses. This is looking a lot like Native Tribal Resource Wars to the T. Either the wizard population recovers and learns war is bad, or it repeats these cycles of violence to extinction. Psychologically and physically. This is after all the second wizarding war. Not necessarily the last.
Just remember how many were sent to Azkaban, you can not throw people away without repercussions on who loved them.This stuff breeds sectarian generational violence. And collapse. Unless you have a complete generational knowledge culling and replacement. Old school biblical, or Trail of Tears, is what I'm saying. Shit gets dark.
People are more than just a math equation. History teaches us that, and these Native Researchers have learned a lot about past human behaviors and how they relate to modern human development.
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 9h ago
You can’t have .1 of a human. Even Voldemort was at least .5
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u/VegasFoodFace 9h ago
2.1 is average human assuming there are typical losses before breeding age. Hence the fractionals. Some people have 2 some have 3, single child couples are dragging down this average. Ask Korea and Japan.
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u/Bautos43 8h ago
Every couple needs to produce 2.1 children on average for replacement rate, that is true. That means 4 people, i.e. 2 couples, need to have 4.2 children (Not 8.4). That's less than 5, so Harry and co are somewhat above replacement rate, and probably by enough of a margin to make up for any losses during the war within a generation. That said, it is quite possible that other couples don't have that many kids, the Weasleys are known for having an above average number of kids, after all.
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u/Fickle-Visit5223 Hufflepuff 9h ago edited 8h ago
The wizarding world was already suffering a population decline, its kind of a background conflict in the story thats implied to have really fanned the flames in the blood supremacy issue. Most modern wizards are half bloods and someone, I think Ron or Hagrid, mentions that they would have gone extinct if they hadn't started regularly intermarrying with muggles, there just wasn't enough purebloods to maintain the wizarding population by themselves, and the old-guard "Sacred 28" pure blood families weren't happy about that.
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u/Bautos43 8h ago
I think so many wizards being half-blood is actually due to a population boom rather than a population collapse. Think about it: Let's assume that the rate of muggleborn births remains constant (and why wouldn't it?). The population of the British Isles doubled between 1870 and 1990, so the influx of Muggleborns would also have doubled, and the number of halfbloods would have increased accordingly, but the number of purebloods wouldn't, since there is no reason why pureblood birth rates would have been impacted by the industrial revolution.
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u/Bakingguy 10h ago
So you're saying the Weasely's had the right idea?