POPULATION PROBLEM

September 27, 2019 by Dr Rajiv Desai

Population Problem:

Prologue:

In an interview given to Economic Times, JRD Tata had reminisced how Nehru once retorted to his concerns on rising population. “Nonsense, a large population is the greatest source of power of any nation,” the first prime minister of Independent India is believed to have told the industry doyen. Subsequently India’s bulging population was seen as threat to the country’s future so much so that Nehru’s grandson, Sanjay Gandhi, ran a controversial campaign of forced sterilization during the emergency (1975-77). Their present Prime Minister Narendra Modi red-flagged population explosion in the course of his Independence Day speech.

Mainstream politicians, journalists, and academics frequently avoid discussing population issues since notions about population are often seen as being politically or ideologically motivated. As a result, population debates are generally argued from the fringes. Some groups characterize population growth as a Ponzi scheme, whereby increasing numbers of youth are constantly required to support older generations. Antiimmigration activists mobilize overpopulation fears in an attempt to justify legislative actions against immigration. Environmental organizations generally cite population growth as an unsustainable stress on natural ecosystems and resources. There are reasons to worry about the long-term effects of population growth on the environment and quality of life. Humane and non-coercive strategies are available to stabilize our population without draconian population laws. These measures use education (especially of young women), family planning and access to contraception, and they focus on allowing women to make their own choice about how many children they have.

It took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to hit the 1 billion mark in 1800. We added the next billion by 1928. In 1960, we hit 3 billion. In 1975, 4 billion. That sounds like the route to an overpopulation apocalypse. Ever since Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798, speculating that humans’ proclivity for procreation would exhaust the global food supply within a matter of decades, population growth has been a hot issue among those contemplating humankind’s future. However, since Malthus first published his famous Essay on Population in 1798, the world population has grown nearly six times larger, while food output and consumption per person are considerably higher now, and there has been an unprecedented increase both in life expectancies and in general living standards. The fact that Malthus was mistaken in his diagnosis as well as his prognosis two hundred years ago does not, however, indicate that contemporary fears about population growth must be similarly erroneous.

Few issues today are as divisive as what is called the “world population problem.” Divisions among experts are receiving enormous attention and generating considerable heat. There is a danger that in the confrontation between apocalyptic pessimism on the one hand and a dismissive smugness on the other, a genuine understanding of the nature of the population problem may be lost. Visions of impending doom have been increasingly aired in recent years, often presenting the population problem as a ‘bomb’ that has been planted and is about to ‘go off.’ If the propensity to foresee impending disaster from overpopulation is strong in some circles, so is the tendency in others to dismiss all worries about population size. Critics argue that action to address population creates social and economic segregation, and portray overpopulation concerns as being “anti-poor,” “anti-developing country,” or even “anti-human.” Some say the real problem facing humanity is aging and declining world population.

While the Northern populations are declining (and consumption still rising), the Southern countries, particularly in sub Saharan Africa, are still growing in population. The ethical question posed is that the global “North” or “West” should not tell people in the “South” that they should have fewer children, opening a Pandora’s box of potential accusations. In this critique, those who link population to sustainability are branded neo-Malthusian, racist, or misanthropic.

I have discussed “overpopulation” very briefly on January 23, 2010 on this website. Now it is time to discuss “Population Problem” in detail.

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Abbreviations and synonyms:

IPAT means Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology

UNFPA = UN Population Fund = United Nations Fund for Population Activities

LEDC = Less Economically Developed Country = Less Developed Country (LDC)

MEDC = More Economically Developed Country = More Developed Country (MDC)

TFR = Total Fertility Rate

HRD = Human Resource Development

FAO = Food and Agriculture Organization of UN

MEA = Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

PGR = Population Growth Rate

CBR = Crude Birth Rate

RNI = Rate of Natural Increase (of population)

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Some Quotes on Population:

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.

Edward Abbey

Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease-they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor.

Dan Brown, Inferno

Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.

Robert McNamara, Former World Bank President

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth.

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries, including 102 Nobel Prize laureates

The colonization-followed-by-extinction pattern can be seen as recently as 2,000 years ago, when humans colonized Madagascar and quickly drove elephants, birds, hippos, and large lemurs extinct. The first wave of extinctions targeted large vertebrates hunted by hunter-gatherers. The second, larger wave began 10,000 years ago as the discovery of agriculture caused a population boom and a need to plow wildlife habitats, divert streams, and maintain large herds of domestic cattle. The third and largest wave began in 1800 with the harnessing of fossil fuels. With enormous, cheap energy at its disposal, the human population grew rapidly from 1 billion in 1800 to 2 billion in 1930, 4 billion in 1975, and over 7 billion today. If the current course is not altered, we’ll reach 8 billion by 2020 and 9 to 15 billion (likely the former) by 2050.

Center for Biological Diversity

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Some facts about Population:

The world population reached 7.7 billion in 2019. The world has added around one billion people over the last twelve years.
With the world’s population growing by 1.08 percent per year (83 million people annually), it is estimated that the global population will 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.
50.4 percent of the world’s population is male and 49.6 percent is female.
Statistics show that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia (in order of their contribution to world population).
China (1.41 billion) and India (1.34 billion) continue to be the two most crowded countries of the world, representing 19 and 18 percent of the world’s population, respectively. In 2024, both countries are expected to have roughly 1.44 billion people. Thereafter, India’s population is projected to continue growing for several decades to around 1.5 billion in 2030 and approaching 1.66 billion in 2050, while the population of China is expected to remain stable until the 2030s, after which it may begin a slow decline.
According to UNICEF (2009), 47 per cent of India’s women and 56 per cent of rural women aged 20–24 are married before the legal age of 18. It is shocking to note that 40 per cent of the world’s child marriages occur in India.
India’s wheat and rice yields are 2.6 tons and 2.9 tons per hectare respectively as compared to 8 tons and 10 tons being the highest in the world. China produces 40 per cent more food than India on just 60 per cent of the arable land area of India.

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Introduction to population problem:

The wish of the great majority of mankind to have children has extended across centuries, cultures, and classes. The survival of the human race demonstrates that most people have been willing to bear the cost of rearing two or more children to the age of puberty. Widely held ideas and common attitudes reflect and recognize the benefits parents expect from having children.

What is population?

Population is a summation of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area & have the capacity of interbreeding.

What does population mean?

-Total number of people inhabiting a specified area or territory (e.g. population of a village, city, state, country, world).

-Total number of people of a particular group, race, class or category (e.g. population of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, or religious groups like Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs)

-In biology, collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species (e.g. population of tigers, deer, etc.)

-In statistics, a population is the entire pool from which a statistical sample is drawn. A population may refer to an entire group of people, objects, events, hospital visits, or measurements. A population can thus be said to be an aggregate observation of subjects grouped together by a common feature.

Population growth has been propelled by a number of factors, including developments in medicine since the nineteenth century (e.g. the discovery of antibiotics); relative peace since the Second World War; and more efficient food production propelled by the Green Revolution. Antibiotics have helped to rid humanity in most parts of the world from deadly pandemics such as cholera, plague, and tuberculosis. Today, while infectious diseases such as HIV, Ebola virus, and malaria are not yet overcome, survival chances of individuals suffering these diseases have increased. Noninfectious wealthy world diseases such as cancer and diabetes may be on the rise, yet due to better medical care, they do not necessarily condemn the patients to death. Better health, peace, and abundant food are all economic development benefits certainly something that we all celebrate.

In the twentieth century, medical and resource constraints have become easier to manage with the Green Revolution which has enabled humans to produce much more food than Malthus could have imagined. In more contemporary writing, Childe (1951) saw population growth as dependent on subsistence, perceiving foragers as severely restricted by a low carrying capacity. The adoption of farming raised the carrying capacity and so made possible a “population explosion” (Netting 1977, p. 13). The economist Ester Boserup (1965) has emphasized that population growth causes a higher carrying capacity by forcing people to use land more intensively and to adopt technological innovations that make more intensive land use possible.

Yet, the negative side of population growth has also been noted. Thomas Malthus’ (1798) An Essay on the Principle of Population, is one of the best-known and most criticized classical texts on population. Malthus postulated that there are certain “checks” on population expansion, emerging “from the difficulty of subsistence,” including struggle for resources, diseases, and starvation. As land and resources are not unlimited, checks of growth must be in place to avoid Malthusian “controls.” The publication of The Population Bomb (Ehrlich 1968; for an update see Ehrlich & Ehrlich 2009) and The Limits of Growth (published in 1972, for an update see Meadows et al. 2004), linked some Malthusian ideas to the twentieth-century sustainability issues. The Population Bomb offered a model warning that technology may not be sufficient to curtail the devastating effects of increasing populations. Although they were labeled “extremists” and alarmists at the time (Ehrlich and Ehrlich (2014), today we see that their predictions for environmental damage due to excessive population growth, technological and industrial “innovations” to be right on the pulse of global concerns.

Expanding population can become a threat to humanity itself, as it undermines its own resource base, ultimately leading to the reassertion of “natural” controls. A well-known anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1972) noted how when faced with challenges of altered natural conditions, we tend to focus on modifying our environment rather than ourselves. Bateson argued that these basic causes of environmental crisis lie in the combined action of (a) technological advance, (b) population increase, and (c) conventional (but wrong) ideas about the “nature of man” and his relation to the environment. While technological advance has created unintended but extremely destructive effects on the environment, population increase has exacerbated the challenges. The present way of thinking about the primacy of economic agendas has made the challenge of demographic sustainability even more urgent. As Ehrlich and Ehrlich (2014) have long pointed out, the environmental impact is population times consumption, and we cannot ignore either.

Social Scientists and demographers have for long debated the relation among population, environment and development. In recent times, the old debate has yet again become popular due to new but opposite evidences like expansion of labour market owing to economic globalisation on the one hand and ecological crisis because of global warming on the other. Though the problem of “over‟ or “under‟ population hunts many countries of the world today, the societies of the third world are particularly faced with the problem of “population bomb‟ (Ehrlich 1968). In order to attain the cherished goal of sustainable development, these societies need to improve the quality of life and material security of the billion poorest people as well as to realize an ecological wisdom of intergenerational equity in the use of natural resources (Mehta 1997). Although human resource is a significant factor in development, any sustainable society also requires an optimum population to realise the goals of equity and efficiency. As our earth has a carrying capacity, it cannot sustain any unlimited number of people for maximum period of time. There is no doubt about the fact that any additional number of human populations puts demands for more houses, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs etc., and when a society fails to meet these increasing demands, the socio-cultural, economic and political environment degrades. Contrarily, the “success‟ of a society to meet the additional demands of its population puts constraint on environment. The overpopulation question has therefore occupied a pivotal place in any discourse on development in the countries like India. But, in recent years, globalization has, at least theoretically, enhanced the possibility of labour migration, mobility and involvement of “excess‟ (in the form of unemployed or under-employed persons) labour in the expanding areas of our economic activities. It is argued that our population itself is our strength as huge population offers a bigger pool of human resource and hence a bigger consumer market too (Roche 2012). The trend towards shifting of manufacturing and information technology-based industries from the advance industrialised countries to those where labour is cheap appears to be our “advantage‟ now. Looking into this aspect of utilisation of “human resource‟ and the existence of huge “youth power‟ in the country, some have argued that India’s over-population is a prerequisite to development and not a liability in the changed context. Yet, as noted by the Asian Development Bank, “The demographic dividend is not, however, an automatic consequence of demographic changes. Rather, it depends on the ability of the economy to productively use its additional workers‟ (ADB 2011).

Some people say that the world is not overpopulated and that the main issue is overconsumption. It’s pointless talking about overpopulation without considering the consumption patterns. Look up ecological overshoot. It occurs when a population temporarily exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of its environment. We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester. The earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and we have lost more than 50% wildlife in the last 40 years. It’s true that some nations are more densely populated than others, however, the planet is overpopulated by humans. The world is also overpopulated with cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, but these animals are artificially being bred for human consumption. You could probably put all the 7.7 billion people into a state of the size of Texas, but they would still require land, water, and other resources for the goods they consume and we are running out of those resources. And while you may outsource manufacturing to continue enjoying cheap goods, the warming is global. In some nations, the air quality is so poor, they even sell air pollution masks to prevent cancer and lung diseases. Overpopulation and overconsumption are two sides of the same coin. We have to work on reducing both. 7.7 billion people aspiring to live a western lifestyle is a recipe for disaster!

In a famous 1798 essay, Thomas Malthus proposed that human population would grow more rapidly than our ability to grow food, and that eventually we would starve. He asserted that the population would grow geometrically—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32—and that food production would increase only arithmetically—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So food production would not keep up with our expanding appetites. As more people entered the workforce, wages would fall and goods would become scarce. Calamity was inevitable. He observed that although an increase in food production of a nation led to population growth, the improvement was temporary. Rapid population growth normalised and restored the original per capita consumption level. Malthus asserted that there was the tendency of humans for greater consumption of food and other resources rather than improvement of quality and standard of living. It was dubbed as the “Malthusian trap.” When population reached certain level of growth, the poor people experience economic hardships, making them more vulnerable to famine and disease. Malthus’s rationale was so influential that this mode of thinking was soon called ‘Malthusian.’ Even though more than 800 million people worldwide don’t have enough to eat now, the mass starvation Malthus envisioned hasn’t happened. This is primarily because advances in agriculture—including improved plant breeding and the use of chemical fertilizers—have kept global harvests increasing fast enough to mostly keep up with demand. Still, researchers such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Ehrlich continue to worry that Malthus eventually might be right. Ehrlich, a Stanford University population biologist, wrote a 1968 bestseller called The Population Bomb, which warned of mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s because of overpopulation. Even though he drastically missed that forecast, he continues to argue that humanity is heading for calamity. Ehrlich says the key issue now is not just the number of people on Earth, but a dramatic rise in our recent consumption of natural resources, which Elizabeth Kolbert explored in 2011 in an article called “The Anthropocene—The Age of Man.” As part of this human-dominated era, the past half century also has been referred to as a period of “Great Acceleration” by Will Steffen at International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Besides a nearly tripling of human population since the end of World War II, our presence has been marked by a dramatic increase in human activity—the damming of rivers, soaring water use, expansion of cropland, increased use of irrigation and fertilizers, a loss of forests, and more motor vehicles. There also has been a sharp rise in the use of coal, oil, and gas, and a rapid increase in the atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases that result from changes in land use and the burning of such fuels.

Measuring our rising Impact:

As a result of this massive expansion of our presence on Earth, scientists Ehrlich, John Holdren, and Barry Commoner in the early 1970s devised a formula to measure our rising impact, called IPAT, in which (I)mpact equals (P)opulation multiplied by (A)ffluence multiplied by (T)echnology.

The IPAT formula, they said, can help us realize that our cumulative impact on the planet is not just in population numbers, but also in the increasing amount of natural resources each person uses. The graphic above, which visualizes IPAT, shows that the rise in our cumulative impact since 1950—rising population combined with our expanding demand for resources—has been profound.

IPAT is a useful reminder that population, consumption, and technology all help shape our environmental impact, but it shouldn’t be taken too literally. University of California ecologist John Harte has said that IPAT “. . . conveys the notion that population is a linear multiplier. . . . In reality, population plays a much more dynamic and complex role in shaping environmental quality.”

One of our biggest impacts is agriculture. Whether we can grow enough food sustainably for an expanding world population also presents an urgent challenge, and this becomes only more so in light of these new population projections. Where will food for an additional 2 to 3 billion people come from when we are already barely keeping up with 7 billion? Such questions underpin a 2014 National Geographic series on the future of food. As climate change damages crop yields and extreme weather disrupts harvests, growing enough food for our expanding population has become what The 2014 World Food Prize Symposium calls “the greatest challenge in human history.”

There are more than 7 billion people on Earth now, and roughly one in eight of us doesn’t have enough to eat. The question of how many people the Earth can support is a long-standing one that becomes more intense as the world’s population—and our use of natural resources—keeps booming. Recently two conflicting projections of the world’s future population were released. A new United Nations and University of Washington study in the journal Science says it’s highly likely we’ll see 9.6 billion Earthlings by 2050, and up to 11 billion or more by 2100. These researchers used a new “probabilistic” statistical method that establishes a specific range of uncertainty around their results. Another study in the journal Global Environmental Change projects that the global population will peak at 9.4 billion later this century and fall below 9 billion by 2100, based on a survey of population experts. Who is right? After all, how many of us there are, how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of the planet upon which we rely to survive: the land, oceans, fisheries, forests, wildlife, grasslands, rivers and lakes, groundwater, air quality, atmosphere, weather, and climate.

Significant progress has been made over the past 20 years in combating global poverty and addressing other internationally agreed development goals, such as improving gender equality, lowering child mortality, raising educational attainment and improving sanitation and access to clean drinking water. However, progress has been uneven within and across countries and regions and the benefits of social and economic progress have not been shared equally. At the same time, there is growing evidence that population growth, combined with economic development, rising standards of living and a higher level of consumption has resulted in changing patterns of land use, increased energy use and the depletion of natural resources, with signs of climate change and environmental degradation more visible than ever before.

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Population’s Structure: Fertility, Mortality and Migration:

Population is not just about numbers of people. Demographers typically focus on three dimensions—fertility, mortality, and migration—when examining population trends. Fertility examines how many children a woman bears in her lifetime, mortality looks at how long we live, and migration focuses on where we live and move. Each of these population qualities influences the nature of our presence and impact across the planet.

The newly reported higher world population projections result from continuing high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. The median number of children per woman in the region remains at 4.6, well above both the global mean of 2.5 and the replacement level of 2.1. Since 1970, a global decline in fertility—from about 5 children per woman to about 2.5—has occurred across most of the world: Fewer babies have been born, family size has shrunk, and population growth has slowed. In the United States, fertility is now slightly below replacement level. Reducing fertility is essential if future population growth is to be reined in. Cynthia Gorney wrote about the dramatic story of declining Brazilian fertility as part of National Geographic’s 7 Billion series. Average family size dropped from 6.3 children to 1.9 children per woman over two generations in Brazil, the result of improving education for girls, more career opportunities, and the increased availability of contraception. Mortality—or birth rates versus death rates—and migration (where we live and move) also affect the structure of population. Living longer can cause a region’s population to increase even if birth rates remain constant. Youthful nations in the Middle East and Africa, where there are more young people than old, struggle to provide sufficient land, food, water, housing, education, and employment for young people. Besides the search for a life with more opportunity elsewhere, migration also is driven by the need to escape political disruption or declining environmental conditions such as chronic drought and food shortages.

A paradox of lower fertility and reduced population growth rates is that as education and affluence improves, consumption of natural resources increases per person. In other words, (as illustrated in the IPAT graphic above) as we get richer, each of us consumes more natural resources and energy, typically carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. This can be seen in consumption patterns that include higher protein foods such as meat and dairy, more consumer goods, bigger houses, more vehicles, and more air travel.

When it comes to natural resources, studies indicate we are living beyond our means. An ongoing Global Footprint Network study says we now use the equivalent of 1.7 planets to provide the resources we use, and to absorb our waste. A study by the Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified a set of “nine planetary boundaries” for conditions in which we could live and thrive for generations, but it shows that we already have exceeded the institute’s boundaries for climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen).

Those of you reading my article are among an elite crowd of Earthlings. You have reliable electricity, access to Internet-connected computers and phones, and time available to contemplate these issues. About one-fifth of people on Earth still don’t have access to reliable electricity. So as we debate population, things we take for granted—reliable lighting and cooking facilities, for example—remain beyond the reach of about 1.3 billion or more people. Lifting people from the darkness of energy poverty could help improve lives. As World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte says, “It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth, there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity.” Improved education, especially for girls, is cited as a key driver of declining family size. Having light at night can become a gateway to better education for millions of young people. So when we debate population, it’s important to also discuss the impact—the how we live—of the population equation. While new projections of even higher world population in the decades ahead are cause for concern, we should be equally concerned about—and be willing to address—the increasing effects of resource consumption and its waste.

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Numerous population and environmental theorists characterize human population growth as an unsustainable pandemic accountable for a variety of ecological problems. However, regional consumption patterns amplify the environmental impact of a population, making the two factors (consumption and population) difficult to evaluate separately. For instance, a billion subsistence farmers may instigate less environmental impact than a much smaller quantity of rich consumers. The United States Census Bureau expects the world population will peak at about 9 billion by 2043. Such a large number of humans might not cause a problem if everyone were simple subsistence farmers. But clearly this is not the case. Most rich-world inhabitants each consume much more than a subsistence farmer in terms of products, services, and energy. These lofty consumption practices intensify a population’s impact on the biosphere. Furthermore, controversy surrounds calls for population reduction. Many environmentalists advocate for wider distribution of family planning services, contraception, and sexual education to prevent population growth. Meanwhile, some rights advocates insist that population growth is the symptom of larger cultural injustices and that contraceptives are inappropriate tools to address these underlying inequities. Environmental theorists debate the impact of population and consumption on the global ecosystem. Cornucopian theorists believe that technological innovation will allow for continuing growth despite a growing population with high levels of consumption.

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Neo-Malthusianism:

Neo-Malthusianism is the advocacy of population control programs to ensure resources for current and future populations. Malthus and the later thinkers alarmed by rapid population growth, including Paul Ehrlich, focused primarily on the effects of overpopulation on the human species in relation to the “carrying capacity” of the earth: that loss of human habitat and resources that would result in human die-backs if population growth could not be controlled. More recently, theorists of the Anthropocene have become concerned with the impact on earth systems themselves, in addition to the impact on humans, of continuing growth in the human population—this is, after all, what is seen as the cause of the damage to earth systems. Humans are spoiling their nest, to put the neo-Malthusian concern in other words, and it may not be possible to repair the damage even if their growth in numbers is curtailed. This fuels the neo-Malthusian view. There is only one morally acceptable option: effective population control. To consign living people to catastrophic die-back is not a morally satisfactory solution; and there is no third alternative. Nature in this sense is harsh: control your growth or suffer disastrous consequences.

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How many children can you have in a lifetime?

There is a limit to how many children one person can have, but that number is much higher for men than it is for women. One study estimated a woman can have around 15-30 children in a lifetime, taking pregnancy and recovery time into account. Since men require less time and fewer resources to have kids, the most “prolific” fathers can have up to about 200 children. The number of children men can have depends on the health of their sperm and other factors like how many women they can reproduce with. In fact, studies suggest that men over 50 have up to a 38% lower chance of impregnating a woman compared to men under 30.

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Why unrestrained population growth of humans is a bane.

Well, the human being is not just another animal but it is the only animal which

-can proliferate more than the capacity of the land to sustain it.

-can eat even when its hunger is assuaged.

-can consume more than it needs.

-can prolong life even after its time is past in a wish to live ‘forever’

-has no natural enemies in the normal course of things

-can neutralize or remove its natural enemies where and when they occur

-can work against Nature to do all the above.

‘Against Nature’ – is the operative word. Herein lies the bane.

The human is the only animal which can think, ruminate, plan, manipulate, discover and invent…in order to save, preserve and proliferate himself and his kind.

Almost every thought and act of Man since he appeared on Earth, has been to do the above.

Worse, he constantly interferes with Nature to do this.

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History of population concern and population planning:

Ancient times through Middle Ages:

A number of ancient writers have reflected on the issue of population. At about 300 BC, the Indian political philosopher Chanakya (c. 350-283 BC) considered population a source of political, economic, and military strength. Though a given region can house too many or too few people, he considered the latter possibility to be the greater evil. Chanakya favored the remarriage of widows (which at the time was forbidden in India), opposed taxes encouraging emigration, and believed in restricting asceticism to the aged.

In ancient Greece, Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) discussed the best population size for Greek city-states such as Sparta, and concluded that cities should be small enough for efficient administration and direct citizen participation in public affairs, but at the same time needed to be large enough to defend themselves against hostile neighbors. In order to maintain a desired population size, the philosophers advised that procreation, and if necessary, immigration, should be encouraged if the population size was too small. Emigration to colonies would be encouraged should the population become too large. Aristotle concluded that a large increase in population would bring, “certain poverty on the citizenry and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil.” To halt rapid population increase, Aristotle advocated the use of abortion and the exposure of newborns (that is, infanticide).

Confucius (551-478 BC) and other Chinese writers cautioned that, “excessive growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.” Confucius also observed that, “mortality increases when food supply is insufficient; that premature marriage makes for high infantile mortality rates, that war checks population growth.”

Ancient Rome, especially in the time of Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), needed manpower to acquire and administer the vast Roman Empire. A series of laws were instituted to encourage early marriage and frequent childbirth. Lex Julia (18 BC) and the Lex Papia Poppaea (AD 9) are two well-known examples of such laws, which among others, provided tax breaks and preferential treatment when applying for public office for those that complied with the laws. Severe limitations were imposed on those who did not. For example, the surviving spouse of a childless couple could only inherit one-tenth of the deceased fortune, while the rest was taken by the state. These laws encountered resistance from the population which led to the disregard of their provisions and to their eventual abolition.

Tertullian, an early Christian author (ca. AD 160-220), was one of the first to describe famine and war as factors that can prevent overpopulation. He wrote: “The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against Nature’s inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.”

Ibn Khaldun, a North African Arab polymath (1332–1406), considered population changes to be connected to economic development, linking high birth rates and low death rates to times of economic upswing, and low birth rates and high death rates to economic downswing. Khaldun concluded that high population density rather than high absolute population numbers was desirable to achieve more efficient division of labour and cheap administration.

During the Middle Ages in Christian Europe, population issues were rarely discussed in isolation. Attitudes were generally pro-natalist in line with the Biblical command, “Be ye fruitful and multiply.”

16th and 17th centuries:

European cities grew more rapidly than before, and throughout the 16th century and early 17th century discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of population growth were frequent. Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance political philosopher, wrote, “When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere… the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways,” listing floods, plague and famine. Martin Luther concluded, “God makes children. He is also going to feed them.”

Jean Bodin, a French jurist and political philosopher (1530–1596), argued that larger populations meant more production and more exports, increasing the wealth of a country. Giovanni Botero, an Italian priest and diplomat (1540–1617), emphasized that, “the greatness of a city rests on the multitude of its inhabitants and their power,” but pointed out that a population cannot increase beyond its food supply. If this limit was approached, late marriage, emigration, and the war would serve to restore the balance.

Richard Hakluyt, an English writer (1527–1616), observed that, “Through our long peace and seldom sickness… we are grown more populous than ever heretofore;… many thousands of idle persons are within this realm, which, having no way to be set on work, be either mutinous and seek alteration in the state, or at least very burdensome to the commonwealth.” Hakluyt believed that this led to crime and full jails and in A Discourse on Western Planting (1584), Hakluyt advocated for the emigration of the surplus population. With the onset of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), characterized by widespread devastation and deaths brought on by hunger and disease in Europe, concerns about depopulation returned.

Two centuries ago, Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread famine. Malthus argued that, “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.” He also outlined the idea of “positive checks” and “preventative checks.” “Positive checks”, such as diseases, wars, disasters, famines, and genocides are factors which Malthus believed could increase the death rate. “Preventative checks” were factors which Malthus believed could affect the birth rate such as moral restraint, abstinence and birth control. He predicted that “positive checks” on exponential population growth would ultimately save humanity from itself and he also believed that human misery was an “absolute necessary consequence.” Malthus went on to explain why he believed that this misery affected the poor in a disproportionate manner. After Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented prosperity that funded the construction of safe water supplies and sewage systems at a scale never before achieved. Living standards were transformed and lifespans lengthened. As farms mechanized, food became more plentiful even as the population grew. Famine became rarer. Throughout recorded history, population growth has usually been slow despite high birth rates, due to war, plagues and other diseases, and high infant mortality. During the 750 years before the Industrial Revolution, the world’s population increased very slowly, remaining under 250 million.

During the 19th century, Malthus’s work was often interpreted in a way that blamed the poor alone for their condition and helping them was said to worsen conditions in the long run. This resulted, for example, in the English poor laws of 1834 and in a hesitating response to the Irish Great Famine of 1845–52. By the 1970s, overpopulation hysteria came fully back into vogue. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, which opened with the lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Shortly thereafter, in 1972, the Club of Rome issued a report called The Limits to Growth. It bolstered the old argument that population growth would deplete resources and lead to a collapse of society with evidence from computer simulations based on dubious assumptions. Those jeremiads led to human rights abuses including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, as well as China’s draconian one-child (now two-child) policy. In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone. Were these human rights abuses necessary? No. Instead of facing widespread starvation and resource shortages, humanity managed to make resources more plentiful by using them more efficiently, increasing the supply and developing substitutes.

A 2014 study published in Science asserts that population growth will continue into the next century. Adrian Raftery, a University of Washington professor of statistics and sociology and one of the contributors to the study, says: “The consensus over the past 20 years or so was that world population, which is currently around 7 billion, would go up to 9 billion and level off or probably decline. We found there’s a 70 percent probability the world population will not stabilize this century. Population, which had sort of fallen off the world’s agenda, remains a very important issue.”

In 2017, more than a third of 50 Nobel prize-winning scientists surveyed by the Times Higher Education at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings said that human overpopulation and environmental degradation are the two greatest threats facing humankind. In November that same year, a statement by 15,364 scientists from 184 countries indicated that rapid human population growth is the “primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.”

Even if overpopulation were to prove to be a problem, it is one with an expiration date: due to falling global birth rates, demographers estimate the world population will decrease in the long run. It is now well-documented that as countries grow richer, and people escape poverty, they opt for smaller families. It is almost unheard of for a country to maintain a high fertility rate after it passes about $5,000 in per-person annual income. The UN publication ‘World population prospects’ (2017) projects that the world population will reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. Human population is predicted to stabilise soon thereafter.

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World Population Growth:

Throughout most of history, the world’s population has been much smaller than it is now. Before the invention of agriculture, for example, the human population was estimated to be around 15 million people at most. The introduction of agriculture and the gradual movement of humanity into settled communities saw the global population increase gradually to around 300 million by AD 0. To give you an idea of scale, the Roman Empire, which many regards as one of the strongest empires the world has ever seen, probably contained only around 50 million people at its height; that’s less than the number of people in England today. It wasn’t until the early 19th century that the world population reached its first big milestone: 1 billion people. Then, as the industrial revolution took hold and living standards improved, the rate of population growth increased considerably. Over the next hundred years, the population of the world doubled, reaching 2 billion in the late 1920s. The 20th century, however, is where population growth really took off, and over the past 100 years, the planet’s population has more than tripled in size. This massive increase in human population is largely due to improvements in diet, sanitation and medicine, especially compulsory vaccination against many diseases. Today’s world population (~7.7 billion) is approximately 7% of the estimated 110 billion who have ever lived.

Here’s a timeline of the world population growth milestones:

Year 1: 200 million
Year 1000: 275 million
Year 1500: 450 million
Year 1650: 500 million
Year 1750: 700 million
Year 1804: 1 billion
Year 1850: 1.2 billion
Year 1900: 1.6 billion
Year 1927: 2 billion
Year 1950: 2.55 billion
Year 1955: 2.8 billion
Year 1960: 3 billion
Year 1970: 3.7 billion
Year 1985: 4.85 billion
Year 1999: 6 billion
Year 2011: 7 billion
Year 2025: 8 billion

In 2014 the United Nations estimated there is an 80% likelihood that the world’s population will be between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by 2100. Most of the world’s expected population increase will be in Africa and southern Asia. Africa’s population is expected to rise from the current one billion to four billion by 2100, and Asia could add another billion in the same period. What happens next isn’t quite so clear. Most people agree that population increases will continue, but there are arguments about the rate of increase, and even a few people who believe population decreases are likely. The United Nations has gradually been revising its predictions downwards, and now believes that the world population in 2050 will be around 9 billion. It believes that, as the world grows steadily richer and the average family size decreases, growth will steadily slow and eventually stop. However, others believe that poverty will encourage steadily increasing growth, particularly in countries in Africa and parts of Asia, where growth is already much higher than the global average. A few scientists even believe that populations will decrease. Some believe that gradual increases in living standards will result in similar patterns to those in Western Europe, where birth rates are declining rapidly. Others believe that the current world population is unsustainable, and predict that humanity will simply not be able to produce enough food and oil to feed itself and sustain our industrial economy.

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United Nations role in population issues:

The United Nations system has long been involved in addressing these complex and interrelated issues – notably, through the work of the UN Population Fund (formerly United Nations Fund for Population Activities UNFPA) and the UN Population Division.

UN Population Division:

The Population Division pulls together information on such issues as international migration and development, urbanization, world population prospects and policies, and marriage and fertility statistics. It supports UN bodies such as the Commission on Population and Development, and supports implementation of the Program of Action adopted by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (IPCD). The Population Division prepares the official United Nations demographic estimates and projections for all countries and areas of the world, helps States build capacity to formulate population policies, and enhances coordination of related UN system activities through its participation in the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities.

UN Population Fund:

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) started operations in 1969 to assume a leading role within the UN system in promoting population programs, based on the human right of individuals and couples to freely determine the size of their families. At the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), its mandate was fleshed out in greater detail, to give more emphasis to the gender and human rights dimensions of population issues, and UNFPA was given the lead role in helping countries carry out the Conference’s Program of Action. The three key areas of the UNFPA mandate are reproductive health, gender equality, and population and development.

World Population Day is observed annually on 11 July. It marks the date, in 1987, when the world’s population hit the 5 billion mark.

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World Population by Country in 2019:

The current US Census Bureau world population estimate in June 2019 shows that the current global population is 7,577,130,400 people on earth, which far exceeds the world population of 7.2 billion from 2015. The estimate based on UN data shows the world’s population surpassing 7.7 billion.

China is the most populous country in the world with a population exceeding 1.4 billion. It is one of just two countries with a population of more than 1 billion, with India being the second. As of 2018, India has a population of over 1.355 billion people, and its population growth is expected to continue through at least 2050. By the year 2030, India is expected to become the most populous country in the world. This is because India’s population will grow, while China is projected to see a loss in population.

The next 11 countries that are the most populous in the world each have populations exceeding 100 million. These include the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Japan, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. Of these nations, all are expected to continue to grow except Russia and Japan, which will see their populations drop by 2030 before falling again significantly by 2050.

Many other nations have populations of at least one million, while there are also countries that have just thousands. The smallest population in the world can be found in Vatican City, where only 801 people reside.

In 2018, the world’s population growth rate was 1.10 %. Every five years since the 1970s, the population growth rate has continued to fall. The world’s population is expected to continue to grow larger but at a much slower pace. By 2030, the population will exceed 8 billion. In 2040, this number will grow to more than 9 billion. In 2055, the number will rise to over 10 billion, and another billion people won’t be added until near the end of the century. The current annual population growth estimates from the United Nations are in the millions – estimating that over 80 million new lives are added each year.

This population growth will be significantly impacted by nine specific countries which are situated to contribute to the population growth more quickly than other nations. These nations include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the United States of America. Particularly of interest, India is on track to overtake China’s position as the most populous country by the year 2030. Additionally, multiple nations within Africa are expected to double their populations before fertility rates begin to slow entirely.

Global life expectancy has also improved in recent years, increasing the overall population life expectancy at birth to just over 70 years of age. The projected global life expectancy is only expected to continue to improve – reaching nearly 77 years of age by the year 2050. Significant factors impacting the data on life expectancy include the projections of the ability to reduce AIDS/HIV impact, as well as reducing the rates of infectious and non-communicable diseases.

Population aging has a massive impact on the ability of the population to maintain what is called a support ratio. The support ratio is the number of people age 15–64 per one older person aged 65 or older. This ratio describes the burden placed on the working population by the non-working elderly population. As a population ages, the support ratio tends to fall. One key finding from 2017 is that the majority of the world is going to face considerable growth in the 60 plus age bracket. This will put enormous strain on the younger age groups as the elderly population is becoming so vast without the number of births to maintain a healthy support ratio.

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Projections of population growth:

Figure above shows world population estimates from 1800 to 2100, based on “high”, “medium” and “low” United Nations projections in 2015 and UN historical estimates for pre-1950 data. According to the highest estimate, the world population may rise to 16 billion by 2100; according to the lowest estimate, it may decline to 6 billion. The median estimate for future growth sees the world population reaching 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100 assuming a continuing decrease in average fertility rate from 2.5 births per woman in 2010–2015 to 2.2 in 2045–2050 and to 2.0 in 2095–2100, according to the medium-variant projection. With longevity trending towards uniform and stable values worldwide, the main driver of future population growth is the evolution of the fertility rate.

Population of the world and regions in 2017, 2030, 2050 and 2100 according to the medium variant projection in 2017:

Today, the world’s population continues to grow, albeit more slowly than in the recent past. Ten years ago, the global population was growing by 1.24 per cent per year. Today, it is growing by 1.08 per cent per year, yielding an additional 83 million people annually. The world’s population is projected to increase by slightly more than one billion people over the next 13 years, reaching 8.6 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100 (see table above).

Remember the Medium Variant is the projection that the UN researchers see as the most likely scenario.

By 2050 (medium variant), India will have 1.73 billion people, China 1.46 billion, Nigeria 401 million, United States 398 million, Indonesia 327 million, Pakistan 403 million, Bangladesh 265.8 million, Brazil 232 million, Democratic Republic of Congo 195.3 million, Ethiopia 188.5 million, Mexico 164 million, Philippines 157.1 million, Egypt 142 million, Russia 133 million, Tanzania 129.4 million, Vietnam 112.8 million, Japan 107 million, Uganda 101 million, Turkey 96 million, Kenya 95.5 million, Iran 95 million, Sudan 81 million, Germany 78 million and the United Kingdom and France 75 million.

Rapid population growth in Africa:

A key trend in future decades will be population growth in Africa. The continent’s population could quadruple over the next century, rising from 1 billion inhabitants in 2010 to an estimated 2.5 billion in 2050 and more than 4 billion in 2100, despite the negative impact of the AIDS epidemic and other factors. While, globally speaking, one person in six currently lives in Africa, the proportion will probably be more than one in three a century from now. Growth should be especially rapid in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population may rise from just over 800 million in 2010 to 4 billion in 2100.

More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. Africa has the highest rate of population growth among major areas. A rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. The strong growth of the African population will happen regardless of the rate of decrease of fertility, because of the exceptional proportion of young people already living today. For example, the UN projects that the population of Nigeria will surpass that of the United States by 2050.

Shrinking population in Europe:

In sharp contrast to Africa, the populations of 55 countries or areas in the world are expected to decrease by 2050, of which 26 may see a reduction of at least ten per cent. Several countries are expected to see their populations decline by more than 15 per cent by 2050, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. Fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for full replacement of the population in the long run (around 2.1 children per woman), and in the majority of cases, fertility has been below the replacement level for several decades.

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Factors influencing the population growth:

Population of any country increases or decreases because of three main demographic factors: (a) birth rate, (b) death rate, and (c) migration. A number of socio-economic factors also influence birth rate and death rate which ultimately affect population change.

Birth Rate: The number of births per thousand of population in a given year under a particular territory is called Crude Birth Rate (popularly known as birth rate).

Death Rate: The number of deaths per thousand of population in a given year under a particular territory is called Crude Death Rate (popularly known as death rate).

Natural Growth Rate: Natural growth rate is the difference between birth rate and death rate. Therefore, natural growth rate = birth rate – death rate.

Suppose the birth rate of a particular year within an area is 32 and death rate is 24. Therefore, natural growth rate is 32 – 24 = 8 per thousand of population. Population growth rate is in percentage i.e. 0.8 %. (8 per thousand is 0.8 per hundred) In other words, birth rate minus death rate divided by 10 gives population growth rate in percentage excluding migration.

When the birth rate is higher than the death rate, population increases. When the death rate is more than the birth rate, population decreases. When the two rates are equal, the population remains constant. Thus, the birth and death rates affect the balance of population.

When demographers attempt to forecast changes in the size of a population, they typically focus on four main factors: fertility rates, mortality rates (life expectancy), the initial age profile of the population (whether it is relatively old or relatively young to begin with) and migration. In the case of religious groups, a fifth factor is switching – how many people choose to enter and leave each group, including how many become unaffiliated with any religion.

Fertility rates:

Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility will take. According to the World Population Prospects (2019 Revision), global fertility is projected to fall from 2.5 children per woman in 2019 to 2.2 in 2050. As a result of declining fertility rates, global population growth is slowing. Over the four decades from 1970 to 2010, the number of people on Earth grew nearly 90%. From 2010 to 2050, the world’s population is expected to rise 35%, from roughly 7 billion to more than 9 billion.

Life expectancy:

People in many (though not all) countries are living longer due to increased access to healthcare, improvements in diet and hygiene, effective responses to infectious disease, and many other factors. These developments in healthcare and living conditions, however, have not occurred uniformly around the world. Overall, significant gains in life expectancy have been achieved in recent years. Globally, life expectancy at birth is expected to rise from 72.6 years in 2019 to 77.1 years in 2050. While considerable progress has been made in closing the longevity differential between countries, large gaps remain. In 2019, life expectancy at birth in the least developed countries lags 7.4 years behind the global average, due largely to persistently high levels of child and maternal mortality, as well as violence, conflict and the continuing impact of the HIV epidemic. Life expectancy is a significant factor in estimating the size of the world’s populations over time. Groups with higher life expectancies will, on average, live longer and (all else remaining equal) have larger populations.

Age structure:

All else being equal, a population that begins with a relatively large percentage of people who are in – or soon will enter – their prime childbearing years will grow faster than a population that begins with many people who are beyond their prime reproductive years. Moreover, growth propelled by a youthful population tends to carry into the next generation, as the younger cohort’s children reach maturity and begin to have babies of their own, creating a kind of demographic momentum.

International migration:

International migration is a much smaller component of population change than births or deaths. However, in some countries and areas the impact of migration on population size is significant, namely in countries that send or receive large numbers of economic migrants and those affected by refugee flows. Between 2010 and 2020, fourteen countries or areas will see a net inflow of more than one million migrants, while ten countries will see a net outflow of similar magnitude.

Projected migration to developed countries:

According to the United Nations, during 2005–2050 the net number of international migrants trying to reach more developed regions is projected to be 98 million, so the population in those regions will likely be influenced by international migration. Deaths are projected to exceed births in the more developed regions by 73 million during 2005–2050. In 2000–2005, net migration in 28 countries either prevented population decline or doubled at least the contribution of natural increase (births minus deaths) to population growth. These countries include Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Birth rate:

The birth rate (technically, births/population rate) is the total number of live births per 1,000 in a population in a year or period. The rate of births in a population is calculated in several ways: live births from a universal registration system for births, deaths, and marriages; population counts from a census, and estimation through specialized demographic techniques. The birth rate (along with mortality and migration rate) are used to calculate population growth.

The crude birth rate is the number of live births per year per 1,000 mid-year population. When the crude death rate is subtracted from the crude birth rate, the result is the rate of natural increase (RNI). This is equal to the rate of population growth (excluding migration).

The average global birth rate is 18.5 births per 1,000 total population in 2016. The death rate is 7.8 per 1,000 per year. The RNI is thus 10.7 per thousand or 1.07 %.

