[HPforGrownups] Re:Wizard Population and Other Schools

[alicit at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 47164

In a message dated 11/25/2002 4:31:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
kela_bit at netvision.net.il writes:

> You have got to remember, that wizards live by far more then muggles. 
> The average muggle lives about 70-80 years.  Wizards, as we know, live 
> far more.  How much more?  I can only guess, but my guess is they live 
> to be about 200. That would mean that their population would be three 
> times as much as the population a muggle school as big as Hogwarts 
> emits.  e.g. My home town has three schools about the size of Hogwarts 
> each.  My home town has about 600,000 people in it (I think, I'm not 
> sure...  Naama2486, am I right?).  That means each school here emits 
> about 200,000 people.  Hogwarts would thus emit 3 times more - 600,000 
> people.  It's all Math.
> 

Ah-hah! you have brought me to the point I was going to make all along, which 
actually goes against my own belief (that there is a large population).

The fact that wizards live longer than muggles actually would lend itself to 
the small student population more than the large one.  The shorter a person's 
life is likely to be, the younger they will be when they have children.  i.e. 
in olden days, a woman would be in her teens when she married and had 
children, now the norm is mid-to-late twenties.  It would make sense that 
wizards would not have children until they were in their 30-40's, which is 
about a quarter of their lifespan, which correlates to the muggle world.

Case in point: the Weasleys.  I know they would be a more likely candidate 
for the large population theory, but, if we can take most of the other 
hogwarts student's one-or-two child upbringings as the norm, they fit.  Most 
of what we can see in the canon leads us to believe that Molly and Arthur are 
quite a bit older than the marauders/snape and company.  Anyway, I do not 
believe it would be unresonable to think that they were into their thirties 
when they started their little brood.  Then again, this is not the basis of 
my little theory, so I am probably off on the Weasley example, but that is 
just an example.

Just a bit of a thought there...

-Scheherazade


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