Chapter 3: The End of the Population Explosion
The population explosion has become one of the unquestioned truths of our time. Everyone knows that the planet is experiencing a massive increase in population. Everyone is wrong. The population explosion is ending and by the close of the 21st century, global population will actually decline.
Just as thepopulation explosion defined the 20th century, so the end of the population explosion will define the 21stcentury. Population decline changes how economies function, how wars are waged, which countries are powerful and which countries are weak. Changes will range from how every day life is lived, to the kind of political conflicts we will have, from family values versus gay rights to al Qaeda attacks and American responses.
It has been generally accepted that the population explosion was running amok. Uncontrolled population growth would outstrip scarce resources and devastate the environment. Population growth would require more resources in food, energy and goods which in turn would mean a rise in global warming and other ecological catastrophes. But there was no disagreement on the basic fact that population was growing. That was a given.
We already see a change taking place in the advanced industrial countries. The problem of a “graying population,” is that people are living longer and there are fewer younger workers available to support them in retirement. Europe and Japan are experiencing this problem already, and it is coming to the United States too. But an aging population is only the tip of the iceberg, the first problem presented by the population bust.
People assume that while population growth might be slowing down in Europe, the world’s total population will continue to spiral out of control because of the less developed countries. We have found the opposite is true. Birth rates are plunging everywhere. The advanced industrial countries are on the cutting edge of the decline, but the rest of the world is following right behind them. And this “demographic shift” as it’s called will help shape the 21st century.
Some of the most important advanced countries in the world, like Germany and Russia, are going to lose large percentages of their population. In Europe, for example, today’s population is 728 million people. The United Nations forecasts Europe’s population in 2050 to be between 557 and 653 million, a huge drop.
Traditionally, declining population has meant declining power. For Europe, this will indeed be the case. But for other countries, like the United States, maintaining population level or finding technological ways to augment declining population will be essential if political power is to be retained.
With numbers like this we can no longer assume there will be more people to buy goods and consequently keep production and economic growth increasing. For a short time economic growth in the third world will create more customers. But in the end fewer consumers must directly impact economic growth. If economies must continue to grow, they will be compelled to discover new ways to expand.
Immigration has been a controversial issue. It will continue to be, but the rules will change dramatically. More immigrants will be needed to support an aging population. As the less developed countries become wealthier and population pressures decrease, fewer people will look for opportunities in more affluent countries. We will see this happening at about the time the advanced industrial countries need these immigrants the most. Instead of immigrants trying to get into countries, countries will be trying to convince immigrants to go there. It will be a seller’s market.
It will not be a level playing field. Some countries which are very good at attracting and integrating immigrants will have a massive advantage over those which are not. So the United States gains a huge advantage in the 21st Century over the Europeans, who are struggling with their immigrants and the Japanese, who have almost no immigration. Despite all the noise and friction over the issue of illegal immigrants, the U.S. will have no problem attracting or integrating as many immigrants as it wants and needs to make up for shortfalls.
Family and life patterns will experience enormous changes as a result of the population shift, changes that will create important political schism and redefine political reality. For example, increased life expectancy and decreased births is already dramatically changing the way people marry, have children and divorce. The global struggle between religious traditionalists advocating “family values” and “modernists” engaged in unconventional lifestyles will define both personal patterns of life and international relations.
These are just a few of the effects of population decline that we will be dealing with here and in the coming chapters. What we are seeing in the population bust is a reversal of patterns that have dominated the world for centuries. The single most important driver of the global system—ever increasing numbers of people—is ending. Thereforemany of the rules of the game are about to change.
The Facts
Most people and the media itself are still obsessed with the population explosion. However, among demographers, its end is now the conventional wisdom. Still, an assertion this extreme has to be proven, so we must pause and drill into the numbers a bit, before we consider the consequences. This is a pivotal event in human history and we need to understand why it’s happening.
Let’s start simply. Between about 1750 and 2000, the world’s population grew from about one billion people to about six billion. Between 1950 and 2000, the world’s population doubled, from three billion to six billion. The population of the world was not only growing, the growth rate was accelerating at an amazing rate. If that trajectory ahd continued, the result would be global catastrophe.