The 2016 average of 18.5 births per 1,000 total population is estimated to be about 4.3 births/second or about 256 births/minute for the world.

Figure below shows countries by crude birth rate (CBR) in 2017:

Africa has the highest birth rates.

Factors affecting birth rate:

There are many factors that interact in complex ways, influencing the births rate of a population. Developed countries have a lower birth rate than underdeveloped countries. A parent’s number of children strongly correlates with the number of children that each person in the next generation will eventually have. Factors generally associated with increased fertility include religiosity, intention to have children, and maternal support. Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include wealth, education, female labor participation, urban residence, intelligence, increased female age, women’s rights, access to family planning services and (to a lesser degree) increased male age. Many of these factors however are not universal, and differ by region and social class. For instance, at a global level, religion is correlated with increased fertility, but in the West less so: Scandinavian countries and France are among the least religious in the EU, but have the highest TFR, while the opposite is true about Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Poland and Spain.

Reproductive health can also affect the birth rate, as untreated infections can lead to fertility problems, as can be seen in the “infertility belt” – a region that stretches across central Africa from the United Republic of Tanzania in the east to Gabon in the west, and which has a lower fertility than other African region.

In the 20th Century, the world’s birth rate dropped from 40 births per 1,000 people per year to just 31 in 1995, and today it is only 18.5. But long ago, humans needed a birth rate of about 80 births per 1,000 people per year in order to survive, because people didn’t live so long and far fewer of those born had children. Today, life expectancy is about 70 years and for most of human history that was not the case. There are some estimates for the Middle Ages where life expectancy might have been 10-12 years, which means many people never made it out of childhood. Even if you had a lot of births, many of those never lived to actually bear children themselves. That estimate of 80 births per 1,000 people per year looks very high by today’s standards – but in fact it is conservative, implying a very slow population growth, much slower than anything we see today.

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Why do death rates decline?

Except for a 10-year period between 1955 and 1965 when the mortality rate was essentially flat, mortality rates have declined at the relatively constant rate of approximately 1 to 2 percent per year since 1900. That mortality reduction used to be concentrated at younger ages, but then became increasingly concentrated among the aged. In the first four decades of the twentieth century, 80 percent of life expectancy improvements resulted from reduced mortality for those below age 45, the bulk of these for infants and children. In the next two decades, life expectancy improvements were split relatively evenly by age group. In the latter four decades of the century, about two-thirds of life expectancy improvements resulted from mortality reductions for those over age 45.

During the first half of the twentieth century, changes in the ability to avoid and withstand infectious diseases were the prime factors in reducing mortality. Infectious diseases were the leading cause of death in 1900, accounting for 32 percent of deaths. Pneumonia and influenza were the biggest killers. Therefore, improved nutrition and public health measures, particularly important for the young, were vastly more important in this period than medical interventions. Better nutrition allowed people to avoid contracting disease and to withstand disease once contracted; public health measures reduced the spread of disease. During this period, reduced infant mortality contributed 4.5 years to overall improvements in life expectancy; reduced child mortality contributed nearly as much, and reduced mortality among young adults added about 3.5 years.

Between 1940 and 1960, infectious diseases as a cause of death continued to decline. But more of this decline was attributable to medical factors, such as the use of penicillin, sulfa drugs (discovered in 1935), and other antibiotics. These help the elderly as well as the young, thereby reducing mortality across the age spectrum. By 1960, 70 percent of infants could be expected to survive to age 65.

Since 1960, mortality reductions have been associated with two newer factors: the frequent conquest of cardiovascular disease in the elderly and the prevention of death caused by low birth weight in infants. Traditional killers such as pneumonia in the young also have continued to decline, but mortality from these causes was already so low that further improvements did not add greatly to overall longevity.

Increasingly, mortality reductions are attributed to medical care, including high tech medical treatment, and not to social or environmental improvements. Smoking cessation and better diets also are factors: per capita consumption of cigarettes rose from essentially zero in 1900 to more than 4,000 per year per capita in 1960, or over two packs per smoker per day. Since then, per capita consumption has fallen by more than 50 percent. These trends affect death from heart disease and from smoking-sensitive cancers with a 10 to 20-year lag.

For several important causes of death, rising incomes and a variety of social programs have accompanied significant reductions in mortality.

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Population growth rate:

Population growth rate is the rate at which the no. of individuals in a population increases in a given time period, expressed as a fraction of the initial population. Population growth rate is the average annual percent change in the population, resulting from a surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths and the balance of migrants entering and leaving a country. A positive growth rate indicates that the population is increasing, while a negative growth rate indicates that the population is decreasing. A growth ratio of zero indicates that there were the same number of individuals at the beginning and end of the period—a growth rate may be zero even when there are significant changes in the birth rates, death rates, immigration rates, and age distribution between the two times. The rate of national population growth is expressed as a percentage for each country, commonly between about 0.1% and 3% annually. Current Indian population growth rate is 1.38 % which should become zero or even negative to control population.

The world population is currently growing by approximately 83 million people each year. Within many populations of the world, growth rates are slowing, resulting in the global population growth rate decreasing as below:

1995	1.55%
2005	1.25%
2015	1.18%
2017	1.12%

Population in the world is currently (2019-2020) growing at a rate of around 1.08% per year (down from 1.10% in 2018, 1.12% in 2017 and 1.14% in 2016).

Calculate Population’s Growth Rate:

Calculate population growth rate by dividing the change in population by the initial population, multiplying it by 100, and then dividing it by the number of years over which that change took place. The number is expressed as a percentage.

Population growth rates are used for many sizes of geographic areas from a specific neighborhood to the world. These rates take into account the births and deaths occurring during the specified time along with people who move into and out of the area. I have shown before that you can get population growth rate by subtracting death rate from birth rate and dividing it by 10. This is natural population growth rate and this population growth rate is not taking migration into account.

Natural Growth vs. Overall Growth:

You’ll find two percentages associated with population – natural growth and overall growth. Natural growth represents the births and deaths in a country’s population and does not take into account migration. The overall growth rate takes migration into account.

For example, Canada’s natural growth rate is 0.3% while its overall growth rate is 0.9%, due to Canada’s open immigration policies. In the U.S., the natural growth rate is 0.6% and overall growth is 0.9%.

The growth rate of a country provides demographers and geographers with a good contemporary variable for current growth and for comparison between countries or regions. For most purposes, the overall growth rate is more frequently utilized.

The annual population growth rate actually peaked half a century ago at more than 2%, and has fallen by half since then, to 1.12 % in 2017 (see figure below). This trend should continue in coming decades because fertility is decreasing at global level, from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today. In 2017, the regions where fertility remains high (above 3 children per woman) include most countries of intertropical Africa and an area stretching from Afghanistan to northern India and Pakistan. These are the regions that will drive future world population growth.

Doubling Time:

The growth rate can be used to determine a country or region’s — or even the planet’s — “doubling time,” which tells us how long it will take for that area’s current population to double. This length of time is determined by dividing 70 by growth rate. The number 70 comes from the natural log of 2, which is 0.70.

The doubling time is not constant. Humans reached 1 billion around 1800, a doubling time of about 300 years; 2 billion in 1927, a doubling time of 127 years; and 4 billion in 1974, a doubling time of 47 years.

Given Canada’s overall growth of 0.9% in the year 2006, we divide 70 by 0.9 (from the 0.9%) and yield a value of 77.7 years. Thus, in 2083, if the current rate of growth remains constant, Canada’s population will double from its current 33 million to 66 million. However, if we look at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Demographic Data for Canada, we see that Canada’s overall growth rate is expected to decline to 0.6% by 2025. With a growth rate of 0.6% in 2025, Canada’s population would take about 117 years to double (70 / 0.6 = 116.666).

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Patterns of population growth:

The LEDC (Less Economically Developed Country) sector includes countries with a lower GDP and a lower standard of living than MEDC (More Economically Developed Country) countries. Indicators used to classify countries as LEDC or MEDC include industrial development and education. Rates of population growth vary across the world. Although the world’s total population is rising rapidly, not all countries are experiencing this growth. In the UK, for example, population growth is slowing, while in Germany the population has started to decline. MEDCs have low population growth rates, with low death rates and low birth rates. LEDCs have high population growth rates. Both birth rates and death rates in LEDCs tend to be high. However, improving healthcare leads to death rates falling – while birth rates remain high.

The tables below show data in selected LEDC and MEDC countries.

MEDC	Birth rate	Death rate	Natural increase	Population growth rate (%)
UK	11	10	1	0.1
Canada	11	7	4	0.4
Bulgaria	9	14	-5	-0.5

LEDC	Birth rate	Death rate	Natural increase	Population growth rate (%)
South Africa	25	15	10	1
Botswana	31	22	9	0.9
Zimbabwe	29	20	9	0.9

Population Growth in Developed and Developing Countries:

Let us look into the contrasting features of population growth in the developing and developed countries of the world.

By the middle of 2012, growth of world population was 7.058 billion (bn), 84 per cent of which (5.93 bn) are in the developing and poor nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. In other words, world population growth is far from systematic as nearly 37per cent (2.6 bn) of world population is in two developing countries, viz. China (1.35 bn) and India (1.25bn) only. Data reveal the tragic aspect of population growth: poorer the country, the higher the rate of population growth. The more developed countries of the West today have low death (10 per 1000 population) and low birth rate (11 per 1000 population). One important reason for such a demographic transition is the high standard of life of their population as revealed in their HDI rank and Gross National Income in Purchasing Power Parity (GNI PPP) per capita. But, due to steadily declining population, these societies are also faced with strains of fading and aging populations. Changes in the composition of population during the last century also have left adverse effect on the environment because different population subgroups behave differently and their requirements also differ. This aspect of the population– development relation once again reminds us about the fact that population is a prerequisite to development only to the extent that a society requires more manpower to carry out its developmental activities.

Figure below shows difference in population growth rates between developed and developing countries:

It has generally been argued that population explosion is responsible for many of the ills faced by countries like India. This is mainly because these developing countries have not been able to match their rate of development with rising population (Ghosh 2005). Consequently, research has quite credibly established the linkages among population-poverty-pollution (called three Ps) in the Third World. The poor, says World Development Report (1992), are both victims and agents of environmental damage. They, with few assets, have to depend on environmental resources available in their surroundings. As they care more about extracting common property resources (CPRs) on daily basis than about conserving them for future, they end up exploiting the natural habitat excessively. On the other hand, environmental degradation affects the health of a poor by exposing him to the damages caused by polluted water, air or unsanitary living conditions. Poverty is, therefore, identified as a disease that sickens the society and promotes larger families. Many poor parents produce children not because they are ignorant but because they need them to supplement family income. The problem of child labour thus emanates from economic hardship. As opposed to this, the Western countries of the North face the problem of environmental pollution caused basically by over industrialization and consumerism. This again suggests that that development alone cannot guarantee a pollution free sustainable society for the South.

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Does rapid population growth keep poor countries poor?

In 1960, South Korea and Taiwan were poor countries with fast-growing populations. Over the two decades that followed, South Korea’s population surged by about 50 percent, and Taiwan’s by about 65 percent. Yet, income increased in both places, too: Between 1960 and 1980, per capita economic growth averaged 6.2 percent in South Korea and 7 percent in Taiwan. Clearly, rapid population growth did not preclude an economic boom in those two Asian “tigers” — and their experience underscores that of the world as a whole. Between 1900 and 2000, as the planet’s population was exploding, per capita income grew faster than ever before, rising nearly fivefold, by the reckoning of economic historian Angus Maddison. And for much of the last century, the countries with faster economic growth tended to be the ones where population was growing most rapidly, too. Today, the fastest population growth is found in so-called failed states, where poverty is worst. But it’s not clear that population growth is their central problem: With physical security, better policies and greater investments in health and education, there is no reason that fragile states could not enjoy sustained improvements in income.

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Negative Growth Rates:

Most European countries have low growth rates. In the United Kingdom, the rate is 0.2%, in Germany, it’s 0.0%, and in France, 0.4%. Germany’s zero rate of growth includes a natural increase of -0.2%. Without immigration, Germany would be shrinking, like the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic and some other European countries’ growth rate is actually negative (on average, women in the Czech Republic give birth to 1.2 children, which is below the 2.1 needed to yield zero population growth). The Czech Republic’s natural growth rate of -0.1 cannot be used to determine doubling time because the population is actually shrinking in size.

High Growth Rates:

Many Asian and African countries have high growth rates. Afghanistan has a current growth rate of 4.8%, representing a doubling time of 14.5 years. If Afghanistan’s growth rate remains the same (which is very unlikely and the country’s projected growth rate for 2025 is a mere 2.3%), then the population of 30 million would become 60 million in 2020, 120 million in 2035, 280 million in 2049, 560 million in 2064, and 1.12 billion in 2078! This is a ridiculous expectation. As you can see, population growth percentages is better utilized for short term projections.

Increased population growth generally represents problems for a country – it means increased need for food, infrastructure, and services. These are expenses that most high-growth countries have little ability to provide today, let alone if the population rises dramatically.

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Population Dynamics:

The United States’ population is growing more rapidly than expected. In 1984 the United States Census Bureau predicted that the nation would contain 309 million residents by 2050. But, the nation’s population surpassed that estimate forty years early. Revised population estimates for 2050 range from 420 to 500 million. Shrinking the human population over time is not as straightforward as it might seem. Even if the global birth rate were to drop from the current average of 2.5 children per couple to the replacement rate of about 2.1 children per couple, the world population would continue to expand for 70 years before stabilizing. Why? Several population momentum factors temporarily sustain growth even as birth rates drop. For instance, a disproportionately large proportion of the global population is young. Forty percent of the world’s population is under 20 years old and will presumably be around for quite some time. Also, humans are now living longer than their ancestors. In 1900, humans survived an average of just 30 years. Today, the global average lifespan is 67 years. Rich-world residents live an average of 78 years. Medical and longevity advancements will likely extend life spans further.

Populations are aging in several European nations and Japan, leaving fewer young workers to support a sizeable number of elderly individuals. Declining tax income combined with increasing eldercare costs threaten funding for established social welfare systems. Economists are closely monitoring these countries to determine if and how they can maintain their high standards of living during this impending demographic transformation. Meanwhile, social scientists point to several benefits afforded to nations as their populations age. While these nations must pay more for eldercare, they also have fewer children to birth, cloth, bath, house, and educate. Demographers maintain that crime rates tend to fall as populations age since younger people perpetrate most crimes. As a result, aging regions can spend less on policing, crime investigations, and jails.

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Fertility rate:

It is important to distinguish birth rate—which is defined as the number of live births per 1,000 in a population per year—from fertility rates. The total fertility rate (TFR), sometimes also called the fertility rate is average number of children born to women during their reproductive years. For the population in a given area to remain stable, an overall total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, assuming no immigration or emigration occurs.The single most important factor in population growth is the total fertility rate (TFR). If, on average, women give birth to 2.1 children and these children survive to the age of 15, any given woman will have replaced herself and her partner upon death. A TFR of 2.1 is known as the replacement rate. Generally speaking, when the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population in a given area will eventually decrease, though it may take some time because factors such as age structure, emigration, or immigration must be considered. More specifically, if there are numerous women of childbearing age and low death rate, so even though the TFR is below the replacement rate, the population may remain stable or even increase slightly. This trend cannot last indefinitely but could persist for decades.

Tracking fertility rates allows for more efficient and beneficial planning and resource allocation within a particular region. If a country experiences unusually high sustained fertility rates, it may need to build additional schools or expand access to affordable child care. This occurred in the United States during the post-World War II baby boom era. During this period, the TFR peaked at about 3.8, roughly twice the average 21st-century rate in the United States. The unusually high number of children born during this period left communities unprepared. Conversely, sustained low fertility rates may signify a rapidly aging population, which may place an undue burden on the economy through increasing health care and social security costs.

Although fertility rates remain well above the replacement rate in many parts of the world, the global TFR has declined significantly since 1970. At that time, the world’s TFR was roughly 4.5, but by 2015 it had dipped to 2.5. In the 21st century, developed countries generally had lower fertility rates than developing countries, as the former tended to have lower childhood mortality rates and greater access to birth control. Higher fertility rates in developing countries reflected the need for children to engage in farming and other economic pursuits as well as the lack of contraceptive access.

Regional Differences in Fertility:

Fertility patterns may vary between countries and larger geographic regions for a host of reasons, including cultural norms, levels of economic development, education systems and government policies that encourage or discourage family planning. Fertility rates also may be influenced by infant mortality rates, women’s participation in the labor market, income levels and social status, among other factors.

A study analysed Total Fertility Rates by Region, 2010-2015. Of the six geographic regions analysed, only two have a Total Fertility Rate that is higher than the global average of 2.5 children per woman: sub-Saharan Africa (4.8) and the Middle East and North Africa (3.0). The Latin America-Caribbean region has the third-highest fertility rate (2.2), followed by the Asia-Pacific region (2.1) and North America (2.0). Europe is the only region with a fertility rate that is well below replacement level (1.6).

Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region, the two areas where fertility rates exceed the global average in the current period (2010-2015), are expected to have the highest rates of population growth in the coming decades. These are the only regions where population growth is expected to outpace global population growth from 2010 to 2050.

Governmental policies related to fertility can take two forms: direct and indirect. Direct policies are those that offer tax breaks or childbearing incentives. The impact of a direct policy on fertility rates is usually immediate. Indirect policies are those that target other societal goals but then inadvertently affect fertility rates. Indirect policies include shifts in child care availability or regulations and laws regarding maternity and paternity leave. Despite the influence that governments can have on TFRs, few policy interventions have worked to reverse low TFRs, although there were some notable exceptions to this rule. France adopted policies that encouraged harmony between individuals’ work and family lives so that young adults would not be dissuaded from bearing children. The French government provided child care subsidies and implemented a reward system for individuals who had at least three children. Sweden followed this pattern by creating more flexible work schedules for women, ensuring quality child care, and allowing more flexible parental leaves.

A country’s social structure may also have an effect on fertility rates. This was especially obvious in Germany after reunification. In East German families, in which the end of the communist system caused economic instability, children were less likely in the years following reunification. In comparison, West Germany’s fertility rate remained relatively stable after reunification. Experts noted that because unified Germany’s political, economic, and social climates mirrored that of the former West Germany, fertility rates in West Germany were uninfluenced by the unification. Similarly, when Poland transitioned to a free-market economy after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it experienced a marked decrease in fertility rates.

For the world as a whole, the number of children born per woman decreased from 5.02 to 2.65 between 1950 and 2005. A breakdown by region is as follows:

Europe – 2.66 to 1.41

North America – 3.47 to 1.99

Oceania – 3.87 to 2.30

Central America – 6.38 to 2.66

South America – 5.75 to 2.49

Asia (excluding Middle East) – 5.85 to 2.43

Middle East & North Africa – 6.99 to 3.37

Sub-Saharan Africa – 6.7 to 5.53

Excluding the theoretical reversal in fertility decrease for high development, the projected world number of children born per woman for 2050 would be around 2.05. Only the Middle East & North Africa (2.09) and Sub-Saharan Africa (2.61) would then have numbers greater than 2.05.

Replacement rate:

Replacement fertility is the total fertility rate at which women give birth to enough babies to sustain population levels. According to the UN Population Division, a total fertility rate (TFR) of about 2.1 children per woman is called replacement-level fertility. If replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long period, each generation will exactly replace itself. Replacement level TFR has to be greater than 2.0. Suppose, TFR is 2.0, means two children per couple, but can you expect all the female children will survive till the child bearing ages? No, thus TFR has to be greater than 2.0. Moreover, natural sex ratio at birth has always been favorable to boys, 105 boys per 100 females born. Thus adjusting for all these factors, the replacement level fertility comes to 2.1. However, in poor or under developed societies where child and maternal mortality rates are high due to lack of proper medical care, even higher numbers like say 2.2 or 2.3 can be taken as replacement level. This is the current situation in many developing nations. The global average for the replacement total fertility rate (eventually leading to a stable global population) was 2.33 children per woman in 2003.

Net reproduction rate:

The net reproduction rate is the average number of Daughters that would be born to a woman taking into account the prevailing levels of fertility, female mortality and the sex ratio at birth. When the net reproduction rate is one, each woman is exactly replacing herself with one surviving daughter and this implies that fertility is at replacement level. Where more boys than expected are born compared with girls, the net reproduction rate will be lower than expected for a given fertility rate and the long-term population growth rate will be lower as a result. This is the case in many countries in Asia. Globally, the net reproduction rate is 1.1 surviving daughters per woman. In all regions in the world, the net reproduction rate is at or below this level, except for Africa, where the net reproduction rate is 1.9. This means that, on average, each African mother is replacing herself with nearly two daughters, which leads to fast population growth.

In the absence of migration, a net reproduction rate of more than one indicates that the population of females is increasing, while a net reproduction rate less than one (sub-replacement fertility) indicates that the population of females is decreasing. Net reproduction rate is particularly relevant where the number of male babies born is very high due to gender imbalance and sex selection. This is a significant factor in world population, due to the high level of gender imbalance in the very populous nations of China and India.

According to the results of the 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects, total fertility is now 2.5 children per woman globally. This global average masks wide regional differences. Africa remains the region with the highest fertility at 4.7 children per woman. Europe has the lowest fertility of 1.6 children per woman. Both Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have total fertility of 2.2 children per woman, closely followed by Oceania with 2.4 children per woman. Middle and Western Africa stand out as having particularly high fertility of over five children per woman. Eastern Asia, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe have very low fertility at under 1.6 children per woman.

Today, 46 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries with low levels of fertility, where women have fewer than 2.1 children on average. Low-fertility countries now include all of Europe and Northern America, as well as many countries in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Another 46 per cent of the world’s population lives in “intermediate fertility” countries that have already experienced substantial fertility declines and where women have on average between 2.1 and 5 children. The remaining 8 per cent of the world’s population lives in “high-fertility” countries that have experienced only limited fertility decline to date. In these countries the average woman has five or more children over her lifetime. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Factors influencing fertility rate:

Women’s empowerment, the increasing well-being and status of children, technological and economic changes, changing norms, and opportunities for family planning matter for the reduction of the total fertility rate.

Empowerment of women:

Women’s Education:

The level of education in a society – of women in particular – is one of the most important predictors for the number of children families have. Wolfgang Lutz, director of the Vienna Institute of Demography, highlighted education as crucial in not only reducing birth rates but also enabling people to prosper even while populations are growing fast. In Ghana, for example, women without education have an average of 5.7 children, while women with secondary education have 3.2 and women with tertiary education only 1.5. But he said: “It is not primarily the number of people that’s important in population policy, it’s what they are capable of, their level of education, and their health.”

The higher the educational level of a woman, the lower the total number of children she will have, according to conventional wisdom. However, recently released official data from 2017 on the total fertility rate (TFR) in India shows the connection may be more complex. For one, the culture of a state might be a greater determinant of fertility, with illiterate rural women in Tamil Nadu having a lower fertility rate than urban graduates in Uttar Pradesh. There’s a consistent pattern across states of illiterate women and those with no formal education having lower fertility rates than those with below primary level education. It raises the question: does little education lead to higher TFR? Experts say this pattern – referred to as “inverted-J” — has been observed in other countries. Dr KS James, director of the International Institute for Population Studies in Mumbai, explained that this inverted-J pattern in fertility is seen not only in education levels but also in income levels. “Usually there is an inverse relationship between education or income and fertility, but it has been observed that fertility could go up with a slight increase in education or income level. But eventually, fertility declines with higher levels of education,” said Dr James. However, Prof PM Kulkarni, a renowned demographer and population expert, pointed out that the pattern was clearly discernible only in the 2017 data. “It could be because the number of illiterates in all states has been falling and so the sample size for illiterates might be small, leading to errors. At this stage, I wouldn’t call it a trend. We need to see it for three or four years,” said Prof Kulkarni. Dr James pointed out that the culture of a state or geography had greater influence than education or socio-economic characteristics on fertility while explaining why even urban graduates in high-fertility states like UP or Chhattisgarh had fertility rates of 2.2 and 2 respectively compared to illiterate rural women in states like Maharashtra and West Bengal with fertility rates of 1.3 and 1.4 respectively.

Women’s Labor Force Participation:

The increasing labor force participation of women is a second aspect of women’s rising empowerment in society and this change too tends to lead to a decline of the number of children that women have. This change is so closely linked to the rising education of women discussed before that it is indeed impossible to separate from that. A substantial part of the increased opportunities that better education offered were realized in the labor market and it can be argued that the best way to understand how education matters for fertility rates is to view it together with women’s increasing labor force participation.

In today’s rich economies children have vastly more education than in the poor agrarian economies of the past. The basic argument for why the increase of education contributed to the decline of fertility rates derives from the seminal work of Becker (1960) who argued that because of the costs of bringing up a child parents have to make a decision between the number of children they want (quantity) and the resources they want to spend on each child (quality). Limited resource force parents to decide to either have many children – but then have few resources (time & money) available for each child – or to have fewer children and then to be able to have more resources available for each child. This trade-off is described in the literature as parents’ choice between the “quantity” or the “quality” of their children. The argument in a nutshell is that educating children is very costly and since parents have limited resources the increasing costs of having children forced them to have fewer children.

Skewed gender ratios in China and India (i.e. an overabundance of single males) also suggest fertility rates will come in lower than raw population counts imply in the world’s two most populous nations. A record number of women now use contraception. Figures from the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs show 64% of married and cohabiting women used modern or traditional methods of contraception in 2015 – a significant rise from 36% in 1970. But the figures show wide disparities between and within regions and countries. Africa has the lowest percentage of women using contraceptives, and the highest unmet need in the world. Despite this, some African countries have made the biggest leaps in contraception use over the past 40 years and are projected to make the greatest gains in the next 15.

Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility will take:

The population trends projected as part of the medium variant are an outcome of substantial projected declines in fertility. According to the medium variant of the 2017 Revision, global fertility is projected to fall from just over 2.5 births per woman in 2010-2015 to around 2.4 in 2025-2030 and 2.0 in 2095-2100. Steep reductions are projected for the group of least developed countries, which currently has a relatively high average level of fertility, estimated at 4.3 births per woman in 2010-2015, and projected to fall to around 3.5 in 2025-2030 and 2.1 in 2095-2100. However, for countries with high levels of fertility, there is significant uncertainty in projections of future trends, even within the 15-year horizon of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and more so for the projections to 2100. Fertility declines that are slower than projected would result in higher population totals in all subsequent time periods. To achieve the substantial reductions in fertility projected in the medium variant, it will be essential to support continued improvements in access to reproductive health care services, including family planning, especially in the least developed countries, with a focus on enabling women and couples to achieve their desired family size.

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Population density:

Population density means the number of people per unit land area. There is no correlation between population explosion and population density. Even sparsely populated area with little population density could be overpopulated. Hongkong has population density of 6,659 people per square kilometer with less overpopulation due to high standard of living while Africa has population density of 45 people per square kilometer but still overpopulated due to lack of resources.

Why is the distribution and density of population uneven?

It is human nature that people like to live in the areas where resources are easily available. These resources may be fresh water, fertile soil, food and shelter, opportunities of work and others. The availability of these resources is influenced by geographical factors.

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Population growth was and is not equally distributed around the globe. The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. From 1950 on, a much more substantial and intensive population explosion started to take place in Asia, Latin America and Africa (see figure below). Asia already represented over 55% of the world population in 1950 with its 1.4 billion citizens and by the year 2010 this had increased to 4.2 billion people or 60%. Of those people, more than 1.3 billion live in China and 1.2 billion in India, together accounting for more than one third of the world population.

Figure below shows evolution of the population size by continent, 1950-2050

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Population composition:

We have studied the distribution, density and growth of population so far. You would have been able to understand that the net effect of the difference between birth rate and death rate determines the pace and trend of population change. This net effect also demonstrates the composition of population which is an important factor influencing not only the pace of population growth but also the quality of population as a human resource. Population composition is the description of population defined by characteristics such as age, sex, rural-urban or literacy status.

Population pyramid:

Population structure means the ‘make up’ or composition of a population. Looking at the population structure of a place shows how the population is divided up between males and females of different age groups. Population structure is usually shown using a population pyramid. The graphical illustration that is used for studying the population composition of a country is called population pyramids. It shows the present number of males and females in a country along with their age groups. The age-group distribution of population tells us the number of dependents and the number of economically active individuals present in the population. A population pyramid can be drawn up for any area, from a whole continent or country to an individual town, city or village.

At the global level, the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, with the male population being slightly larger than the female population. Currently, in 2017, there are 102 men for every 100 women. Thus, in a group of 1,000 people selected at random from the world’s population, 504 would be male and 496 would be female on average. Children under 15 years of age represent roughly one quarter of the world’s inhabitants (26 per cent), while older persons aged 60 or over account for just over one eighth (13 per cent). More than half (61 per cent) are adults between 15 and 59 years of age. If the total number of people were split in half according to the age distribution of the world’s population (at the median age), one group would bring together all persons younger than 30 years of age, while the other would include everyone aged 30 years or older.

Pyramid below shows distribution of the world’s population by age and sex, 2017:

Analysing population pyramids:

Key things to know about population pyramids

The shape of a population pyramid can tell us a lot about an area’s population.
It gives us information about birth and death rates as well as life expectancy.
A population pyramid tells us how many dependants there are. There are two groups of dependants; young dependants (aged below 15) and elderly dependants (aged over 65).
Dependants rely upon the economically active for economic support.
Many LEDCs have a high number of young dependants, whilst many MEDCs have a growing number of elderly dependants.

How do pyramids change over time?

A population pyramid that is very triangular (e.g. Mozambique in 2000) shows a population with a high number of young dependants and a low life expectancy.
A population pyramid that has fairly straight sides (more like a barrel) shows a population with a falling birth rate and a rising life expectancy.
Over time, as a country develops, the shape changes from triangular to barrel-like.
Places with an ageing population and a very low birth rate would have a structure that looks like an upside-down pyramid.

Population pyramids show the structure of a population by comparing relative numbers of people in different age groups. Population structures differ markedly between LEDCs and MEDCs as seen in the figure below.

Demographic transition models show population change over time – and also show marked differences between LEDCs and MEDCs.

Hidden momentum of population growth:

The term hidden momentum of population growth (demographic momentum) refers to the phenomenon of continuous increase in the population of a country even though there is fall in the birth rate of that country. This is so because the youth population becomes the population base of potential parents.

According to figure above, population of Kenya will show demographic momentum. When a country has a broad-based population pyramid, there are more girls entering their fertile years than women leaving the fertile years resulting in population momentum. The youth dependency gives rise to the hidden momentum of population growth. It is a dynamic latent process of population growth where population continues to grow despite a fall in birth rate due to larger number of child bearing couples.

Stable Population:

Stable population is a population where fertility and mortality are constant over a period of time. This type of population will show an unvarying age distribution and will grow at a constant rate. Where fertility and mortality are equal, the stable population is stationary.

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Demographic transition:

The demographic transition is a shift of birth and death rates from high levels to low levels in a population. And that usually is a result of economic and social development. The theory of demographic transition held that, after the standard of living and life expectancy increase, family sizes and birth rates decline. In its simplest form, it’s the principle that when societies get wealthy and child mortality falls, people tend to start having less children. The connection between societies growing wealthier and people desiring smaller families is pretty straightforward. In richer societies, people do not need their kids to do labor and support the family, and they typically invest money and other resources in their kids, to give them the best shot possible at a decent life. The connection between drops in child mortality and smaller desired family sizes is less obvious. Indeed, at first, when child mortality falls, the population shoots up, as people are still having lots of kids, but more of them survive to adulthood. That produces a rapid increase in population. That was the state of the world in the 1960s, and some parts of the world are still in that state now. But then, overall growth rates started to fall.

The demographic transition is a sequence of five stages:

Stage 1: high mortality and high birth rates. In the long time before rapid population growth the birth rate in a population is high, but since the death rate is also high we observe no or only very small population growth. This describes the reality through most of our history. Societies around the world remained in stage 1 for many millennia as the long-run perspective on extremely slow population growth highlighted. According to this theory, death rates are high in first stage of an agrarian economy on account of poor diets, primitive sanitation and absence of effective medical aid. Birth rates are also high in this stage as a consequence of widespread prevalence of illiteracy, absence of knowledge about family planning techniques, early age of marriage and social attitude. At this stage the population pyramid is broad at the base but since the mortality rate is high across all ages – and the risk of death is particularly high for children – the pyramid gets much narrower towards the top.

Stage 2: mortality falls but birth rates still high. In second stage due to economic development, basic health condition improves and thus there is low death rate along with the high birth rate. Since the health of the population has already improved, but fertility still remains as high as before, this is the stage of the transition at which the size of the population starts to grow rapidly. Historically it is the exceptional time at which the extended family with many (surviving) children is common.

Stage 3: mortality low and birth rates fall. Later the birth rate starts to fall and consequentially the rate at which the population grows begins to decline as well. Why the fertility rate falls is a question that is answered here. When the mortality of children is not as high as it once was parents adapt to the healthier environment and choose to have fewer children; the economy is undergoing structural changes that makes children less economically valuable; and women are empowered socially and within partnerships and have fewer children than before.

Stage 4: mortality low and birth rates low. Rapid population growth comes to an end in stage 4 as the birth rate falls to a similar level as the already low mortality rate. Eventually economic development changes the character of the economy from an agrarian to industrialised one. Shift from rural economy to urban economy changes the mindset of people towards family size and thus this stage is characterised by low birth rate, low death rate and low growth rate of population. The population pyramid is now box shaped; as the mortality rate at young ages is now very low the younger cohorts are now very similar in size and only at an old age the cohorts get smaller very rapidly.

Stage 5: mortality low and some evidence of rising fertility. The demographic transition describes changes over the course of socio-economic modernization. What happens at a very high level of development is not a question we can answer with certainty since only few societies have reached this stage. But we do have some good evidence that at very high levels of development fertility is rising again. Not to the very high levels of pre-modern times, but to a fertility rate that gets close to 2 children per woman. What level exactly the fertility rate will reach is crucial for the question of what happens to population growth in the long run. If the fertility rate stays below 2 children per woman then we will see a decline of the population size in the long run. If indeed the fertility rate will rise above 2 children per woman we will see a slow long-run increase of the population size.

As new data has become available, it has been observed that after a certain level of development (HDI equal to 0.86 or higher) the fertility increases again and is often represented as a “J” shape. This means that both the worry that the theory generated about aging populations and the complacency it bred regarding the future environmental impact of population growth could need re-evaluation.

As a country passes through the demographic transition model, the total population rises. Most LEDCs are at stage 2 or 3 (with a growing population and a high natural increase). Most MEDCs are now at stage 4 of the model and some such as Germany have entered stage 5.

Many countries have high population growth rates but lower total fertility rates because high population growth in the past skewed the age demographic toward a young age, so the population still rises as the more numerous younger generation approaches maturity.

Limitations of the demographic transition model:

The model was developed after studying the experiences of countries in Western Europe and North America. Conditions might be different for LEDCs in different parts of the world.
The original model doesn’t take into account the fact that some countries now have a declining population and a 5th stage. Most texts will now show this stage as it is relevant to an increasing number of MEDCs in the 21st century.

“Demographic entrapment” is a concept developed by Maurice King, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, who posits that this phenomenon occurs when a country has a population larger than its carrying capacity, no possibility of migration, and exports too little to be able to import food. This will cause starvation. He claims that for example many sub-Saharan nations are or will become stuck in demographic entrapment, instead of having a demographic transition.

Is demographic transition possible in future?

Oil Production, Global Per Capita GDP and Population Growth Rates:

In the past, people have argued that concerns over world population will dissipate as countries undergo the demographic transition. Peak global population growth rates of 2.1 per cent occurred in the 1960s followed by a peak in the absolute number of people being added each year at 87 million 25 years later. This slowing in global average population growth was the outcome of a dramatic drop in birth rates among the world’s most developed countries; many dropping to replacement level or even below. It is very widely accepted that this phenomenon, part of something demographers call the demographic transition, reliably occurs in countries as they become developed. This assumption is incorporated into estimates that project world population levelling off just above nine billion by the middle of this century. In general, projections of future population also assume that the economic and social development which is an important dimension of demographic transition, can and will occur in many of the world’s poorer countries.

The prevailing assumption about population growth rates is that as the developing countries achieve greater development their population growth rate will slow. This would mean an easing in the number of people putting pressure on the Earth System as population growth itself is serious challenge to economic and social development as an ever-increasing number of employment opportunities and services are needed to meet the needs of the population. So far, so good. However, developed countries also have larger ecological footprints and elevated levels of consumption. Thus while population growth will decline during demographic transition, the reduced number of consumers may have an equally large impact on the Earth System. A further problem is that the steady progress of global GDP, which is taken as evidence that development will eventually reach the entire world, has so far been built on cheap energy—primarily oil.

A further problem is that as the world’s supply of cheap oil declines, increasing energy costs will hinder economic and social development, which are presumed to be important drivers of demographic transition. Researchers warn that large amounts of cheap energy are needed to drive development. The historical reality of the relationship between per capita energy consumption and per capita GDP is illustrated in the graph below. As we reach (or have reached) “peak oil”, there is good reason to question the sustainability of the current trend of rising global per capita GDP, barring the emergence of a cheap and abundant alternative energy source.

Figure above shows Global GDP has risen with global oil production. The global economic development reflected in per capita GDP is linked to lower birth rates and population growth by the demographic transition concept.

All of this suggests that demographic transition may not be inevitable and that population growth and the question of carrying capacity may still be important concerns. Complacent reliance on demographic transition, however politically acceptable it might be, is highly problematic. The current population is believed by many to overshoot the Earth’s capacity to sustainably support it already. To bring developing countries up to consumption levels of developed countries—and thereby trigger demographic transition—would magnify per capita impact on top of an increasing number of consumers.

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Aging population:

Declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancies are causing the population to age. The social and economic implications of an aging population are becoming increasingly apparent in many industrialized nations around the globe. With populations in places such as North America, Western Europe and Japan aging more rapidly than ever before, policymakers are confronted with several interrelated issues, including a decline in the working-age population, increased health care costs, unsustainable pension commitments and changing demand drivers within the economy.

The United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, recently published a report describing the world’s ageing population. “Today we have one in nine persons aged 60 or over,” says the UNFPA’s Dr Ann Pawliczko, “but by 2050 it’ll be one in five, and by that time there will be more older persons than those under 15 years.” The UN sees these statistics as a cause both for celebration because more people are living longer, and some concern because the change presents an economic and social challenge.

Lower fertility also leads to ageing populations:

A reduction in the fertility level results not only in a slower pace of population growth but also in an older population. Compared to 2017, the number of persons aged 60 or above is expected to more than double by 2050 and to more than triple by 2100, rising from 962 million globally in 2017 to 2.1 billion in 2050 and 3.1 billion in 2100.

In Europe, 25% of the population is already aged 60 years or over. That proportion is projected to reach 35% in 2050 and to remain around that level in the second half of the century. Populations in other regions are also projected to age significantly over the next several decades and continuing through 2100. Africa, for example, which has the youngest age distribution of any region, is projected to experience a rapid ageing of its population. Although the African population will remain relatively young for several more decades, the percentage of its population aged 60 or over is expected to rise from 5% in 2017 to around 9% in 2050, and then to nearly 20% by the end of the century.

Globally, the number of persons aged 80 or over is projected to triple by 2050, from 137 million in 2017 to 425 million in 2050. By 2100 it is expected to increase to 909 million, nearly seven times its value in 2017.

Population ageing is projected to have a profound effect on societies, underscoring the fiscal and political pressures that the health care, old-age pension and social protection systems of many countries are likely to face in the coming decades. Aging population raises questions about how working populations will support large numbers of elderly people. Countries like Singapore and Italy, where the fertility rate has dropped below replacement levels, are in deep trouble. As their populations age and ultimately shrink, low-fertility countries will have fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more retirees. This will strain their social-welfare systems.

The aging of the population impacts economic growth through changes in productivity. A nation’s population declines when the fertility rate drops, which results in the aging of the population and a reduction in the size of the young labor force. As a result, society gradually loses the creativity and aggressiveness associated with younger people. A study conducted using data from about 20 OECD countries over a period from 1980 to 2010 pointed to a statistically significant negative relationship between population aging and productivity growth. Another study from the School of Economics has found that an increase in Asian elderly population share will significantly lower economic growth due to decreased labour participation in the region. Another study finds that a 10 percent increase in the share of the population that is age 60 and above decreases growth in GDP per capita by 5.5 percent. On the other hand, new analysis of international data from 35 countries, published by the International Longevity Centre, provides evidence in favour of a “longevity dividend”. The authors found that as life expectancy increases, so does “output per hour worked, per worker and per capita”. Aging population is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth but evidence is equivocal.

Environmental scientists argue that societies should embrace population aging and decrease in an opinion appearing in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution 2018. They cite multiple reports of the socioeconomic and environmental benefits of population aging, mortality-related decrease, and shrinking workforces due to retirement and maintain that, contrary to some economic analyses, costs associated with aging societies are manageable, while smaller populations make for more sustainable societies.

Global Population Estimates by Age, 1950-2050

The demographic future for the U.S. and the world looks very different than the recent past. Growth from 1950 to 2010 was rapid—the global population nearly tripled, and the U.S. population doubled. However, population growth from 2010 to 2050 is projected to be significantly slower and is expected to tilt strongly to the oldest age groups, both globally and in the U.S. as seen in the figure below:

Advantages of an Ageing Population:

The ageing population is often stereotyped as a burden and their detrimental impact on the economy is exaggerated causing their significant societal contributions to be overlooked. More precise analysis and research show that having an ageing population is often advantageous in terms of lower health care costs in later years of life and other beneficial contributions to the community. It appears that associating an ageing population with immense medical and social care expenses is a common misconception. It has been researched that approximately a quarter of all health-related expenses in a person’s life are spent on their last year of life (Wanless 2001) and do not tend to increase with age. Furthermore it is more likely that health care expenditure on the last year of life decreases with age, as the elderly cannot physically endure extensive medical procedures (Graham et al. 2003). Nevertheless, the shift of dependent elderly people from hospitals to residential and nursing homes will minimize health care costs as it transfers the expenditure from health care to social care funds. Since social care is increasingly becoming more privatized, elderly people are less likely to financially burden the government (Healy 2004). The ageing population also makes positive contributions to the community through their services. As a general rule, it is likely that older communities will become more law abiding, since older people are less inclined to commit crimes. Older people tend to play a role in supporting and maintaining informal social networks, which in turn bind communities and families together. All developed nations have an ageing population — it’s a sign of good healthcare and high levels of education. In fact, for any population to stabilise, it is essential that it adjusts to a gradually ageing population as part of the process. There is a myth that never-ending population growth is a necessary means of offsetting an ageing population.

