The New Worlds Patreon moves into the final month of the year — the calendar year, that is. Since I began my Patreon in March of 2017, the New Worlds New Year comes at the end of February. 🙂 My lovely patrons have voted, and this month’s subject begins with demographics: the makeup of a given society, and (as part and parcel of that) the idea of “life expectancy at birth,” which is a number many people seem to misunderstand. Comment over there!

And it seems like a good time to mention again that all of this, the weekly essays and the yearly collections, is made possible by the steadfast support of my patrons. I’ve said before that this is a project I’d wanted to tackle for years, only I couldn’t figure out how to break it down into manageable pieces; it took this “one bite per week” approach to make it feasible. So if you’ve been enjoying the essays, please consider either becoming a patron, or promoting New Worlds to your own friends and social circles.