Dear Colleague:
As the world welcomes its 6.5 billionth inhabitant, most experts and the
media continue to ignore the birth dearth in favor of the overpopulation
myth.
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
24 March 2006
Vol. 8 / No. 12
6.5 Billion and Rising-For a Time
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
The experts do not agree when the Earth's population reached 6.5 billion,
but they generally agree that it has. The U.S. Census Bureau chose
February 25, 2006, but the United Nations Population Division (UNDP) had
picked July 2005. The People's Daily of China's Communist Party, intent
on reducing the population of the world's largest nation by any means
necessary, went with Dec. 19, 2005. Both the UN and Census Bureau believe
world population will continue to rise, with the UN predicting 9.1 billion
by 2050 and the bureau 9.2 billion. It is taken as divinely revealed
dogma by the media and the experts its doyens choose to have interviewed
that this population growth should cause us all grave concern.
First of all, population growth has been slowing rapidly and this trend
will continue. In recent decades, according to the Census Bureau, world
population growth as a percentage hit a high in 1962 and 1963 at 2.19% and
has been in long-term decline ever since. It was only 1.15% last year and
is projected to be 0.46% in 2049. Population growth in absolute numbers
is already dropping despite the increase in total world population. That
number peaked in 1989, when the world added a net 88 million new souls,
declined to 74.4 million last year, and will be only 42.2 million in 2049
despite the increase in total population to over 9 billion. Of course,
since the experts believe life expectancy will continue its rise, this
drop in population growth will come from an astounding further decline in
families and births to extend the one the world has already seen since the
'60s.
Historically, population experts have tended to overestimate their
numbers, so it is likely that these numbers will be even lower than
currently projected. The population controllers have won: The world has
long been on the path to population decline and shows no signs of
deviating from it. If AIDS is not brought under control, or if other rosy
assumptions do not pan out, the Earth's demographic future could resemble
UNDP's "low variant" projection: A peak at approximately 7.8 billion
around 2040 and decline after that. One of five people in the world could
over 65 by 2050 if this happens. UNDP assumes that fertility rates in
Europe will rise to 1.85 children per woman and not drop below that
elsewhere in the world despite long-term downward trends-an arbitrary
assumption that means its projections tend to overinflation.
Some will find population decline a cause for celebration. But keep this
in mind: The world's population will age rapidly in that time, due to the
few births. Most of the world, including its poor nations, will develop
the same massive social security and health care problems that
increasingly plague fast-aging First World nations in Western Europe and
North America as well as Japan. The UNDP projects the median age of the
world will go from 28 today to 38 by 2050. The proportion of the
population over 65 will go from 7.4% to 16.1%, the oldest old-those over
80, who cannot work and usually require daily if not constant care from
others-will more than triple from 1.3% to 4.3%. That's a big bill for any
society. At the same time, the proportion of the population of productive
working age, defined as between ages 15 and 64, will go from 64.5% to
63.7%, while the next generation-those under 4-will go from 9.5% to a
crippling 6.7%.
A Sep. 8, 2005 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs press release
said, "The reductions of fertility that developing countries began to
experience in the 1970s and 1980s have opened up a 'window of opportunity'
by producing reductions in the share of children in the population and
increasing the proportions of persons of working age, says a new report
issued today. Provided jobs are available for the rising number of
workers, developing countries can reap the benefits of the increased
production and the lower costs associated with the decreasing proportion
of dependent children."
This is true enough. But what happens when all those dependent-free
workers retire? What then? That's why the United States has an unfunded
Social Security liability of $11 trillion and an unfunded Medicare and
Medicaid liability of $68 trillion.
Despite decades of overpopulation hysteria, some experts this time around
are not making sky-falling predictions about a world of 9 billion, even if
they don't highlight the problems that will come with an aging world. In
February 2005, when she announced the UNDP's prediction of 6.5 billion by
July, UNDP Director Dr. Hania Zlotnick said, "It is going to be a strain
on the world, but it seems feasible. It doesn't seem that there is a
crisis coming. That doesn't mean that some countries are not facing a
crisis."
She also noted that her agency's standard "medium variant" projections
depend on the global AIDS pandemic coming under control, a questionable
postulate. "We cannot emphasize enough the huge impact of this disease,"
she said. "We also have to emphasize that these projections in the long
term are assuming that humanity is going to have success in combating the
spread of this disease, by mostly behavioral change and prevention."
The 1970s produced a lot of wrongheaded predictions: overpopulation
catastrophe, the coming ice age, feminism's ability to make people
happier, the Soviet Union's staying power, and good taste's permanent
passing. The concern is not overpopulation, but a birth dearth. That's
why the 6.5 billion figure is nothing to worry about, but the aging world
is. At the very least, experts and the media should now promote higher
birthrates as vigorously as they promoted population control, and there
has been a small counter-cultural trend in that direction with Ben
Wattenberg, Phillip Longman, Mark Steyn, PRI, and others trying to give
more attention to this issue. That trend needs to grow as rapidly as a
newborn child.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
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Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
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Website: www.pop.org
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The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human
rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending
counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of
"overpopulation."