But the growth rate has not accelerated. It has actually slowed down dramatically. Between 2000 and 2050, the population will continue to grow, but only by about 50 percent, halving the growth rate of the previous 50 years. In the second half of the century, it becomes more interesting. Again, the population will continue to grow, but only by 10 percent. Statistically this is slamming on the brakes. In fact, some forecasts have indicated that the total human population will decline by 2100.
The most dramatic effect will be seen in the advanced industrial countries, many of which will see remarkable declines in population. The middle tier of countries, like Brazil, South Korea or Algeria will see their population stabilize by mid-century and slowly decline by 2100. Only in the least developed part of the world, like Zaire or Bangladesh, will population continue to increase until 2100, but not nearly as much as over the past hundred years. Any way you look at it, the population explosion is ending.
Let’s begin with a critical number: 2.1. This is the number of children that each woman must have, on average, in order to maintain a generally stable world population. Anything above that number and the population grows; anything below, the population declines. According to the United Nations, women had an average of 4.5 children in 1970. In 2000, that number had dropped to 2.7 children. Remember, this is a world-wide average.That is a dramatic drop and explains why the population continued to grow, but more slowly than before.
The United Nations forecasts that in 2050 (as far out as they predict), the global fertility rate will decline to an average of 2.05 births per woman. That is just below the 2.1 needed for a stable world population. The United Nations has another forecast based on different assumptions where the rate is 1.6 babies per woman. So the United Nations, which has the best data available, is predicting that by the year 2050, population growth will be either stable or declining dramatically. We think the latter is closer to the truth.
The situation is even more interesting if we look at the developed regions of the world, the 44 most advanced countries. In these countries women are currently having an average of 1.6 babies each. The population istherefore already contracting in these countries. The middle tier of countries is down to 2.9 and dropping. Even the least developed countries are down from 6.6 to 5.0 today, and expected to drop to 3.0 by 2050. There is no doubt that birth rates are plunging.The question is why are they plunging? The answer will be found when we understand why the population explosion occurred in the first place, because in a certain sense, the population explosion aborted itself.
There were two clear causes for the population explosion that were equally significant. First, there was the decline in infant mortality and second was the increase of life expectancy. Both were the result ofmodern medicine, the availability of more food, and the introduction of basic public health measures that began in the late 18th century and have continued until today.
There are no really good statistics on fertility rates in 1800 but the best estimates are between 6.5 and 8.0 children per woman on average. Women in Europe in 1800 were having the same number of babies as women in Bangladesh are having today, yet the population wasn’t growing. Most children born in 1800 didn’t live long enough to reproduce. Since the 2.1 rule still held, out of 8 children born, 6 died before the age of 12.
Medicine, food and hygiene dramatically reduced the number of infant and childhood deaths, until by late in the 19th century, most children survived to have their own children. Even though infant mortality declined, family patterns did not shift. People were having the same number of babies as before. Traditionally, people wanted to have as many babies as possible.
There were reasons for this. First, lets face the fact that people like to have sex and sex without birth control makes babies—and there was no birth control. But people didn’t mind having a lot of children because children were the basis of wealth.In agricultural society, every pair of hands produces wealth. You don’t have to be able to read or program computers to weed, seed or harvest.Children were also the basis for retirement, if someone lived long enough to have an old age. There was no social security but your children took care of you. Part of this was custom, but part of it was reality. The father owned the land or had the right to farm it. The child needed to have access to the land to live. The father could dictate policy.
As children brought the family prosperity and retirement income the major responsibility of the woman was to produce as many children as possible. If women had children and if they both survived childbirth, the family as a whole was better off. This was a matter of luck, but it was a chance worth taking from the standpoint of families, and of the men who dominated them. Between lust and greed, children were coming into the world.
Habits are hard to change. When families moved into the cities, children were still valuable assets. Parents could send them to work in primitive factories at the age of six, and take their pay. In early industrial society factories didn’t need much more skilled workers than did farm labor. But as factories became more complex, they had less use for six year olds. Soon they needed some education from their workers. Later they needed MBAs.