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Human resource and human capital:

Although the terms human resource and human capital are used interchangeably, they are different. Resources are the total means available or an available supply that can be drawn on when needed. Resources can be drawn on until exhausted. Capital is defined as any form of wealth employed or capable of being employed in the production of more wealth. Capital can grow with investment to produce more capital. Resources are finite. We can strip coal, gold and iron mines until the supply is exhausted. Capital can be infinite, as it can be used to produce more and more capital. So human resource is finite and exhaustible while human capital can grow. Human resource refers to the people who are part of the workforce. The human resource plays a significant role in the economy of a country by contributing to productivity. The other resource becomes useful because of the input by the human resource.

Investment in human capital yields a return and it is done through education, training, and healthcare. It is truly known that a person who is educated earns better than an uneducated person. Also, a healthy person is much more productive than an unhealthy person.

It is really the well-educated parents who understand the value of education and at the same time invest in their child’s education to secure a better future for the child. The uneducated parents fail to invest in their child’s education and healthcare of their children which in turn creates a vicious cycle wherein the coming generation is often forced to remain poor. Educated parents also take extra care of the health and nutrition of their child which leads to a virtuous cycle of creating a better human capital. Education enhances the literacy level and skill level of a person. It also helps in enriching the culture of the society. Presence of educated persons in the society indirectly benefits the illiterate persons as well.

Education is a force of global socioeconomic change. Education plays a central role in determining not only global population dynamics, but also people’s vulnerability and resilience to environmental risks. Thus, public investment in universal education should be considered as one of the key priorities of the policies addressing climate change. National human resource development as a policy can help achieve sustainable development. Fertility varies significantly with the level of female education – particularly during the process of demographic transition. Thus, improvements in the education of younger women bring about decline in fertility.

Figure above shows historical trend and projections according to the medium scenario (SSP2) for the world population by six levels of educational attainment (see color coding). The additional lines superimposed on this graph show the projections of total population size according the stalled development scenario (SSP3), the rapid development scenario (SSP1), and the medium variant of the UN 2012 projection.

SSP = Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

Figure above depicts the medium (middle of the road) SSP2, and also SSP1, which describes the case of rapid socioeconomic development, and SSP3, which captures the case of stalled development. As can be seen from figure above, the SSP1 to SSP3 range covers a world population size in 2100 from 7 to 12.7 billion.

For detail, read World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, published recently by Oxford University Press.

People as resource:

Population becomes human capital when there is investment made in the form of education, training and medical care. In fact, human capital is the stock of skill and productive knowledge embodied in them.

‘People as Resource’ is a way of referring to a country’s working people in terms of their existing productive skills and abilities. Looking at the population from this productive aspect emphasises its ability to contribute to the creation of the Gross National Product. Like other resources population also is a resource — a ‘human resource’. This is the positive side of a large population that is often overlooked when we look only at the negative side, considering only the problems of providing the population with food, education and access to health facilities. When the existing ‘human resource’ is further developed by becoming more educated and healthy, we call it ‘human capital formation’ that adds to the productive power of the country just like ‘physical capital formation’.

Investment in human capital (through education, training, medical care) yields a return just like investment in physical capital. This can be seen directly in the form of higher incomes earned because of higher productivity of the more educated or the better trained persons, as well as the higher productivity of healthier people. India’s IT revolution is a striking instance of how the importance of human capital has come to acquire a higher position than that of material, plant and machinery.

Not only do the more educated and the healthier people gain through higher incomes, society also gains in other indirect ways because the advantages of a more educated or a healthier population spreads to those also who themselves were not directly educated or given health care. In fact, human capital is in one way superior to other resources like land and physical capital: human resource can make use of land and capital. Land and capital cannot become useful on its own!

Large population has been considered a liability rather than an asset. But a large population need not be a liability. It can be turned into a productive asset by investment in human capital (for example, by spending resources on education and health for all, training of industrial and agricultural workers in the use of modern technology, useful scientific researches and so on). The quality of population depends upon the literacy rate, health of a person indicated by life expectancy and skill formation acquired by the people of the country. The quality of the population ultimately decides the growth rate of the country. Illiterate and unhealthy population are a liability for the economy. Literate, skilled and healthy population are an asset.

Countries like Japan have invested in human resource. They did not have any natural resource. These countries are developed/rich countries. They import the natural resource needed in their country. How did they become rich/developed? They have invested on people especially in the field of education and health. These people have made efficient use of other resource like land and capital. Efficiency and the technology evolved by people have made these countries rich/developed.

Importance of Human Resources:

Proper Utilisation of Resources:

Human resources are considered important type of resources for attaining economic development of a country. Among various types of resources, human resources are the most active type of resources. Qualitative and quantitative development of human resources is very much required for the proper utilisation of natural resources of the country. Thus the human capital formation is the process of acquiring and increasing the number of persons who have skills, education and experience which are critical for the economic and political development of the country.

Increased Productivity:

Human capital has been playing an important role in the economic development of a country. Schultz, Kenderick and Harbison have made some important studies so as to point out that a major part of the growth of national output in USA can be attributed to increased productivity which has been mostly realised out of capital formation. In this connection Prof. Galbraith was of the view that “we now get the larger part of industrial growth not from more capital investment but from investment in men and improvements brought about by improved men.”

Development of Skills:

Slow growth in underdeveloped countries is mostly resulted from lack of investment in human capital. These countries are suffering from lack of critical skills required for its industrial sector and also face the problem of surplus labour force in its farm sector. Thus human capital formation is very much required for the economic development of developing countries. It is now increasingly recognised that many developing countries may be held back, not so much by a shortage of savings as by a shortage of skills and knowledge resulted in a limited capacity of their organisational framework to absorb capital in productive investment. Thus the developing countries are suffering from shortage of technically trained, highly skilled and educated persons and the developed countries are maintaining high level of investment on the development of manpower resources. While investment in human beings has been a major source of growth in advanced countries, the negligible amount of human investment in developing countries has done little to extend the capacity of the people to meet the challenge of accelerated development. Thus in order to attain an all-round development of the country, the human capital formation through adequate volume of investment on human development is very much important under the present context of development.

Increased Volume of Output:

As a result of human resource development, the production increases as the knowledgeable and skilled workers can make a rational use of all resources at their disposal. With the imparted knowledge, workers try to increase his output and income. Attainment of vocational skills helps the workers and all categories of manpower to earn higher level of income in various professions. The higher education and training at higher educational set up like college and universities usually enables workers to contribute liberally towards faster expansion of output in technical, engineering, machine building, accounting, management etc. Moreover, improved health facility can enhance physical capacity of workers. Thus all these factors positively contribute towards increased output.

Addition to Productive Capacity:

Human resource development in the form of human capital formation can make necessary addition to the productive capacity of a country in numerous ways. By upgrading the technological scenario along with improved knowledge and skill can modernise the production technologies and thereby can add to the productive capacity of the country in general. Transfer of technology from foreign countries can pave the way for adoption of modern technology into production and thereby can improve the productive capacities. Moreover, human capital formation can promote higher growth of the economy by adding physical stock of capital of the country.

Raises Per capita Income:

Human resources development can raise per capita income of the country through increased formation of human capital. Imparting knowledge can improve the productivity of workers and therefore, can raise the per capita income.

Tool for Economic Change and Economic Development:

Human resource development can make the people knowledgeable, skilled and physically fit. This can also change the attitudes of the people and improve the personal qualities of people. Such changes are conducive to the development of innovative capacity and entrepreneurship which usually motivates people to work hard, take risks, do research and apply them to produce new products and also to develop new processes of production. Human resources are playing an important role in attaining economic development of a country. Economic development of country involves proper utilisation of its physical resources by its labour force and other forms of manpower for the proper utilisation of production potential of the country.

Economic development normally involves achievement of three conditions:

-An increase in the per capita income to raise the level of living of the people;

-A fall in the magnitude and rate of unemployment and

-A consequent reduction in the number of people living below poverty line. All these can work as a tool for economic change.

Improving Quality of Life:

Human resources development can pave the way for improving quality of life for the people in general. This can be made possible through improvements in the three components of Human Development Index (HDI), i.e., rise in per capita income, higher educational attainments and increase in life expectancy.

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How fast population growth affects human resource quality:

The rapidly rising population adversely affects the quality of population. It works in two ways.

On an individual level, the available empirical evidence shows an inverse relation between numbers of children and ‘resource intensity per child’, suggestive of a trade-off between the number of children and their average quality desired by parents.

On an aggregative level, such health technologies as have been invoked so far are, largely, what may be called death-control strategies, which have served to reduce death rates and ensure better survival. But between the point of ‘survival’ or escape from death on the one hand, and the point of optimal health and nutrition on the other, there is a distance to be covered. Unfortunately, investments in HRD have not been adequate to cover fast this crucial distance.

The world is, therefore, now caught up in a dangerous twilight phase of development wherein large numbers of the poor who might have otherwise died without the benefits of modern health technology are now being ‘saved’, but these survivors continue to live in a state of substandard health, poor nutrition and poor educational attainment. It is this ever-expanding pool of substandard survivors that is eroding the quality of human resources. It is also this large pool of substandard survivors, because of its poverty, illiteracy and under development, that is most resistant to family-planning programmes.

In the social sphere, unchecked growth in population causes a vicious circle. There is a large-scale exodus of rural causes unplanned urbanisation. The rising population of unemployed young people is prone to adopt anti-social activities. Such people tend to perpetuate the cycle by having more children themselves. Paul Ehrlich remarked in his best-selling book, ‘Population Bomb’: ‘You are poor because you are too many.’

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Quality of population and Eugenics:

Population quality is the overall level of certain desirable traits in a specific population. In most discussions of population quality, the traits in question are health, intelligence, and what the scientist Sir Francis Galton, the coiner of the term eugenics, called “moral character”; this is frequently interpreted by modern psychologists as the personality traits of conscientiousness and altruism. However difficult it may be to define and assess such qualities in ways that command wide agreement, let alone consensus, it is obvious that people want to live in a society whose members are healthy, intelligent, conscientious, considerate, and civil toward others and prefer not to live in a society whose members are on the whole unhealthy, unintelligent, dishonest, lazy, and uncivil. The question, then, is how social policies in a specific population could be devised to increase the frequency of members with high amounts of the good traits and decrease the frequency of those with low amounts and whether such policies should even be sought.

A commonly discussed method of increasing the frequency of those with the good traits and decreasing the frequency of those without them is eugenics. Eugenics is a science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Eugenic methods are applicable when the trait in question is inherited in some fashion, and many of those traits seem to be. What Richard Lynn (2001) calls “classical eugenics” seeks to increase the reproductive rates of those with higher levels of the desired traits and decrease the reproductive rates of those without them. This would counteract the tendency, perceived by many observers, of people who are better endowed with intelligence or the personality traits of conscientiousness and civility to replace themselves in the next generation at lower rates than those of people with low intelligence or minimal conscientiousness or civility.

Problems with Eugenics:

There are problems with a program of eugenics. Assuming that agreement about desirable and undesirable traits can be reached, probably the most important problem is time. Generation length (the average time between two successive generations) among human beings is between 25 and 30 years, and for males it is often even longer. Because eugenics programs propose changing the frequency of a trait in the next generation, such programs would take 20 or more years to have an effect. This may be too long in comparison to other changes affecting human populations.

The eugenicist Hermann Muller (1890–1967), a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, wrote about this problem, noting the “creeping pace” of dysgenic trends compared to the “fast growing menaces presented by our cultural imbalances” (Muller 1973, p.128). Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989), also a Nobel Prize winner, worried about the genetic quality of the human species. Late in his life, however, he allowed that cultural deterioration proceeds much more rapidly than does genetic deterioration (Lorenz 1976). This argument against the efficacy of eugenics has not been answered.

Of course, if change in the quality of a population is due in large part to the environment in which the members of that population live, change can take place considerably faster than the slow pace of genetic change. However, Richard Lynn has shown in his books Dysgenics (1996) and Eugenics (2001) that important traits such as intelligence, conscientiousness, altruism, and a psychopathic personality have significant inherited components. That conclusion strongly suggests that public policies consider eugenic measures despite the problems. The problem identified in the past by some demographers–the low fertility of those with large amounts of desirable traits relative to the fertility of those with low amounts–persists to this day.

The phrase, “population quality,” has largely disappeared from recent demographic writings, partly because of its association with Nazi eugenic theories and programs. A common criticism of eugenics is that “it inevitably leads to measures that are unethical”. Some fear future “eugenics wars” as the worst-case scenario: the return of coercive state-sponsored genetic discrimination and human rights violations such as compulsory sterilization of persons with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, specifically, segregation and genocide of races perceived as inferior. Health law professor George Annas and technology law professor Lori Andrews are prominent advocates of the position that the use of these technologies could lead to such human-posthuman caste warfare.

Policies and Population Quality:

A few countries have instituted demographic policies designed to cause a higher level of population quality. In China mentally retarded persons and those with genetically transmitted diseases are actively discouraged from having children. In Singapore more highly educated women are actively encouraged and given substantial financial incentives to have more children. These policies have been noted in the West but derided and not emulated. In the West persons with mental retardation, which is known to have an inherited component, are not discouraged from having children and highly educated men and women are not encouraged to reproduce.

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Carrying capacity:

The carrying capacity of a species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available in the environment. Biological carrying capacity is defined as the maximum number of individuals of a species that can exist in a habitat indefinitely without threatening other species in that habitat. Factors such as available food, water, cover, prey and predator species will affect biological carrying capacity. Unlike cultural carrying capacity, biological carrying capacity cannot be influenced by public education. When a species exceeds its biological carrying capacity, the species is overpopulated. Carrying capacity is a topic of much debate in recent years due to the rapidly expanding human populations, some scientists believe that humans have exceeded their biological carrying capacity.

Although the biology term was originally coined to describe how much a species could graze on a portion of land before permanently damaging its food yield, it was expanded later to include the more complex interactions between species such as predator-prey dynamics and the recent impact modern civilization has had on native species. However, competition for shelter and food aren’t the only factors that determine a particular species’ carrying capacity, it also depends upon environmental factors not necessarily caused by natural processes — such as pollution and species extinctions caused by mankind. Now, ecologists and biologists determine the carrying capacity of individual species by weighing all of these factors and use the resultant data to best mitigate species overpopulation — or conversely extinction—which could wreak havoc on their delicate ecosystems and the global food web at large.

Carrying capacity was originally used to determine the number of animals that could graze on a segment of land without destroying it. Later, the idea was expanded to more complex populations, like humans. For the human population, more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary establishment. As population density increases, birth rate often increases and death rate typically decreases. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate is the “natural increase”. The carrying capacity could support a positive natural increase or could require a negative natural increase. Thus, the carrying capacity is the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment. Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase, while above, they typically decrease. A factor that keeps population size at equilibrium is known as a regulating factor. Population size decreases above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on the species concerned, but can include insufficient space, food supply, or sunlight. The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors including: food availability, water supply, environmental conditions and living space.

Figure above shows that when the population of a species grows beyond the capacity of its environment to sustain it, it reduces that capacity below the original level, ensuring an eventual population crash.

Earth’s carrying capacity:

Scientists are still undecided on the Earth’s “carrying capacity” – the maximum number of people it can support indefinitely – with estimates ranging widely between 500 million and more than one trillion. Part of the reason is that our consumption of resources varies massively across the globe. Several estimates of the carrying capacity have been made with a wide range of population numbers. A 2001 UN report said that two-thirds of the estimates fall in the range of 4 billion to 16 billion with unspecified standard errors, with a median of about 10 billion. More recent estimates are much lower, particularly if non-renewable resource depletion and increased consumption are considered. Changes in habitat quality or human behavior at any time might increase or reduce carrying capacity. Research conducted by the Australian National University and Stockholm Resilience Centre mentioned that there is a risk for the planet to cross the planetary thresholds and reach “Hothouse Earth” conditions. In this case, the Earth would see its carrying capacity severely reduced.

The application of the concept of carrying capacity for the human population has been criticized for not successfully capturing the multi-layered processes between humans and the environment, which have a nature of fluidity and non-equilibrium, and for sometimes being employed in a blame-the-victim framework. Supporters of the concept argue that the idea of a limited carrying capacity is just as valid applied to humans as when applied to any other species. Animal population size, living standards, and resource depletion vary, but the concept of carrying capacity still applies. The number of people is not the only factor in the carrying capacity of Earth. Waste and over-consumption, especially by wealthy and near-wealthy people and nations, are also putting significant strain on the environment together with human overpopulation. Population and consumption together appear to be at the core of many human problems. When scientists talk of global change today, they are usually referring to human-caused changes in the environment of sufficient magnitude eventually to reduce the carrying capacity of much of Earth (as opposed to local or regional areas) to support organisms, especially Homo sapiens.

From an anthropological point of view, there really is no ideal population size. If we look at the world 20,000 years ago, our best estimates suggest fewer than 10 million people lived in the whole world at that time. For every one of those people 20,000 years ago, there are 1000 people today. The Earth 20,000 years ago could not support 7 billion people with Palaeolithic lifeways. People invented new ways to get more food from the same space. People invented new ways to live in spaces where they couldn’t live before, and spread into every corner of the planet. All those changes were culture — without our culture, the world’s population today would be totally unsustainable.

Now the question is whether we can continue to adapt our culture to accommodate larger populations. We didn’t always manage this. During most of the last 2 million years, there were several human species. The fact that they all survived for hundreds of thousands of years suggests that no one of them was pushing against the others very hard. Each of them must have been limited by resources, and probably their populations crashed when resources became limited. It’s only during the past hundred thousand years that our own species, Homo sapiens, started to grow in population size, and that may have been tied to cultural innovations in hunting or social organization. So today we’re still living the consequences of those changes 100,000 years ago, and we haven’t stopped yet.

We are now seven billion people and we are adding one million more people roughly every 4.4 days. Before 1950 no one on Earth had lived through a doubling of the human population but now some people have experienced a tripling in their lifetime. So many people now inhabit the planet with so much impact that scientists have coined a new word to describe our time, the Anthropocene Epoch. Unlike previous epochs, where various natural regimes of geological processes defined the time periods, the Anthropocene is named for escalating human influence on the environment. The release of CO2 into the atmosphere is beginning to alter the global climate. Species are going extinct at a rate 100 to 1,000 times above the natural rate. The scale of human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis—the most fundamental process of the biosphere—has reached around one-quarter to one-third of all global Net Primary Production. We have become a major “global geophysical force”.

After roughly 100,000 to 200,000 years of modern humans remaining at very low numbers (and with a very minimal impact on the planet), our numbers began to grow around 4,000 years ago. That growth began to accelerate over the following centuries until we were adding more people each year than had ever lived on Earth at one time prior to 500 BCE (87 million added in 1989). While the rate of population growth in percentage terms is estimated to have peaked in the 1960s, the absolute number of people added each year continues to be staggering. The most recent billion arrivals were added in about 13 years; it took 12 years for the billion before that and 13 years for the billion before that. Even though the global growth rate peaked more than 50 years ago, it is estimated that there will be another billion added over the next 15 years and yet another billion before mid-century. The UN Population Division’s “medium-variant” projection for the end of the century is now 11 billion!

Figure above shows world population began accelerating about 4,000 years ago and has “exploded” in the past 1,000 years.

While global population has doubled since the 1960s, per capita GDP has grown to more than 10 times what it was then. Per capita income for millions in the developing world including India and China is growing rapidly, creating enormous demand for material goods and services. Life expectancy has also increased globally —by almost 20 years. That puts twice as many people on the planet, living about 40 per cent longer and each person consuming many times what the average person in the 1960s did. Most developing economies are striving to close the gap between their living standards and those of developed economies. However, it has been estimated that “if everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American, we would need five planet Earths” to provide the needed land and ecosystem goods and services as seen in the figure below.

Living standards and consumption need not be directly equivalent to environmental impact. While population is a multiplier of per capita impact, technological advances in efficiency can be a divisor of per capita impact. However, so far development of technologies that can deliver goods and services efficiently enough to stabilize environmental impact in the face of rapidly growing population remains a profound challenge. In other words, population growth is multiplying per capita impacts faster than technology (the divisor) is mitigating environmental impacts. It is not surprising that concerns about the number of people the Earth can support have re-emerged in the past decade.

Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people. One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth’s available resources. As Wilson pointed out in his book “The Future of Life” (Knopf, 2002), “The constraints of the biosphere are fixed.” Aside from the limited availability of freshwater, there are indeed constraints on the amount of food that Earth can produce, just as Malthus argued more than 200 years ago. Even in the case of maximum efficiency, in which all the grains grown are dedicated to feeding humans (instead of livestock, which is an inefficient way to convert plant energy into food energy), there’s still a limit to how far the available quantities can stretch. “If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people,” Wilson wrote. The 3.5 billion acres would produce approximately 2 billion tons of grains annually, he explained. That’s enough to feed 10 billion vegetarians, but would only feed 2.5 billion U.S. omnivores, because so much vegetation is dedicated to livestock and poultry in the United States. So 10 billion people is the uppermost population limit where food is concerned. Because it’s extremely unlikely that everyone will agree to stop eating meat, Wilson thinks the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth based on food resources will most likely fall short of 10 billion.

According to population biologist Joel Cohen of Columbia University, other environmental factors that limit the Earth’s carrying capacity are the nitrogen cycle, available quantities of phosphorus, and atmospheric carbon concentrations, but there is a great amount of uncertainty in the impact of all of these factors.

Joel Cohen is the professor and mathematician who most famously tried to calculate a definitive number, in his book How Many People Can the Earth Support? His success was in admitting that he couldn’t determine a sustainable limit for human population because that limit depends on how people live their lives and what they choose to consume. Are they city-dwelling vegetarians who live in tiny apartments and take public transportation, omnivorous homesteaders who grow their own food and make their own clothes and furniture, wealthy estate owners who take private jets to play golf every weekend, or somewhere in between? The carrying capacity estimates of 94 scientists range from 500 million to 1 sextillion (that’s 21 zeroes) and the factors discussed above illustrate why.

Some scientists who look at population issues believe that we’re already past the “tipping point,” where natural systems are so overstressed that they cannot be recovered, thus effectively changing renewable resources into non-renewable ones. Already, we’re consuming the Earth’s renewable resources at one and a half times the sustainable rate. And that’s with billions of people living in poverty, consuming next to nothing. Imagine what would happen if desperately poor people were fortunate enough to live a middle-class lifestyle. And then imagine what would happen if poor people joined the middle class, and the human population grew from today’s 7.5 billion to 9, 10, or 11 billion.

Criticism of earth’s carrying capacity:

Nordhaus argues on dismissing the longstanding biological concept of “carrying capacity”—the number of organisms an environment can support without becoming degraded. “Applied to ecology, the concept [of carrying capacity] is problematic,” Nordhaus writes, arguing in a nutshell that the planet’s ability to support human civilization can be, one presumes, infinitely tweaked through a combination of social and physical engineering. Few actual ecologists, however, would agree. Indeed, the concept of carrying capacity is useful in instance after instance—including modelling the population dynamics of nonhuman species, and in gauging the health of virtually any ecosystem, be it ocean, river, prairie, desert, or forest. While exact population numbers are sometimes difficult to predict on the basis of the carrying capacity concept, it is nevertheless clear that, wherever habitat is degraded, creatures suffer and their numbers decline.

The controversy deepens in applying the carrying capacity concept to humans. Nordhaus seems to think we are exceptions to the rules. Still, as archaeologists have affirmed, many past human societies consumed resources or polluted environments to the point of collapse. Granted, societies have failed for other reasons as well, including invasion, over-extension of empire, or natural climate change. Yet in cases where societies depleted forests, fisheries, freshwater, or topsoil, the consequences were dire.

But that was then. The core of Nordhaus’ case is that we are now living in a magical society that is immune to the ecological law of gravity. Yes, it is beyond dispute that the modern industrial world has been able to temporarily expand Earth’s carrying capacity for our species. As Nordhaus points out, population has grown dramatically (from less than a billion in 1800 to 7.6 billion today), and so has per capita consumption. No previous society was able to support so many people at such a high level of amenity. If we’ve managed to stretch carrying capacity this much already, why can’t we do so ad infinitum?

To answer the question, it’s first important to understand the basis of our success so far. Science and technology usually glean most of the credit, and they deserve their share. But sheer energy—the bulk of it from fossil fuels—has been at least as important a factor. With lots of cheap energy, we were able to extract raw materials faster and in greater quantities, transport them further, and transform them through industrial processes into a breath-taking array of goods—including fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics, all of which tended to reduce human death rates.

But there was still another essential factor in our success: nature itself. Using science, technology, and cheap energy, we expanded farmlands, chain-sawed forests, exploited fisheries, mined minerals, pumped oil, and flattened mountains for their buried coal. And we did these things in a way that was not remotely sustainable. By harvesting renewable resources faster than they could regrow, by using non-renewable resources that could not be recycled, and by choking environments with industrial wastes, we were borrowing from future generations and from other species.

Nordhaus writes: “For decades, each increment of economic growth in developed economies has brought lower resource and energy use than the last.” This trend of severing the tie between GDP and energy/materials throughput is called “decoupling.” Many economists make big claims for past decoupling and promise much more of it in the future. But careful analysis of decoupling to date shows that most is attributable to accounting error. And to get the developing world up to the level of an average American’s energy usage would require nearly quadrupling global energy consumption, even assuming advances in efficiency. So, unless we find ways to make decoupling actually happen in the future more reliably and at higher rates, growing the global economy will require us to use more of the Earth’s depleted resources.

It is true that some past warnings about the consequences of overpopulation and overconsumption, framed as forecasts, proved wrong. Thomas Malthus famously thought famine would engulf humanity within decades; it didn’t. He failed to foresee industrial agriculture. Paul Ehrlich thought rapid population growth would lead to catastrophe in the 1980s, but he failed to anticipate the impacts of globalization and debt—which enables us to consume now and pay later. Peak oil analysts didn’t foresee the fracking frenzy. Yet cornucopian economists who perceive no problem in the expectation of endless growth on a finite planet likewise failed to foresee climate change, the exponential increase in extinction rates primarily as a result of human-caused habitat degradation, the collapse of fisheries from overfishing, and much, much more.

How can we judge so-called Malthusians, will be right in the long run? One way would be to keep a running account of key biophysical factors on which the prospering of our species depends. If an alarm bell sounds for any of those key factors, we should sit up and pay attention. After all, Liebig’s Law (another foundation of ecology) tells us that growth limits are set not by total resources available, but by the single scarcest necessary resource.

Fortunately, somebody is keeping those accounts. Indeed, a cottage industry of environmental scientists, led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center and Will Steffen of the Australian National University, has identified nine planetary boundaries that we transgress at our peril as seen in the figure below: climate change, ocean acidification, biosphere integrity, biochemical flows, land-system change, freshwater use, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and the introduction of novel entities into environments. We are currently exceeding the “safe” marks for four of these boundaries:

Stockholm Resilience Centre has identified nine key processes in the global ecosystem which they feel are being altered enough by human activity to put the stability of the Earth System at risk:

Another way of keeping track is the ecological footprint, which measures human demand on nature in terms of the quantity of land and water it takes to support an economy sustainably. The Global Footprint Network calculates that humanity is currently exceeding Earth’s sustainable productivity by 60 %. We do this, again, by drawing down resources that future generations and other species would otherwise use. So, as a result of our actions, Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans is actually declining. Nordhaus is right that it’s not a fixed quantity; the problem is that we’re reducing it rather than adding to it in a way that can be maintained.

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Overpopulation (population explosion):

George Morris has defined overpopulation as the state of the population “when there are more people than can live on the earth in comfort, happiness, and health and still leave the world a fit place for future generations.” Every element of the definition is open to interpretation. Even the carrying capacity of the land — the number of people that can be supported in an area — depends on who is using the land and for what. The same amount of land can support a great many more vegetarians than meat-eaters. Comfort, health and happiness have different standards among peoples, and the next generation may find the world more or less “fit,” depending on their level of technology. Population density is not an adequate measure of overpopulation, since countries with advanced economies, like the Netherlands or Singapore, can support an extremely dense population. Whether a country is overpopulated or not depends on its population growth rate, standard of living, lifestyle, culture, available technology and resources, economy, and other factors. Some experts feel that the earth’s resources are finite and therefore there are limits to population and economic growth; others argue that, as long as science and technology advance, there are no limits to growth.

Human overpopulation:

Human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group. Overpopulation can further be viewed, in a long term perspective, as existing when a population cannot be maintained given the rapid depletion of non-renewable resources or given the degradation of the capacity of the environment to give support to the population. The term human overpopulation also refers to the relationship between the entire human population and its environment: the Earth, or to smaller geographical areas such as countries. Overpopulation can result from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates against the background of high fertility rates, an increase in immigration, or an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely populated areas to be overpopulated if the area has a meagre or non-existent capability to sustain life (e.g. a desert). Advocates of population moderation cite issues like quality of life, carrying capacity and risk of starvation as a basis to argue against continuing high human population growth and for population decline. Scientists suggest that the human impact on the environment as a result of overpopulation, profligate consumption and proliferation of technology has pushed the planet into a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene.

The population explosion or overpopulation for human species is defined as the number of people in the given area exceeds the resources and the carrying capacity of its environment to sustain the quality of life which would have existed; had the lesser number of people inhabited the same area in the same environment. Overpopulation is when the number of people cannot be maintained without depleting resources and degrading environment with lowering standard of living. The quality is sacrificed to accommodate increased quantity. As per the above definition, the earth is overpopulated and almost all countries are overpopulated. Many environmental, social and economic problems stem from overpopulation. The earth is a ‘closed system’ means we have limited environmental/ecological resources like water, air, land, food, shelter, energy etc to be consumed by the population and to be replenished by the earth. If the rate of consumption of resources by the population is less than the rate of replenishment by the earth, no problem. The reverse is overpopulation.

The entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly being depleted—and that implies that its carrying capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and water resources and contributing mightily to the destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and other rich nations are overpopulated because of their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere, among many other reasons. More than 80% of the world’s old growth forests have been destroyed, wetlands are being drained for real estate development, and demands for biofuels take much-needed arable land away from crop production. While reducing our consumption is important, worldwide per capita energy consumption increased from 1990 to 2005, so the trend does not look good.

Overpopulation occurs when a population has exceeded its carrying capacity. Biologically carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals of a species that can exist in a habitat indefinitely without threatening other species in that habitat. It would be difficult to argue that humans are not threatening other species. Life on earth is currently experiencing its sixth major extinction, and we are losing an estimated 30,000 species per year. The most famous major extinction was the fifth one, which occurred about 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. The major extinction that we are now facing is the first that is caused not by an asteroid collision or other natural causes, but by a single species—humans.

Lesson from Easter Island:

The effects of human overpopulation have been documented in the history of Easter Island, where a human population with finite resources was nearly wiped out when their consumption increased beyond what the island could sustain. An island once lush with diverse plant and animal species and fertile volcanic soil became nearly uninhabitable 1,300 years later. The population peak on the island has been estimated between 7,000 and 20,000 people. Trees were cut down for firewood, canoes, and wooden sleds for transporting the carved stone heads for which the island is known. Because of deforestation, the islanders lacked the resources necessary to make ropes and seaworthy canoes. Fishing from shore was not as effective as fishing out on the ocean. Also, without canoes, the Islanders had nowhere to go. They wiped out sea birds, land birds, lizards, and snails. Deforestation also led to erosion, which made it difficult to grow crops. Without adequate food, the population crashed. A rich and complex society that erected now-iconic stone monuments was reduced to living in caves and resorted to cannibalism.

Is the Earth really overpopulated?

Yes, for two main reasons. First, people are rapidly displacing wildlife species across the globe, initiating a mass extinction event. Second, we are degrading ecosystems that provide essential, irreplaceable environmental services that future generations will need to live decent lives. Both these trends are driven, in large part, by immense and unprecedented numbers of human beings. Because there are too many of us to share the Earth fairly with other species and with future human generations, Earth is overpopulated. It is important to realize that overpopulation exists in many rich countries with too high rates of consumption as well as in many poor countries with too high fertility rates. Every effort should be made reduce consumption rates as well as high birth rates; in combination, these two measures would create a much better future for people on the planet.

Current population dynamics, and cause for concern:

As of July 31, 2019, the world’s human population is estimated to be 7.723 billion. Most contemporary estimates for the carrying capacity of the Earth under existing conditions are between 4 billion and 16 billion. Depending on which estimate is used, human overpopulation may or may not have already occurred. Nevertheless, the rapid recent increase in human population has created concern. The population is expected to reach between 8 and 10.5 billion between the years 2040 and 2050. In 2017, the United Nations increased the medium variant projections to 9.8 billion for 2050 and 11.2 billion for 2100 (see figure below). The critical factor is that the population is not “just growing”, but that the growth ratio reached its peak and the total population is now growing much slower. The UN population forecast of 2017 was predicting “near end of high fertility” globally and anticipating that by 2030 over ⅔ of world population will be living in countries with fertility below the replacement level and for total world population to stabilize between 10-12 billion people by year 2100.

Figure below shows United Nations latest population projections (2017) till 2100:

The variants differ in fertility levels which assumed to be medium, high, low or constant (as of 2010-2015) while the mortality assumed to be “normal”; and in case of no change variant both the fertility and mortality are assumed to be constant as of 2010-2015. Latest population projections from the UN (2017) shows how differences in assumed fertility levels lead to large differences in future population numbers. The ‘No change’ variant keeps the current mortality and fertility levels constant.

Studies suggest that a future population of 11 or 12 billion could require a doubling of global food production. Tens of millions of people around the world already go to bed hungry every night. Continued population growth, combined with the uncertainties of climate change, could lead to much greater food insecurity in the years ahead. Meanwhile, the attempt to feed ever more people will inevitably come at the expense Earth’s remaining biodiversity, shrinking wild lands and extinguishing many thousands of species. Human beings have no right to act so selfishly and destructively. Earth is their home, too.

The rapid increase in world population over the past three centuries has raised concerns that the planet may not be able to sustain the future or even present number of its inhabitants. The InterAcademy Panel Statement on Population Growth, circa 1994, stated that many environmental problems, such as rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming, and pollution, are aggravated by the population expansion. Other problems associated with overpopulation include the increased demand for resources such as fresh water and food, starvation and malnutrition, consumption of natural resources (such as fossil fuels) faster than the rate of regeneration, and a deterioration in living conditions.

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Why do people still deny overpopulation?

In practice, many governments actually try to boost their population growth by pro-child policies in order to boost their economic and political advantage over their less populous neighbors. In some countries population growth is seen favorably as politicians and economists assume that larger population stimulates economic growth both in terms of markets and consumers. Young population provides future assets, paying for the (increasingly longer living) elderly, and stimulates “flourishing” economy. Western and Northern European countries are actually interested in attracting more (cheap) labor, and an endless supply of consumers for expanding markets. Hence high fertility is often celebrated.

Other supposedly more noble and “enlightened” reasons for not addressing population are the “sacredness” of (human) life. Births are influenced by conservative Christian ideas of procreation. Mitt Romney, an American Republican candidate, talked about Europe’s “demographic disaster” as he ended his presidential bid in 2008, referring to low European births as the “inevitable product of weakened faith in the creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life, and eroded morality”. This missionary fervor, combined with economic rationale, is perhaps one of the reasons why the morality of “saving every life” has spread from missionary countries and particularly America to the rest of the world. The unprecedented concern for human life is aligned with the interests of the dominant political and corporate elites that find population growth economically profitable.

Another reason for not wanting to address overpopulation has been the argument that in laying so much blame on population growth, the need for basic human development (and poverty alleviation) is ignored. With the approach of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, a vocal coalition of developing countries “insisted on broadening the list of actors that contributed to ecological deterioration beyond the obligatory reference to population growth”. This issue associated with the differences between the “wealthy” North and the “populous” South remains one of the most fiercely argued issues today. One of the persistent claims is that resource use by marginal communities, those of the “victimized South” is either “relatively benign” or “environmentally innocuous”. Those unconcerned with population assume that the global population growth is disconnected from overconsumption in the West. Factors such as the growing middle classes in developing countries, and migration from high to low population and high consumption areas are rarely taken into consideration.

Also, those unconcerned with population assume that as soon as the level of welfare rises, the birth rates will drop, which has proven true, not just in Europe and Japan but in many other developed countries. According to demographic transition theory, it is assumed population starts with stable, equal, and relatively high fertility and death rates. Consequently, as medical technologies become widely available (and particularly significant the availability of antibiotics and vaccinations) as well as improved diet lowers mortality. This raises both the population; and general higher affluence. The key factor is that it results in higher rates of education and women’s empowerment. In the final stages of transition, as birth-control technology develops, with higher educational levels, greater material levels lead to lower fertility. At some stage, the rates of mortality and fertility stabilize. The hypothesis is that these factors will stabilize population size without policy intervention: “Development is the best contraceptive” and it has been argued that we can be complacent that population growth will end (Alcott 2015).

Countries with a higher HDI usually have a lower birth rate, known as the fertility-income paradox. Thomas Malthus, in his book An Essay on the Principle of Population, proposed that greater means (higher income) would enable the production of more offspring (a higher fertility rate). However converse is true. This is the paradox.

There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country. In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating “Development is the best contraceptive.”

Has development, in fact, done much to reduce population growth? There can be little doubt that economic and social development, in general, has been associated with major reductions in birth rates and the emergence of smaller families as the norm. This is a pattern that was, of course, clearly observed in Europe and North America as they underwent industrialization, but that experience has been repeated in many other parts of the world. In particular, conditions of economic security and affluence, wider availability of contraceptive methods, expansion of education (particularly female education), and lower mortality rates have had—and are currently having—quite substantial effects in reducing birth rates in different parts of the world. The rate of world population growth is certainly declining, and even over the last few decades its percentage growth rate has fallen from 2.2 percent per year between 1970 and 1980 to 1.7 percent between 1980 and 1992. This rate is expected to go steadily down until the size of the world’s population becomes nearly stationary.

There are important regional differences in demographic behavior; for example, the population growth rate in India peaked at 2.2 percent a year (in the 1970s) and has since started to diminish, whereas most Latin American countries peaked at much higher rates before coming down sharply, while many countries in Africa currently have growth rates between 3 and 4 percent, with an average for sub-Saharan Africa of 3.1 percent. Similarly, the different factors have varied in their respective influence from region to region. But there can be little dispute that economic and social development tends to reduce fertility rates. The regions of the third world that lag most in achieving economic and social development, such as many countries in Africa, are, in general, also the ones that have failed to reduce birth rates significantly.

This raises the following question: in view of the clear connection between development and lower fertility, why isn’t the dispute over how to deal with population growth fully resolved already? Why don’t we reinterpret the population problem simply as a problem of underdevelopment and seek a solution by encouraging economic and social development (even if we reject the oversimplified slogan “development is the most reliable contraceptive”)?

The problem is more complex, however, because a “contraceptive” that is “reliable” in the long run may not act fast enough to meet the present threat. Even though development may dependably work to stabilize population if it is given enough time, there may not be, it is argued, time enough to give. The death rate often falls very fast with more widely available health care, better sanitation, and improved nutrition, while the birth rate may fall rather slowly. Much growth of population may meanwhile occur.

Development as the best contraceptive is doubtful. Myrskylä et al. (2009) found that the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at an HDI level of 0.86

In the many parts of the world the number of women of child-bearing age is disproportionately large, this “population momentum” being likely to outrun fertility decline, overriding even possible large mortality-increasing catastrophes. (Bradshaw & Brook 2014).

Smail (2016) has noted regarding the claim that population will stabilize at 9–10 billion in the twenty-first century: Much of this guarded optimism is based on the assumption – but not the assurance – that certain inferences based on the demographic transition model are empirically justified, particularly the claim that there is a strong positive correlation between increased economic, social, and sexual well-being and steadily decreasing fertility levels. But it is entirely possible that these assumptions and correlations are also “projections rather than predictions.”

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Causes of overpopulation:

From a historical perspective, technological revolutions have coincided with population expansion. There have been three major technological revolutions – the tool-making revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution – all of which allowed humans more access to food, resulting in subsequent population explosions. For example, the use of tools, such as bow and arrow, allowed primitive hunters greater access to more high energy foods (e.g. animal meat). Similarly, the transition to farming about 10,000 years ago greatly increased the overall food supply, which was used to support more people. Food production further increased with the industrial revolution as machinery, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides were used to increase land under cultivation as well as crop yields. Today, starvation is caused by economic and political forces rather than a lack of the means to produce food.

Significant increases in human population occur whenever the birth rate exceeds the death rate for extended periods of time. Traditionally, the fertility rate is strongly influenced by cultural and social norms that are rather stable and therefore slow to adapt to changes in the social, technological, or environmental conditions. For example, when death rates fell during the 19th and 20th century – as a result of improved sanitation, child immunizations, and other advances in medicine – allowing more newborns to survive, the fertility rate did not adjust downward, resulting in significant population growth. Until the 1700s, seven out of ten children died before reaching reproductive age. Today, more than nine out of ten children born in industrialized nations reach adulthood.

Agriculture has sustained human population growth and has been the main driving factor behind it. With more food supply, the population grows with it. This occurs most in regions which are fertile and capable of higher food production in contrast to barren regions unable to support crop production on larger or any scales at all. This dates back to prehistoric times, when agricultural methods were first developed, and continues to the present day, with fertilizers, agrochemicals, large-scale mechanization, genetic manipulation, and other technologies.

Poverty: There is a strong correlation between overpopulation and poverty. Poverty is believed to be the leading cause of overpopulation. A lack of educational resources, coupled with high death rates leading to higher birth rates, result in impoverished areas seeing large booms in population. The effect is so extensive that the UN has predicted that the forty-eight poorest countries in the world are also likely to be the biggest contributors to population growth. Their estimates state that the combined population of these countries is likely to balloon to 1.7 billion in 2050, from 850 million in 2010. The invention of the birth control pill and other modern methods of contraception resulted in a dramatic decline in the number of children per household in all but the very poorest countries.

Child labor: As distressing as it may be to hear, child labor is still used extensively in many parts of the world. UNICEF estimates that approximately 150 million children are currently working, primarily in countries that have few child labor laws. This can result in children being seen as a source of income by impoverished families. Furthermore, children who begin work too young also lose the educational opportunities they should be granted, particularly when it comes to birth control.

Poor contraceptive use: Though the availability of contraceptives is widespread in developed countries, poor planning on both partners’ parts can lead to unexpected pregnancies. Statistics have shown that in Great Britain 76% of women aged between 16 and 49 used at least one form of contraceptive, leaving a quarter open to unexpected pregnancies. This issue is exacerbated in underdeveloped areas. A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that this usage figure drops to 43% in countries that are blighted by issues like poverty, which leads to higher birth rates.

Migration and urban concentration: in certain countries, the impact of migration and accumulation of the population in cities was very important, but not only with respect to demographic growth, but also in relation to wealth generation. Currently, over half the global population live in cities of more than 300,000 inhabitants and which are expected to continuing growing until they reach 70% of the population.

