The other population crisis

From China to Italy to India - the world is facing a baby drought. What will falling numbers mean for the globe?

Robin McKie
Sunday September 26, 2004
The Observer

It is an unquestioned axiom that has dominated international politics for decades, a shibboleth undented by the passage of time. We live in an overcrowded world teeming with billions of humans who are destined to suffocate our cities and squeeze our planet of its precious resources.


Our species is inexorably wrecking Earth: flooding valleys, cutting down forests and destroying the habitats of animals and plants faster than scientists can classify them. Our future is destined to be nasty, brutish and cramped.


Or is it? Population analysts have suddenly started to question the 'self-evident' truth that we are destined to drown under our own weight. Yes, populations will still rise, but not nearly as steeply as once feared or for so long. We can even envisage the day, in the not too distant future, when they will decline.


As evidence, statisticians point to a simple, stark fact: people are having fewer and fewer children. In the 1970s global fertility rates stood at about six children per woman. Today the average is 2.9 - and falling. Such a rate will still see the world's population rise to 9 billion by 2050, an increase of 50 per cent on today's figure. That is not good news for the planet, but it is far less alarming than the projections of 15 billion that were once being made. More to the point, statisticians predict that, after 2050, the number of humans will go down, the first major long-term fall since the Black Death.


As sociologist Ben Wattenberg states in his book, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future: 'Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Plague, have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so low, for so long, in so many places.'

So the urging by Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt that it is now the patriotic duty of the nation's women to have children makes some sense. As she told the CBI last week: 'We won't have a workforce if people do not have children.'


She has a point. By 2050 we will have stopped replacing ourselves with enough youngsters. At present the median age of people on this planet is 26; within 100 years, if current trends continue, that will have doubled. More and more old people will have to be supported by fewer and fewer young people. Populations will go down and also become badly unbalanced. Today 10 per cent of the world's population is 60 years or over, a figure set to rise to more than a third by 2100.
Such trends raise two key questions. Why has the rise in world populations started to die out so dramatically? And what will be the consequences of this decline?
Answers to the first depend a great deal on locality.

'In Europe, women have their own career options,' said Ros Davies of Interact Worldwide, which campaigns on population issues. 'They are no longer considered failures if they do not acquire husbands and produce children in their twenties or thirties; they are judged by their careers. That has taken a substantial number out of the pool of potential mothers.'


In addition, women who do take partners face the problem of the cost of having a child. Parents have all sorts of aspirations for their offspring, choices not available to past generations but which cost money - for example, further education and travel. In Britain issues such as tuition fees are only going to add to that pressure, so that men and women will have only one or two children, when they might have had three or four a couple of decades ago.


The idea that prosperity discourages childbearing is backed by Wattenberg: 'Capitalism is the best contraception.' Hence Europe's birth rate, which varies from 1.8 per woman in France and Ireland to 1.2 in Italy and Germany. Britain comes in at 1.7, well above the average of 1.4. However, given that a country needs a birth rate of 2.1 to maintain its numbers, it is not hard to see that in the long term there are likely to be far fewer Europeans. By the middle of the century western Europe's population could be dropping by several million a year as today's young adults reach old age, die, and are not replaced.


The causes of declining numbers in other countries are more alarming. Russia's population is dropping by almost 750,000 people a year, a phenomenon described by President Putin as 'a national crisis.' The causes are alcoholism, breakdown of the public health service and industrial pollution that has had a disastrous effect on sperm counts of Russian men.


In China, different factors come into play. The state enforces strict quotas of offspring numbers and it is expected that its population will peak at 1.5 billion by 2019 then go into steep decline. Some analysts suggest the country could lose 20 to 30 per cent of its population every generation.


Then there is the exodus from the countryside, a trek happening across the globe. According to UN figures last week, half the world's population will have urban homes by 2007. But in cities a child becomes a cost rather than an asset for helping to work the land, and again pressures mount for people to cut down the size of their families.
Other countries with birth rates below replacement level include Australia, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico and the industrial 'tiger' nations of South East Asia such as Singapore and Taiwan. On the other hand, there are still nations - mainly in Africa and the Middle East - where fertility rates remain high. According to the UN, the population of the Middle East will double over the next 20 years. Saudi Arabia has a fertility rate of 5.7; in Yemen it is 7.2; in Palestine 5.9.


More surprising is the case of Africa. Despite Aids, which kills millions of young Africans every year, population numbers will continue to rise - except for a band of Mediterranean nations, including Libya and Egypt,and South Africa at the other end of the continent. In Europe, only Albania and Kosovo are kicking the trend for reduced fertility rates. The impact of all this is harder to gauge. Slight population movements are relatively easy to deal with; huge fluctuations pose serious problems. In Europe, demographers forecast a major drop in the numbers who will work and earn money, while the population of older people - who need support and help - will soar. In China, the prob lem is worse. Most young Chinese adults have no brothers or sisters and face the prospect of having to care for two parents and four grandparents on their own. Pensions and incomes are simply not able to rise fast enough to deal with the crisis.


'There are people who cling to the hope that you can have a vibrant economy without a growing population, but mainstream economists are pessimistic,' says Philip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity, in the current issue of Newsweek.


Reduced human numbers can only be good for the planet in the long term. Until we halt our spread, the destruction of the last great wildernesses, such as the Amazon, will continue. Just after the last Ice Age, there were only a few hundred thousand humans on Earth. Since then the population has grown ten thousandfold. Such a growth rate is bound to lead us into an uncertain future. The next 50 years will determine how unstable the coming decades are going to be.

That is a worry

I think they should make having a baby easier for people.

women will always be required to work, but I think working life should be balanced. I remember in Niger women who worked had the choice to be very flexible with hours, extended family help etc.

At the time being the average household in Europeneeds two wages to lead a comfortable life,( open to subjective view)therefore that will affect the number of kids.

Already I am starting to worry to how I will be able to send my kids to university, which means I am looking to have 2 only.

I am come from a small family were it is just me and my sister, and I know the finanical and emotional burden we put our parents through

BUT

MAYBE

we need to stop and think that it is not a financial burden, but instead peoples lifestyle has changed, we want nice cars (two), holidays, latest technology big houses that requires TWO salaries.

Both of my grandparents had 10 kids each, and they survived well, except that they did not need two BMW's.

I thought you were never going to get married Sooofresh ?

No marriage = no kids

right?

sorry

I did not know that I have to talk to you first before I make any major decisons.

now please do contribute something, other than following me around every topicniceone.gif

Hey soofresh.........don't you think it is too early to be thinking about that.You never know, you may marry a millionaire or you may become a millionare yourself, and if so you would be able to afford the school fees. I am sure you have visions and targets, so it is a little bit too early to be thinking about whether you will be able to send your children to University or not. Not too early to think about how many you want to have, but to be thinking about theUniversity school fees is just too early babe.