As the sophistication of industrialism advanced the economic value of children declined. In order to continue being economically useful, children had to go to school to learn. Rather than adding to family income, they consumed family income. Children had to be clothed, fed and sheltered, and over time the amount of education they needed increased dramatically, until today, many “children” go to school until their mid-20s and still have not earned a dime.
The tendency to have as many babies as possible continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of our grandparents come from families that had ten children. A couple of generations previously if you had ten children you’d be lucky if three of them survived. Now, they were almost all surviving. However in the economy of 1900, they could all head out and find work by the time they were reached puberty. And that’s what most of them did.
Ten children in 18th century France might have been a godsend. Ten Children in late 19th century France might have been a burden. Ten Children in late 20th century France would be a catastrophe. It took a while for reality to sink in but eventually it became clear that most children wouldn’t die and that children were extremely expensive to raise. Therefore, people started having a lot fewer children, more for pleasure for the pleasure of having them than for economic expectations. Medical advances such as birth control helped achieve this, but the sheer cost of having and raising children drove the decline in birth rate. Children went from being producers of wealth to the most conspicuous form of consumption. Parents began satisfying their need for nurturing with one child, rather than ten.
Now let’s consider life expectancy. After all, the longer people live the more people there will be at any given time. Life expectancy surged at the same time infant mortality declined. In 1800, estimated life expectancy in Europe and he United Stateswas about 40 years. In 2000 it waspushing 80 years. Life expectancy has, in effect doubled over 200 years, and has surged the population as much as the decline in infant mortality.
Continued growth in life expectancy is probable, but very few people anticipate another doubling. In the advanced industrial world, the UN projects a growth from 76 years in 2000 to 82 years in 2050. In the poorest countries it will increase from 51 to 66. While this is growth, it is not geometric growth and it, too, is tapering off. This also reduces population growth.
Now we can see why the population expanded so massively over the past 200 years but also why its expansion ending. It is quite simple. When children turned from being workers bringing in wealth to being enormously expensive hobbies, people reduced the number of children they were having. So long as children are consumers, people will have fewer of them. The process that took place in the advanced industrial world is now underway as well in the least developed countries. Having ten children in Sao Paolo is the surest path to economic suicide. It may take several generations to break the habit, but the habit will be broken. And it won’t return while the length and cost of educating a child for the modern work force continues to rise. Between declining birth rate and slowing increases in life expectancy, the population has to end.
The Population Bust and the Way We Live
What does this have to do with international power in the 21st century? The population bust affects nations as we will see in later chapters. But it also effects the life cycles of people within these nations. Lower populations affect everything from the number of troops that can fight in a war to how many people there are in the work force to internal political conflicts. The process we are talking about will change more than the number of people in a country. It will change how those people live and therefore how those countries behave.
Let’s start with three core facts. Life expectancy is moving toward high of 80 years in the advanced industrial world; the number of children women have is declining and it takes longer and longer to become educated. A college education is now considered the minimum for social and economic success in the advanced countries. Most people graduate from college at 22. Add in law or graduate school, and people are entering the work force in their mid-twenties. Not everyone follows this pattern of course, but a sizeable portion of the population does and it includes most of those who will be part of the political and economic leadership of the country.
This has shifted marriage patterns dramatically. People are putting off marriage longer and are having children even later. They are also becoming economically productive at a much later age. Let’s consider this effect on women. Two hundred years ago, women started having children in their early teens. Women continued having children, nurturing them and frequently burying them until they themselves died. It was necessary for the family’s well-being and for society. Having and raising children was what women did for most of their lives.
In the 21st century this whole pattern changes. Assuming that a woman reaches puberty at age 13 and enters menopause at age 50, she will live twice as long as her ancestors and will for over half her life be incapable of reproduction. Let’s assume a woman has two children. She will spend only one and half years being pregnant, which is less than 2 percent of her life. Now assume a fairly common pattern, which is that the woman will have these two children three years apart, and that each child enters school at the age of five and that she returns to work outside the home when the oldest starts school.