Immigration: Unchecked immigration into countries may lead to overpopulation to the point where those countries no longer have the required resources for their population. This is particularly problematic in countries where immigration numbers far exceed emigration numbers. In some cases, immigrants may be attempting to escape overpopulation in their own countries, only to contribute to the same issues in the countries they move to. Many people prefer to move to developed countries like US, UK, Canada and Australia where best facilities are available in terms of medical, education, security and employment. The end result is that those people settle over there and those places become overcrowded.

Causes of Overpopulation are summarised in the table below:

Cause	Effects
Decline in the Death Rate	This causes a depletion of natural resources. The root of overpopulation is the difference between the overall birth rate and death rate in populations. It’s not that we must allow our kids to die or lack medical help, but perhaps we should start having less children to combat this imbalance.
Better Medical Facilities	The industrial revolution led to better technological advancement. This was the biggest reason why the balance has been permanent. Vaccines have saved billions, but those billions do not have the proper tools to live a sustainable lifestyle.
More Hands to Overcome Poverty	There is a psychological component as well. For thousands of years, a very small part of the population had enough to live comfortably, but the rest faced poverty. As we become more empathetic to the plight of others, we must also educate people on the dangers of overpopulation and teach environmentalism to growing populations.
Technological Advancement in Fertility Treatment	Technological advancement in medical science has led to the possibility for couples to conceive more easily. This leads to a rise in the birth rate. Once again, we must think harder about the size of families and our responsibility to the planet.
Lack of Family Planning	Most developing nations have large numbers of illiterate people who live below the poverty line. We must redouble our efforts to bring comprehensive education to all people.

India’s struggle to grapple with Population Explosion:

As per the 2011 Census, India’s total population was at 1.21 billion which is almost equal to the combined population of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan. It was earlier estimated that India could overtake China’s population by 2035. But, now due to significant success of the Chinese government to cut down birth rate in recent times, India would become the most populous country of the world by 2027.

India is one of the densely populated countries of the world. It has to support about 15% of the world population, although its land area is merely 2.4% of the land area of the world. India’s population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2 per cent between 2010 and 2019 to 1.36 billion, more than double the annual growth rate of China. India’s population in 2019 stood at 1.36 billion, growing from 942.2 million in 1994 and 541.5 million in 1969. In comparison, China’s population stood at 1.42 billion in 2019, growing from 1.23 billion in 1994 and 803.6 million in 1969. China’s population grew at an average annual rate of 0.5 per cent between 2010 and 2019. India is expected to become the first political entity in history to be home to more than 1.5 billion people by 2030, and its population is set to reach 1.7 billion by 2050. Its population growth rate is 1.13%, ranking 112th in the world in 2017. It is beyond any one’s expectations how the country would be able to manage such huge population.

In India, total fertility rate per woman was 5.6 in 1969, dropping to 3.7 in 1994 and 2.3 in 2019. More Indian women are using contraceptives for birth control and are using modern methods of family planning. Presence of a huge percentage of young population (50 per cent below 25 years of age in 2011) also mean that India’s population will continue to grow even after reaching replacement level fertility. The lower age at marriage of average Indians contribute to such increase rapidly.

A nation’s “dependency ratio” is the ratio of the dependent population to the working-age population. In the case of India this turns out to be 0.5 (50%) in 2018. That means out of every 100 persons, 50 are dependent and 50 are working. In reality, many of working age population are unemployed due to lack of employment opportunity and in fact many of them are not employable. This puts heavy stress on working population and economy to support more than half of population who are unproductive.

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Overpopulation and Overconsumption:

Blaming the climate crisis on overpopulation means blaming the most marginalised for a problem caused by the rich. Overpopulation is a simple enough concept. Human beings cause climate change by pumping greenhouse gases into the air. If you have fewer humans, you reduce emissions. Added to that, it is believed that the planet can only properly support so many people. Sir David Attenborough said: ‘What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about. And we are blinding ourselves’. What Sir David miss is a fact that some people consume a lot and others don’t consume at all. Famines do not occur because there’s not enough land to farm, but because the world’s resources are so unfairly distributed. The world needs to change if we are to stop climate change. But it’s the way we use natural resources, not how many people use them, that will solve this crisis. A major new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the way the world uses land is threatening the survival of humanity. Scientists revealed that 72 percent of the ice-free surface of the planet is used to feed, clothe and support humanity, yet so much of the global population is not adequately supported. There are ways of changing this. Instead of using huge amounts of land to grow crops to feed livestock, we could eat less meat and use the land to feed humans. Instead of encouraging people to travel by airplane, through cheap flights and frequent flyer schemes, we could invest in trains and other low carbon public transport.

Overpopulation is an often-misunderstood topic. It is more about resource use than resource availability. And one thing it is definitely not about is space. It is not the number of people on the planet that is the issue – but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of their consumption. The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed. Citizens of more affluent nations leave a much greater footprint on our planet than people living in poorer countries – although there are exceptions. If we look at an individual’s lifestyle, the differences between wealthy and non-wealthy groups are even more dramatic. There are many low-income urban dwellers whose consumption is so low that they contribute almost nothing to greenhouse gas emissions. So a world with a human population of 11 billion might put comparatively little extra strain on our planet’s resources.

But the world is changing. Low-income urban centres may not continue on low-carbon development trajectories. The real concern would be if the people living in these areas decided to demand the lifestyles and consumption rates currently considered normal in high-income nations; something many would argue is only fair. If they do, the impact of urban population growth could be much larger. This fits with a general pattern that has played out over the past century or so. It is not the rise in population by itself that is the problem, but rather the even more rapid rise in global consumption (which of course is unevenly distributed).

This leads to an uncomfortable implication: people living in high-income nations must play their part if the world is to sustain a large human population. Only when wealthier groups are prepared to adopt low-carbon lifestyles, and to permit their governments to support such a seemingly unpopular move, will we reduce the pressure on global climate, resource and waste issues. Studies suggest that the developed countries benefit from nearly 80 per cent of all of the world’s recourses and only 20 per cent is left for the poor countries.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Industrial Ecology looked at environmental impact from a household perspective. It puts consumption firmly in the spotlight. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well. The analysis showed that household consumers are responsible for more than 60% of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 80% of the world’s land, material and water use. What’s more, the researchers found that the footprints are unevenly distributed across regions, with wealthier countries generating the most impacts per household.

Consumer culture:

Like overpopulation, overconsumption is something of a taboo word. It is of course the other half of the I = PAT entity. As Paul Ekins (1991) had noted, a sustainable ‘consumer society’ is a contradiction in terms. We cannot consume the ecosystem services upon which our society depends. Consumption has gone up six-fold since 1960, but numbers have only grown by a factor of 2.2. Consumer expenditure per person has almost tripled (Assadourian, 2010). Mining of ores and minerals grew 27-fold in the twenty-first century (UNEP, 2011). Humans today extract and use around 50% more natural resources (about 60 billion tonnes of raw materials a year) than only 30 years ago (FOE/SERI, 2009). If all the world were to adopt American lifestyles, we would need at least four more planets to supply them (Graff, 2010). We are simply using too many resources to create too many ‘things’ and in so doing creating an unsustainable waste stream and pollution that is overwhelming the capacity of the Earth’s ‘sinks’ to clean up (Washington, 2015). We thus reduce the reserves of non-renewable resources, degrade renewable resources, and overwhelm the ecosystem sinks that handle pollution. Overconsumption thus accelerates overshoot. It has been argued that preventing the collapse of human civilization requires ‘nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant consumer culture’ (Flavin, 2010). The consumer ethic was vastly expanded in the 1950s and was actually a deliberately constructed ideology (Assadourian, 2010). This raises the question of whether it can now be deliberately deconstructed – and how (Assadourian, 2013).

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Overpopulation or overconsumption: where should we focus?

We often hear how the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population, yet consumes 25 percent of its resources. It’s also true that the developed world, with 23 percent of the population, uses about 66 percent of the Earth’s resources. Yes, it can sound like just a consumption problem, but the magnitude of this consumption actually makes population even more important to preserving our environment and quality of life! In many environmental and population circles, the traditional thinking dictates that the problem in developing countries is overpopulation, while in the developed world the bulk of the problem is overconsumption. This is oversimplification.

In the developed world, per capita consumption levels are all within the same order of magnitude. Yes, in highly populated sections of Western Europe and Japan levels are somewhat lower than American (often due to smaller and more expensive living spaces, higher energy costs, and fewer cars), but not vastly different. On the other hand, most third world consumption levels are between 0.5 and 5 percent of Americans. This vast difference is not because these people recycle, use little plastic or don’t drive a turbo-charged car – it is because they have no car, no central heat, no refrigerator, and maybe no house at all!

It is this lack of the most basic items, items which most of us believe every human should be able to have, which make up most of the consumption difference between the haves and the have nots. In the developed world, even if every effort were made to cut frills and inefficient consumption, these basics still have them out-consuming a third world citizen by a factor of five to fifty. Reasonable levels of consumption are not morally wrong, in fact most of us believe that they are desirable. We need to allow all of the world’s citizens a reasonable lifestyle while at the same time heading toward sustainability. This will require a leap in consumption for developing countries, a practical and therefore smaller reduction in consumption for developed countries, and population stabilization or reduction for all. Population levels are critical to the dream and are too often overlooked.

Population growth directly drives increasing overall consumption, but not vice versa. The existence of a person necessarily consumes resources, takes up space, and disposes of waste products. In the poorest regions of the world, localized destruction is taking place due primarily to overpopulation because per capita consumption is at subsistence levels. When we talk about the affluent U.S., consumption takes on even more significance. But, by accepting that “reasonable” levels of consumption are O.K., we must bring population into the formula since each additional person has a much more significant impact on the ecosystem. Overpopulation actually occurs at a lower point with a higher standard of living.

Population growth creates problems beyond the impacts of excess consumption. Will just decreasing consumption have an appreciable or lasting effect on reducing the crowds at our national parks or our loss of open space? Just reducing consumption will do relatively little over the long term to save the 20 thousand species of plants and animals we are pushing off the planet each year. Habitat loss, probably the biggest direct problem, is impacted by our individual ecological footprints. While reducing consumption will reduce the size of that footprint, the total habitat loss will only grow if population continues to grow. Much of the world’s habitat loss is greatly aggravated by population growth.

Population is not getting the attention it should. There are many organizations with programs aimed at reducing consumption. Because many people choose to believe that dealing with consumption is the answer – they often don’t acknowledge that stopping population growth is a necessary component of the solution. Attainable reductions in consumption will not do the job if we do not also stop population growth. We all want a truly sustainable world which can support a reasonable standard of living with reasonable levels of consumption for all. Population growth is important in itself, and in its effect on overall consumption growth. In the long term, stopping population growth is a necessary part of the sustainability equation. All environmental organizations need to incorporate the population connection into their programs or all will ultimately fail.

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Harms of overpopulation:

Human overpopulation is among the most pressing environmental issues, silently aggravating the forces behind global warming, environmental pollution, habitat loss, the sixth mass extinction, intensive farming practices and the consumption of finite natural resources, such as fresh water, arable land and fossil fuels, at speeds faster than their rate of regeneration.

Disadvantages of over population are enumerated below:

More mouths to feed.
Lower standard of living.
Poverty.
Overcrowded cities.
Sickness and spreading of diseases.
Insufficient natural resources to provide adequate goods and services.
Inadequate facilities, such as housing, medical etc.
Problem of starvation and malnourished population.
Education facilities may not meet the requirements of the entire population.
Unemployment.
Higher crime rate due to unequal distribution of wealth and insufficient financial resources.
Environmental pollution.
Lower life expectancy.

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Population and food scarcity:

Increased population means more mouths to feed which, in turn, creates pressure upon available stock of food. This is the reason, the under-developed countries with rapid growing population are generally faced with a problem of food shortage. Despite all their efforts for raising agricultural production, they are not able to feed their growing population. Food scarcity effects economic development in two respects. Firstly, inadequate supply of food leads to undernourishment of the people which lowers their productivity. It further reduces the production capacity of the workers, Secondly, the deficiency of food compels to import food grains which places as unnecessarily strain on their foreign exchange resources. Many countries rely heavily on imports. Egypt and Iran rely on imports for 40% of their grain supply. Yemen and Israel import more than 90%. And just 6 countries – Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Thailand and the USA – supply 90% of grain exports. In recent decades the US alone supplied almost half of world grain exports.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states in its report The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2018 that the new data indicates an increase of hunger in the world, reversing the recent trend. It is estimated that in 2017 the number of undernourished people increased to 821 million, around 11 per cent of the world population. The FAO states: “Evidence shows that, for many countries, recent increases in hunger are associated with extreme climate events, especially where there is both high exposure to climate extremes and high vulnerability related to agriculture and livelihood systems.”

While humans occupy only 0.05% of the Earth’s total area, human effects are felt on over one-quarter of the land. The World Resources Institute states that “Agricultural conversion to croplands and managed pastures has affected some 3.3 billion [hectares] – roughly 26 percent of the land area. All totalled, agriculture has displaced one-third of temperate and tropical forests and one-quarter of natural grasslands.” Forty percent of the land area is under conversion and fragmented; less than one quarter, primarily in the Arctic and the deserts, remains intact. Usable land may become less useful through salinization, deforestation, desertification, erosion, and urban sprawl. Global warming may cause flooding of many of the most productive agricultural areas. The development of energy sources may also require large areas, for example, the building of hydroelectric dams. Thus, available useful land may become a limiting factor. By most estimates, at least half of cultivable land is already being farmed, and there are concerns that the remaining reserves are greatly overestimated.

No civilization can avoid collapse if it fails to feed its population. The world’s success so far, and the prospective ability to feed future generations at least as well, has been under relatively intensive discussion for half a century. Agriculture made civilization possible, and over the last 80 years or so, an industrial agricultural revolution has created a technology-dependent global food system. That system, humanity’s single biggest industry, has generated miracles of food production. But it has also created serious long-run vulnerabilities, especially in its dependence on stable climates, crop monocultures, industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides, petroleum, antibiotic feed supplements and rapid, efficient transportation.

Despite those food production miracles, today at least two billion people are hungry or poorly nourished. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that increasing food production by some 70 per cent would be required to feed a 35 per cent bigger and still growing human population adequately by 2050. What are the prospects that H. sapiens can produce and distribute sufficient food? To do so, it probably will be necessary to accomplish many or all of the following tasks: severely limit climate disruption; restrict expansion of land area for agriculture (to preserve ecosystem services); raise yields where possible; put much more effort into soil conservation; increase efficiency in the use of fertilizers, water and energy; become more vegetarian; grow more food for people (not fuel for vehicles); reduce food wastage; stop degradation of the oceans and better regulate aquaculture; significantly increase investment in sustainable agricultural and aquacultural research; and move increasing equity and feeding everyone to the very top of the policy agenda.

Today there are about 7.7 billion men, women on children on Earth, a staggering figure given that a century ago, there were only 1.9 billion. And although populations have stabilised in many regions, in particular Europe and North America, figures released by the UN show global numbers are now growing at the alarming rate of about 100 million every 14 months. By 2050, the Earth’s population will have hit 9.7 billion and it will continue to rise, reaching a figure of about 10.9 billion by 2100. These are the kind of population numbers we associate with simple organisms swimming in a pond, not those of a big-brained omnivore that requires 3,000 calories a day to survive. If there are 10 billion of us, every forest, valley and piece of land will have to be turned to agriculture to feed us. “Our planet cannot withstand such numbers,” says the palaeontologist Peter Ward in his book The End of Evolution.

Whether food supply can keep pace with an expanding human population is an old question. In 1798, Thomas R. Malthus predicted that population growth would outstrip food supply, causing great human suffering. In the early 1960s, most nations were self-sufficient in food, but alarm about a rapidly growing population (~2% annually) caused many to echo Malthus’ prediction. Then, the Green Revolution (high-yield crops and energy intensive agriculture) brought about remarkable increases in crop production. World grain output expanded by a factor of 2.6 from the 1950s to the 1980s. The basic approach was the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. Today, per capita production has now slowed and appears to be declining. To increase food production, we can farm more land, or we can increase the yield from each unit of land. The future lies in increasing yields. Most arable land already is farmed, and the land area under agriculture had slightly declined. Improved agricultural methods that increase yields while minimizing environmental impacts hold the greatest promise for increasing world food supplies.

The expectation that population growth will outrun its food supply has a long history. Surprisingly, from the 1950s to the 1990s, which experienced the most dramatic increase in human population ever, per capita world food production increased.

Figure below shows that growth in food production has been greater than population growth.

The issue is not population growth giving rise to food scarcity but uneven distribution resulting in food scarcity. From 1950 to 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the world, grain production increased by over 250%. The world population has grown by about four billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and most believe that, without the Revolution, there would be greater famine and malnutrition than the UN presently documents.

The number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished. There were an estimated 800 million undernourished people and more than a billion considered overweight worldwide in 2006. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. However, studies show that wealthy and educated people are far likelier to eat healthy food, indicating obesity is a disease related to poverty, lack of education and consumption of cheap fast food and junk food which are high in calories with no protein and no vitamins.

Global food production will have to increase 70 percent for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapting to climate change, according to a paper published by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). To keep up with population and economic growth, food production should increase by 70% by 2050. Meat consumption is predicted to increase from 37 kg/person/year in 2000 to over 52 kg/person/year by 2050; if so, then 50% of cereal production would go to animal feed. Over the last 20 years, inflation adjusted food prices have doubled and may rise by an additional 150% by 2030. In food-import-dependent poor countries, where people already spend up to 80% of their incomes on food, a price hike could mean starvation. The FAO Food Price Index averaged 171 points in April 2015, 1.2% lower than the figure in a year ago and nearly 30% lower than the peak in 2011. However, food prices may rise again due to increasing affluence (especially in India and China), soil erosion and the loss of cropland, increasing fertilizer costs, market speculation, aquifer depletion, falling water tables and water pollution, diversion of crops to biofuels, increasing meat consumption, falling food reserves, diversion of water from rural to urban, and a variety of climate change impacts. Yet, there are enough food resources and varieties in the world to feed everyone, but their management and distribution are deficient, ending up with about 33% of the food produced for human consumption being wasted. In the developed countries, some 30% of food is wasted at the consumption level, while in the developing ones, an estimated 40% is wasted at the production level, due to lack of adequate infrastructure and commercialization networks. We can meet the challenge of feeding a planet of 9 billion people through the application of existing technologies. For example, in Africa, no less than half the food produced is destroyed before it reaches its local marketplace: with refrigeration and good roads, the developing world could avoid this horrendous waste.

Does population growth lead to famine?

“It’s no good blaming climate change or food shortages or political corruption. Sorry to be neo-Malthusian about it, but continuing population growth in this region makes periodic famine unavoidable – as many people have been pointing out since the last famine. Many of the children saved by the money raised over the next few weeks will inevitably be back again in similar feeding centres with their own children in a few years time.”

-Blog entry from British environmentalist, Sir Jonathan Porrit, 2011

It is not uncommon to see arguments along the lines of this quote from Sir Jonathan Porritt, claiming that famines are ultimately caused by overpopulation. Porritt – former director of ‘Friends of the Earth’ and also former chairman of the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission – was talking about the 2011 famine in Somalia that went on to kill roughly 250,000 people. He seems certain that the rapid population growth witnessed in East Africa had made famine there ‘unavoidable’. There is something compelling about this logic: a finite land area, with a limited ‘carrying capacity’, cannot continue to feed a growing population indefinitely. From such a perspective, the provision of humanitarian aid to famine-afflicted countries, however well intended, represents only a temporary fix. In this view it fails to address the fundamental issue: there simply being too many mouths to feed.

The simple fact is that, despite the world population increasing from less than one billion in 1800 to more than seven billion today, the number of people dying due to famine in recent decades is only a tiny fraction of that in previous eras. We might naturally think that the explanation for this trend lies in increasing agricultural production. Indeed, food supply per person has consistently increased in recent decades, the large increase in global population being met with an even greater increase in food supply (largely due to increases in yields per hectare). However, looking at the issue in this way is too simple. As we discuss insufficient aggregate food supply per person is just one factor that can bring about famine mortality. Contemporary famine research tends to suggest that insufficient aggregate food supply is less important than one might think, and instead emphasises the role of public policy and violence: in most famines of the 20th and 21st centuries, conflict, political oppression, corruption, or gross economic mismanagement on the part of dictatorships or colonial regimes played a key role. The same also applies for the most acutely food-insecure countries today. It is also true of the 2011 famine in Somalia referred to above, in which food aid was greatly restricted, and in some cases diverted, by militant Islamist group al Shabaab and other armed opposition groups in the country.

The production of food has grown faster since 1960 than the world population has, so nowadays the amount of food produced per person exceeds that which existed before the population explosion (Lam, 2011). The problem of famine isn’t as much an insufficient food production as it is a lack of fair distribution (and a lack of sustainable production, but that’s another issue). Often regions with famine have ecological conditions permitting sufficient production of food, provided the necessary investments in human resources and technology are made. The most important cause of famine is therefore not the population explosion. Famine is primarily a consequence of unequal distribution of food, which in turn is caused by social-economic inequality, lack of democracy and (civil) war.

Figure below shows income inequality in India. Uneven distribution of resources leads to income inequality.

No wonder India is among the countries accounting for the highest burden of stunted, wasted and malnourished children, and no need to blame population growth alone for it.

How can agriculture be intensified to feed a growing population while addressing environmental concerns? Simply put, yields on existing lands must increase.

In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, a population of 800 million must subsist on local yields of one ton per hectare—one third of yields in the rest of the developing world and one ninth those of the U.S., Europe, Australia and other parts of the developed world. Genetically modified varieties—currently illegal in most of Africa might boost yields. Such biotechnology is “critical for achieving the ecological intensification required to meet human food demand on a global scale,” argues agronomist Ken Cassman of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. At the same time, genetic modification is not a panacea, despite claims for drought tolerance and the like from companies such as Monsanto. “Anything you do to reduce the water that plants transpire will reduce yield,” he added.

Perhaps, fortunately, there is still a lot of room for improvement by more conventional means: the targeted application of fertilizer and the like. The Earth Institute’s Millennium Village of Sauri in Kenya has tripled yields even in the face of a crippling drought gripping the region, and Malawi doubled yields through fertilizer subsidies in just four years. “If we want to increase production, it’s better to have small to medium-size farms,” argued U.M. ecologist Ivette Perfecto. “Precision agriculture is already done by [such] farmers.” At the same time, the collapse of agriculture in the “bread basket” of eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, leaves room to “triple food production in that region pretty easily,” Institute on the Environment’s Foley said.

And, ultimately, a little change in diet might do a world of good. Global demand for beef is an inefficient way to get protein, possibly unhealthy, and a major driver of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Beef is costly per kilogram ingested of both mass and protein but also probably unhealthy.

CropWatch is a program sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences that relies heavily on remote sensing data to monitor global crop production. CropWatch issues quarterly bulletins that report global agroclimatic conditions as well as the status of major producers of maize, wheat, rice and soybeans — the “big four” crops that provide about 80 percent of all calories consumed by humans. A 2013 review of CropWatch’s remote sensing products in the International Journal of Digital Earth found its estimates of crop conditions and acreage, and its predictions of crop yields and food production, to be highly accurate. Such data can offer early warnings of potential shortages so that timely interventions — such as the delivery of food aid — can be planned and implemented.

Ray and other researchers are working on global production numbers. He and his colleagues have developed an extensive crop statistics database filled with satellite data that they use to analyze how crop yields are changing. Specifically, they’re interested in whether or not the world is on track to double global food production by 2050 to meet the projected demands without clearing additional land, which has widely acknowledged drawbacks due to greenhouse gas emissions and loss of biodiversity. How the productivity of the big four crops is increasing on existing agricultural land will determine whether we can meet these growing demands.

In a 2013 analysis in PLOS One, Ray and his team concluded that most recent yields of the four major crops are increasing at 0.9 to 1.6 percent per year — nowhere near the annual rate of 2.4 percent necessary to double production by 2050. At current rates, only about a 38 percent increase in wheat, a 42 percent increase in rice, a 55 percent increase in soybeans and a 67 percent increase in maize production will be possible by 2050. The situation, Ray says, is that “most of the lands that could potentially be brought under crop cultivation have already been brought into production.”

If increasing crop yields and expanding the area under cultivation aren’t possible or desirable, a third strategy is to increase the frequency of harvests on existing croplands, wrote Ray and ecologist Jonathan Foley, now executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, in a 2013 study in Environmental Research Letters. This could be accomplished by planting multiple crops per year, reducing crop failure and leaving less land fallow.

By analyzing a global compilation of agricultural statistics, Ray and Foley uncovered significant differences in the frequency of cropland harvests in countries around the planet. Between 2000 and 2011, 19 countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa were statistically “unable to harvest their standing cropland even once every two years.” In other words, on average, farmers in these 19 nations failed to harvest even half of their crops each year. This was most likely due to crop failure caused by factors such as drought, lack of rainfall at the right times, catastrophic storms and pests. The researchers also identified a larger number of nations that are harvesting their croplands less than once, on average, per year, as well as numerous countries in the tropics which, despite the more favorable climate, are not meeting their potential of two or three harvests per year.

Arable land, needed to sustain the growing population, is also a factor because land being under or over cultivated easily upsets the delicate balance of nutrition supply. There are also problems with location of arable land with regard to proximity to countries and relative population (Bashford 240). Access to nutrition is an important limiting factor in population sustainability and growth. No increase in arable land added to the still increasing human population will eventually pose a serious conflict. Only 38% of the land area of the globe is dedicated to agriculture, and there is not room for much more. Although plants produce 54 billion metric tons of carbohydrates per year, when the population is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, the plants may not be able to keep up. Food supply is a primary example of how a resource reacts when its carrying capacity is exceeded. By trying to grow more and more crops off of the same amount of land, the soil becomes exhausted. Because the soil is exhausted, it is then unable to produce the same amount of food as before, and is overall less productive. Therefore, by using resources beyond a sustainable level, the resource become nullified and ineffective, which further increases the disparity between the demand for a resource and the availability of a resource. There must be a shift to provide adequate recovery time to each one of the supplies in demand to support contemporary human lifestyles.

New agricultural approaches are needed, such as:

producing pure meat without growing animals (demonstrated in 2013)
better rain-fed agriculture and irrigation management
genetic engineering for higher-yielding and drought-tolerant crops
reducing losses from farm to mouth
precision agriculture and aquaculture
planting sea grass to bring back wild fish populations
saltwater agriculture (halophytes) on coastlines to produce food for human and animals, biofuels, and pulp for the paper industry as well as to absorb CO2 which also reduces the drain on freshwater agriculture and land, and increase employment.
processing of insects for animal feed (Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint, according to FAO; 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diet with insects today).

More Intensive Farming Practices:

Intensive farming practices produce more and cheaper food per acre and animal, which has helped feed a booming human population and may prevent surrounding land from being converted into agricultural land, but has grown to become the biggest threat to the global environment through the loss of ecosystem services and global warming, has led to the emergence of new parasites and re-emergence of parasites previously considered to be ‘under control’ by creating the conditions for parasite growth and is responsible for 80% of tropical deforestation. Furthermore, intensive farming kills beneficial insects and plants, degrades and depletes the very soil it depends on, creates polluted runoff and clogged water systems, increases susceptibility to flooding, causes the genetic erosion of crops and livestock species around the world, decreases biodiversity, and destroys natural habitats.

Declining trend of Agricultural Development:

In less developed countries, mostly people live in rural areas and their main occupation is agriculture and if the population increases the land-man ratio disturbed. Per capita availability of land for cultivation declined from 1.1 acre in 1911 to 0.6 acre in 1971 in India which makes the size of holdings very small. The small size of holdings makes adoption of modern technology means of irrigation and mechanization impossible. This also leads to the occurrence of disguised unemployment and underemployment in the agricultural sector. It leads to congestion and moreover to reduction in land available for farming as well as for building houses, factories, hospitals, shopping centres, educational institutions, roads and railway tracks etc. Thus, the growth of population retards agricultural development and creates many other problems.

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Population and water scarcity:

According to UN-Water, 75% of planet Earth is covered in water. 97.5% of that is ocean and 2.5% is freshwater. 70% of freshwater is divided into glaciers and ice caps and the remaining 30% into land surface water, such as rivers, lakes, ponds and groundwater. Most of the freshwater resources are either unreachable or too polluted, leaving less than 1% of the world’s freshwater, or about 0.003% of all water on Earth, readily accessible for direct human use. According to the Global Outlook for Water Resources to the Year 2025, it is estimated that by 2025, more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability and human demand for water will account for 70% of all available freshwater. Furthermore, a report in November 2009 by the 2030 Water Resources Group suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions in the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50% and a report jointly produced by more than two dozen U.N. bodies states that, “By 2030, nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage.” This will place those living in impoverished areas that already have limited access to such water at great risk. The planet is in the midst of what the United Nations is calling a “Global Water Crisis.” Freshwater is the most fundamental finite resource with no substitutes for most uses, yet we are consuming fresh water at least 10 times faster than it is being replenished in regions of northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, and the U.S. As human populations grow, so will the problem of clean freshwater availability. The most water-scarce areas are typically those with fewer water resources, a relatively high existing population density, and an even higher population growth rate. It is certain that population growth will further impact water availability.

Directly related to maintaining the health of the human population is water supply, and it is one of the resources that experience the biggest strain. With the global population at about 7.5 billion, and each human theoretically needing 2 liters of drinking water, there is a demand for 15 billion liters of water each day to meet the minimum requirement for healthy living. Weather patterns, elevation, and climate all contribute to uneven distribution of fresh drinking water. Without clean water, good health is not a viable option. Besides drinking, water is used to create sanitary living conditions and is the basis of creating a healthy environment fit to hold human life. In addition to drinking water, water is also used for bathing, washing clothes and dishes, flushing toilets, a variety of cleaning methods, recreation, watering lawns, and farm irrigation. Irrigation poses one of the largest problems, because without sufficient water to irrigate crops, the crops die and then there is the problem of food rations and starvation. In addition to water needed for crops and food, there is limited land area dedicated to food production, and not much more that is suitable to be added.

Fresh water supplies, on which agriculture depends, are running low worldwide. This water crisis is only expected to worsen as the population increases. Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in numerous smaller countries, may soon do the same in larger countries, such as China or India, if technology is not used. The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including Northern China, the US, and India) owing to widespread overdrafting beyond sustainable yields. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Iran, and Mexico. This overdrafting is already leading to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest. Even with the overpumping of its aquifers, China has developed a grain deficit. This effect has contributed in driving grain prices upward. Most of the 3 billion people projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages.

Desalination is considered a viable and effective solution to the problem of water shortages. Fresh water can be obtained from salt water by desalination. For example, Malta derives two thirds of its freshwater by desalination. A number of nuclear powered desalination plants exist; however, the high costs of desalination, especially for poor countries, makes the transport of large amounts of desalinated seawater to interiors of large countries impractical. The cost of desalination varies; Israel is now desalinating water for a cost of 53 cents per cubic meter, Singapore at 49 cents per cubic meter. In the United States, the cost is 81 cents per cubic meter ($3.06 for 1,000 gallons). According to a 2004 study by Zhou and Tol, “one needs to lift the water by 2000 m, or transport it over more than 1600 km to get transport costs equal to the desalination costs. Desalinated water is expensive in places that are both somewhat far from the sea and somewhat high, such as Riyadh and Harare. In other places, the dominant cost is desalination, not transport. This leads to somewhat lower costs in places like Beijing, Bangkok, Zaragoza, Phoenix, and, of course, coastal cities like Tripoli.” Thus while the study is generally positive about the technology for affluent areas that are proximate to oceans, it concludes that “Desalinated water may be a solution for some water-stress regions, but not for places that are poor, deep in the interior of a continent, or at high elevation. Unfortunately, that includes some of the places with biggest water problems. Another potential problem with desalination is the byproduction of saline brine, which can be a major cause of marine pollution when dumped back into the oceans at high temperatures. Worldwide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association in 2008.

Solar thermal desalination plant could help poor countries transform seawater or brackish water to pure drinking water for low cost. Unlike largescale industrial desalting plants with access to energy infrastructure, these projects would be appropriate for small, rural areas with autonomous solar power supplies. Today’s desalting plants are multibillion- dollar projects, and it will take time for improving technology to bring the cost down. Timid government officials and politicians delay action for years, during which the cost of a plant and related distribution facilities may double or triple.

New data originating from the GRACE experiments and isotopic testing done by the IAEA show that the Nubian aquifer—which is under the largest, driest part of the earth’s surface, has enough water in it to provide for “at least several centuries”. In addition to this, new and highly detailed maps of the earth’s underground reservoirs will be soon created from these technologies that will further allow proper budgeting of cheap water.

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Is there enough room for all the people?

Compared to the land area of the earth, the population is very small. For perspective, if all the people in the world were placed in an area the size of Texas, each person would have almost 93 square meters. A family of four would have 372 square meters. That’s about 4000 square feet, enough for a 2000 square foot house and a yard or garden. This thought experiment puts population in perspective with the size of the earth. Global average population is 55 people per square kilometer of land area, excluding Antarctica. That’s 17.96 acres per family of four. In 2016, over 54% of the population lived in cities, which cover only 2.7% of the land. That means that 46% of the population is rural and lives on 97.3% of the land area. That calculates to 26 people /km2 in rural areas or 38 acres per family of four. However large areas are uninhabitable and only 10% of the land is actually inhabited.

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Population and poverty:

Figure below shows that as the world’s population has grown, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than $1 per day (adjusted for inflation) has halved in 20 years. The graph shows the 1981–2001 period.

Does that mean that population growth reduces poverty?

See the graph carefully. Africa has highest population growth and poverty has increased. Also, percentage of people living below 1 dollar per day has decreased overall but due population growth, the absolute number of poor people has in fact increased. The United Nations indicates that about 850 million people are malnourished or starving, and 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. Since 1980, the global economy has grown by 380 percent, but the number of people living on less than 5 US dollars a day increased by more than 1.1 billion.

The Malthusian line of thought continues to leave an important mark on the debate regarding the association between population growth and poverty: Malthus saw an excessive population growth as an important cause of poverty and famine. Rightfully this Malthusian vision has been criticized a lot. One must after all take the reverse causal relation into account as well: poverty and the related social circumstances (like a lack of education and good health care for children) contribute to high population growth as well.

Figure below shows connections between social factors, poverty and population growth.

Rapid population growth can indeed hinder economical development and can thus pave the way for poverty. But this is only part of the story. As mentioned, poverty is also an underlying cause of rapid population growth. Social factors are at the base of both poverty and population growth. It’s those social factors that require our intervention: via investments in education and (reproductive) health care.

Rapid growth of population is largely responsible for the perpetuation of vicious circle of poverty in underdeveloped countries. On account of rapid growth of population people are required to spend a major part of their income on bringing up their children. Thus savings and rate of capital formation remain low, reduction in per capita income, rise in general price level leading to sharp rise in cost of living. There is no improvement in agricultural and industrial technology, shortage of essential commodities, low standard of living, mass unemployment etc. As a result the entire economy of an underdeveloped country is surrounded by the vicious circle of poverty. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, have argued that poverty and famine are caused by bad government and bad economic policies, not by overpopulation.

Growing Population lowers Standard of Living:

The standard of living is determined by their per capita income. The factors affecting per capita income in relation to population growth equally apply to the standard of living. The increase in population leads to an increased demand for food products, clothes, houses etc., but their supply cannot be increased due to the lack of cooperate factors like raw materials, skilled labour and capital etc. The cost and prices rise which raise the cost of living of the masses. This brings the standard of living low. Poverty breeds large number of children which increases poverty further and vicious circle of poverty. Thus, the consequence of population growth is to lower the standard of living. With the exception of a few oil-rich states, no country has risen from poverty while still maintaining high average fertility. Conversely, many countries that lowered their birth rates have also greatly reduced poverty.

Fertility rate vs. GDP per capita graph:

Figure above shows Log-log graph of total fertility rate (TFR) vs. GDP (PPP) per capita with population size shown as bubble area, for all countries having population greater than 2 million (2016 estimates; 30 largest countries bold). TFR is inversely correlated with GDP per capita.

As of 2004, there were 108 countries in the world with more than five million people. All of these in which women have, on the average, more than 4 children in their lifetime, have a per capita GDP of less than $5000. Only in two countries with per capita GDP above ~$15,000 do women have, on the average, more than 2 children in their lifetime: these are Israel and Saudi Arabia, with average lifetime births per woman between 2 and 4.

High rates of infant mortality are associated with poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality. However, both global poverty and infant mortality has declined over the last 200 years of population growth.

Poverty, including subsistence farming, not population, causes environmental harm and deforestation. Modern agriculture and higher yield crop varieties can end deforestation and provide surplus crops to sell. Roads, electricity, clean water and disease control can provide a healthy workforce and energy to attract investors and run industry. Historically, improved infrastructure and opportunity also stabilize populations and reduce family size. By keeping the poor in poverty, environmentalists actually are doing more harm to the environment. Raising standards of living means people will be able to care for their environment.

Poverty causes population growth and population growth causes poverty:

Everywhere in the world, in every kind of culture, the poorest people have the most children. Does having many children make people poor? Or does being poor make people have many children? That is a hot question in the continuous struggle over how to spend foreign aid money. Those who think population growth causes poverty advocate programs in family planning and population education. Those who think poverty causes population growth favor direct economic aid, jobs, capital investment. Take care of development, they say, and the birth rate will take care of itself. Poverty does cause population growth and population growth does cause poverty. Economic development means increasing control of both parts of the cycle; the ability to choose your family size, and the ability to make a living with something more than your hands and the hands of your children.

Explosive population growth and capitalism:

The growth spurts in world population in 20th century can be largely attributed to the Industrial revolution and the growth of global capitalism. Surpluses became the norm not only in food production but also in almost every aspect of the economic life. Additional new consumer goods were produced such as household electrical appliances, vehicles, and personal electronic items. Along with these innovations, medicine also advanced, eradicating many types of communicable diseases through vaccination, reducing infant mortality rates, and extending the life expectancy of humans. All of these were possible because of capitalistic motivations of earning profits through entrepreneurial ventures. Capitalism needed both labourers and consumer. A large population supplies both. Hence, it became a feedback loop of growth.

Who is overpopulated? Communist North Korea or Capitalist South Korea?

Today people live like animals in North Korea. They, too, eat grass and bark off trees. Geographically, North Korea is almost 25 percent larger than South Korea. The population of modern South Korea is about double the population of starving North Korea. Overpopulation is relative to the ability of an economy to provide a decent standard of living, adequate nutrition, and minimize the impact on the environment. Using that measure, North Korea, with more land and fewer people, is overpopulated compared to South Korea.

If you think South Korea, with its more modern economy, inflicts more harm on the environment than the poor economy of North Korea, you would be wrong. In North Korea, some rivers run black from uranium mining. The poor people of North Korea harvest forests for fuel and to make fields during a succession of famines. Some people resorted to eating bark. The result has been widespread deforestation and a denuding of the landscape. Ecologist Margaret Palmer visited North Korea, and she saw the “entire landscape was lifeless and barren.” She saw a Malthusian nightmare: Emaciated looking farmers tilled the earth with plows pulled by oxen and trudged through half-frozen streams to collect nutrient-rich sediments for their fields. “We went to a national park where we saw maybe one or two birds, but other than that you don’t see any wildlife,” Palmer said. Dutch soil scientist Joris van der Kamp reports on the North Korean environmental collapse. “The landscape is just basically dead. It’s a difficult condition to live in, to survive.” Van der Kamp added, “There are no branches of trees on the ground. Everything is collected for food or fuel or animal food, almost nothing is left for the soil.”

Elon Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, but he can find in North Korea a dead landscape with warmer temperatures, more oxygen, and minuscule travel costs compared to the Red Planet. When communism collapses in North Korea, capitalism will transform the country at an inestimably small fraction of the cost of terraforming Mars.

Saving poor children just increases the population sounds correct, but the opposite is true. Delaying the escape from extreme poverty just increases the population. Every generation kept in extreme poverty will produce an even larger next generation. The only proven method for curbing population growth is to eradicate extreme poverty and give people better lives. With better lives, parents then have chosen for themselves to have fewer children. This transformation has happened across the world but it has never happened without lowering child mortality In the past 20 years, “the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty” has fallen by half and already the “majority of the world population live in middle-income countries.” When feverish dreams of doom are used to justify controlling the lives of others, restricting personal and economic freedom, expect more poverty and environmental degradation with real overpopulation like that of North Korea. It is capitalism and freedom that lift humanity out of poverty, vanquish overpopulation, and offer a sustainable future.

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Population and environment:

During the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (the Earth Summit), international agendas integrating population and sustainability were proposed. These international agendas challenged the fundamental fallacy infecting industrial capitalism, that unlimited growth both of population and the economy is possible on a planet of finite resources. As Bateson (1972, p. 497) has observed, the very first requirement for ecological stability is a balance between the rates of birth and death. For better or for worse, we have tampered with the death rate, especially by controlling the major epidemic diseases and the death of infants. Today, there is a growing proportional difference between the number of people on earth (over 7 billion) and the number of nonhumans, especially apex predators left in the wild. While the apex predators are normally checked by environmental constraints, this is not the case for a population of humans. It seems that “the bigger the population, the faster it grows; the more technology we have, the faster the rate of new invention; and the more we believe in our ‘power’ over an enemy environment, the more ‘power’ we seem to have and the more spiteful the environment seems to be” (Bateson 1972, p. 494).

The United Nations Environment Programme UNEP (2014) takes a somewhat contradictory attitude to population and environment. On the one hand, the report states: “A major driver of the overall increase in raw material extraction and use is population numbers. The world’s, and each country’s, material use is tightly coupled to the number of inhabitants.”

On the other hand, the report continues: “From another perspective, metabolic rates can be seen as the ‘material footprint’…. These metabolic rates are more than one order of magnitude different for different countries…While global resource use has increased eightfold during the course of the 20th century… average resource use per capita merely doubled.”

Further, the report goes on to suggest that resource use and population may in fact actually be negatively correlated, stating: “It appears that densely populated areas and regions, for the same standard of living and material comfort, need fewer resources per capita [than less densely populated areas]” (UNEP 2014).

Degradation of Environment:

With the overuse of coal, oil and natural gas, it has started producing some serious effects on our environment. Rise in the number of vehicles and industries have badly affected the quality of air. Rise in amount of CO2 emissions leads to global warming. Melting of polar ice caps, changing climate patterns, rise in sea level are few of the consequences that we might we have to face due to environment pollution. The impact of the population explosion on the environment is unquestionably high, but the size of the population represents only one aspect of this. The other factors in the I=PAT scheme have however played a relatively bigger role than the demographic factor P. The considerable increase in the Chinese ecological footprint of the past decades for example, is more a consequence of the increased consumption of meat than of population growth (Peters et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2008). The carbon dioxide emission of China grew by 82% between 1990 and 2003, while the population only increased by 11% in that same period. A similar story exists for India: the population grew by less than 23% between 1990 and 2003, while the emission of carbon dioxide increased by more than 83% (Chakravarty et al., 2009). The consumption of water and meat in the world is increasing more rapidly than the population. The consumption of water per person is for example threefold higher in the US than in China (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007). The African continent has at present the same number of inhabitants as Europe and North America together, over 1 billion. But the total ecological footprint of Europeans and Americans is many times higher than that of Africans (Ewing et al., 2010). Less than 18% of the world population is responsible for over 50% of the global carbon dioxide emission (Chakravarty et al., 2009). If we are therefore concerned about the impact of the world population on the environment, we can do something about it immediately by tackling our own overconsumption: it’s something we can control and it has an immediate effect. In contrast, we know of the population growth that it will continue for some time anyhow, even if people in poor countries would practice much more birth control than we consider possible at present.

Increased Global Warming and Climate Change:

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the planet in the decades to come will be global climate disruption due to the build-up of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. People around the world are beginning to address the problem by reducing their carbon footprint through less consumption and better technology. But unsustainable human population growth can overwhelm those efforts, leading us to conclude that we not only need smaller footprints, but fewer feet.” Every national academy of science of every major country in the world agrees. Every professional scientific society in every field related to the field of climate endorses it. 97-98 percent of all scientists that are most active in publishing in the field of climate science agree with it. The consensus is unequivocal: human activities are causing climate change. The effects of climate change are profound and far-reaching. Learning the hard way that we can’t separate the economy from the ecological systems that support it, climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge and threat humanity has ever faced, has been left largely unchecked by world leaders to continue unabated threatening the basis of civilization itself. Many studies link population growth with emissions and the effect of climate change.

Slower Population Growth could significantly reduce Carbon Emissions:

A new research paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) offers more evidence that slower population growth could significantly reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. The paper, “The Consequences of Increased Population Growth for Climate Change” by economist David Rosnick, finds that that an additional 1 percentage point of population growth through the end of the century would coincide with about an additional 2 degrees Fahrenheit in average global temperatures. “Over time,” the paper concludes, “the temperature change is greater and becomes increasingly sensitive to population growth.” “There are many warnings of ‘demographic time bombs’ due to population declines in countries like Japan and even China,” Rosnick said. “But lower population growth actually has many economic benefits; one of the most important is that it reduces the rate of global climate change.” The paper explains that “A larger population requires more farmland, and increased economic activity means greater carbon emissions and more intense climate change.”

The author employs the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to estimate the effects of population growth on the change global average temperature by 2100. Observing that a larger population supports a larger economy, which translates in close proportion into additional releases of carbon dioxide (CO2), the paper notes that global temperature should in any year be nearly linear in relation to the rate of growth when the rate of population growth is constant. While the author notes that technology or economics (such as reducing work hours) can produce a path of lower emissions, there also appears to be a significant climate benefit to slower population growth.

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Population and natural resources:

As the human population continues to explode, finite natural resources, such as fossil fuels, fresh water, arable land, coral reefs and frontier forests, continue to plummet, which is placing competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources and leading to a diminished quality of life. A study by the UNEP Global Environment Outlook, which involves 1,400 scientists and five years worth of work to prepare, found that “Human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply.” Excessive human consumption of the naturally occurring non-renewable resources can outstrip available resources in the near future and remarkably deplete them for future generations. Furthermore, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which is a four-year research effort by 1,360 of the world’s leading scientists commissioned to measure the actual value of natural resources to humans and the world, concluded that, “The structure of the world’s ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at any time in recorded human history, and virtually all of Earth’s ecosystems have now been significantly transformed through human actions.” Most of the environmental damage being seen in the last fifty odd years is because of the growing number of people on the planet. They are cutting down forests, hunting wildlife in a reckless manner, causing pollution and creating a host of problems. Those engaged in talking about overpopulation have noticed that acts of violence and aggression outside of a war zone have increased tremendously while competing for resources.

The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment, waste disposal and energy supplies. Overpopulation places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life. David Pimentel has stated that “With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, and biological resources. There is a need to develop renewable energy resources. Humans everywhere must understand that rapid population growth damages the Earth’s resources and diminishes human well-beings.

These reflect the comments also of the United States Geological Survey in their paper The Future of Planet Earth: Scientific Challenges in the Coming Century. “As the global population continues to grow…people will place greater and greater demands on the resources of our planet, including mineral and energy resources, open space, water, and plant and animal resources.” “Earth’s natural wealth: an audit” by New Scientist magazine states that many of the minerals that we use for a variety of products are in danger of running out in the near future. A handful of geologists around the world have calculated the costs of new technologies in terms of the materials they use and the implications of their spreading to the developing world. All agree that the planet’s booming population and rising standards of living are set to put unprecedented demands on the materials that only Earth itself can provide. Limitations on how much of these materials is available could even mean that some technologies are not worth pursuing long term…. “Virgin stocks of several metals appear inadequate to sustain the modern ‘developed world’ quality of life for all of Earth’s people under contemporary technology”.

On the other hand, some cornucopian researchers, such as Julian L. Simon and Bjørn Lomborg believe that resources exist for further population growth. In a 2010 study, they concluded that “there are not (and will never be) too many people for the planet to feed”. Some critics warn, this will be at a high cost to the Earth: “the technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that overall world food production can be increased substantially over the next few decades…[however] the environmental cost of what Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich describe as ‘turning the Earth into a giant human feedlot’ could be severe. A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with improved diets is likely to lead to further deforestation, loss of species, soil erosion, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff as farming intensifies and new land is brought into production.” Since we are intimately dependent upon the living systems of the Earth, some scientists have questioned the wisdom of further expansion.

Although all resources, whether mineral or other, are limited on the planet, there is a degree of self-correction whenever a scarcity or high-demand for a particular kind is experienced. For example, in 1990 known reserves of many natural resources were higher, and their prices lower, than in 1970, despite higher demand and higher consumption. Whenever a price spike would occur, the market tended to correct itself whether by substituting an equivalent resource or switching to a new technology.

Population optimists have been criticized for failing to take into account the depletion of fossil fuels required for the production of fertilizers, tillage, transportation, etc. Optimists counter that fossil fuels will be sufficient until the development and implementation of suitable replacement technologies—such as nuclear power or various sources of renewable energy—occurs. With increasing awareness about global warming, the question of peak oil has become less relevant. According to many studies, about 80% of the remaining fossil fuels must be left untouched because the bottleneck has shifted from resource availability to the resource of absorbing the generated greenhouse gases when burning fossil fuels.

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Population and unemployment:

A fast growth in population means a large number of persons coming to the labour market for whom it may not be possible to provide employment. In fact, in underdeveloped countries, the number of job seekers is expanding so fast that despite all efforts towards planned development, it has not been possible to provide employment to all. Unemployment, underemployment and disguised employment are common features in these countries. The rapidly rising population makes it almost impossible for economically backward countries to solve their problem of unemployment.

On the other hand, a large population means more consumers as well as more producers. The large increase of population in the West over the last two centuries has not brought about persistent unemployment. The experience of the contemporary less developed world confirms that rapid increase of population does not result in unemployment and also that the issue cannot be discussed simply on the basis of numbers and physical resources. The idea that population growth results in unemployment implies that labor cannot be substituted for land or capital in particular activities and also that resources cannot be moved from less labor-intensive to more labor-intensive activities. The idea implies that the elasticity of substitution between labor and other resources is zero in both production and consumption. But the development of more intensive forms of agriculture in many developing nations, including the development of double and treble cropping, refutes such notions, as do frequent changes in patterns of consumption.

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Population and migration:

The population explosion has created an increasing migration pressure from the South to the North – and there is also important migration within and between countries in the South. However the main responsibility doesn’t lie with the population growth but with economic inequality. The primary motive for migration was and is economic disparity: people migrate from regions with no or badly paid labour and a low standard of living to other regions, where one hopes to find work and a higher standard of living (Massey et al., 1993; Hooghe et al., 2008; IMO, 2013). Given the permanent population growth and economic inequality, a further increasing migration pressure is to be expected, irrespective of the national policies adopted.

It is sometimes expected that economic growth and increasing incomes in the South will slow down the migration pressure, but that remains to be seen. After all, it isn’t usually the poorest citizens in developing countries that migrate to rich countries. It is rather the affluent middle class in poor countries that have the means to send their sons and daughters to the North – an investment that can raise a lot of money via remittances to the families in the country of origin (IMO, 2013). There is after all a considerable cost attached to migration, in terms of money and human capital. Not everyone can bear those costs: to migrate you need brains, guts and money. With growing economic development in poor countries, an initial increase in migration pressure from those countries would be expected; the association between social-economic development and emigration is not linearly negative but follows the shape of a J turned upside down: more emigration at the start of economic development and a decline in emigration only with further development (De Haas, 2007).

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Population and Lower Life Expectancy:

While higher life expectancy is leading to increases in population in developed countries, lower life expectancy may be caused by the booms in population that less developed nations are experiencing. A large proportion of the world’s population growth occurs in less developed countries. This stretches the resources these countries have thinner resulting in less access to medical care, fresh water, food and jobs, all resulting in a fall in life expectancy. Overpopulation lowers the standards of living since it creates stress on the vital resources for survival and increases the difficulty of accessing the consistent supply of quality food, water, energy, health, security and shelter. Consequently, it makes the poor to become poorer, and they often opt for poor living conditions to survive. Eventually, it gives rise to lower life expectancy. The situation is serious in developing nations such as southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where most of the poor populations submit to inadequate and poor diets.

According to a Harvard study, “Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa.” Already strained with relentless population explosion, many developing countries, such as in Sub Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, will experience a degradation of their quality and length of life as they face increasing difficulties to supply water, food, energy and housing to their growing populations, which will have major repercussions for public health, security measures and economic growth. These situations are especially dire for populations in Uganda, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, which will double and, in some cases, even triple over the next 40 years.

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Population and Emergence of New Pandemics and Epidemics:

According to WHO, overpopulation is one of the leading causes of the speedy occurrence and emergence of human diseases. Overpopulation worsens numerous environmental and social factors such as pollution, malnutrition, overcrowded living conditions, and lacking health care which makes poor communities vulnerable to infectious diseases. Diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, and dysentery spread faster in overpopulated areas.

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Population and Species Extinction:

Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago at rates 1000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The 2012 update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species shows that of the 63,837 species examined worldwide, 19,817 are threatened with extinction – nearly a third of the total. If present trends continue, scientists warn that within a few decades, at least half of all plant and animal species on Earth will be extinct, as a result of climate change, habitat loss, pollution, acidifying oceans, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources, overfishing, poaching and human overpopulation. Human overpopulation has been dominating planetary physical, chemical, and biological conditions and limits, with an annual absorption of 42% of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30% of its marine net primary productivity, 50% of its fresh water, 40% of its land devoted to human food production, up from 7% in 1700, 50% of its land mass being transformed for human use and atmospheric nitrogen being fixated by humans than all other natural processes combined. Compared to the natural background rate of one extinction per million species per year, we are now losing 30,000 species per year, or three species per hour, which is faster than new species can evolve. Today about a total of 8.7 million species live on the planet.

Increased Habitat Loss:

Human overpopulation is a major driving force behind the loss of ecosystems, such as rainforests, coral reefs, wetlands and Arctic ice. Rainforests once covered 14% of the Earth’s land surface, now they cover a bare 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years and certainly by the end of the century at the current rate of deforestation. Due mainly to warming temperatures, acidifying oceans and pollution, close to 30% of the ocean’s reefs have already vanished since 1980, including half of the reefs in the Caribbean and 90% of the Philippines’ coral reefs, and scientists forecast that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef may be dead by the year 2050 and all coral reefs could be gone by the end of the century. Furthermore, the area of permanent ice cover is now declining at a rate of 11.5% per decade, relative to the 1979 to 2000 average. If this trend continues, summers in the Arctic could become ice-free in as few as 4 years or in the next 30 years. Wetlands are increasingly under threat in the United States, but also all over the world. In the U.S., less than half of original wetlands remain with 53% being lost, which is about 104 million acres. In Europe, between 60% and 70% of wetlands have been completely destroyed. As human populations continue to grow, so will our footprint on the interconnected, ecological infrastructures of life. Both animal and plant species are affected, by habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation. The effect of overpopulation on the world’s wildlife is also a major issue. As demand for land grows, so too does the destruction of natural habitats, such as forests. Some scientists warn that if present trends continue, as many as 50% of the world’s wildlife species will be at risk of extinction. Data has also been collected to show that there is a direct link between increases in human population and decreases in the number of species on the planet.

We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms — thousands of species die off per year — because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam’s elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is “the monster on the land.” Species are vanishing at a rate faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic — the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.

Earth’s sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn in 2017 study:

Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as study reveals billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades. A “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way and is more severe than previously feared, according to research. Scientists analysed both common and rare species and found billions of regional or local populations have been lost. They blame human overpopulation and overconsumption for the crisis and warn that it threatens the survival of human civilisation, with just a short window of time in which to act. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, eschews the normally sober tone of scientific papers and calls the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” that represents a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation”. Prof Gerardo Ceballos, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, who led the work, said: “The situation has become so bad it would not be ethical not to use strong language.”

The scientists conclude: “The resulting biological annihilation obviously will have serious ecological, economic and social consequences. Humanity will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe.” They say, while action to halt the decline remains possible, the prospects do not look good: “All signs point to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life.”

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Population growth and economic development:

The relationship between population growth and economic growth has been fundamental to the policy makers in different countries. However, there has been no consensus whether population growth is beneficial or detrimental to the economic growth in the developing countries.

Income and fertility:

A broad consensus has developed over time that as incomes rise, fertility tends to fall. There is little debate about the causal relationship between rising prosperity and declining fertility. Generally speaking, there has been a uniformly high correlation between national income growth and falling birth rates, and between family incomes and fertility. Economists and demographers for the most part agree that important ingredients of improved living standards, such as urbanization, industrialization and rising opportunities for non-agrarian employment, improved educational levels, and better health all lead to changed parental perceptions of the costs and benefits of children, leading in turn to lower fertility. In other words, there is no longer much debate about whether or not improved economic conditions, whether at the family level or at the societal level, lead to lower fertility. However United Nations report in 2002 came to the conclusion that sharp declines in fertility rates in India, Nigeria, and Mexico occurred despite low levels of economic development. Every country could differ in their respective relationship between income and fertility. Some countries show that income and fertility are directly related but other countries show a directly inverse relationship.

Increased unemployment is generally associated with lower fertility. A study in France came to the result that employment instability has a strong and persistent negative effect on the final number of children for both men and women and contributes to fertility postponement for men. It also came to the result that employment instability has a negative influence on fertility among those with more egalitarian views about the division of labor but still a positive influence for women with more traditional views. Fertility declines have been seen during economic recessions. This phenomenon is seen as a result of pregnancy postponement, especially of first births. However, this effect can be short-term and largely compensated for during later times of economic prosperity.

The debate remains active and at times quite contentious regarding whether causality runs the other way—i.e. does reduced fertility improve the economic prospects of families and societies? Here there is anything but consensus, although, there appears to be a slowly growing convergence of views in favour of an affirmative answer to this question. A good deal of research, of course, has been conducted on this question. In tracing the recent history of theory and research on the connection between demography and economics, we find a new consensus is emerging; that reductions in fertility and declining ratios of dependent to working age populations provide a window of opportunity for economic development and poverty reduction.

Empirical studies increasingly support the idea that countries which have incorporated population policies and family planning programmes in their overall economic development strategies have achieved high and sustained rates of economic growth and that they have also managed significant reductions in poverty. Fertility reduction is by no means an economic development panacea and is certainly not a sufficient condition for economic growth, but it may well be a necessary condition, establishing conditions in which governments can invest more per capita in education and health, thus creating the human capital for sustained economic growth. Likewise, with fewer children to care for and raise, families can improve their prospects for escaping the poverty trap. At both the macro- and micro-levels, moderating fertility enhances economic prospects.

Throughout the developing world, declining birth rates and rising living standards have gone hand in hand. The evidence suggests that the interrelationship between them represents a virtuous circle, whereby improvements in one reinforce and accelerate improvements in the other. The virtuous circle can be initiated either by investing in human development programmes such as healthcare and education or by investing in programmes to reduce fertility. But the example of the East Asian Tigers suggests that the best strategies have been those that do the two simultaneously.

Dependency ratio:

The dependency ratio is a measure of the number of dependents aged zero to 14 and over the age of 65, compared with the total population aged 15 to 64. This indicator gives insight into the number of people of nonworking age, compared with the number of those of working age. A high dependency ratio means those of working age, and the overall economy, face a greater burden in supporting children and the aging population. Consideration of the dependency ratio is essential for governments, economists, bankers, business, industry, universities and all other major economic segments which can benefit from understanding the impacts of changes in population structure. A low dependency ratio means that there are sufficient people working who can support the dependent population. A lower ratio could allow for better pensions and better health care for citizens. A higher ratio indicates more financial stress on working people and possible political instability.

Dependency ratios based on the Demographic Transition Model:

There are three types of age dependency ratio. The youth dependency ratio is the population ages 0-15 divided by the population ages 16-64. The old-age dependency ratio is the population ages 65-plus divided by the population ages 16-64. The total age dependency ratio is the sum of the youth and old-age ratios. The age-dependency ratio can determine which stage in the Demographic Transition Model a certain country is in. The dependency ratio acts like a rollercoaster when going through the stages of the Demographic Transition Model. During stages 1 and 2, the dependency ratio is high due to significantly high crude birth rates putting pressure onto the smaller working-age population to take care of all of them. In stage 3, the dependency ratio starts to decrease because fertility and mortality rates start to decrease which shows that the proportion of adults to the young and elderly are much larger in this stage. In stages 4 and 5, the dependency ratio starts to increase once again as the working-age population retires. Because fertility rates caused the younger population to decrease, once they grow up and start working, there will be more pressure for them to take care of the previous working-age population that just retired since there will be more young and elderly people than working-age adults during that time period. The population structure of a country is an important factor for determining the economic status of their country. Japan is a great example of an aging population. They have a 1:4 ratio of people 65 years and older. This causes trouble for them because there is not enough people in the working-age population to support all of the elders. Rwanda is another example of a population that struggles with a younger population (also known as the “youth bulge”). Both of these countries are struggling with high dependency ratios even though both countries are on opposite stages of the Demographic Transition Model.

Demographic dividend:

When fertility rates decline over a sustained period of time the proportion of the working age population (i.e. over 15) grows relative to the economically dependent youth population. This change in age composition creates a window of opportunity during which a country can potentially raise its level of savings and investment—a phenomenon now known as the ‘demographic dividend’. Demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) means, “the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older)”. In other words, it is “a boost in economic productivity that occurs when there are growing numbers of people in the workforce relative to the number of dependents.” UNFPA stated that, “A country with both increasing numbers of young people and declining fertility has the potential to reap a demographic dividend. Demographic dividend occurs when the proportion of working people in the total population is high because this indicates that more people have the potential to be productive and contribute to growth of the economy. In order for economic growth to occur the younger population must have access to quality education, adequate nutrition and health including access to sexual and reproductive health. Demographic dividend can only come into existence, when countries invest in the empowerment, education and employment including good governance.

The economy can be driven by a fast growth track with other macroeconomic variables like employment, per capita income, saving and investment putting a positive impact on the economic growth of the country only when demographic dividend is taken care of. Hence, the human resources can only transform into asset through proper recruitment, selection, training, appraising performance, compensating, maintaining relationships, and welfare, health and safety measures of employees. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the youth needs to be absorbed meaningfully into the workforce to make it productive enough so that this demographic dividend does not turn into a demographic nightmare.

Demographic dividend refers to the growth in an economy that is the result of a change in the age structure of a country’s population. The change in age structure is typically brought on by a decline in fertility and mortality rates. While most countries have seen an improvement in child survival rates, birth rates remain high in many of them, particularly in lesser developed countries. These countries, therefore, rarely enjoy an economic benefit known as the demographic dividend. Demographic dividends are occurrences in a country that enjoys accelerated economic growth that stems from the decline in fertility and mortality rates. A country that experiences low birth rates in conjunction with low death rates receives an economic dividend or benefit from the increase in productivity of the working population that ensues. As fewer births are registered, the number of young dependents grows smaller relative to the working population. With fewer people to support and more people in the labor force, an economy’s resources are freed up and invested in other areas to accelerate a country’s economic development and the future prosperity of its populace.

To receive a demographic dividend, a country must go through a demographic transition where it switches from a largely rural agrarian economy with high fertility and mortality rates to an urban industrial society characterized by low fertility and mortality rates. In the initial stages of this transition, fertility rates fall, leading to a labor force that is temporarily growing faster than the population dependent on it. All else being equal, per capita income grows more rapidly during this time too. This economic benefit is the first dividend received by a country that has gone through the demographic transition (stage 3 of demographic transition). A decline in fertility and mortality rates boosts working population productivity, which leads to a demographic dividend.

Four mechanisms for economic growth in the demographic dividend:

During the course of the demographic dividend there are four mechanisms through which the benefits are delivered.

The first is the increased labor supply. However, the magnitude of this benefit appears to be dependent on the ability of the economy to absorb and productively employ the extra workers rather than be a pure demographic gift.
The second mechanism is the increase in savings. As the number of dependents decreases individuals can save more. This increase in national savings rates increases the stock of capital in developing countries already facing shortages of capital and leads to higher productivity as the accumulated capital is invested.
The third mechanism is human capital. Decreases in fertility rates result in healthier women and fewer economic pressures at home. This also allows parents to invest more resources per child, leading to better health and educational outcomes.
The fourth mechanism for growth is the increasing domestic demand brought about by the increasing GDP per capita and the decreasing dependency ratio.

Types of Demographic Dividend:

The first dividend period generally lasts for a long time—typically five decades or more. Eventually, however, the reduced birth rate reduces labor force growth. Meanwhile, improvements in medicine and better health practices lead to an ever-expanding elderly population, sapping additional income and putting an end to the demographic dividend. At this stage, all else being equal, per capita income grows at a decelerated rate and the first demographic dividend becomes negative.

An older working population facing an extended retirement period has a powerful incentive to accumulate assets to support themselves. These assets are usually invested in both domestic and international investment vehicles, adding to a country’s national income. The increase in national income is referred to as the second dividend which continues to be earned indefinitely.

The benefits gotten from a demographic transition is neither automatic nor guaranteed. Any demographic dividend depends on whether the government implements the right policies in areas such as education, health, governance, and the economy. In addition, the amount of demographic dividend that a country receives depends on the level of productivity of young adults which, in turn, depends on the level of schooling, employment practices in a country, timing, and frequency of childbearing, as well as economic policies that make it easier for young parents to work. The dividend amount is also tied to the productivity of older adults which depends on tax incentives, health programs, and pension and retirement policies.

Much, although not all, of the economic success of these East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs) can be attributed to the baby boom that they enjoyed after the Second World War, which resulted in a large pool of young workers in the 1960s to the 1980s that these countries cleverly employed in labor-intensive, export-oriented industries, which jumpstarted their rapid industrialization and rise of the middle class. In fact, Nobel laureate and famous commentator Paul Krugman attributed practically all the success of these NICs to the significant increase in the supply of their manpower (and capital) and not to productivity increase. Although Krugman’s analysis might have been too extreme (after all, the Philippines also benefited from a large labor pool during the same period but failed to grow because of mismanagement and flawed economic policies), there is a great deal of truth in the “demographic dividend” hypothesis. A rapid rise of population, if well managed, is a very positive contribution to sustainable and inclusive growth.

David Bloom hypothesized that the demographic dividend lasts for approximately 50 years. Sooner or later fertility rates decline because of urbanization; more investments in education, especially among the women; and later marriages so that there comes a time when growth of the young labor force slows down and is surpassed by the increase in the number of citizens above 65 years of age. This is when the “inverted pyramid” sets in and the dependency ratio increases. There are more people in the retired force for every person in the active labor force. Many east Asian countries have experienced or are experiencing the end of their demographic dividend. There are only a few Southeast Asian countries that will continue to enjoy this demographic dividend in the next 20 years. They are Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, together with South Asia’s largest country, India. These countries cannot afford to squander their demographic dividend. Population growth is not a problem. Mismanagement of resources is. If we mismanage our resources, we will face problems even with a smaller population and if we manage our resources well, we can manage our population and reap the full use of demographic dividend. To do that we must all learn a lot from countries such as Israel and Singapore.

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Does Population Growth have a Positive Effect on Economic Growth?

Economists are torn between three theories; one that state’s that population growth helps a nation’s economy by stimulating economic growth and development and another that bases its theory on Robert Malthus’ findings. Malthus (1798) stated that population increase is detrimental to a nation’s economy due to a variety of problems caused by the growth. For example, overpopulation and population growth places a tremendous amount of pressure on resources, which result in a chain reaction of problems as the nation grows. The third school of thought is that population growth does have any impact on economic growth. On the macroeconomic level, it is more believable to argue that population does undermine a nation’s economy because an increase in the number of people leads to an increase of the number of mouths to feed. The increase in demand for food leads to a decrease in natural resources, which are needed for a nation to survive. Other negative effects of population growth and, specifically, overpopulation include poverty caused by low income per capita, famine, and disease.

More people may mean a country can produce and consume more goods and services, leading to economic growth. But this can only occur when employment opportunities grow at least as fast as the labor force and when people have access to the necessary education and training. A larger population may help overcome possibly diminishing returns to this generation’s human capital in the production of the next generation’s human capital because greater population growth induces more specialization and a larger market that raise returns to human capital and knowledge. If human capital per capita were sufficiently large, the economy would move to steady state growth, whereby in the steady-state growth path, consumption per capita would increase at a slower rate than human capital if the population is growing and if the production of consumer goods has diminishing returns to population. However, consumption per capita can still be increasing, despite these diminishing returns, if the positive impact of the growth in human capital on productivity in the consumption sector more than offsets the negative impact of population growth. Thus, zero population growth is not necessary for sustainable growth in per capita consumption, even with diminishing returns to population in the production of consumer goods (Gerald and Meier, 1995).

Economists advocating the positive side to population growth, say that the population growth creates problems in the short run that include poverty, famine and unemployment. Yet, they also state that in the long run, it leads to new developments through advancement in technology that leave countries better off than if the problems never occurred. On the positive side, there is a chain reaction of events caused by population growth. According to the neo-classical growth model, population is beneficial to an economy due to the fact that population growth is correlated to technological advancement. Rising population promotes the need for some sort of technological change in order to meet the rising demands for certain goods and services. With the increased populace, economies are blessed with a large labor force, making it cheaper as well, due to its immense availability. An increase in labor availability and a low cost for labor results in a huge rise in employment as businesses are more inclined to the cheap labor. Low labor costs results in a shift of money usage from wages into advancement through technology (Coale and Hoover, 1958).

According to Friedberg and Hunt (1995) population growth and urbanization go together, and economic development is closely correlated with urbanization. Rich countries are urban countries. Population growth increases density and, together with rural-urban migration, creates higher urban agglomeration. And this is critical for achieving sustained growth because large urban centers allow for innovation and increase economies of scale. Companies can produce goods in larger numbers and more cheaply, serving a larger number of low-income customers. Many countries have companies which have been benefitting from increasing population growth and density in targeting the large numbers of lower and lower-middle income. Their business model is viable because they can serve a multi-million customer base.

Studies of past economic growth provide many hypotheses about population and economic growth. As for productivity growth, there are some interesting hypotheses.

First, the larger the population, the higher the chance that great innovators will emerge. This is called the “genius hypothesis,” and since the innovation is the source of technological progress, a simple inference shows that economic growth will stagnate as the population declines.
Second, a larger population increases the opportunity for intellectual interchange with diverse human resources, which in turn promotes technological progress. Although it is difficult to clearly identify the causes of productivity growth, diverse human interchange is considered to be a necessary condition. A population decline reduces the chances of that happening.
Third, as the population declines, the number of people in research and engineering jobs falls, which negatively affects the nation’s R&D performance.

Restrict the Economy, Create Overpopulation:

Norberg explains what Malthus got wrong:

He underestimated [humanity’s] ability to innovate, solve problems and change its ways when Enlightenment ideas and expanded freedoms gave people the opportunity to do so. As farmers got individual property rights, they then had an incentive to produce more. As borders were opened to international trade, regions began to specialize in the kinds of production suited to their soil, climate and skills. And agricultural technology improved to make use of these opportunities. Even though population grew rapidly, the supply of food grew more quickly. The more specialization and exchange, the wealthier and better fed a growing population will be. In countries like North Korea, Venezuela, and Mao’s China, central planning leads to reduced specialization, which leads to starvation.

As Matt Ridley explains in his book The Rational Optimist:

If exchange becomes harder, [people] will reduce their specialisation, which can lead to a population crisis even without an increase in population. The Malthusian crisis comes not as a result of population growth directly, but because of decreasing specialisation. Increasing self-sufficiency is the very signature of a civilisation under stress, the definition of a falling standard of living. Ridley explains that embracing specialization increases human ingenuity and increases the possibility that more people “can live upon the planet in improving health, food security and life expectancy and that this is compatible with cleaner air, increasing forest cover and some booming populations of elephants.” In short, Ridley writes, “Embracing dynamism means opening your mind to the possibility of posterity making a better world rather than preventing a worse one.”

Population growth can influence economic growth through two essential channels including technical progress and economies of scale. An increase in population leads to innovations. Technological advances in turn promote productivity and economies of scale, hence the national output. There is need for the government to change the education system to ensure that new training methods, which develop existing skills and create skills where they do not exist are implemented. There is also a need to put in place training policies that will strengthen the competitive capacities of the work force and increase the competitiveness. Education is the principal supplier of highly skilled and effective human resources. The most important thing is to take action to amend and reform mostly the higher education and makes it a useful tool in the service of the development process, and to link it to the global market so as to meet the demands of the labor market and create new job opportunities for the population.

According to Julian Simon, a prestigious economist at the University of Maryland, the long run benefits of population growth that links to economic development of poor countries are on the positive balance, contrary to conventional wisdom. He figured that an increase in the numbers of consumers and an increase of income, expand the demand for raw materials as well as finished products. Naturally this would lead to a shortage in goods and services caused by the high demand for products and services, forcing up prices for the natural resources. The increased prices will trigger a search for new ways to satisfy the increasing demands in order to meet expectations. Sooner or later new sources and innovative substitutes will be found. The new discoveries lead to cheaper natural resources than existed before the increase in population and the demand for goods and services begin. In turn, it leaves a nation better off than if the shortages had never appeared, meaning the nation has gone through a process of economic growth and development.

Normally, through conventional wisdom, economists might argue that population growth and overpopulation hinder the growth output per worker. The important factor to this theory is Malthusian diminishing returns to labor, as the stock of capital, including land, does not increase in the same proportion as does labor. Another important factor, that contradicts Simon’s theory, is the dependency effect, which suggests that saving is more difficult for households when there are more children and that higher fertility causes social investment funds to be diverted away from high-productivity uses. These factors seem to suggest that high fertility, and, more importantly, increasing population growth create a negative effect on output per worker, and on the broader aspect, it creates negative economic growth.

Yet, empirical data does not support this a priori reasoning. Contemporary evidence provided by a number of economists indicates there is a correlation between population growth and economic growth and development. Although most of these economists found inconsistent evidence to prove this theory, they did, generally, obtain the same data. Their reports concluded that population growth does have a positive effect on less-developed countries (LDC’s). Although some said the positive effects were very minimal and weak, the economists were still able to use a simulation model for LDC’s and report that economic growth did occur. Economists, Easterlin, Kuznets, Conlisk and Huddle, and Thirlwall all arrayed LDC’s by their recent population growth rates and their economic growth rates, to examine for relationships between the two. Easterlin assessed that “[his data] is clear…that there is little evidence of any significant, negative association between the income and population growth rates. Kuznets compiled data on 21 countries in Asia and Africa, including India. In the samples he took, Kuznets reported no significant negative correlation between population growth and the growth per capita. Conlisk and Huddle regressed the output growth rate on the savings rate and the rate of population growth of 25 LDC’s, and announced that an increment of population has, ceteris paribus, a positive effect on per capita income. These empirical studies do not necessarily show that fast population growth in less-developed countries increases capita per income, although most findings reported positive effects. But they do imply that one should not assert that population growth decreases per capita economic growth in less-developed countries.

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Does Population Growth have a Negative Effect on Economic Growth?

Other economists seem to think otherwise, and oppose the theory that population growth has a positive effect on economic growth. Basic theory surrounding population growth in less developed countries states that the growth of a populace may eventually lead to overpopulation, due to the simple factors of food, education, health, housing, and employment. Earth and its resources are finite. Human ingenuity and efforts have limits to fulfil the needs of the increasing numbers. The more heads there are in a nation means there are more mouths to feed. This begins Malthus’ theory of diminishing returns when it comes to resources and food. Malthus states: either people practice continence, restrain sexual impulses, or they breed themselves into starvation. Population is said to be negative once productivity and output are less than demand. Population growth, no matter how high or low it may be, results in a rise in a nation’s populace. The rise in population will increase the demand for goods and services, such as food, water, and a variety of other resources needed for survival. If supply (based on quantity and price) ends up lower than the demand for the supply of the good, the resulting effect would be that of a shortage of goods. In the long run, the resulting shortage of goods and services available to the rising population leads to starvation. Yet, starvation isn’t achieved solely because of the shortage in goods. Since demands are high for resources and the resources are depleted due to the population increase, the prices of the goods are raised. The rising price, in return, reduces the demand for certain goods, unless the good is a necessity for survival. The decrease in demand is due to the insufficient income per capita, meaning consumers cannot afford to purchase many necessary goods in the market. Due to the fact that the goods are now unaffordable the consumers won’t be able to purchase the necessary food required to survive, resulting in starvation, famine and even disease.

Another problem associated with population growth, which might lead to a decrease in economic growth, is the problem of environmental degradation and resource scarcity. Earth is comprised of 75% water, the rest is comprised of land, with a majority of it used for agriculture. According to Malthus, population growth of a nation is detrimental to economic growth, primarily due to the factor of finite resources in an economy. With a rise in the number of people, a nation can expect a decline in the natural resources and in the end a lowering of the production of goods. In a closed and stagnant economy with fixed natural resources, no capital accumulation and no technological change, population growth and size determine the standard of living as well as the state of natural resources.

To some economists, rapid population growth can be associated with downward pressure on wages and worsening distribution of income, if not actual negative effects on the income per capita. This is mainly due to the spreading of capital over larger number of workers or due to the difficulties in raising the quantity and quality of investments in education and health. If it is true that continuous rapid population growth is detrimental to the growth of per capita incomes, while past population growth is beneficial to the economy once fertility decline sets in, then the ultimate impact of population growth on the environment depends on the impact made by economic growth. Past population growth seemed to be at a slower rate than what it is now, and because of that factor economic growth thrived in the past, whereas now, it seems that the rapid population growth is detrimental to an economy due to its strains on resources, cause for famine, disease, poverty and even unemployment. This is why most Malthusian economists urge governments to step up and curb the rapid population growth in order to sustain economic growth.

A mathematical formula suggests population decline may result in a richer society. Some economists claim that economic prosperity should be measured at the per capita level. There is an interesting equation, as follows: Per capita economic growth rate is calculated by macroeconomic growth rate minus the rate of population growth. Using this equation, we can show that a declining population brings a richer economy on a per capita basis. Under the projection by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the average annual rate of population growth through 2065 will be a minus 0.7 percent. So if the macroeconomic growth is zero, the rate of economic growth per capita will be plus 0.7 percent. Therefore, we need not worry about a population decline. In truth, however, it’s unlikely this happy turnout will take place. The decline of the population will reduce the labor force, hamper productivity growth and erode the domestic market base. Therefore, there is a chance that the macroeconomic growth rate will be in negative territory and as a result per capita growth rate could also be negative.

Population can be a limiting factor to economic development because of the following reasons:

Population reduces the rate of Capital Formation:

In underdeveloped countries, the composition of population is determined to increase capital formation. Due to higher birth rate and low expectation of life in these countries, the percentage of dependents is very high. Nearly 40 to 50 per cent of the population is in the non-productive age group which simply consumes and does not produce anything. In under developed countries, rapid growth of population diminishes the availability of capital per head which reduces the productivity of its labour force. Their income, as a consequence, is reduced and their capacity to save is diminished which, in turn, adversely affects capital formation.

According to Prof. Spigler, in developed countries there are 2 dependents against 3 workers, whereas in underdeveloped countries there are 4 dependents against 3 workers. This high burden of dependency reduces the capacity of people to save. This equally applies to India, because such persons do not produce anything but they do consume. They are supported by their families. The majority of such families have low incomes. So their savings are too low to be invested. Further, their incomes being low, they do not come under the tax net (that is, they do not pay any tax to the government). Rather, the government spends on them to provide various social services. This is called demographic investment which simply maintains their existing standard of living of misery and poverty. Such persons are a drag on the economic development of the country. They are to a great extent responsible for low rate of saving, low rate of investment and low rate of capital formation. As pointed out by Prof. Meier, “The high dependency requires the economy to -divert a considerable part of resources, that might otherwise go into capital formation to the maintenance of a high percentage of dependents who may never become producers”. The Coale and Hoover suggests that declines in fertility promote growth through decreases in the dependency ratios.

Higher rate of Population requires more Investment:

In economically backward countries, investment requirements are beyond its investing capacity. A rapidly growing population increases the requirements of demographic investment which at the same time reduces the capacity of the people to save. This creates a serious imbalance between investment requirements and the availability of investible funds. Therefore, the volume of such investment is determined by the rate of population growth in an economy. Some economists have estimated that for maintaining the present level of per capita income, 2 per cent to 5 per cent of national income must be invested if population grows at 1 per cent per annum. In these countries, population is increasing at the rate of about 2.5 per cent per annum and 5 per cent to 12.5 per cent of their national income and hence the entire investment is absorbed by demographic investment and nothing is left for economic development. These factors are mainly responsible for stagnation in such economies.

It reduces per Capita availability of Capital:

The large size of population also reduces per capita availability of capital in less developed countries. This is true in respect of underdeveloped countries where capital is scarce and its supply is inelastic. A rapidly growing population leads to a progressive decline in the availability of capital per worker. This further leads to lower productivity and diminishing returns.

Adverse Effect on per Capital Income:

Rapid growth of population directly effects per capita income in an economy. Up to ‘income optimizing level’, the growth of population increases per capita income but beyond that it necessarily lowers the same. In a sense, so long as the rate of population growth is lower than the per capita income, rate of economic growth will rise but if population growth exceeds the rate of economic growth, usually found in the case of less developed countries, per capita income must fall.

In the 1990s researchers made two discoveries that questioned the neutrality of population growth with respect to economic development. First, analyses of the remarkable economic trajectory of East Asian countries in the late 20th century suggested a sizeable fraction of their impressive economic growth was attributable to high levels of savings and investment facilitated by earlier fertility declines. Second, new research suggested that there was in fact a negative association between population growth and economic performance. High birth rates and rapid population growth in poor countries would divert scarce capital away from savings and investment, thereby placing a drag on economic development. They hypothesized that larger families have fewer aggregate resources and fewer resources per child. Larger families therefore spread their resources more thinly to support more children. This leaves less for saving and investing in growth-enhancing activities. It also reduces spending on enhancing the economic potential of each child (e.g. through education and health expenditures). In the aggregate, these household level consequences of high birth rates were believed to exert a significant negative effect on per capita income growth.

A recent meta-analysis concluded that a negative relationship emerged in the post-1980 data, and that its strength has increased with time:

Figure above illustrates, the simple cross-sectional relationship between population growth and economic growth is clearly negative when viewed over the long run (i.e. 1950-2008).

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The Role of Population in Economic Growth, a 2017 study:

The relationship between population growth and economic growth is controversial. This article draws on historical data to chart the links between population growth, growth in per capita output, and overall economic growth over the past 200 years. Low population growth in high-income countries is likely to create social and economic problems while high population growth in low-income countries may slow their development. International migration could help to adjust these imbalances but is opposed by many. Drawing on economic analyses of inequality, it appears that lower population growth and limited migration may contribute to increased national and global economic inequality.

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Fertility and intelligence correlation:

Dysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species. The adjective “dysgenic” is the antonym of “eugenic”. Dysgenic fertility means that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and number of children.

The negative correlation between fertility and intelligence (as measured by IQ) has been argued to have existed in many parts of the world. Nobel Prize–winning physicist William Shockley controversially argued from the mid-1960s through the 1980s that “the future of the population was threatened because people with low IQs had more children than those with high IQs.”

In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by 0.81 points per generation. Taking 0.71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks and Fulker, they calculated a dysgenic decline of 0.57 IQ points per generation. Another way of checking the negative relationship between IQ and fertility is to consider the relationship which educational attainment has to fertility, since education is known to be a reasonable proxy for IQ, correlating with IQ at 0.55; in a 1999 study examining the relationship between IQ and education in a large national sample, David Rowe and others found not only that achieved education had a high heritability (0.68) and that half of the variance in education was explained by an underlying genetic component shared by IQ, education, and SES. One study investigating fertility and education carried out in 1991 found that high school dropouts in the United States had the most children (2.5 on average), with high school graduates having fewer children, and college graduates having the fewest children (1.56 on average). The Bell Curve (1994) argued that the average genotypic IQ of the United States was declining due to both dysgenic fertility and large scale immigration of groups with low average IQ.

Although much of the research into intelligence and fertility has been restricted to individuals within a single nation (the United States), Steven Shatz (2008) extended the research internationally; he finds that “There is a strong tendency for countries with lower national IQ scores to have higher fertility rates and for countries with higher national IQ scores to have lower fertility rates.” Lynn and Harvey (2008) found a correlation of −0.73 between national IQ and fertility. They estimated that the effect had been “a decline in the world’s genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. A further decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world’s genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050.” In the first period this effect had been compensated for by the Flynn effect causing a rise in phenotypic IQ but recent studies in four developed nations had found it has now ceased or gone into reverse. They thought it probable that both genotypic and phenotypic IQ will gradually start to decline for the whole world.

Possible causes of negative association between intelligence and fertility:

Income

A theory to explain the fertility-intelligence relationship is that while income and IQ are positively correlated, income is also in itself a fertility factor that correlates inversely with fertility, that is, the higher the incomes, the lower the fertility rates and vice versa. There is thus an inverse correlation between income and fertility within and between nations. The higher the level of education and GDP per capita of a human population, sub-population or social stratum, the fewer children are born.

Education

People often delay childbearing in order to spend more time getting education, and thus have fewer children. Conversely, early childbearing can interfere with education, so those with early or frequent childbearing are likely to be less educated. While education and childbearing place competing demands on a person’s resources, education is positively correlated with IQ.

Birth control and intelligence

Among a sample of women using birth control methods of comparable theoretical effectiveness, success rates were related to IQ, with the percentages of high, medium and low IQ women having unwanted births during a three-year interval being 3%, 8% and 11%, respectively. Since the effectiveness of many methods of birth control is directly correlated with proper usage, an alternative interpretation of the data would indicate lower IQ women were less likely to use birth control consistently and correctly. Another study found that after an unwanted pregnancy has occurred, higher IQ couples are more likely to obtain abortions; and unmarried teenage girls who become pregnant are found to be more likely to carry their babies to term if they are doing poorly in school.

Criticism:

The general increase in IQ test scores, the Flynn effect, has been argued to be evidence against dysgenic arguments. However, it has been argued that genotypic IQ may decrease even while phenotypic IQ rises throughout the population due to environmental effects such as better nutrition and education. The Flynn effect may now have ended or reversed in some developed nations. Recent research has shown that education and socioeconomic status are better indicators of fertility and suggests that the relationship between intelligence and number of children may be spurious. When controlling for education and socioeconomic status, the relationship between intelligence and number of children, intelligence and number of siblings, and intelligence and ideal number of children reduces to statistical insignificance. Among women, a post-hoc analysis revealed that the lowest and highest intelligence scores did not differ significantly by number of children. However, socioeconomic status and (obviously) education are themselves not independent of intelligence. Other research suggests that siblings born further apart achieve higher educational outcomes. Therefore, sibling density, not number of siblings, may explain the negative association between IQ and number of siblings.

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Religion and fertility correlation:

Many religious teachings are asking the believers to have a large number of children. Where people are having more kids is where religion flourishes. When they’re not (i.e. in Europe), atheism grows. The Christian bible for example teaches to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”. Religions vary widely in their views of the ethics of birth control. The Roman Catholic Church officially only accepts natural family planning, although large numbers of Catholics in developed countries accept and use modern methods of birth control. Among Protestants, there is a wide range of views from supporting none, such as in the Quiverfull movement, to allowing all methods of birth control. Views in Judaism range from the stricter Orthodox sect, which prohibits all methods of birth control, to the more relaxed Reform sect, which allows most. Hindus may use both natural and modern contraceptives. A common Buddhist view is that preventing conception is acceptable, while intervening after conception has occurred is not. In Islam, contraceptives are allowed if they do not threaten health, although their use is discouraged by some. In highly unequal societies, the poor continue to breed so much because that is a rare claim to power. In nation-states that have failed, organised religions succeed. They are the only genuine service providers for the poor. And nearly all of them urge the indigent of their flock to multiply. They chastise abortion or population moderation philosophies.

Study showing strong association between religion and fertility:

Figure below shows that the effects of religious prohibitions against birth control are clear on the international scale. No country that is either less than 40% religious, or has less than a 40% rate of belief in God, has a fertility rate of over 2.0. Conversely, every country that has a fertility rate of over 3.0 is over 80% in terms of both belief in God and in the rate at which they say they are religious.

Where studies found “correlations” and “associations” between religion and birth rates, Speckhardt discovered causation: “religious emphasis on copious reproduction and common teachings against the use of contraception are having a direct impact on population growth” and “religious belief increases the number of children an average woman will have.”

Within a single religious group, fertility rates can vary enormously depending on where people live. For example, Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa have a fertility rate of 5.6 children per woman, on average, while Muslims in Europe have an average of 2.1 children per woman. Similarly, religiously unaffiliated people in sub-Saharan Africa have more than four children per woman, on average, while the fertility rate among Europe’s unaffiliated population – 1.4 children per woman – is well below replacement level.

In most regions where reliable fertility data are available for religious groups, Muslims have more children per woman than the regional average. Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa have the highest Total Fertility Rate (5.6) of any major religious group in any large region. Across the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe, fertility rates among Muslims also are higher than among Christians and the unaffiliated. In the Middle East and North Africa, Muslims make up more than 90% of the population and are largely responsible for the region’s relatively high fertility rate (3.0).

As far as religion and population are concerned, it’s an oversimplification to single out religion as the cause of high birth rates. The demographics don’t show a clear connection between religion and fertility. For example, relatively pious Poland has a fertility rate of 1.28 children per woman, while more secular France is at almost 2 per woman. And Iran, a strongly Muslim country, has a lower rate than France. But poverty-stricken Rwanda’s rate is 5.25 per woman. In general, poverty and lack of education are far more significant factors in high fertility rates than religion. However, it would be wrong to say that religion has no importance for the number of children women have. There is evidence that, everything else being equal, religious people have more children, so that religion matters for differences at the same socio-economic level. Still, the differences between religions within the same country are much smaller than the differences between different countries in different socio-economic conditions. We can see how much more living conditions matter than the religion.

Study showing weak association between religion and fertility:

Which religion dominates in a country has no clear relation to the fertility level – and even if does have some importance the correlation is much weaker than that with the health of children.

Figure below shows average number of children vs child mortality, by the religion of the majority of the population, 2015:

Child mortality measures the share of children that die before their fifth birthday. The religion shown for each country is that with the largest share of followers in that country. Figure above shows that fertility positively correlates with child mortality rather than religion per se.

The religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world by demography. The demographic dividing line is not between secular and religious, but cuts across each religion because fundamentalism is “a disease of all religions”. Fundamentalist groups have high birth rates, are growing in number, and some are advocating endogenous growth as a strategy. With the fertility of Indian Hindus at or close to replacement fertility, some right-wing Hindu-nationalist politicians have clamoured for Hindu couples to boost their fertility in order to increase the number of Hindu followers compared to other religious groups in the country. In 2015, Sakshi Maharaj, a BJP MP particularly well-known for making controversial remarks – urged that “every Hindu woman must produce at least four children to protect the Hindu religion.” Population control policies in India have long served as a flashpoint between Hindu-nationalists that have advocated for them and Indian Muslims and the poor who have viewed such policies with suspicion. Population control initiatives are widely viewed in India as indirect attempts to lower the population of Indian Muslims and of poor and rural Indians as both groups tend to have larger families on average. According to the “National Family Health Survey 2015-16,” the total fertility rate was 2.6 for Muslims in India versus 2.1 for Hindus.

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Solution to overpopulation:

A population policy is a set of interventions implemented by government officials to better manage demographic variables and to try to attune population changes (number, structure by age and breakdown) to the country’s development aspirations. Population policies attempt to modify the various components of population growth. This may concern mortality or fertility, when it is felt to be too high or too low. This may also involve regulating international migratory flows or fostering internal migration currents. Finally, we may think of policies to support urbanization and to try to manage slums. More recently, the developed countries have also focused on their aging population problem. The means used to implement population policies are “policy levers” or targeted actions such as vaccination campaigns or family planning to change certain key variables. Vaccination campaigns are used to reduce mortality and family planning programs are used to reduce fertility.

There is not a single global population, but various populations facing very different situations that are divided among some 200 countries and geographic entities. Currently, 16% of the world population lives in countries where fertility is high (more than 4 children per woman); 38% lives in countries where the fertility level is between 4 and 2.1 children per woman; and, finally, the rest, or 46%, experiences fertility below the generation replacement level (the famous 2.1). So here we have two opposite phenomena – strong population growth and rapid aging, even depopulation –that are occurring simultaneously in various parts of the world.

We know how many people will live on earth around 2050: for the most part, all these people have already been born. It’s more difficult to say for the year 2100, since the vast majority of people who will live in 2100 have not been born yet. It is fertility that is both the key variable for the final (projected) population figure and the phenomenon whose evolution is the most difficult to foresee. We used to think that fertility would decrease quickly in Sub-Saharan Africa; this was not the case. We also used to think that the fertility levels of the industrialized countries would never fall much below 2.1 children per woman (the generation replacement threshold); we currently observe fertility rates barely higher than one in numerous countries and regions, for example Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Sub-Saharan Africa refused to set up organized family planning programs. The idea at the time was that socioeconomic development alone was going to bring about the drop in fertility. Unfortunately, development was not as rapid as anticipated. At present, population growth is so rapid that many countries no longer manage to build their human capital (education and health). Thirty or forty years of neglecting the problem of strong population growth have left traces that are found in the age pyramids. The problem of the unemployment among young people is more acute than ever, as stressed by the latest report from the African Development Bank. Faced with this serious situation, the countries are beginning to wake up: some have achieved impressive improvement in their contraceptive coverage, thanks to targeted and decentralized programs such as in Rwanda or Ethiopia. Still, the continued decline in mortality, especially infant and child mortality, is going to intensify population growth in Africa coupled with the additional growth caused by the population momentum tied to the youthful age structure. This strong population growth can only be curbed by rapid urbanization (accompanied, unfortunately, by a probable increase in slums) and by large migratory streams. Population policies will have a hard time managing all these phenomena.

Two approaches:

There are two approaches to population control. One involves voluntary choice and a collaborative solution, and the other overrides voluntarism through legal or economic coercion.

Alarmist views of impending crises tend to produce a willingness to consider forceful measures for coercing people to have fewer children in the third world. Imposing birth control on unwilling people is no longer rejected as readily as it was until quite recently, and some activists have pointed to the ambiguities that exist in determining what is or is not “coercion.” Those who are willing to consider—or at least not fully reject—programs that would use some measure of force to reduce population growth often point to the success of China’s “one child policy” in cutting down the national birth rate. Force can also take an indirect form, as when economic opportunities are changed so radically by government regulations that people are left with very little choice except to behave in ways the government would approve. In China’s case, the government may refuse to offer housing to families with too many children—thus penalizing the children as well as the dissenting adults.

The “override” approach contrasts with another, the “collaborative” approach, that relies not on legal or economic restrictions but on rational decisions of women and men, based on expanded choices and enhanced security, and encouraged by open dialogue and extensive public discussions. The difference between the two approaches does not lie in government’s activism in the first case as opposed to passivity in the second. Even if solutions are sought through the decisions and actions of people themselves, the chance to take reasoned decisions with more knowledge and a greater sense of personal security can be increased by public policies, for example, through expanding educational facilities, health care, and economic well-being, along with providing better access to family planning. The central political and ethical issue concerning the “override” approach does not lie in its insistence on the need for public policy but in the ways, it significantly reduces the choices open to parents.

The distinction between the “collaborative” approach and the “override” approach thus tends to correspond closely to the contrast between, on the one hand, treating economic and social development as the way to solve the population problem and, on the other, expecting little from development and using, instead, legal and economic pressures to reduce birth rates. Among recent writers, those such as Gerard Pie who have persuasively emphasized our ability to solve problems through reasoned decisions and actions have tended to find the solution of the population problem in economic and social development. They advocate a broadly collaborative approach, in which governments and citizens would together produce economic and social conditions favoring slower population growth. In contrast, those who have been thoroughly sceptical of reasoned human action to limit population growth have tended to go in the direction of “override” in one form or another, rather than concentrate on development and voluntarism.

In order to reduce the adverse impacts of overpopulation, mitigation measures, such as spreading awareness and education about overpopulation, enacting birth control measures and regulations, and providing universal access to birth control devices and family planning, must be taken. Stabilizing human overpopulation is possible through widespread availability of family planning, spreading awareness on the causes and effects of overpopulation, providing easier access to birth control devices and implementing social norms, such as social marketing strategies, to educate the public, particularly in developing countries, about overpopulation and provide them with the tools they need to make the decisions they want. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which equates to about 80 million unintended pregnancies each year and, according to the United Nations Population Fund, an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either not wanting their last child, not wanting another child or wanting to space their pregnancies, but lack access to information and affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families in 2002. Even in the United States, in 2011, almost half of pregnancies were unintended. The Worldwatch Institute has released State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity and in the chapter “Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion,” Worldwatch Institute President Robert Engelman argues that, “If most or all of these strategies were put into effect, global population likely would peak and subsequently begin a gradual decline before 2050, thereby ensuring sustainable development of natural resources and global stability into the future. By implementing policies that defend human rights, promote education, and reflect the true economic and environmental costs of childbearing, the world can halt population short of the 9 billion that so many analysts expect.”

The “Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion” are as follows:

1.”Provide universal access to safe and effective contraceptive options for both sexes.”

2.”Guarantee education through secondary school for all, especially girls.”

3.”Eradicate gender bias from law, economic opportunity, health, and culture.”

4.”Offer age-appropriate sexuality education for all students.”

5.”End all policies that reward parents financially based on the number of children they have.”

6.”Integrate lessons on population, environment, and development into school curricula at multiple levels.”

7.”Put prices on environmental costs and impacts.”

8.”Adjust to an aging population instead of boosting childbearing through government incentives and programs.”

9.”Convince leaders to commit to stabilizing population growth through the exercise of human rights and human development.”

Here’s what the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009, “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”: “Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendants. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time…. No human is genuinely ‘carbon neutral,’ especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way…. Strong family planning programmes are in the interests of all countries for greenhouse-gas concerns as well as for broader welfare concerns.”

Solutions to overpopulation and what you can do:

Actions on the individual level:

Have fewer children! One is good, two is enough. The couple should understand the criticality of spacing between 2 children. Ideal birth spacing interval should be between 3-5 years.
Read, educate yourself about population issues.
Reduce your personal consumption: go vegan, limit flying etc.
Educate your teenage child(ren) about sex and contraception early, without taboos.

Actions on the national level:

Generously fund family planning programs
Make modern contraception legal, free and available everywhere, even in remote areas
Improve health care to reduce infant and child mortality
Restrict child marriage and raise the legal age of marriage (minimum 18 years)
Introduce obligatory education as long as possible (minimum until the age of 16), and generously fund the necessary infrastructure
Empower women, assuring equal rights, treatment and opportunities for both genders
Legalize abortion without restrictions or social stigma
Integrate family planning and safe motherhood programs into primary health care systems
Make population and environmental issues and sex education part of the basic educational curriculum
Disincentivize third and further children non-coercively, by limiting government support to the first two children
Create a national population policy built around an optimal population size, and work to achieve it

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Education, sex education and women empowerment:

One of the most powerful tools in stemming population growth will be education, says Mark Montgomery, an economics professor at Stony Brook University and a researcher at the Population Council. “We’ve seen some astonishing transitions, especially in the 1970s in what were then poor countries where fertility rates fell when levels of education went up.” Studies conducted by Mr Lutz and his team support this. The researchers found that, on average, uneducated Malian women gave birth to almost 7 children. For the better-educated, the number was about four. “Education leads to lower birth rates and slows population growth,” he says. “This makes it easier for countries to develop. A more-educated workforce also makes poverty eradication and economic growth easier to achieve.” The relationship between education and a lower fertility rate is especially evident in women, as statistics from both developed and developing countries prove.

Vice versa, smaller families improve educational attainment of mothers and children due to two facts.

Children in large households have less primary and secondary education.
Smaller families invest more in children’s education.

As population of this world is growing at a rapid pace, raising awareness among people regarding family planning and letting them know about serious after effects of overpopulation can help curb population growth. The focus should be on education about overpopulation, family planning, and birth control methods, and to make birth-control devices like male and female condoms, contraceptive pills and intrauterine devices easily available. Simply educating men and women about contraception can have a big impact. When Iran introduced a national family planning programme in 1989, its fertility rate fell from 5.6 births per woman to 2.6 in a decade. A similar effort in Rwanda saw a threefold increase in contraception usage in just five years. Of course, the reduced fertility rate is only one of the consequences of increased education. There are countless benefits to expanding education across the board. Still, it’s the poor and underprivileged of the world who have the most children. They don’t have access to education that many in the developed countries do, and that needs to change. The developing world needs 2,000,000 more teachers each year just to cope with rapid population growth.

Sex education:

The importance of sex education for young people is well documented. According to the united nations population fund (UNFPA), sex education could influence young people’s attitudes, beliefs, interactions, and intimate relationships. Worldwide, people experience sexual maturity earlier and marry at later ages; thus, they are more probable to engage in premarital sexual behavior. Furthermore, adolescents and youth are at greater risk for sexually transmitted infections; therefore sex education for this group is essential. Parents and teachers need to get over the uncomfortable feeling of discussing sex with teenagers. Many of them are sexually active, and parents need to arm them with information to ensure they’re making the right decisions. This advice goes beyond overpopulation, and extends to having happier, healthier sexual experiences. Sex education might have 3 important advantages for young women: increase their knowledge, help to talk openly on sexuality issues, and improve their self-efficacy. Sex education helps young people make appropriate decisions in critical situations. Disadvantage of sex education is that it could be a motive for initiating sexual behaviour.

A lack of sex education – or poorly-implemented education – has led to overpopulation issues in many countries. The issue is so pronounced that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is calling for improvements to be made, particularly in poorer areas of the world. Better education will help people understand more about the potential consequences of having sex as they relate to child birth. It will also do away with many of the myths that surround the sexual act and introduce scientifically-proven methods of birth control.

Empower women:

The political will should be generated globally to give full rights, education and opportunities to women, and provide all sexually active women with modern contraception and backup abortion. The degree to which these steps would reduce fertility rates is controversial, but they are a likely win-win for societies. Obviously, there are huge cultural and institutional barriers to establishing such policies in some parts of the world. Studies show that women with access to reproductive health services find it easier to break out of poverty, while those who work are more likely to use birth control. The United Nations Population Fund aims to tackle both issues at once, running microcredit projects to turn young women into advocates for reproductive health. Women’s rights and their reproductive rights in particular are issues regarded to have vital importance in the debate. Wherever women are put in control of their lives, both politically and socially, where medical facilities allow them to deal with birth control and where their husbands allow them to make those decisions, birth rate falls. Egypt announced a program to reduce its overpopulation by family planning education and putting women in the workforce.

High literacy rates and education levels are important, especially for women; once they are empowered intellectually and socially, they make decisions about the number of children they wish to have. Low infant mortality rates give parents a sense of confidence that even with a small family, some of their children will grow to maturity… and provide physical security when they are old. Nearly ubiquitous access to a variety of affordable birth control techniques gives parents the power to choose when and whether to have children. Each of these three requisites may qualify as a social objective in its own right, entirely irrespective of its influence on demographic trends.

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Government incentives, Tax Benefits or Concessions:

Governments should promote “responsible parenthood” and subsidies should be limited to the first two children unless the family is living below poverty line. Government of various countries might have to come with various policies related to tax exemptions to curb overpopulation. One of them might be to waive of certain part of income tax or lowering rates of income tax for those married couples who have single or two children. As we humans are more inclined towards money, this may produce some positive results. Tax break won’t harm anyone who has a larger family but might dissuade some parents from having an excessive amount of kids.

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Birth control and family planning:

Birth control, also known as contraception and fertility control, is a method or device used to prevent pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only became available in the 20th century. Planning, making available, and using birth control is called family planning. Family planning refers to all active efforts to choose actively the number of children a woman or family wants. Some cultures limit or discourage access to birth control because they consider it to be morally, religiously, or politically undesirable.

“The promotion and availability of family planning . . represents one of the most significant public health success stories of the past century. . . . family planning decreases maternal and child mortality, empowers women, reduces poverty, and it lessons stress on the natural and political environment.”

Cleland J, Bernstein S, Ezeh A, Faundes A, Glasier A, Innis J. Family planning: the unfinished agenda. The Lancet Sexual and Reproductive Health Series, October 2006.

The most effective methods of birth control are sterilization by means of vasectomy in males and tubal ligation in females, intrauterine devices (IUDs), and implantable birth control. This is followed by a number of hormone-based methods including oral pills, patches, vaginal rings, and injections. Less effective methods include physical barriers such as condoms, diaphragms and birth control sponges and fertility awareness methods. The least effective methods are spermicides and withdrawal by the male before ejaculation. Sterilization, while highly effective, is not usually reversible; all other methods are reversible, most immediately upon stopping them. Safe sex practices, such as with the use of male or female condoms, can also help prevent sexually transmitted infections. Other methods of birth control do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Emergency birth control can prevent pregnancy if taken within the 72 to 120 hours after unprotected sex. Some argue not having sex as a form of birth control, but abstinence-only sex education may increase teenage pregnancies if offered without birth control education, due to non-compliance.

About 222 million women who want to avoid pregnancy in developing countries are not using a modern birth control method. Birth control use in developing countries has decreased the number of deaths during or around the time of pregnancy by 40% (about 270,000 deaths prevented in 2008) and could prevent 70% if the full demand for birth control were met. By lengthening the time between pregnancies, birth control can improve adult women’s delivery outcomes and the survival of their children. In the developing world women’s earnings, assets, weight, and their children’s schooling and health all improve with greater access to birth control. Birth control increases economic growth because of fewer dependent children, more women participating in the workforce, and less use of scarce resources.

Few people doubt the severity of the problem that overpopulation presents for this planet. Its consequences are poverty, famine, disease and death, sometimes on very large scales. Minor problems include overcrowding, strained infrastructure and social instability. By facilitating contraception and women’s medical services we enable family planning. Allowing women to plan their pregnancies also leads to healthier outcomes for children. A recent study showed that if all births were spaced at least two years apart, the number of deaths among children younger than five would decline by 13%. The number would decline by 25% if there were a three-year gap between births“. Making birth control accessible to all is a moral requirement for anyone who has the power to help. It is inconsistent, for example, to say that contraception and abortion is “murder” whilst ignoring the fact that poverty and overpopulation are far bigger killers.

Aside from population control, “the health benefits of contraceptive use are substantial. Contraceptives prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the number of abortions, and lower the incidence of death and disability related to complications of pregnancy and childbirth”. The numbers of abortions that are prevented by contraception is staggering. A Guttmacher Institute report on the developing world predicts that “in 2012, use of modern contraceptives in the developing world will prevent 218 million unintended pregnancies, which, in turn, will avert 55 million unplanned births, 138 million abortions (40 million of them unsafe), 25 million miscarriages and 118,000 maternal deaths. It will also prevent an estimated 1.1 million neonatal deaths (those within 28 days of birth) and 700,000 post-neonatal infant deaths (those from 28 days to one year of age)”. Condoms help prevent the spread of disease – their effect is strong enough that long-term use by a community can gradually eradicate strains of sexually transmitted diseases from the community. Venereal disease causes unimaginable suffering and can affect the innocent. Babies are frequently infected with the diseases of the parents; in this way, the prevention of disease with contraception is vital because once women in a local area are infected with a disease, children will also be directly infected. In the case of incurable diseases, such an event can lead to unsurmountable suffering. Such a terrible state of affairs is prevented by the correct use of contraceptives such as condoms.

Unmet need for contraception:

With the development of low-cost, safe methods of contraception have become more widely available in recent decades. But as the map below shows there is still a substantial unmet need for contraception in many parts of the world. The share of married women of reproductive age who do not want to become pregnant but are not using contraception is higher than 20% in many parts of the world. The number of women with unmet needs for contraception in the developing world is still increasing – between 2008 and 2012 the figure rose from 153 million to 162 million. If one takes into account which substantial impact the availability of modern contraceptive methods had in many parts of the world, it seems likely that meeting this “unmet need” is a promising way to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies.

As of 2017, 1.6 billion women of reproductive age (15–49) live in developing regions. About half of them (885 million women) want to avoid a pregnancy; of this subset of women, about three-quarters (671 million) are using modern contraceptives. Yet 214 million women of reproductive age in developing regions who want to avoid pregnancy are not using a modern contraceptive method. This includes 155 million who use no method of contraception and 59 million who rely on traditional methods. These women are considered to have an unmet need for modern contraception.

In the figure below we see the relationship between fertility rates and the use of contraception. This is shown as the average children per woman versus contraception prevalence (based on the use of any method of contraception). Here we see a negative relationship: in countries where contraception use is low, the number of children per woman is higher. As contraception becomes more widely used, the number of children per woman declines.

We can also see this when we compare the unmet need for contraception with fertility rates: the average children per woman is high where the unmet need for contraception is also high.

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Uneven burden of family planning:

The invention of the birth control pill was a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. Since then, other long-acting, reversible contraceptives (LARCs) have been developed for women, and women now have a total of 11 methods to choose from, including barrier methods, hormonal methods, and LARCs. In contrast, men only have 2 options—male condom and vasectomy—and neither are hormonal methods or LARCs. The disparity between the number and types of female and male LARCs is problematic for at least two reasons: first, because it forces women to assume most of the financial, health-related, and other burdens of contraception, and, second, because men’s reproductive autonomy is diminished by ceding major responsibility for contraception to women. A more just contraceptive arrangement can only be achieved through the development of male LARCs and reconceptualizing the responsibility for contraception as shared between men and women.

It must be remembered that historically population control measures have always affected women the most. For women belonging to marginalised communities, the problem manifests itself in ways that are all the more devastating. According to the National Health Mission report released in 2018 in India, women continue to face the “uneven burden” of family planning. The report explains, “Women continue to bear an uneven burden of the terminal methods of family planning and sterilisation. As per HMIS in 2017-18 (till October) of the total 14,73,418 sterilisation procedures only 6.8 % were male sterilisation while 93.1 % were female sterilisation.” This has had long standing disastrous consequences for women – physically and emotionally.

Worldwide even educated, middle-class men are unwilling to assume the risks and inconveniences associated with effective contraception, yet expect their female partners to do so.

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Birth regulations:

Overpopulation can be mitigated by birth control; some nations, like the People’s Republic of China, use strict measures to reduce birth rates. The “two-child norm” can cause immense harm to women’s health in the existing social situation, where the preference for a son is high and the woman’s status is still very low. One of the important risks includes increase in sex-selective abortion and consequent reduction in the number of girl children. Religious and ideological opposition to birth control has been cited as a factor contributing to overpopulation and poverty.

Sanjay Gandhi, son of late Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, implemented a forced sterilization programme between 1975 and 1977. Officially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but there was a greater focus on sterilizing women than sterilizing men. Some unmarried young men and political opponents may also have been sterilized. This program is still remembered and criticized in India, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to family planning, which hampered government programs for decades.

Urban designer Michael E. Arth has proposed a “choice-based, marketable birth license plan” he calls “birth credits”. Birth credits would allow any woman to have as many children as she wants, as long as she buys a license for any children beyond an average allotment that would result in zero population growth. If that allotment was determined to be one child, for example, then the first child would be free, and the market would determine what the license fee for each additional child would cost. Extra credits would expire after a certain time, so these credits could not be hoarded by speculators. The actual cost of the credits would only be a fraction of the actual cost of having and raising a child, so the credits would serve more as a wake-up call to women who might otherwise produce children without seriously considering the long term consequences to themselves or society.

Another choice-based approach, similar to Arth’s birth credits, is financial compensation or other benefits (free goods and/or services) by the state (or state-owned companies) offered to people who voluntarily undergo sterilization. Such compensation has been offered in the past by the government of India.

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Urbanization:

The urban population of the world has grown rapidly from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. Asia, despite its relatively lower level of urbanization, is home to 54% of the world’s urban population, followed by Europe and Africa with 13% each. Today, the most urbanized regions include Northern America (with 82% of its population living in urban areas in 2018), Latin America and the Caribbean (81%), Europe (74%) and Oceania (68%). The level of urbanization in Asia is now approximating 50%. In contrast, Africa remains mostly rural, with 43% of its population living in urban areas.

Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization, the gradual shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90% of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa.

Despite the increase in population density within cities (and the emergence of megacities), UN Habitat states in its reports that urbanization may be the best compromise in the face of global population growth. Cities concentrate human activity within limited areas, limiting the breadth of environmental damage. But this mitigating influence can only be achieved if urban planning is significantly improved and city services are properly maintained. Having seen that rich countries tend to be urbanized, IMF and the World Bank—confusing correlation with causality—are emphasizing urbanization of India and other poor countries to improve quality of life. In these poor countries evidence shows that urbanization leads to crime, disease, and utter dehumanization of the under-class.

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Examples of other ways to help balance future populations and resources include:

encourage vegetarianism; floating ocean solar, agriculture, and fish farms
anticipate potential impacts of synthetic biology and other longevity technologies that could make aging healthier and more productive
accelerate safe nanotechnology R&D (to help reduce material use per unit of output while increasing quality)
encourage telemedicine (including online self-diagnosis expert software)
teach urban systems ecology.

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Technological Solutions to overpopulation:

Integration of urban sensors, mesh networks, and intelligent software can create smarter cities that let citizens help in urban improvements. Without more intelligent human-nature symbioses, increased migrations, conflicts, and disease seem inevitable. Continual improvements and applications of ICT are key to improving the match between needs and resources worldwide and in real time.

Smart Cities and Transportation Improvements

As communities become more crowded, traffic levels can go up, making it more difficult to get around. Accommodating overpopulation in a smart city means offering people sustainable options for getting where they need to go, such as electric scooters. In San Francisco, more than 50 percent of the city’s residents commute by public transit, bicycle or walking. Connected tech comes into play when sensors and cameras give timely, constant feedback to city planners about which intersections are the busiest at certain times of the day, how to adjust bus routes to make them more efficient, areas that have the most foot traffic and more. In an Australian pilot study, measurements are underway to detect how long people sit at traffic lights and how many vehicles line up to wait. A second phase of the initiative will assess whether the same technology could work for controlling autonomous vehicles.

Using IoT Solutions to avoid Wasting Resources

There are meters that save money in the areas using them. In India, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, some apartment tenants use water meters. They help people keep tabs on their overall water usage, plus proactively notice potential leaks. In Hyderabad, the apartments fitted with these meters use up to 35 percent less water per month than the units that don’t have them. Connected technology is helping reduce food waste by tracking production and distribution, too. For example, farmers use sensors to monitor things like soil condition, water levels, and pest infestations, allowing them to intervene before the issues become too severe and significantly affect output during a growing season. Up to 40 percent of food waste occurs after food gets harvested, so smaller amounts reach the people who need to eat it. And food waste is even more impactful in overcrowded areas where there are perpetual food shortages.

What if all the supermarkets in a smart city had sensors on the merchandise to take real-time measurements of the most popular items? Then, supermarkets could adjust the amounts of particular products they order to meet consumer demands more accurately. Such an option could work exceptionally well for perishable items or products with seasonal peaks in demand.

Reducing Housing issues in an Overpopulated Smart City

Many of the smart city projects already underway include buildings with solar panels and other features to save on energy costs. There are also multi-purpose complexes where people both live and work to avoid having to travel. If city planners use big data platforms and connected technology, they can keep tabs on things like increases in the number of people moving to a city or declines in residents relocating. With this approach, builders can respond proactively and create new structures when possible to accommodate the influx of new residents. If people notice that housing options are few and far between in an area, they may choose to relocate elsewhere.

Both High-Tech and Low-Tech Options are needed

Overpopulation affects our community in various ways, which means there’s no universal fix. But the IoT and its capabilities could assist with managing overpopulation through smart city technology, while more traditional methods — such as access to and education about birth control — could minimize overpopulation effects instead of exacerbating them.

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One-child policy:

After the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the government trained tens of thousands of “barefoot doctors” to bring health care to poor and rural areas. The mortality rate plummeted and the population growth rate rose from 16 per thousand in 1949 to 25 per thousand just five years later. This prompted the first attempts to encourage family planning in 1953. Still, total population expanded to over 800 million in the late 1960s. By the 1970s, China was facing food and housing shortages. In 1979, its leader, Deng Xiaoping, decided to limit most couples to just one child. (There were exceptions for rural farmers and certain situations, like when a first child was handicapped.) It worked: The annual population growth rate averaged just 0.6 percent.

The one-child policy was a policy implemented by the Chinese government as a method of controlling the population, mandating that the vast majority of couples in the country could only have one child. Distinct from the family planning policies of most other countries (which focus on providing contraceptive options to help women have the number of children they want), it set a limit on the number of children parents could have, the world’s most extreme example of population planning. This was intended to alleviate the social, economic and environmental problems associated with the country’s rapidly growing population. China’s unique one-child policy is probably the largest social experiment in human history. Under this policy, each household is allowed only one child, especially in urban areas. Women are given birth quotas, and households are penalized for “above-quota births.” The policy was started in 1979, and has since affected the lives of more than one billion people in what is the most populous nation in the world. This large social experiment provides a unique opportunity for researchers to examine the impact of counter-natal policies, which rarely occur in human history (Birdsall, 1988).

The one-child policy was introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, and enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions. According to Chinese government, it prevented between 200 to 400 million births in the country. There were various methods of enforcement, both through incentives and sanctions. For those who complied there were financial incentives, as well as preferential employment opportunities. For those who violated the policy, there were sanctions, economic and otherwise. At times, the government employed more draconian measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations.

One-Child Policy—Implications:

The one-child policy had serious implications for China’s demographic and economic future. In 2017, China’s fertility rate was 1.6, among the lowest in the world. China now has a considerable gender skew—there are roughly 3-4% more males than females in the country. With the implementation of the one-child policy, and the preference for male children, China saw a rise in female fetus abortions, increases in the number of baby girls left in orphanages, and even increases in infanticide of baby girls. There were 33 million more men, with 115 boys for every 100 girls, as compared to women in China. This will have an impact on marriage in the country, and a number of factors surrounding marriage, for years to come. Lower numbers of females also mean that there were less women of child-bearing age in China.

The drop in birth-rates meant less children, and longevity rates rose as death rates dropped. It is estimated that a third of China’s population will be over the age of 60 by 2050. That means more elderly people relying on their children to support them, and fewer children to do so. So, China is facing a labor shortage, and will have trouble supporting this aging population through its state services.

And finally, the one-child policy has led to the proliferation of undocumented, non-first-born children. Their status as undocumented makes it impossible to leave China legally, as they cannot register for a passport. They have no access to public education. Oftentimes, their parents were fined or removed from their jobs.

Here are some of the major consequences of the one-child policy.

The fertility rate decreased after 1980.
The birth rate decreased after 1980.
The overall rate of natural increase (the difference between the birth rate and the death rate) declined.
The Chinese government estimated that some 400 million births were prevented by the policy, although some analysts dispute this finding.
As sons were generally preferred over daughters, the overall sex ratio in China became skewed toward males. In 2016 there were 33.59 million more men than women.
Because of the preference for sons, there was a rise in the number of abortions of female fetuses.
The number of female babies killed, abandoned, or placed in orphanages increased as a result of the policy.
Incentives were offered to families complying with the policy, including financial perks and greater employment options.
Millions of Chinese parents had to endure strict enforcement methods of the policy, including forced sterilization and forced abortions.
In families that already had one child, the births of additional children—in violation of the one-child policy—were often undocumented, leading to many problems later on for those children as they struggled to receive an education or find work.
Even after the one-child policy was rescinded, China’s birth and fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a population that was aging too rapidly as well as a shrinking workforce.

China’s fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman is significantly below the country’s desired population replacement level of 2.1 and dramatically lower than the 1970 rate of 5.8. The number of women of childbearing age is falling by 5 million a year, compounding the challenge of rebuilding China’s birth rate.

In 2015, the fertility rate in Shanghai and Beijing was 0.7, the lowest recorded rate in human history, according to James Liang, the economic and demographic analyst. He argues that China’s one-child policy was coercive, extreme and unnecessary, since the fertility rate had already dropped to 2.2 children per woman before the policy went into effect as seen in the figure below:

President Xi Jinping’s “Made in China 2025” plan aims to make China a global leader in cutting-edge technology. But an aging population and a sharp decline in the number of future workers in the 30 to 40 age range could undermine that vision. In the 1990s, Liang says, 40% fewer babies were born than the previous decade. “In 10 years’ time, when the much smaller 1990 birth cohort turns 30, the level of innovation and entrepreneurship will almost certainly suffer.” China, Liang says, has yet to fully confront its demographic crisis.

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China’s One-Child Policy: Effects on the Sex Ratio and Crime:

A study found that the skewed sex ratio accounts for a 34% increase in China’s crime rate. Young unmarried men are the main perpetrators of crime worldwide and commit more than two-thirds of violent and property-related crimes in China.

Crime has been skyrocketing in China: crime rates have increased more than six-fold over the past three decades. Likely causes include extraordinary economic growth and rising inequality, mass rural-urban migration and the erosion of traditional values.

China’s one-child policy is another potential candidate. While crime has been soaring, the one-child policy, along with a strong preference of Chinese parents for sons over daughters, has resulted in there being approximately 115 boys for every 100 girls in China, or 30 million “surplus” boys. These surplus young men, mostly of lower socio-economic status, are pouring out of the countryside and into China’s industrial cities in search of jobs. Many of them are destined to face tremendous difficulties in finding a wife. Add to this the fact that young unmarried men are the main perpetrators of crime worldwide and commit more than two-thirds of violent and property-related crimes in China—and the seeds of a crime explosion are sown.

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The 4-2-1 problem (four grandparents, two parents and one child):

Ratio of old-age dependency:

The rapid decrease in the birth rate, combined with an improving life expectancy, has led to an increasing proportion of elderly people and an increase in the ratio between elderly parents and adult children. In the absence of old-age pensions, approximately 70 per cent of the elderly are financially dependent on their offspring. In China, this problem has been labelled the “4:2:1” phenomenon, meaning that a couple (two) are responsible for the care of one child and four parents. Later on the 4-2-1 problem places a heavy burden on the child to support his parents and grandparents both directly and indirectly, and so China has made efforts to prevent this by allowing certain families to have additional children. The government has eased access to government pensions and has launched schemes to encourage saving for private pensions in an attempt to reduce the burden of the 4:2:1 phenomenon. In addition, urban couples who were themselves both only children were allowed to have more than one child.

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China’s Shifting Demographics:

China’s parliament struck “family planning” from the draft of the new Civil Code recently. Then an official told attendees at a United Nations conference that China wouldn’t set population limits in the future. Policy makers are increasingly concerned that drastic action is needed to face a quickly greying society. The nation’s population will peak at roughly 1.45 billion by 2030 — possibly as soon as 2027 — and then hover around 1.4 billion until the middle of the century. The International Monetary Fund says that the number of people in their prime working years — ages 15 to 59 — could fall by 170 million in the three decades from now. China’s labor force fell by 4.7 million in 2018 — the seventh consecutive year of decline. The aging workforce may already be chipping into gains in productivity, with the increase in China’s output per hours worked at its lowest level since 1999. The lifting of the one-child rule worked at first. The number of newborns in 2016 was 18.5 million, a jump of more than 2 million compared with 2015, though the average number of births per woman over a lifetime, 1.7, was still below the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. However, after births dropped to 17.2 million in 2017, they slumped to 15.2 million last year, the least since 1961.

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Potential social problems:

Some parents may over-indulge their only child. The media referred to the indulged children in one-child families as “little emperors”. Since the 1990s, some people have worried that this will result in a higher tendency toward poor social communication and cooperation skills amongst the new generation, as they have no siblings at home. No social studies have investigated the ratio of these so-called “over-indulged” children and to what extent they are indulged. Being over-indulged, lacking self-discipline and having no adaptive capabilities are traits that are highly associated with Chinese singletons.

Some 30 delegates called on the government in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 2007 to abolish the one-child rule, citing “social problems and personality disorders in young people”. One statement read, “It is not healthy for children to play only with their parents and be spoiled by them: it is not right to limit the number to two children per family, either.” The proposal was prepared by Ye Tingfang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who suggested that the government at least restore the previous rule that allowed couples to have up to two children. According to a scholar, “The one-child limit is too extreme. It violates nature’s law. And in the long run, this will lead to mother nature’s revenge.”

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Birth tourism:

Reports surfaced of Chinese women giving birth to their second child overseas, a practice known as birth tourism. Many went to Hong Kong, which is exempt from the one-child policy. Likewise, a Hong Kong passport differs from China mainland passport by providing additional advantages. Recently though, the Hong Kong government has drastically reduced the quota of births set for non-local women in public hospitals. As a result, fees for delivering babies there have surged. As further admission cuts or a total ban on non-local births in Hong Kong are being considered, mainland agencies that arrange for expectant mothers to give birth overseas are predicting a surge in those going to North America. As the United States practises birth right citizenship, all children born in the US will automatically have US citizenship. The closest US location from China is Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US dependency in the western Pacific Ocean that allows Chinese visitors without visa restrictions. As of 2012, the island was experiencing an upswing in Chinese births, since birth tourism there had become cheaper than to Hong Kong. This option is used by relatively affluent Chinese who often have secondary motives as well, wishing their children to be able to leave mainland China when they grow older or bring their parents to the US.

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Two-child policy:

A two-child policy is a government-imposed limit of two children allowed per family or the payment of government subsidies only to the first two children. It has previously been used in Vietnam. In British Hong Kong in the 1970s, citizens were also highly encouraged to have two children as a limit (although it was not mandated by law), and it was used as part of the region’s family planning strategies. Since 2016, it has been implemented in China, replacing the country’s previous one-child policy.

The total fertility rate in Vietnam dropped from 5.6 in 1979 to 3.2 by 1993, suggesting the two-child policy was successful in containing the population growth. There is evidence that son preference exists in Vietnam. Traditionally, men oversee and are responsible for household enterprises, managing agriculture, ancestral worship, and carrying on the family name. However, although the desire for a son is seen in the Vietnamese family’s fertility practices, the desire for more than one son is not. Families with two daughters are twice as likely to have a third child than families with at least one son. Furthermore, women who do not have any sons are around 15% less likely to use contraceptives than families who have at least one. There were also increased rates of “contraceptive failure” amongst couples who had a son, as families secretly removed an IUD to bypass the policy in hopes of having a son. This is consistent with findings from other East Asian countries in which son preference corresponds with a demand for fewer children so that families will have at least one son to maintain the ancestral line. Despite the evidence for son preference, there is no clear evidence that Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth is increasing, as seen in other East Asian countries, notably China.

As China’s youngest generation (born under the one-child policy, which first became a requirement for most couples in 1979) came of age for formation of the next generation, a single child would be left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents. In response to this issue, by 2009 all provinces allowed couples to have two children if both parents were only children themselves. After a policy change of the Chinese government in late 2013, most Chinese provinces further relaxed the policy in 2014 by allowing families to have two children if one of the parents is an only child.

On 29 October 2015, the new policy allowing Chinese couples to have two children was proposed in order to help address the aging issue in China. On 27 December 2015, the new law was passed in the session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, which governs country’s laws, effective from 1 January 2016. In 2018, about two years after the new policy reform, China is facing new ramifications from the two-child policy. Since the revision of the one-child policy, 90 million women have become eligible to have a second child. The new two-child policy may have negative implications on gender roles, with new expectations from females to bear more children and to abandon their careers. After the reform, China saw a short-lived boost in fertility rate for 2016. Chinese women gave birth to 17.9 million babies in 2016 (a record value in the 21st century), but the number of births declined by 3.5% to 17.2 million in 2017, and to 15.2 million in 2018.

One study suggests the two-child policy may exacerbate a vicious circle of gender inequality in post-reform China. Women’s disadvantaged status in the labour market exacerbates gender inequalities in access to resources, and the fewer resources wives have relative to their husbands may diminish women’s bargaining power, their ability to push for equality in the family, and their ability to stop childbearing when they don’t want additional children, which may in turn jeopardize women’s careers. The researchers argue that more policies should be developed to lessen the disadvantages arising from childbearing that women face, and to enhance women’s status in the era of the universal two-child policy.

Chinese researchers have predicted that the world’s largest population will peak at 1.4 billion people in 2029. However, it will then experience an “unstoppable” decline that could see it drop to 1.36 billion by 2050, reducing the workforce by as much as 200 million. Should fertility rates remain unchanged, then China could even shrink to 1.17 billion people by 2065, according to the China Academy of Social Sciences. From a theoretical point of view, the long-term population decline, especially when it is accompanied by a continuously aging population, is bound to cause very unfavourable social and economic consequences in china.

In May 2018, it was reported that the Chinese authorities were in the process of ending their population control policies. While scrapping the cap altogether to allow more than two children would drive faster fertility improvements, in smaller cities, where couples have been more willing to have second children after the policy change, hospitals and paediatricians were overwhelmed by the baby boom. Officials might need to build up medical services and schools and work out new tax breaks for families before lifting all family-size limits.

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Can China recharge its Population Growth?

You cannot just change policy and expect people to have more children. Women who have more than one child will likely face more discrimination in the job market. For a long time, employers have preferred to hire women when their children are in elementary school, and they flinch at the prospect of an employee planning a second child. Increasing numbers of women are finding white-collar jobs, and that trend is affecting marriage and fertility rates. These women tend to delay marriage because they don’t want to hurt their career prospects. As women move up the career ladder, status becomes a factor in selecting a partner, further reducing marriage options. Women in China, as in many places, are relatively reluctant to marry down in terms of socioeconomic status. The cost of housing is also a big deterrent to having more children. Chinese families tend to prepare their children’s home when they get married, and [having more children] just doubles or triples the burden. The new policy of encouraging couples to have more children applies mostly to urban and coastal areas where the one-child policy was strictly implemented, and which happen to be relatively more expensive places to raise children. There are all sorts of economic reasons for not having additional children, and some of it has also become habit. The people who are now of childbearing age grew up as single children. They’re not used to the idea that a family has multiple children. The younger generation would not relish the task of taking care of the aging population, especially if they have bigger responsibilities of their own. If they start having lots of kids, they’re suddenly going to be facing a double burden. These are people who aren’t used to focusing on anyone other than themselves, [at least] among the affluent classes in the cities. That’s a really hard switch to make. China’s aging population issue is different from that of other more developed countries, like Japan. China is facing the problem of becoming grey before it becomes rich.

What was once China’s population pyramid (a graphical distribution of various ages in a population, which forms a pyramid when there is growth) is not a pyramid today: It looks more like a pagoda with a big bulge at the top. That bulge at the top increases your dependency ratio, i.e. the ratio of people under ages 15 and over 64 to the working-age population aged between 15 and 64. When you ask people to have more children, and hypothetically they do, the dependency ratio goes up and throws a bit of a monkey wrench into economic development. Fifteen years later you might get your dividend payment. But in the meantime, it will actually slow your economic growth rates, which are already under strain. China has been preparing for a decline in labor supply by investing in developing artificial intelligence and robotic technologies.

It could be difficult to persuade Chinese couples to have more children. High living costs, long work hours and surging child-care expenses mean that many couples feel that they can only afford to have one child — or none. A survey by Zhaopin.com, a job recruitment site, found that 33 percent of women had their pay cut after giving birth and 36 percent were demoted. Even if they go up to a 2.1 replacement rate or higher — now at 1.6 per woman — it takes a long time for that to build up a population.

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Should India repeat China’s mistakes rather than learn from their example?

The booming population has been raising concerns for decades due to a rising poverty, decline in jobs and a poor literacy rate. There are several factors for the high population. India has a large percentage of the population in the reproductive age group. Only 54% of couples use contraceptives. Over the years, the government has introduced more than a dozen schemes that educate families in rural India on the benefits of family planning, such as financial incentives, awareness campaigns and distribution of contraceptives like condoms and pills, or hold sterilization drives. India spent more than $100 million on family planning in 2015-16, with some of these programs resulting in improvement. India is a signatory to the International Conference on population and Development declaration. Signed in 1994, the declaration advocates free speech and honors the reproductive rights of couples to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of children.

India and China are experiencing rapid economic growth. Both have huge, poor, rural agrarian populations. Neither country provides an effective social security net for the elderly. Both have realised that population control is essential to increasing per capita GDP. Feminist groups have struggled long and hard to make abortion legal and easily available to women. They assert that women must have the absolute right to decide whether or not to carry the child to term as it is their body that will nurture this child and they will put in the labour to raise it till maturity. If we accept this position, we must also accept the right of a woman to choose the size of her family. For the state to encroach on this right would be justifiable only on the principle that the good of the many, the society, supersedes the good of the few, the woman and her family. However the shortcomings of china’s one-child and two-child policies are visible.

As of 2014, there were 11 Indian states that implemented the two-child policy, in hopes to reduce the number of children per family. The policy was geared mainly towards politicians, future and aspiring, to limit their number of children to two or less. Those who held politicians have stricter policies in hopes that they will set an example for the community, if one were to exceed the limit of two children while employed, they would be terminated from the job. Non-politicians may also receive consequences to exceed the two-child limit, the government begins to withhold health care, government rights, face jail and, fees. The Indian government, perhaps inspired by China’s one-child policy, has created a set of laws, varying from state to state, that force politicians to have a maximum of two children to lead by example. The laws are heavily criticized both in India and abroad and, while modified to avoid the negative consequences resulting from China’s one-child policy, are still considered problematic and discriminatory. Recently nearly 125 lawmakers in India’s Parliament have signed a petition to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, calling for a nationwide two-child policy. Members of Parliament (MPs) who signed the petition have called for a law prohibiting Indian couples from having more than two children with stiff penalties for couples who exceed the proposed two-child limit.

The Economic Survey of 2018 points out that ‘son meta preference’ – the desire to have a male child – has resulted in 21 million “unwanted girls” in India. Sex selective abortions and differential survival of girls has led to skewed sex ratio of 943 females per 1,000 males. According to the same survey, due to sex selective abortions alone there are an estimated 63 million missing women from India’s population and two million more are missing from every age group every year due to abortions, neglect, disease and malnutrition of girls. Imposing a two-child norm will add to the burden on women, by way of sex selective practices and forced sterilisations. This could result in a setback to population stabilisation efforts, as it happened during the emergency period in mid-1970s. The policy makers, MPs and the government should reaffirm India’s commitment towards a rights-based approach to family planning. The government should raise budgetary allocations in order to ensure expanded contraceptive choices for delaying and spacing births and better access and quality of health care for young people. This will not only lead to improved health, but will also visibly improve educational outcomes, raise productivity and workforce participation, and in turn result in increased household incomes and economic growth for the country.

Many analysts believe introducing a two-child policy will do little to solve the problem. The only comparable example by scale is China, which conclusively shows that government policy is one of the least effective determinants in shaping [family planning] decisions. While the Chinese Government has moved to a two-child policy out of fears of a falling birth rate, in India fears of overpopulation are pushing the country in the opposite direction. “India should not repeat China’s mistakes,” according to Steven Mosher, president of the U.S.-based Population Research Institute. “People are the ultimate resource, the one resource you cannot do without, as China is belatedly discovering after having eliminated 400 million [people] from their own now aging and dying population,” Mosher said in a report on the Indian legislators pushing for a two-child policy. Those opposed to the policy point out that India’s fertility rate has already begun falling. Recent surveys show that majority of Indian states fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement level of 2.1 and the country is fast approaching the replacement level itself. The total fertility rate of India stands at 2.3 in 2019, compared to 3.2 births per woman in 2000.

A criticism of these policies is that it decreases the number of women in government positions, and encourages sex-selective abortions. Critics are quick to point out that India is a country with a booming technology industry, one that relies on young people. There is fear that, by restricting the number of children that can be born, there will not be enough educated young people in the next generation to carry on India’s technological revolution. Critics also argue that the population growth of India will slow down naturally as the country grows richer and becomes more educated. There are already well-documented problems with China’s one-child policy, namely the gender imbalance resulting from a strong preference for boys and millions of undocumented children who were born to parents that already had their one child. These problems risk being replicated in India with the implementation of their two-child policy. A final criticism about India’s two-child policy is that the laws are anti-women. Human rights activists argue that, not only does the law discriminate against women right from birth (through abortion or infanticide of female fetuses and babies), but divorce and familial abandonment are at risk of increasing if a man with a large family wants to run for political office. In addition, women in India are, by and large, uneducated and illiterate and, as such, are often unaware of the two-child policy. There have been cases where women with many children try and run for political office only to be turned away because of a law they didn’t know existed.

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Discussion:

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Challenges in addressing population:

Why is population such a diabolical policy issue?

Because it cuts at the heart of the received wisdom of million years of human evolution, where “more” people were always better (Washington 1991). “More” meant we could gather more food, cut down more forest, hunt more animals, defend ourselves better, and ostensibly gather more taxes for the State (though sometimes this can mean even more money needs to be spent). “More people” as a concept until the last 100 years has always been seen as a “good thing” for society. Clearly people love babies, so it goes against the grain to say we should have fewer. Even authors of sustainability classics such as “Cradle to Cradle” (Braungart & McDonough 2008) hesitate at talking about stabilizing population. It is very hard for us to understand in our hearts that now “more” is no longer better. Then there is religious discouragement of birth control methods (e.g. the Catholic Church). Then there is fundamental desire of governments to have more citizens and greater power.

Population ecologist Meyerson explains: Conservatives are often against sex education, contraception and abortion and they like growth – both in population and in the economy. Liberals usually support individual human rights above all else and fear the coercion label and therefore avoid discussion of population growth and stabilization. The combination is a tragic stalemate that leads to more population growth.

Crist (2012) points out also that environmentalists and the political Left have both blundered badly in failing to face up to population growth. In 1994 the UN “Cairo” conference stopped talking about “family planning” and instead spoke of “women’s reproductive health.” At that time population became something of a taboo word, as it was portrayed as infringing on “women’s rights” (ironically, the opposition has argued that it is a women’s right to decide how many children she wants and terminate unwanted pregnancies). Funding for family planning then dropped worldwide.

Many have referred to the failed forced sterilization program in India, suggesting (erroneously) that most family planning was coercive (Campbell 2012). In fact, family planning is about giving women the choice as to when to use their “right” to have children. In fact, if family planning and contraceptives were made universally available, the evidence is that population growth would stabilize and then start to decline (Engelman 2012). Another problem has been a common (if not universal) trend in feminism and the political Left to argue against population controls by labelling them as coercive (Kolankiewicz & Beck 2001), though this may be starting to change (Weeden & Palomba 2012). Denial is often at its peak before the denial dam bursts, and there are signs that the silence around overpopulation is changing.

Sometimes, in poor societies, it is very important to burn down nature and convert it into more productive assets and hand these on. This is the ethical imperative – that’s what stewardship is. Using natural assets productively, creating more value and passing them on, is how we will reduce poverty. But in other cases, the same thought experiment will come up with a different answer – the future may say you are proposing to leave us a nasty climate and we will be awash in man-made assets…Once you come from a doctrinal, ideological position that “nature has to be preserved”, it will condemn poor societies to poverty (Collier in Lee 2010). The critics who see overpopulation as a nonissue (e.g. Ellis 2013; Fletcher et al. 2014) dispute the assumption that dignified and desirable living conditions for the “bottom billion” (Collier in Lee 2010) require that we consent to the continued expansion of fundamentally exploitative and unsustainable systems of production, exchange, consumption, and distribution. Yet they offer no alternative. All humans deserve to have equal opportunity for health, well-being, happiness, and basic necessities. And indeed, it is true that the poor consume less than the rich – the problem that both perpetuates this discrepancy and endangers the surrounding environment and other species. Denying a problem of the growing population – whose appetites, material aspirations, and life expectancy have greatly increased in the recent decades – seems detrimental to any long-term objective of achieving sustainability (Washington 2015).

The question of both human overpopulation and overconsumption are key drivers of unsustainability and hence must be seriously considered. If we want everybody in this world to live “decent” lives, expansion of wealth will necessarily cause greater pressure on the planet and thus hurt the future generations (Wijkman & Rockström 2012). Addressing population is not a condemnation of the poor or an excusal of the rich. Nor is this a call for coerced population control or a perpetuation of social inequality. Rather, this is a call for recognition that there are many common factors, contributing to global poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction, and that population growth exacerbates all of these.

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The Ultimate Resource:

The Ultimate Resource is a 1981 book written by Julian Lincoln Simon challenging the notion that humanity was running out of natural resources. It was revised in 1996 as The Ultimate Resource 2. The overarching thesis on why there is no resource crisis is that as a particular resource becomes more scarce, its price rises. This price rise creates an incentive for people to discover more of the resource, ration and recycle it, and eventually, develop substitutes. The “ultimate resource” is not any particular physical object but the capacity for humans to invent and adapt.

The work opens with an explanation of scarcity, noting its relation to price; high prices denote relative scarcity and low prices indicate abundance. Simon usually measures prices in wage-adjusted terms, since this is a measure of how much labor is required to purchase a fixed amount of a particular resource. Since prices for most raw materials (e.g., copper) have fallen between 1800 and 1990 (adjusting for wages and adjusting for inflation), Simon argues that this indicates that those materials have become less scarce. Simon contends that resources, such as copper, become less scarce as demand for them drives recycling, development of alternatives, and new extraction techniques, which are all reflected in the drop in their wage-adjusted prices.

Perhaps the most controversial claim in the book is that natural resources are infinite. Simon argues not that there is an infinite physical amount of, say, copper, but for human purposes that amount should be treated as infinite because it is not bounded or limited in any economic sense, because:

-known reserves are of uncertain quantity

-new reserves may become available, either through discovery or via the development of new extraction techniques

-recycling

-more efficient utilization of existing reserves

-development of economic equivalents, e.g., optic fibre in the case of copper for telecommunications

The ever-decreasing prices, in wage-adjusted terms, indicate decreasing scarcity, in that it takes less time for the average worker to earn the money required to purchase a set amount of some commodity. This suggests, Simon claims, an enduring trend of increased availability that will not cease in the foreseeable future, despite continued population growth.

Simon argues that for thousands of years, people have always worried about the end of civilization brought on by a crisis of resources. Simon lists several past unfounded environmental fears in order to back his claim that modern fears are nothing new and will also be disproven. Some of the “crises” he notes are a shortage of tin in the 13th century BCE; disappearing forests in Greece in 550 BCE and in England in the 16th century to 18th century CE; food in 1798; coal in Great Britain in the 19th century; oil since the 1850s; and various metals since the 1970s.

Simon–Ehrlich wager:

Based on preliminary research for The Ultimate Resource, Simon and Paul Ehrlich made a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. Ehrlich was the author of a popular book, The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon was highly sceptical of such claims. Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose five metals: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up. The basket of goods, costing US$1,000 in 1980, fell in price by over 57 percent over the following decade. As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for US$576.07 to settle the wager in Simon’s favor.

Population:

A large section of the book is dedicated to showing how population growth ultimately creates more resources. The basic argument echoes the overarching thesis: as resources become more scarce, the price rises, creating an incentive to adapt. It suggests that the more a society has to invent and innovate, all other things being equal, the more easily the society will raise its living standards and lower resource scarcity.

Is there a population problem?

Again, of course there is a population problem, just as always. When a couple is about to have a baby, they must prepare a place for the child to sleep safely. Then, after the birth of the child, the parents must feed, clothe, protect, and teach it. All this requires effort and resources, and not from the parents alone. When a baby is born or a migrant arrives, the community must increase its municipal services – schooling, fire and police protection, and garbage collection. None of these are free. For the first decades of its life, an additional child certainly is a burden not only on its parents but also on others. Brothers and sisters must do with less of everything except companionship. Taxpayers must cough up additional funds for schooling and other public services. Neighbours hear more noise. During these early years the child produces nothing material, and the income of the family and the community is spread more thinly than if the baby had not been born. And when the child grows up and first goes to work, jobs are squeezed a bit, and the output and pay per working person go down. All this clearly is an economic loss for other people. Just as surely, however, an additional person is also a boon. The child or immigrant will pay taxes later on, contribute energy and resources to the community, produce goods and services for the consumption of others, and make efforts to beautify and purify the environment. Perhaps most significant for the more-developed countries is the contribution that the average person makes to increasing the efficiency of production through new ideas and improved methods. The real population problem, then, is not that there are too many people or that too many babies are being born. The problem is that others must support each additional person before that person contributes in turn to the well-being of others.

Here follow some of the main conclusions of the book:

Food.

Contrary to popular impression, food production per capita has been increasing for the half century since World War II, the only decades for which we have acceptable data. We also know that famine has progressively diminished for at least the past century. Average height has increased in developed countries in recent centuries, a sign of people eating better. And there is compelling reason to believe that human nutrition will continue to improve into the indefinite future, even with continued population growth.

If Malthusians were right, essential commodities like wheat, maize and rice would become relatively scarcer over time, and thus more expensive — but they have actually become much cheaper in real terms. This is thanks to the productivity and creativity of humans, who are in practice always renewable and in theory entirely inexhaustible.

Land.

Agricultural land is not a fixed resource. Rather, the amount of agricultural land has been increasing substantially, and it is likely to continue to increase where needed. Paradoxically, in the countries that are best supplied with food, such as the U.S., the quantity of land under cultivation has been decreasing because it is more economical to raise larger yields on less land than to increase the total amount of farmland. For this reason, among others, the amount of land used for forests, recreation, and wildlife has been increasing rapidly in the U.S. – hard to believe, but substantiated beyond a doubt.

Natural resources.

Hold your hat – our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years. Population growth is likely to have a long-run beneficial impact on the natural-resource situation.

Energy.

Grab your hat again – the long-run future of our energy supply is at least as bright as that of other natural resources, though government intervention can temporarily boost prices from time to time. Finiteness is no problem here either. And the long-run impact of additional people is likely to speed the development of cheap energy supplies that are almost inexhaustible.

Pollution.

This set of issues is as complicated as you wish to make it. But even many ecologists, as well as the bulk of economists, agree that population growth is not the villain in the creation and reduction of pollution. And the key trend is that life expectancy, which is the best overall index of the pollution level, has improved markedly as the world’s population has grown. This reflects the enormous decline during the past couple of centuries in the most important pollutions, diseases borne by air and water.

The standard of living.

In the short run, additional children imply additional costs, though the costs to persons other than the children’s parents are relatively small. In the longer run, however, per capita income is likely to be higher with a growing population than with a stationary one, both in more-developed and less-developed countries. Whether you wish to pay the present costs for the future benefits depends on how you weigh the future relative to the present; this is a value judgment.

Human fertility.

The contention that poor and uneducated people breed without constraint is demonstrably wrong, even for the poorest and most “primitive” societies. Well-off people who believe that the poor do not weigh the consequences of having more children are simply arrogant, or ignorant, or both.

Future population growth.

Population forecasts are published with confidence and fanfare. Yet the record of even the official forecasts made by U.S. government agencies and by the UN is little (if any) better than that of the most naive predictions. For example, experts in the 1930s foresaw the U.S. population as declining, perhaps to as little as 100 million people well before the turn of the century. In 1989, the U.S. Census Bureau forecast that U.S. population would peak at 302 million in 2038 and then decline. Just three years later, the Census Bureau forecast 383 million in 2050 with no peaking in sight. The science of demographic forecasting clearly has not yet reached perfection.

Present trends suggest that even though total population for the world is increasing, the density of population on most of the world’s surface will decrease. This is already happening in the developed countries. Though the total populations of developed countries increased from 1950 to 1990, the rate of urbanization was sufficiently great that population density on most of their land areas (say, 97 percent of the land area of the U.S.) has been decreasing. As the poor countries become richer, they will surely experience the same trends, leaving most of the world’s surface progressively less populated, astonishing as this may seem.

Immigration.

The migration of people from poor to rich countries is as close to an everybody-wins government policy as can be. Countries in North America and Western Europe advance just about all their national goals thereby – higher productivity, a higher standard of living, and an easing of the heavy social burdens caused by growing proportions of aged dependents. And of course the immigrants benefit. Even the sending countries benefit on balance from the remittances that immigrants send back, and from improved ties between the countries. Amazingly, immigration does not even increase native unemployment measurably, even among low-income groups.

As you reflect upon the arguments of the doomsters with which this book takes issue, you may notice a peculiar contradiction: On the one hand, the doomsters say that there are too many of us; on the other hand, they warn that we are in danger of most of us being wiped out. Usually, a larger number of members of a species is greater protection against being wiped out. Hence there is an apparent contradiction. The doomsters reply that because there are more of us, we are eroding the basis of existence, and rendering more likely a “crash” due to population “overshoot”; that is, they say that our present or greater numbers are not sustainable. But the signs of incipient catastrophe are absent. Length of life and health are increasing, supplies of food and other natural resources are becoming ever more abundant, and pollutants in our environment are lessening.

The world’s problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom. Powerful evidence comes from pairs of countries that had the same culture and history and much the same standard of living when they split apart after World War II — East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Taiwan and China. In each case the centrally planned communist country began with less population “pressure”, as measured by density per square kilometer, than did the market-directed economy. And the communist and non-communist countries also started with much the same birth rates. But the market-directed economies performed much better economically than the centrally-planned economies. This powerful demonstration cuts the ground from under population growth as a likely explanation of poor economic performance.

To sum up the argument of the book:

In the short run, all resources are limited. The longer run, however, is a different story. The standard of living has risen along with the size of the world’s population since the beginning of recorded time. There is no convincing economic reason why these trends toward a better life should not continue indefinitely.

Many people find it difficult to accept this economic argument. Dwindling resources, increasing pollution, starvation and misery–all this seems inevitable unless we curb population growth or otherwise cut back consumption of natural resources. Thomas Malthus reached this conclusion nearly two centuries ago in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population, and popular thinking is now dominated by his gloomy theory (not widely accepted in Malthus’s own day).

The new theory that is the key idea of the book is this:

Greater consumption due to increase in population and growth of income heightens scarcity and induces price run-ups. A higher price represents an opportunity that leads inventors and businesspeople to seek new ways to satisfy the shortages. Some fail, at cost to themselves. A few succeed, and the final result is that we end up better off than if the original shortage problems had never arisen. That is, we need our problems, though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for ourselves. The most important benefit of population size and growth is the increase it brings to the stock of useful knowledge. Minds matter economically as much as, or more than, hands or mouths. Progress is limited largely by the availability of trained workers. In the long run the basic forces influencing the state of humanity and its progress are a) the number of people who are alive to consume, but also to produce goods and knowledge; and b) the level of wealth. Those are the great variables which control the advance of civilization.

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Are we above nature?

Many scientists believe that by transforming the earth’s natural landscapes, we are undermining the very life support systems that sustain us. Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences. Disaster looms as humans exceed the earth’s natural carrying capacity. Clearly, this could not be sustainable. Yet these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain populations well beyond the capabilities of unaltered “natural” ecosystems. The evidence from archaeology is clear. Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies and tools of stone and fire to extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible. And, of course, Homo sapiens went much further, learning over generations, once their preferred big game became rare or extinct, to make use of a far broader spectrum of species. They did this by extracting more nutrients from these species by cooking and grinding them, by propagating the most useful species and by burning woodlands to enhance hunting and foraging success.

Even before the last ice age had ended, thousands of years before agriculture, hunter-gatherer societies were well established across the earth and depended increasingly on sophisticated technological strategies to sustain growing populations in landscapes long ago transformed by their ancestors. The planet’s carrying capacity for prehistoric human hunter-gatherers was probably no more than 100 million. But without their Paleolithic technologies and ways of life, the number would be far less — perhaps a few tens of millions. The rise of agriculture enabled even greater population growth requiring ever more intensive land-use practices to gain more sustenance from the same old land. At their peak, those agricultural systems might have sustained as many as three billion people in poverty on near-vegetarian diets.

The world population is now estimated at 7.7 billion. But with current industrial technologies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has estimated that the more than nine billion people expected by 2050 as the population nears its peak could be supported as long as necessary by investments in infrastructure and conducive trade, anti-poverty and food security policies are in place. Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? The important message from these rough numbers should be clear. There really is no such thing as a human carrying capacity. We are nothing at all like bacteria in a petri dish.

Classic mathematics of population growth tells us that populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments. Not to think so would be to misunderstand physics: there is only one earth, of course! Classic mathematics is unable to explain how populations grew for millenniums while increasing the productivity of the same land. The science of human sustenance is inherently a social science. Neither physics nor chemistry nor even biology is adequate to understand how it has been possible for one species to reshape both its own future and the destiny of an entire planet. This is the science of the Anthropocene. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history, and most likely the future. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. Two hundred thousand years ago we started down this path. The planet will never be the same. It is time for all of us to wake up to the limits we really face: the social and technological systems that sustain us need improvement. There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future. There is no need to use any more land to sustain humanity — increasing land productivity using existing technologies can boost global supplies and even leave more land for nature — a goal that is both more popular and more possible than ever. The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it. With our social, economic and technological development, we can improve environment.

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The fallacy of “population is not the problem”:

Earth’s population is approaching 8 billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day. Rich nations have long assured poor nations that they, too, would one day be rich and that their rates of population growth would decline, but it is no longer clear that this will occur for most of today’s poor nations. Resource scarcities, especially oil, are likely to limit future economic growth; the demographic transition that has accompanied economic growth in the past may not be possible for many nations today. Nearly 227,000 people are added to the planet every day, further compounding most resource and environmental problems. We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now. It makes more sense for humans to bring growth to a halt by adjusting birth rates downward in humane ways rather than waiting for death rates to move upward. Those who think it inhumane to control human fertility have apparently never experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns, where people struggle just to stay alive for another day.

The argument that “population growth is not a problem” is simplistic, dividing people into the bad (rich, Western) consumers and the innocent (poor, non-Western) bottom class. This division makes any objection to population growth morally charged. Strategies to control population are often incorrectly labelled “coercive,” referring to draconian measures such as sterilization and quotas for child bearing. In fact, such oversimplification is really “reductio ad absurdam,” where environmental impact is divorced from the number of people. After all, as Dietz and O’Neill (2013) point out: “we need smaller footprints, but we also need fewer feet.” Simplistic divisions also tend to underplay the growth of middle classes in developing countries and the environmental impact that the increasing population in poor countries (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment MEA 2005). Simultaneously, polarization between innocent poor and guilty rich serves to make any argument in favor of discussion of population growth potentially politically explosive. About 60% of the world’s ecosystem services are degrading or being used unsustainably, according to MEA (2005), the Living Planet Index has dropped by 52% since 1970 (WWF 2014) and without change two thirds of life on Earth may be extinct by 2100 (Raven et al. 2011). This is not just due to the top rich 5%, it is due to the total population and its continued growth both in numbers and in use of resources. The old mantra that the problem is just “in the North” or developed world ignores the fact that the developing world is rapidly increasing its consumption (Washington 2015). Yet the world’s planetary boundaries (thresholds) are already exceeded on three levels (climate change, nitrate pollution, and species extinction) and are close to exceeding other thresholds on many other levels (Rockstrom et al. 2009). Civilization cannot afford to stick with a “meme” that population is a nonissue.

In 1970 Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on developing new plant strains that formed the basis for the Green Revolution that began in the 1960s. However, in his Nobel acceptance speech Borlaug perceptively commented that “There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind.” That was 5 decades ago. During that time the world’s population increased by more than three billion and the struggle to feed, clothe, house, and educate ever-growing numbers of people continues. “Temporary skirmishes” seem persistent, if not permanent.

Both population and consumption are parts of the problem–neither can be ignored and both are exacerbating the human impact on Earth. More distressing, however, is that many among us don’t even see that there are problems created by both growing populations and increasing affluence bearing down on a finite planet. To pretend that another 80 million people added to the planet each year is not a problem because they are all being added to the world’s poor nations makes no sense at all. Many of them will end up in rich nations by migrating, legally or illegally, and all will further compound environmental problems, from strains on oil and other fossil fuel resources to deforestation and higher emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. As Kenneth Boulding noted decades ago, “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” The widespread acceptance and political influence of modern neoclassical economics is a central part of our global problem. In one widely used economics textbook, Principles of Economics, Greg Mankiw wrote that “A large population means more workers to produce goods and services. At the same time, it means more people to consume those goods and services.”

Little attention is given to the fact that the rich and poor have different kinds of environmental impacts (Cafaro & Crist 2012). While the United States, for example, produces staggering amounts of carbon dioxide that spreads far beyond its borders, Madagascar’s population growth has triggered massive deforestation and rapid species extinction. Furthermore, although the rich countries have been responsible for causing such grave ecological threats as climate change, the poor countries are rapidly “catching up” as witnessed by “developing” nations such as China, India, and Brazil. Thus, as Cafaro and Crist (2012) summarize:

To scrutinize the global North and see only the variable of consumption is to remain blind to that mass that qualifies it. A major factor underlying destructive consumerism is population size: the sheer numbers of consumers around the globe. To propagate the myth that population growth is not itself a problem and to lament, instead, the harmful effects of unsustainable production and consumption bypasses one leading reason that production and consumption are unsustainable. In short, the destructive reach of the affluent is global, and that of the poor tends to be more localized, involving, deforestation for subsistence agriculture and fuel, or the acceleration of the bushmeat trade, leading to the “empty forest syndrome.”

Population, consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow until we either face up to the fact that there are limits on our finite Earth or we are confronted by a catastrophe large enough to turn us from our current course. If Chinese, Indians, and others in the poorer world had consumption levels that rose to current western levels it would be like Earth’s population suddenly increasing to 72 billion, according to Jared Diamond, who then wrote that, “Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies–for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy–they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.”

It is questionable whether the objective of balancing the social, economic, and environmental triad is achievable with the present rate of natural degradation (Rees 1992, 2008; Washington 2013, 2015). In this regard, “sustainable development” objectives are empirically questionable in propagating the oxymoronic goal of maintaining economic growth, redistributing wealth, while supposedly simultaneously keeping the health of the ecosystem intact (Goldsmith 1996; Mander & Goldsmith 1996; Spring 2004; Easterly 2006; Washington 2015). Currently, the world has an ecological footprint of 1.6 Earths, but if the entire world were to live at the American standard then we would need 4 Earths (Graff 2010). Clearly this is impossible, given the accelerating environmental crisis the world faces.

Future oil production will come at an increasing cost, if it comes at all. As Bill McKibbin noted, in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, “Cheap and abundant fossil fuel [mainly oil] has shaped the farming system we’ve come to think of as normal; it’s the main reason you can go to the store and get anything you want at any time and for not much money.” More expensive oil will eat into world food production, especially if we continue to use foodstuffs to help fill gas tanks. Continued population growth is unsustainable, as is continued growth in the production of oil and other fossil fuels. As Lester Brown argued, in PLAN B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, “If we cannot stabilize population and if we cannot stabilize climate, there is not an ecosystem on earth we can save.” As Alan Weisman wrote, in The World Without Us, “The intelligent solution [to the problem of population growth] would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would henceforth limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one.” Started now, such a policy would reduce Earth’s population down to around 1.6 billion by 2100, about the same as the world population in 1900. Had we kept Earth’s population at that level we would not be having this conversation.

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Efforts to curb population growth have no chance of working, a 2014 study finds:

In a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers plugged population data from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Census Bureau into a computer model, and then subjected it to all sorts of potential population-reducing scenarios. What they found is far from encouraging. Empowering women and giving them full reproductive freedom, while a worthy goal on its own, isn’t going to cut it. A global pandemic probably wouldn’t be enough to cut our population down to a sustainable size. The researchers predict that there’ll be 10.4 billion of us by 2100 — a slightly more optimistic take than another recent study that sees our numbers soaring as high as 11 billion by century’s end. It’s a number that, according to their models, is essentially catastrophe-proof. That’s problematic, because it suggests that population growth — which further threatens an already strained planet while exacerbating climate change — may be an unsolvable problem, and it lead to the researchers’ saying things like this: “We were surprised that a five-year WWIII scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century.” “No matter what levers you pull, we have such a huge demographic momentum, there’s no way we can rein in the human population fast enough to address sustainability issues in the next century,” lead author Corey Bradshaw says.

In other words, that ship has sailed. But the authors put a decidedly optimistic spin on that news: it means, they argue, that population growth can no longer be held up as an excuse for inaction when it comes to climate policy and sustainability. And it means that we don’t have to go about instituting a worldwide one-child policy or simply people who care about the planet feel guilty about their simultaneous desire to procreate. After all, while “there are clearly many environmental and societal benefits to ongoing fertility reduction in the human population,” the authors write, “here we show that it is a solution long in the making from which our great-great-great-great grandchildren might ultimately benefit, rather than the people living today.” Instead, the authors say, it’d be easier to change the way the masses are living: embracing technological improvements like renewable energy, easing up on our use of natural resources and enhancing the way we recycle.

Another study from researchers at the University of Minnesota reached similar conclusions: relatively basic measures, they found, like using nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently and reducing meat consumption, could provide us with enough food to feed 3 billion extra mouths.

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Only wealthy people eat healthy food:

The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study conducted in 17 countries and involving 154,000 individuals from 628 communities reported on the patterns of diet, physical activity and smoking. The study found that healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, proteins and total fats are consumed more often by the wealthy while poorer people consume more carbohydrates The findings suggest need for strategies to combat unhealthy lifestyles differently for the poor and the rich.

As far as our discussion is concerned, the finding has a relevance. Poor people of poor nations eat unhealthy food and their food lack protein and vitamins essential for healthy body. Healthier people are able to learn better, work harder, and engage in gainful employment longer and contribute more to economic activity than unhealthy counterparts. If you want to build high quality human capital, first thing is healthy body besides good education and training. Due to unhealthy diet, poor population is unlikely to develop high quality human capital necessary to bring economic development which in turn will bring them out of poverty. Poverty alleviation program must include diet education.

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Will Humanity face a Carbohydrate Shortage?

Photosynthesis is the single most important transformation on Earth. Using the energy in sunlight, all plants—from single-celled algae to towering redwoods—knit carbon dioxide and water into food and release oxygen as a by-product. Every year, humanity uses up roughly 40 percent of the planet’s photosynthesis for our own purposes—from feeding a growing population to biofuels. Given that growing human population, is there a limit to how much of the world’s photosynthesis we can appropriate?

Satellite measurements now allow precise measurements of the amount of photosynthesis taking place on the planet’s seven continents and assorted islands—or what scientists call “net primary productivity.” Such measurements are based on the amount of ground covered by plants, the density of that growth, and observations of temperature, sunlight and available water. Using these measurements, ecological modeler Steven Running of the University of Montana concludes that plants produce nearly 54 billion metric tons of carbohydrates a year—the bulk of it the complex organic chains of cellulose and lignin.

Running has also looked back over the past 30 years and discovered that the total amount of photosynthesis is surprisingly stable. Despite local weather that ranged from droughts to floods, plants soldier on producing roughly the same amount of food year in and year out, varying by less than 2 percent annually. This may be because the inputs of photosynthesis also vary so little—sunlight strength fluctuates only mildly, as does precipitation on a global basis. This finding suggests to Running that the plants’ “net primary productivity” might be usefully thought of as a planetary boundary, a threshold or safe limit for human impacts on natural systems, or so he argued in Journal Science.

Our population is estimated to swell to 9 billion by 2050. Will the plants be able to keep up?

Already, agriculture covers 38 percent of the globe and there’s little room to grow further, although once-productive lands in Eastern Europe could be brought back and better management practices could boost output elsewhere. And as the other planetary boundaries suggest, we may be approaching or have already passed geophysical limits for fertilizer application to fields in places like the U.S. or China, as well as the potential to increase the amount of irrigated land to boost crop growth. Finally, we’re already diverting more and more agricultural production away from stomachs and into fuel tanks, as exemplified by the U.S. practice of making ethanol from corn. The vast bulk of the remaining productivity not co-opted by humans is presently inaccessible to us, whether by being part of root systems or protected national parks. That’s not to say humanity won’t keep trying to expand those boundaries, either by colonizing parks, breaking down formerly inaccessible cellulose to make biofuels, or extending agriculture to the seas in the form of algae farms.

But Running suggests that only roughly 5 billion more metric tons of carbohydrates can be diverted to human uses, meaning a “net primary productivity” boundary of roughly 26.6 billion metric tons. We’re closing in on that fast. “The question is thus not whether humans will reach the global [photosynthesis] boundary but when we will do so,” he writes. “The obvious policy question must be whether the biosphere can support the 40 percent increase in global population projected for 2050 and beyond.”

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Is Indian population a liability?

India’s growing population poses more challenges than opportunities. To begin with, the country will need to invest in augmenting its education and healthcare system, grow more food, provide more housing, sharply increase its drinking water supply and add capacity to basic infrastructure, such as roads, transport, electricity and sewage to provide a minimum quality of life to every citizen. To fund all that expansion, the nation needs to raise resources through taxation and other means. Even if less than five million people are entering the workforce every year (and not 12 million as claimed by some), employing them at a decent wage is a tall order.

The current population of India is 1,368,973,535 as of Sunday, September 8, 2019, based on the latest United Nations estimates. India population is equivalent to 17.71% of the total world population. India’s average TFR of 2.3 is slightly above replacement rate fertility of 2.1 and the south, Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab and J&K are already in the 1.6-1.7 range. In Hindi heartland states, especially Bihar and UP, TFR is 3.0-3.2. The nation needs to find ways to contain growth of population without use of coercion. The poor, populous northern States must make concerted advances in women’s literacy, health and participation in the workforce, emulating the achievements of the southern States. This calls for a socio-cultural challenge to patriarchal mores. While disseminating messages and offering assistance for voluntary birth control is fine, population control policy should not be coercive and become avenue for minority bashing. A very large section of the population is not geared towards creating wealth, for India is neither skilled, nor organized. Quite to contrary, it is entitled, a result of continual ratcheting up of populist measures under its democratic system.

Working age population of India:

Figure below shows the difference between other developing countries and India as far as working age population is concerned:

Between 2010-2030, India will add 241 Million people in working-age population, Brazil will add around 18 million, while China will add a meagre 10 million people during the same time. So even with all the drawbacks that India has, this particular Indian aspect may prove pivotal in making India the world leader in coming years. It is estimated that by 2020, the US will be short of 17 million people of working age, China by 10 million, Japan by 9 million and Russia by 6 million while India will have a surplus of 47 million working age people. The demographic outlook for the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – could hardly be more different. In terms of the demographic transition model, India is at the beginning of stage three (declining fertility, population growth), Brazil and China are at stage four (low mortality and fertility, population trending towards stability), while Russia is already at stage five (sub-replacement-rate fertility, declining population). Not surprisingly, the differences in the projected change in the working-age population – the economically relevant variable – are very significant in both absolute and relative terms.

The demographic developments in the BRICs over the next 10, 20, 30 years will vary greatly. This will impact not only economic growth prospects, but also savings and investment behavior and potentially – if somewhat difficult to quantify – financial market growth prospects. India is demographically in a substantially more favorable position than China and Russia. Brazil’s “demographic window” (defined here, non-technically, as a falling dependency ratio) will close around 2020-25, while in China and Russia it is closing right now. India, by contrast, will enjoy a very favorable demographic momentum for another three decades. So even though in current scenario, India may not exactly be mentioned in the same breath as US, UK and China, the picture in next couple of decades is expected to be quite different. India probably has the largest young population in the world. The question: is India’s population its greatest asset or its greatest liability?

Population can be our greatest asset or biggest liability. It depends upon how we deal with it. If we can use our population for constructive and productive purpose, then it becomes our greatest asset, otherwise it becomes our biggest liability. It is very sad to say that so far, Indian population has proved to be more of a liability rather than an asset. They have been unable to provide a decent life to the great majority of people. Their limited resources have been overtaxed. They may even run out of drinking water for people. A large number of Indian children do not get even the minimum calories required to function properly. This undernourishment is leading to stunted physical, mental and intellectual growth. Moreover, poor physical health also leads to lower immunity and susceptibility to disease. Healthier people are able to learn better, work harder, and engage in gainful employment longer and contribute more to economic activity than unhealthy counterparts. As was widely reported, India ranked 103 out of 119 qualifying countries in the 2018 Global Hunger Index. India has 200 million hungry people. In the 21st century, India still has starvation deaths! With what face India can say that Indian population is their strength and not a problem?

As per world health statistics (WHO) 2012, in India there are 9 beds per 10,000 patients ,6 doctors and 13 nurses per 10,000 people. Urban India has been an unmitigated disaster. 17% of urban Indians live in slums. Among the major cities, Mumbai has the highest slum population, with 41% of its population living in slums. Calcutta is at 30%. But this is only a part of the story. Most areas that do not get classified as slums are congested and have structures that are badly constructed without professional supervision of either architects or civil engineers.

Overpopulation also leads to congestion and unclean & unhealthy living conditions. Look at what is happening in Indian capitol city, Delhi. Delhi and the surrounding area has become the most densely populated area of India. It has also become one of the most polluted cities in the world. People even have difficulty breathing the air. There is yet another big problem related to overpopulation. India has not been able to provide proper employment opportunities for youth. This has led to mass scale migration of educated youth to other countries. Today India is facing record unemployment at a 45-year high. About 67% Indians live in rural areas, and are mostly associated with agriculture and associated activities. There is massive hidden unemployment in rural areas. If India must progress out of its subsistence existence, these people must find work in manufacturing or participate in higher value-added activities. However, there is the catch. Indian urban areas are not industrialized, and do not offer higher value-adding jobs. Even when there are vacancies in companies, the rural people, as well as those from cities, are not skilled, disciplined or have work-ethics.

One can argue that these are not issues of population per se, but delivery mechanisms, governance or bureaucratic efficiency. If generations of all sections benefitted from being Indians, then there wouldn’t be any cause for blight, no hunger-related deaths, no unemployment at a 45-year high, and universal access to quality education and healthcare. But all these goodies have gone to fractions of Indian society and have been distributed unevenly. If India’s population is a resource and not a problem, it begs the question: what part or segment are you speaking of? And if it means something, the action has to show on the ground. Otherwise, all talk of the population as a resource is nonsense.

Very Poor Quality of human capital in India:

Half India’s population is less than 27 years old. Twelve million people join the workforce every year. Most have no hope getting a job. Economic growth requires not just a large working population, but people who are trained and skilled to work in different industries. Many industries have remarked that people coming out of colleges and universities in India are not employable and they have to give them skills training before they start their work. 26% of Indians are officially illiterate. The situation with those who are so-called literate is scary. Ask your next Ola or Uber driver about his education and he might tell you that he is a post-graduate or an engineer. 80% of Indian engineers are unemployable. 76% of school students cannot count money correctly. Only 40% of Indian 14-18-year-olds can calculate the price of a shirt sold at a 10% discount and less than 60% could read the time from an analog clock, according to the findings of the Annual Status of Education (ASER) report. And, less than 17% of India’s graduates are employable. A study found that most children in their sample were unable to solve arithmetic problems as typically presented in school. About a third (32.2%) of the children could divide and 21.4% could subtract. Of the 201 children, 70% were enrolled in school, 98% had had some schooling and 53% had completed primary school. Another study found that Children do not know the difference between three and third. They will count till 100 but may not know where to find 41. More than 46% of Indian kids cannot understand simple text and 62% cannot use simple arithmetic by the time they reach Grade 8. The damage is done because their foundational learning is weak at Grade 3 stage. Some states and entrepreneurs realise the problem, but India needs to understand that fixing it late can cost up to 10% of national expenditure on primary education. Only a small proportion of the workforce has the educational foundation required for skilled high-productivity jobs. Barely 5% of the workforce in India has had any skill training. Only 2% have any formal skill certificate compared to over 70% in advanced European countries like the UK or Germany, and as much as 80% to 90% in east Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. None of these revelations are new. I have known for years that Indian education system is failing. Children are going to school but actually not learning.

India’s large population can become a liability rather than an advantage as limited progress in human resources development has been made so far, Infosys chairman N R Narayana Murthy said. “Economic growth and prosperity is not ensured by an expanding population but by what economists call ‘good human capital’ and the key to create good human capital is human development,” he said. However key indicators show India has fallen behind in its efforts in human development,” Murthy said pointing out that India is ranked 130th among 189 countries on the human development Index. He pointed that the high population densities have led to overloaded systems and infrastructure in urban areas and nearly 72 per cent of India’s population will be urbanised by 2030 and India will be required to construct 3.6 million housing units in urban areas every year. He said the water table in India is falling by an average of six feet every year and it is predicted that the country will face severe water scarcity by 2025. Nandan Nilekani in his book Imagining India, while corroborating the rise in population with surge of economic growth, also underlines the dangers of being too complacent. Education, healthcare, dwindling gender ratio, inequity are some of the issues that requires attention before one gloats over the growing millions of consumers and free-flowing foreign direct investments.

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From population bomb to depopulation bomb:

Population decline:

A population decline (or depopulation) in humans is a reduction in a human population caused by events such as long-term demographic trends, as in sub-replacement fertility, urban decay, rural flight, or due to violence, disease, or other catastrophes. Depopulation can be largely beneficial for a region, allocating more resources and less competition for the new population, in addition to exempting the disadvantages of overpopulation, such as increased traffic, pollution, real estate prices, and environmental destruction. Underpopulation is a situation in which there are too few people to realize the economic potential of an area or support its population’s standard of living. It has sometimes been argued that countries such as Australia, Canada, and Mongolia have too few people to make best use of their resources of food, minerals, and energy.

The United Nations forecasts that our population will grow from seven billion to eleven billion in this century before levelling off after 2100. But an increasing number of demographers around the world believe the UN estimates are far too high. More likely, they say, the planet’s population will peak at around nine billion sometime between 2040 and 2060, and then start to decline. By the end of this century, we could be back to where we are right now, and steadily growing fewer. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning population will soon overwhelm the earth’s resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different alarm. Rather than continuing to increase exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline—and in many countries, that decline has already begun.

According to UN estimate, the fastest population rises are being recorded in Africa and Asia, which will have 15 of the 20 most populous nations by 2050. By that year, there will be more Nigerians than Americans. By 2100, it is projected that as many as one-third of all people – almost 4 billion – will be African. In sharp contrast, the populations of another 51 countries or areas of the world are expected to decrease between 2019 and 2050. Population growth has stalled – or even gone into reverse – in parts of Europe, Japan and Russia. Several countries are expected to see their populations decline by more than 15 per cent by 2050, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and the United States Virgin Islands. Fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for replacement of the population in the long run (around 2.1 births per woman, on average) and, in most cases, has been below the replacement level for several decades. The problem is so bad in Russia, which may shrink by 25 million people in the next 40 years, that demographers are referring to a population crisis. This will put an enormous strain on Russia’s economy as the government struggles to care for its aging population. Fertility for Europe as a whole is projected to increase from 1.6 births per woman in 2010-2015 to nearly 1.8 in 2045-2050. Such an increase, however, will not prevent a likely contraction in the size of the total population.

The big news is that the largest developing nations are also about to grow smaller, as their own fertility rates come down. China will begin losing people in a few years. By the middle of this century, Brazil and Indonesia will follow suit. Even India, soon to become the most populous nation on earth, will see its numbers stabilize in about a generation and then start to decline. Fertility rates remain sky-high in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East. Even here, though, things are changing as young women obtain access to education and birth control. Africa is likely to end its unchecked baby boom much sooner than the UN’s demographers think.

Developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control is easily accessible and children often can become an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other cost involved in bringing up children. Higher education and professional careers often mean that women have children late in life. This can result in a demographic economic paradox.

A lower global population is something that many folks would celebrate. The reason it’s scary is that the low will keep getting lower. All around the world, the fertility rate is dropping below replacement level, country by country, so that globally there will soon be an un-sustaining population. With negative population growth, each generation produces fewer offspring, who produce fewer still, until there are none. Right now, Japan’s population is way below replacement level, as is most of Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Former Soviet Republics, and some Asian countries. It goes further: Japan, Germany and Ukraine have absolute population decline; they are already experiencing the underpopulation bomb. To counter this scary underpopulation, Japan, Russia, and Australia pay bonuses for newborns. Singapore (with the lowest fertility rate in the world) will pay couples $5,000 for a first child and up to $18,000 for a third child—but to no avail; Singapore’s rate is less than one child per woman. In the past, drastic remedies for reducing fertility rates were difficult, but they worked. Drastic remedies for increasing fertility don’t seem to work, so far.

Our global population is aging. The moment of peak youth on this planet was in 1972. Ever since then the average age on Earth has been increasing each year, and there is no end in sight for the aging of the world for the next several hundred years! The world will need the young to work and pay for medical care of the previous generation, but the young will be in short supply. Mexico is aging faster than the U.S., so all those young migrant workers who seem to be a problem now will soon be in demand back at home. In fact, after the peak, individual countries will race against each other to import workers, modifying immigration policies, but these individual successes and failures cancel out and won’t affect the global picture.

Enormous disruption lies ahead. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. Here is the challenge: This is a world where every year there is a smaller audience than the year before, a smaller market for your goods or services, fewer workers to choose from, and a ballooning elder population that must be cared for. We’ve never seen this in modern times; our progress has always paralleled rising populations, bigger audiences, larger markets and bigger pools of workers. It’s hard to see how a declining yet aging population functions as an engine for increasing the standard of living every year. To do so would require a completely different economic system, one that we are not prepared for at all right now. The challenges of a peak human population are real, but we know what we have to do; the challenges of a dwindling human population tending toward zero in a developed world are scarier because we’ve never been there before. It’s something to worry about.

Counter-view:

Population declines does not necessarily mean lower economic growth:

Between the 1840s and 1960s, Ireland’s population collapsed, spiralling downward from 8.3 million to 2.9 million. Over roughly that same period, however, Ireland’s per capita gross domestic product tripled. More recently, Bulgaria and Estonia have both suffered sharp population contractions of close to 20 percent since the end of the Cold War, yet both have enjoyed sustained surges in wealth: Between 1990 and 2010 alone, Bulgaria’s per capita income (taking into account the purchasing power of the population) soared by more than 50 percent, and Estonia’s by more than 60 percent. In fact, virtually all of the former Soviet bloc countries are experiencing depopulation today, yet economic growth has been robust in this region, the global downturn notwithstanding. A nation’s income depends on more than its population size or its rate of population growth. National wealth also reflects productivity, which in turn depends on technological prowess, education, health, the business and regulatory climate, and economic policies. A society in demographic decline, to be sure, can veer into economic decline, but that outcome is hardly preordained.

A study has proposed policies to address declining birth rates in developed countries:

It is widely accepted that “human reproduction” is an important and fundamental wheel of life with spokes spread across societal, economic, population, immigration, employment, education, health, wealth and family life (see figure above). It involves sustaining the current family structure for the creation of future generations. Reproduction is important in order to achieve a balance of family life, diversity, socio-economic equality and progress across communities. It is the only area that spreads not only through a cross-section of society but also longitudinally through generations.

All that it would take to break this downward spiral is that many women living in cities all around the world decide to have more than two children in order to raise the average fertility level to 2.1 children. That means substantial numbers of couples would have to have three or four children in urban areas to make up for those with none or only one. It possibly could become fashionable to have four kids in the city. The problem is that these larger families are not happening anywhere where the population has become urban, and urbanity is now the majority mode of the population and becoming more so. Every developed country on the planet is experiencing falling birth rates. The one exception has been the U.S. because of its heavy immigration, primarily because of Catholic Hispanic immigrants, but even that is changing. The most recent report shows that the birth rates of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. is dropping faster than ever. Soon the U.S. will be on par with the rest of the world, with plunging birth rates.

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Experts’ & Scientists’ view:

A 2012 Interview of Prof Paul Ehrlich:

The world’s renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor. Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968 says that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed. The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian. “How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to 2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage.” “The question is: can you go over the top without a disaster, like a worldwide plague or a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? If we go on at the pace we are there’s going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people getting more and more hungry, or catastrophic disasters because the more people you have the greater the chance of some weird virus transferring from animal to human populations, there could be a vast die-off.” Ehrlich, who was described as alarmist in the 1970s but who says most of his predictions have proved correct, says he was gloomy about humanity’s ability to feed over 9 billion people. “We have 1 billion people hungry now and we are going to add 2.5 billion. They are going to have to be fed on more marginal land, from water that is purified more or transported further, we’re going to have disproportionate impacts on how we feed people from the population increase itself,” he said. But he agreed with the Royal Society report that said human population and consumption should not be divided. “[They] multiply together. You have to be deal with them together. We have too much consumption among the rich and too little among the poor. That implies that terrible thing that we are going to have to do which is to somehow redistribute access to resources away the rich to the poor.”

Sir David Attenborough:

Humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled by limiting population growth, according to Sir David Attenborough. The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources. He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth. Sir David, who is a patron of the Population Matters, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

Jesse H. Ausubel:

Director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University:

With most animal populations, the niches that encase the populations are of constant size. Animal societies growing in a given niche have dynamics neatly fitted by equations with a constant limit or ceiling. In short, from a niche point of view, resources are the limits to numbers. But access to resources depends on technologies. When the animals can invent new technologies, such as when bacteria produce a new enzyme to dismantle a sleepy component of their broth, then we face a problem. New growth pulses suddenly pop up, growing from the prior.

Homo faber (Latin for “Man the Maker”) is the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools. Homo faber, the toolmaker, keeps inventing all the time, so that our limits are fleeting. These moving edges confound forecasting the long-run size of humanity. Expansion of the niche, the accessing and redefinition of resources, keeps happening with humans. Through the invention and diffusion of technology, humans alter and expand their niche, redefine resources, and violate population forecasts.

Matthew J. Connelly:

Professor, History, Columbia University, and Director of the Hertog Global Strategy Initiative:

Since the time of Thomas Malthus, people concerned about overpopulation have been worried about whether there’s enough food to go around. The good news is that, yes, there’s a lot of food. In fact, on average, caloric consumption has been rising for decades. So if we’re running out of food, it’s hard to explain why it is that people are consuming more and more of it, this despite the fact that most of us are living more sedentary lives. When it comes to CO2 emissions, you have to ask yourself: who is producing most of these CO2 emissions? And Oxfam came out with a study few years ago that estimated that the world’s richest 1% probably emit 30 times more than the poorest 50% of the planet. There’s a big, big difference between a poor peasant farming the land and a fossil fuel corporation executive. The overpopulation framework tends to lump all humans together into one broad category, not differentiating between their differential impacts on the planet.

Betsy Hartmann:

Professor Emerita, Development Studies, Hampshire College, and the author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, among other books:

People get very nervous—understandably—when they see the figures: we have 7.7 billion people now, and the figure could go up to 11.2 billion by 2100. But what people don’t understand is that the demographic momentum built into these numbers has a lot to do with age distribution: there are presently a large proportion of people of reproductive age in the population, especially in the global south, and even if they have only two or fewer children, it means an absolute increase in population numbers. We need to understand that population is likely to stabilize or even go down in the future as the younger generation ages and that momentum peters out. In the meantime the real challenge facing us is how to plan for a growing population in environmentally sustainable and socially equitable ways. Since the majority of the world’s people now live in cities, the greening of urban spaces and transport is vitally important. Talking about overpopulation as a cause of climate change can be a convenient way for some people to ignore the powerful forces that have contributed to the build-up of greenhouse gases, historically and right now. Also problematic is the tendency among some family planning agencies, private foundations and international aid organizations to use overpopulation arguments to try to get more support for international family planning. This ends up convincing people that somehow family planning is the solution to major problems like climate change and poverty. We live in an era of incredible concentration of wealth: Globally, the bottom 50% of adults on the wealth scale now own less than 1% of the world’s total wealth, while the richest 10% own almost 90%. The top 1% alone owns 50%. These numbers are staggering. Let’s start there when we start talking about the world’s serious problems, and not with the poorest people in the world having too many children.

Warren Sanderson:

Professor Emeritus, Economics, Stony Brook University:

Are we putting too much CO2 in the atmosphere? The answer to this question is “yes”. Another clear question is whether we are using our groundwater unsustainably? The answer to that question is “yes”. The goal should be to get the planet on a sustainable footing. Should we do this by sterilizing American women who have more than 2 children? Would that help reduce CO2 emissions? Undoubtedly not. Should we spend more money on education in Africa? This would lower the birth rate, but the more educated generation would be wealthier and therefore pollute more. Getting the planet on a sustainable footing needs to be addressed seriously and directly. Trying to get the planet on a sustainable course through population reduction is a dangerous cop out.

Kimberly Nichols:

Associate Professor, Sustainability Science, Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies:

The latest science from IPCC tells us that to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, we need to cut today’s climate pollution in half in the next decade. This means it’s critical to reduce emissions present today. The biggest system changes needed to avoid dangerous climate change are to stop burning fossil fuels very quickly, and to reduce the amount of livestock we raise. Currently, higher income tends to be correlated with higher climate pollution. It’s relatively few people who cause a large share of climate pollution. About half the world’s population lives on less than $3/day; they cause very little climate pollution (only 15% of the global total). Those of us in the top 10% of global income (living on more than $23/day, or about $8400/year) are responsible for 36% of global carbon emissions. The fastest way to cut emissions today is for those of us who are currently high emitters to reduce our own emissions. Our study showed that the three high-impact choices that can reduce emissions today are to live meat, car, and flight-free. There are health and social benefits to these choices too. Where it’s not possible to go all the way, aiming to cut today’s flying, driving, or meat consumption in half is a great place to start. In particular, flying is an extremely carbon-intensive activity, and every flight avoided is a substantial emissions savings. (For example: you would have to recycle for four years to equal the climate benefit of a year without eating meat; you emit as much carbon in one roundtrip flight (e.g. New York-London) as two years of eating meat, or eight months of driving a car).

Raywat Deonandan:

Associate Professor, Health Sciences, University of Ottaw:

A region is typically considered overpopulated when it exceeds its carrying capacity, which is the number of people that that region’s resources (typically food) can support. But that estimate will depend on what those people are eating, and what they are willing to eat. It’s well known, for instance, that a vegetarian diet is easier to sustain than a carnivorous one. Sufficiency will also vary with our ever-changing ability to produce food. And it’s not just about food. It’s also about whether there is enough energy and water and jobs and services and physical space to support people. With innovations in urban architecture, space is being managed. And depending on the level of development of the society we’re talking about, energy demands will vary. Softer factors, like jobs and services, will depend on political leadership and global socioeconomic factors that are difficult to measure and predict.

It is not the number of people that’s the issue. It is how much those people consume. With increased wealth, people tend to want more ecologically damaging foods, like meat. There may be fewer of us, but each of us will have a much larger ecological footprint. See, another way to look at overpopulation is not to consider whether we have enough resources to support the existing number of people, but rather whether the existing population is creating an intolerable amount of ecological stress and damage. A poor person in the low-income developing world produces one tonne of CO2 per year. A rich person in the high-income developed world can produce 30 times that amount. In other words, large population growth in low income countries is likely not as damaging as moderate population growth in high income countries. We could probably accommodate many more people if comfortable people in wealthy developed nations consumed a little less. So, if your concern is ecological damage, you’re probably better advised to lecture First World people on our wasteful ways, rather than wringing your hands over large families in low income communities.

The world is not overpopulated. I say this because: (1) most people in the world are not over-consuming; it’s the wealthier people in low fertility populations who have the more damaging consumptive behaviours; (2) most growth is in those populations that are least responsible for ecological damage; (3) we actually have plenty of food for everyone and more, but lack the organizational and political acumen to make it universally accessible; (4) the rate of global population growth has already slowed, and we will have decline by the end of the century.

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World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: 1992 and 2017:

The Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”. These concerned professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto, they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.

The authors of the 1992 declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth’s ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future. They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.

25 years after their call, in 2017, scientists look back at their warning and evaluate the human response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (see figure below). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al. 2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production— particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014). Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.

Humanity is now being given a second notice by scientists, as illustrated by these alarming trends (see figure below). We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.

As most political leaders respond to pressure, scientists, media influencers, and lay citizens must insist that their governments take immediate action as a moral imperative to current and future generations of human and other life. With a groundswell of organized grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can be overcome and political leaders compelled to do the right thing. It is also time to re-examine and change our individual behaviors, including limiting our own reproduction (ideally to replacement level at most) and drastically diminishing our per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources.

The rapid global decline in ozone depleting substances shows that we can make positive change when we act decisively. We have also made advancements in reducing extreme poverty and hunger. Other notable progress (which does not yet show up in the global data sets in figure below) include the rapid decline in fertility rates in many regions attributable to investments in girls’ and women’s education, the promising decline in the rate of deforestation in some regions, and the rapid growth in the renewable-energy sector. We have learned much since 1992, but the advancement of urgently needed changes in environmental policy, human behavior, and global inequities is still far from sufficient. Sustainability transitions come about in diverse ways, and all require civil-society pressure and evidence-based advocacy, political leadership, and a solid understanding of policy instruments, markets, and other drivers.

Figure above shows trends over time for environmental issues identified in the 1992 scientists’ warning to humanity. The years before and after the 1992 scientists’ warning are shown as gray and black lines, respectively.

Ozone depletion, Figure a.

During the 1970s, human-produced chemicals known as ozone-depleting substances, mainly chlorofluorocarbons, were rapidly depleting the ozone layer. In 1987, governments of the world came together and crafted the United Nations Montreal Protocol as a global attempt to address this issue. With protocol compliance, emissions of halogen source gases (ozone-depleting substances and natural sources) peaked in the late 1980s and since then they have significantly decreased (Figure a). Global ozone depletion is no longer increasing, and significant recovery of the ozone layer is expected to occur by the middle of this century (Hegglin et al. 2014).

Declining Freshwater availability, Figure b.

Per capita freshwater availability is less than half of levels of the early 1960s (Figure b) with many people around the world suffering from a lack of fresh clean water. This decrease in available water is nearly all due to the accelerated pace of human population growth. It is likely that climate change will have an overwhelming impact on the freshwater availability through alteration of the hydrologic cycle and water availability. Future water shortages will be detrimental to humans, affecting everything from drinking water, human health, sanitation, and the production of crops for food.

Unsustainable marine fisheries, Figure c.

In 1992, the total marine catch was at or above the maximum sustainable yield and fisheries were on the verge of collapse. Reconstructed time series data show that global marine fisheries catches peaked at 130 million tonnes in 1996 and has been declining ever since (Figure c). The declines happened despite increased industrial fishing efforts and despite developed countries expanding to fishing the waters of developing countries.

Ocean dead zones, Figure d.

Coastal dead zones which are mainly caused by fertilizer runoff and fossil-fuel use, are killing large swaths of marine life. Dead zones with hypoxic, oxygen-depleted waters, are a significant stressor on marine systems and identified locations have dramatically increased since the 1960s, with more than 600 systems affected by 2010 (Figure d).

Forest loss, Figure e.

The world’s forests are crucial for conserving carbon, biodiversity, and freshwater. Between 1990 and 2015, total forest area decreased from 4,128 to 3,999 million ha, a net loss of 129 million ha which is approximately the size of South Africa (Figure e). Forest loss has been greatest in developing tropical countries where forests are now commonly converted to agriculture uses.

Dwindling biodiversity, Figure f.

The world’s biodiversity is vanishing at an alarming rate and populations of vertebrate species are rapidly collapsing (World Wildlife Fund 2016). Collectively, global fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals declined by 58% between 1970 and 2012 (Figure f). Freshwater, marine, and terrestrial populations declined by 81%, 36%, and 35% respectively.

Climate change, Figure g, Figure h.

Global fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions have increased sharply since 1960 (Figure g). Relative to the 1951-1980 average, global average annual surface temperature, in parallel to CO2 emissions, has also rapidly risen as shown by 5-year mean temperature anomaly (Figure h). The 10 warmest years in the 136-year record have occurred since 1998. The most recent year of data, 2016, ranks as the warmest on record. Temperature increases will likely cause a decline in the world’s major food crops, an increase in the intensity of major storms, and a substantial sea level rise inundating major population centers.

Population growth, Figure i.

Since 1992, the human population has increased by approximately 2 billion individuals, a 35% change (Figure i). The world human population is unlikely to stop growing this century and there is a high likelihood that the world population will grow from 7.2 billon people now to between 9.6 and 12.3 billon by 2100 (Gerland et al. 2014). Like the change in human population, the domestic ruminant population, which has its own set of major environmental and climate impacts, has been increasing in recent decades to approximately 4 billion individuals on Earth (Figure i).

Note that y-axes do not start at zero, and it is important to inspect the data range when interpreting each graph. Percentage change, since 1992, for the variables in each panel are as follows: (a) –68.1%; (b) –26.1%; (c) –6.4%; (d) +75.3%; (e) –2.8%; (f) –28.9%; (g) +62.1%; (h) +167.6%; and (i) humans: +35.5%, ruminant livestock: +20.5%.

Examples of diverse and effective steps humanity can take to transition to sustainability include the following (not in order of importance or urgency): (a) prioritizing the enactment of connected well-funded and well-managed reserves for a significant proportion of the world’s terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and aerial habitats; (b) maintaining nature’s ecosystem services by halting the conversion of forests, grasslands, and other native habitats; (c) restoring native plant communities at large scales, particularly forest landscapes; (d) rewilding regions with native species, especially apex predators, to restore ecological processes and dynamics; (e) developing and adopting adequate policy instruments to remedy defaunation, the poaching crisis, and the exploitation and trade of threatened species; (f) reducing food waste through education and better infrastructure; (g) promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods; (h) further reducing fertility rates by ensuring that women and men have access to education and voluntary family-planning services, especially where such resources are still lacking; (i) increasing outdoor nature education for children, as well as the overall engagement of society in the appreciation of nature; (j) divesting of monetary investments and purchases to encourage positive environmental change; (k) devising and promoting new green technologies and massively adopting renewable energy sources while phasing out subsidies to energy production through fossil fuels; (l) revising our economy to reduce wealth inequality and ensure that prices, taxation, and incentive systems take into account the real costs which consumption patterns impose on our environment; and (m) estimating a scientifically defensible, sustainable human population size for the long term while rallying nations and leaders to support that vital goal.

To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was already well articulated by the world’s leading scientists in 1992, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.

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How humanity will end, according to Nobel Prize winners, a 2017 survey:

A survey of 50 Nobel laureates asked about the greatest threats to mankind has revealed that issues such as over-population and climate change are the biggest threat. Meanwhile, the threat of nuclear warfare and infectious diseases and drug resistance follows in second and third place. The survey drew responses from almost a quarter of the living Nobel prize winners for chemistry, physics, physiology, medicine and economics. 34 per cent said that population rise and environmental degradation, were the biggest threat.

This survey of 50 Nobel laureates posed the question: ‘What is the biggest threat to humankind, in your view? And is there anything science can do to mitigate it?’ Some respondents listed more than one threat, and responses were recorded, with the threats ranked as follows:

Population rise/environmental degradation (34%, 18 respondents)
Nuclear war (23%, 12 respondents)
Infectious disease/drug resistance (8%, 4 respondents)
Selfishness/dishonesty/loss of humanity (8%, 4 respondents)
Donald Trump/ignorant leaders (6%, 3 respondents)
Artificial Intelligence (4%, 2 respondents)
Inequality (4%, 2 respondents)
Drugs (2%, 1 respondent)
Facebook (2%, 1 respondent)
Fundamentalism/terrorism (6%, 3 respondents)
Ignorance/distortion of truth (6%, 3 respondents

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Population ethics:

Population ethics is the philosophical study of the ethical problems arising when our actions affect who is born and how many people are born in the future. Moral philosopher Derek Parfit brought population ethics to the attention of the academic community as a modern branch of moral philosophy in his seminal work Reasons and Persons in 1984 which introduced a new framework for thinking about how many people there should be in the world. Starting with the assumption that the well-being of individuals is a positive thing, and that more happy people are, all things being equal, is preferable to fewer happy people, Parfit asks which of the following three societies is most choice worthy:

The width of each figure represents the population, while the height indicates the overall well-being of each group (quality of life). Society A has a relatively small population of very high quality of life, while Society A+ has a group of the same size and quality level as in Society A plus another group of people with somewhat lower, but still quite positive quality of life. Based on the operative assumptions, Society A+ is preferable to Society A—the area of two rectangles is greater than the area of the single rectangle. But what about Society B? This scenario features the same population as that in Society A+, with slightly higher quality of life, so it seems to be the better of the second and third choices. Given that A+>A and B>A+, we have to conclude, by the transitive property, that B>A. So this analysis leads us to conclude that a society with a larger population is ethically preferable to a society with a smaller population enjoying slightly higher quality of life. It’s a superior moral state to have more pretty happy people than half as many happier people.

That conclusion may not seem too radical, by itself, but Parfit says it leads us down a slippery slope ending here:

If B is better than A, then Z—a society with a very large population but a quality of life that is just barely passable—must be superior to A as well. Translation: better to have a world with ten billion people living in mud huts with just enough food to survive and no house, refrigerator, auto or PC than a hundred million people living like kings. Tons of people living just above the misery line is a better state of affairs than, say, life of average American. Parfit agrees this sounds ridiculous, which is why he calls it the Repugnant Conclusion. To be clear, Parfit does not accept the conclusion—he does not believe that Z is actually superior to A—but he thinks it is very hard to construct a theory of population ethics that avoids it. Whether or not we think the Repugnant Conclusion is avoidable in theoretical terms, practically speaking, the future of humanity is edging closer to Z than to A or B. World population continues to grow, primarily in the poorest parts of the globe, while the most advanced countries have static or declining population. Best way to avoid Repugnant Conclusion is to improve quality of life of Z population to western standard. Is it possible to give western style life to all 7.7 billion people on earth today? Impossible. Unlimited increase in the quantity of human population cannot occur without compromising quality of life no matter how innovative and ingenious humans are.

In one government health care facility in India, I see 100 patients of diabetes and hypertension in 3 hours (180 minutes). All patients’ data is fed into computer and uploaded via internet to database in government hospital by me in these 3 hours. How much time can I allot to one patient for consultation? Less than 30 seconds. You can see that as quantity of people increases, quality of service deteriorates. But Indian policy makers never care about quality. They gloat that India produces 1.5 million engineers per year but conveniently forget that 80 % of them are unemployable in India. The quality of Indian work-force is so poor that it is unlikely to make India a developed nation despite large numbers. India is a classic case of Z population described by Parfit, a country with a very large population but a quality of life that is just barely passable. India has epitomized Repugnant Conclusion.

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Moral of the story:

There have been three major technological revolutions in human evolution – the tool-making revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution – all of which allowed humans more access to food, resulting in subsequent population explosions.

Today’s world population (~7.7 billion) is approximately 7% of the estimated 110 billion who have ever lived. Today, world population is growing by 1.08 per cent per year, yielding an additional 83 million people annually. It is shown that differences in assumed fertility levels lead to large differences in future population numbers. The UN population forecast of 2017 predicted “near end of high fertility” globally and anticipating that by 2030 over ⅔ of world population will be living in countries with fertility below the replacement level and total world population will stabilize between 10-12 billion people by year 2100.

Compared to 1960s, there are twice as many people on the earth, living about 40 per cent longer and each person consuming many times than the average person in the 1960s.

How many of us there are, how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of the planet upon which we rely to survive: the land, oceans, fisheries, forests, wildlife, grasslands, rivers and lakes, groundwater, air quality, atmosphere, weather, and climate. There is no doubt that any additional number of human population puts demands for more houses, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs etc., and when a society fails to meet these increasing demands, the socio-cultural, economic and political environment degrades. Overpopulation is when the number of people cannot be maintained without depleting resources and degrading environment with lowering standard of living. The quality (of humans & environment) is sacrificed to accommodate increased quantity (of humans).

The resources to be considered to determine whether we are overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. When quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment, waste disposal and energy supplies. Overpopulation places competitive stress on resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.

Population density is not an adequate measure of overpopulation, since countries with advanced economies, like the Netherlands or Singapore, can support an extremely dense population. Whether a country is overpopulated or not depends on its population growth rate, standard of living, lifestyle, culture, available technology and resources, economy, and other factors. Some experts feel that the earth’s resources are finite and therefore there are limits to population and economic growth; others argue that, as long as science and technology advance, there are no limits to growth.

When the population of a species grows beyond the capacity of its environment to sustain it indefinitely, it reduces that capacity below the original level, ensuring an eventual population crash. Wherever excessive growth of population occur, habitat is degraded, creatures suffer and their numbers decline. When it comes to natural resources, studies indicate we are living beyond our means. An ongoing Global Footprint Network study says we currently using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate. This is akin to using 1.75 Earths. A study by the Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified a set of “nine planetary boundaries” for conditions in which we could live and thrive for generations, and it shows that we already have crossed four planetary boundaries i.e. climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen).

Some experts say humans are exception because of human intelligence to create more food, more space from the same habitat. Population has grown dramatically (from less than a billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion today), and so has per capita consumption. No previous society was able to support so many people at such a high level of amenity. If we’ve managed to stretch carrying capacity this much already, why can’t we do so ad infinitum? There is evidence to suggest that Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans is actually declining and by harvesting renewable resources faster than they could regrow, by using non-renewable resources that could not be recycled, and by choking environments with industrial wastes, we are currently drawing resources that future generations and other species would otherwise use.

It is argued that our population itself is our strength as huge population offers a bigger pool of human resource and a bigger consumer market too. However, is not primarily the number of people that’s important in population policy, it’s what they are capable of, their level of education, their skill and their health. Human resource refers to the people who are part of the workforce. These people become human capital when there is investment made in the form of education, training and medical care. In fact, human capital is the stock of skill and productive knowledge embodied in them. Large population has been considered a liability but can be turned into a productive asset by investment in human capital. The quality of population depends upon their education, skills and health. Investment in human capital (through education, training, medical care) yields a return just like investment in physical capital. Additionally, human capital can make better use of physical capital. The larger part of industrial growth occurs, not from more capital investment but from investment in people and improvements brought about by improved people. Countries like Japan have invested in human resource as they did not have any natural resource. They have invested on people especially in the field of education, training and health. These people have made efficient use of other resource like land and capital, and Japan became developed nation. It is now increasingly recognised that many developing countries may be held back, not so much by a shortage of natural resources as by a shortage of skills and knowledge of their population. Illiterate, unskilled and unhealthy population are a liability for the economy. Literate, skilled and healthy population are an asset.

Population growth rate (PGR) is calculated by dividing the change in population by the initial population, multiplying it by 100, and then dividing it by the number of years over which that change took place. The number is expressed as a percentage. Current world population growth rate is 1.08 % annually. Another way to calculate PGR is: Birth rate per thousand per year minus death rate per thousand per year divided by 10 gives natural population growth rate in percentage per year which excludes migration. There are two types of PGR, natural and overall. The overall population growth rate takes migration into account. Natural PGR and overall PGR are same as far as world PGR is concerned as no humans are immigrating to earth from other planets and no humans are emigrating to other planets from earth. Canada’s natural growth rate was 0.3% while its overall growth rate was 0.9% in 2006, due to Canada’s open immigration policies. For most purposes, the overall growth rate is more frequently utilized. Population growth rate is better utilized for short term projections and not for long-term projections.

When demographers attempt to forecast changes in the size of a population, they typically focus on four main factors: fertility rates, mortality rates (life expectancy), the initial age profile of the population (whether it is relatively old or relatively young to begin with) and migration. With longevity trending towards uniform and stable values worldwide and anti-immigration policies of many nations, the main driver of future population growth is evolution of fertility rate and age structure of current population.

The total fertility rate (TFR), sometimes also called the fertility rate is average number of children born to women during their reproductive years. Factors generally associated with increased fertility include religiosity, cultural norms, high infant/child mortality rate, intention to have children, and maternal support. Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include wealth, education, female labor force participation, urban residence, intelligence, increased female age, women’s rights, access to contraception and family planning services and (to a lesser degree) increased male age.

Although there is a correlation between birth rate and fertility rate, the single most important factor in population growth is fertility rate. Tracking fertility rates allows for more efficient and beneficial planning and resource allocation within a particular region. If a country experiences unusually high sustained fertility rates, it may need to build additional schools or expand access to affordable child care. Conversely, sustained low fertility rates may signify a rapidly aging population, which may place burden on the economy through increasing health care and social security costs.

Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman. Generally speaking, when the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population in a given area will eventually decrease, though it may take some time because of factors such as age structure, emigration, or immigration. The replacement fertility rate is dependent on maternal mortality and child mortality, and therefore it is higher than 2.1 in many developing countries.

Even if the global fertility rate were to drop from the current average of 2.5 children per couple to the replacement rate of about 2.1 children per couple, the world population would continue to expand for 70 years before stabilizing. This is so because a disproportionately large proportion of the global population is young and in reproductive age especially in the global south, which has built demographic momentum, so even if they have only two or fewer children, there would be absolute increase in population numbers as young people will reproduce and their children will grow up and again reproduce, as average life expectancy is increased significantly worldwide. When a country has a broad-based population pyramid, there are more girls entering their fertile years than women leaving the fertile years resulting in demographic momentum. So, despite fall in fertility rate, birth rate and population growth rate may not fall comparably for several decades due to demographic (population) momentum.

More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa, and as population in most regions will level out by 2100, Africa population will rise sharply. The strong growth of the African population will happen regardless of the rate of decrease of fertility due to demographic momentum.

Higher the educational level of a woman, lower the total number of children she will have, although occasionally culture and geography may override influence of education. A more-educated workforce also makes poverty eradication and economic growth easier to achieve. Vice versa, smaller families improve educational attainment of mothers and children. So a virtuous cycle of high education, low fertility and more income can be established.

Sex education will help people understand more about the potential consequences of having sex as they relate to child birth and it will also do away with many of the myths that surround the sexual act and introduce scientifically-proven methods of birth control.

As contraception becomes more widely used, the number of children per woman declines. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which equates to about 80 million unintended pregnancies each year and as of 2017, about 214 million women of reproductive age in developing regions who want to avoid pregnancy are not using a modern contraceptive method. If family planning and contraceptives are made universally available, the evidence is that population growth would stabilize and then start to decline.

Muslims in general have higher fertility rates than other religions. Religious emphasis on copious reproduction and common teachings against the use of contraception are having a direct impact on population growth although poverty and lack of education are far more significant factors in high fertility rates than religion.

China’s one-child policy was coercive, extreme and unnecessary, since the fertility rate had already dropped to 2.2 children per woman before the policy went into effect. With the implementation of the one-child policy, and the preference for male children, China saw a rise in female fetus abortions, increases in the number of baby girls left in orphanages, and even increases in infanticide of baby girls. This caused the skewed sex ratio of 115 men to 100 women. Even after the one-child policy was rescinded, China’s fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a population that was aging too rapidly as well as a shrinking workforce. An aging population and a sharp decline in the number of workers in the 30 to 40 age range could undermine Chinese hope of becoming a global leader in cutting-edge technology. It is unlikely that China can recharge its population growth after transiting from one-child policy to two-child policy due to high living costs, long work hours, surging child-care expenses and social factors. Even if they go up to a 2.1 replacement rate or higher which is now at 1.6 per woman, it takes a long time for that to build up a population.

Government’s one-child or two-child policy is potentially harmful way of population control. Coerced lower fertility can translate into a more male-biased sex ratio if son preference is persistent (China and India). The desire to have a male child – has resulted in 21 million “unwanted girls” in India, and due to sex selective abortions alone there are an estimated 63 million missing women from India’s population. The term “missing women” indicates a shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region or country. The better way is gender equality, women empowerment, women education, women employment and easy access to contraceptives for preventing, delaying and spacing births.

The demographic transition is a shift of birth and death rates from high levels to low levels in a population due to economic and social development. Experts have argued that concerns over world population will dissipate as countries undergo the demographic transition. In general, projections of future population assume that the economic and social development which is an important dimension of demographic transition, can and will occur in many of the world’s poorer countries. According to demographic transition theory population will stabilize without policy intervention. Development is the best contraceptive and it has been argued that we can be complacent that population growth will end. Much of this guarded optimism is based on the assumption that certain inferences based on the demographic transition model are empirically justified, particularly the claim that there is a strong positive correlation between increased economic, social, and sexual well-being and steadily decreasing fertility levels.

Demographic transition may not occur in many developing nations. Demographic transition model was developed after studying the experiences of countries in Western Europe and North America but conditions might be different for developing nations in different parts of the world. High economic development lead to lower fertility in western nations but sharp declines in fertility rates in India, Nigeria, and Mexico occurred despite low levels of economic development. In many parts of the world the number of women of child-bearing age is disproportionately large, this demographic momentum is likely to outrun fertility decline, overriding even possible large mortality-increasing catastrophes.

Also, as the world’s supply of cheap oil declines, increasing energy costs will hinder economic and social development, which are presumed to be important drivers of demographic transition. Researchers warn that large amounts of cheap energy are needed to drive development. As we reach (or have reached) “peak oil”, there is good reason to question the sustainability of the current trend of rising global per capita GDP using cheap oil barring emergence of a cheap and abundant alternative energy source. All of this suggests that demographic transition may not be inevitable and that population growth and the question of carrying capacity may still be important concerns. Complacent reliance on demographic transition, however politically acceptable it might be, is highly problematic.

The current population has already overshot the Earth’s capacity to sustainably support it. To bring developing countries up to consumption levels of developed countries—and thereby trigger demographic transition—would magnify per capita impact on top of an increasing number of consumers. As such we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people. It is impossible for 9 billion people to live their lives in western lifestyle from 2050 onwards. The only option is to reduce population and reduce consumption or accept inequality.

Demographic dividend means boost in economic productivity that occurs when there are growing numbers of people in the workforce relative to the number of dependents. The change in age structure of population is typically brought on by a decline in fertility and mortality rates. Demographic dividend is received by a country that has gone through the stage 3 of demographic transition. Any demographic dividend depends on whether the government implements the right policies in areas such as education, health, governance, and the economy. A rapid rise of working population, if well managed, is a very positive contribution to sustainable and inclusive growth.

Between 2010-2030, India will add 241 million people in working-age population, Brazil will add around 18 million, while China will add a meagre 10 million people during the same time. In terms of the demographic transition model, India is at the beginning of stage three (declining fertility, population growth) and therefore can ripe benefit of demographic dividend for few decades. The demographic dividend is not, however, an automatic consequence of demographic changes. Rather, it depends on the ability of the economy to productively use its additional workers. 80% of Indian engineers and 83% of Indian graduates are unemployable. Only a small proportion of the workforce has the educational foundation required for skilled high-productivity jobs. Barely 5% of the workforce in India has had any skill training. Majority of working age population in India is neither skilled, nor disciplined or nor have work-ethics. Indian labour laws prevent sacking of incompetent workers. 76% of school students cannot count money correctly in India. A large number of Indian children are undernourished leading to stunted physical, mental and intellectual growth resulting in poor health of working age population. Healthier people are able to learn better, work harder, and engage in gainful employment longer and contribute more to economic activity than unhealthy counterparts. Due to unhealthy diet, poor population is unlikely to transform into high quality human capital necessary to bring economic development which in turn will bring them out of poverty. Key indicators show India has fallen behind in its efforts in human development and India is ranked 130th among 189 countries on the human development Index. Therefore, despite largest working age population, India is likely to squander demographic dividend due to poor quality human capital. Demographic dividend will not materialize in many developing countries due to poor quality human capital and therefore they will not become developed nation.

It’s pointless talking about population growth without considering consumption patterns. The environmental impact is population times consumption, so the key issue is not just the number of people on Earth, but a dramatic rise in our consumption of natural resources. A poor person in the low-income developing world produces one ton of CO2 per year. A rich person in the high-income developed world can produce 30 times that amount. About half the world’s population lives on less than $3/day; they cause very little climate pollution (only 15% of the global total). Those in the top 10% of global income (living on more than $23/day, or about $8400/year) are responsible for 36% of global carbon emissions. But poor are also agents of environmental damage. Living standards and consumption need not be directly equivalent to environmental impact. Poor with few assets have to depend on environmental resources available in their surroundings, so they end up exploiting the natural habitat excessively by deforestation for subsistence agriculture and fuel. In other words, both rich and poor degrade environment.

The lack of the most basic items (house, refrigerator, PC, auto), items which every human should be able to have, make up most of the consumption difference between the haves and the have nots. Reasonable levels of consumption are not morally wrong, in fact they are desirable. We need to allow all of the world’s citizens a reasonable lifestyle while at the same time heading toward sustainability. This will require a leap in consumption for developing countries, a practical and therefore smaller reduction in consumption for developed countries, and population stabilization or reduction for all. Every human is part of the population problem, so every human must be part of the population solution in some way. Population growth directly drives increasing overall consumption, but not vice versa. The existence of a person necessarily consumes resources, takes up space, and disposes of waste products; and each additional person has a significant impact on the ecosystem no matter rich or poor. Population growth led to consumption that has far outstripped available resources. Population growth creates problems beyond the impacts of excess consumption. The population driver should not be ignored simply because limiting overconsumption can, at least in theory, be achieved more rapidly. Attainable reductions in consumption will not do the job if we do not also stop population growth. Population control should not be overlooked in favor of reducing consumption. Population and consumption together appear to be at the core of many human problems. Population growth and overconsumption will have serious ecological, economic and social consequences; and both population growth and overconsumption are key drivers of unsustainability and hence both must be seriously addressed.

There is a strong correlation between population growth and poverty. Poverty is believed to be the leading cause of population growth. A lack of educational resources, coupled with high death rates leading to higher birth rates, result in impoverished areas seeing large booms in population. The effect is so extensive that the UN has predicted that the forty-eight poorest countries in the world are also likely to be the biggest contributors to population growth. With the exception of a few oil-rich states, no country has risen from poverty while still maintaining high average fertility. Conversely, many countries that lowered their birth rates have also greatly reduced poverty. Rapidly growing population can reduce quality of human resource. Due to spread of health technologies, many poor escaped death and these survivors continue to live in a state of substandard health, poor nutrition and poor educational attainment. It is this ever-expanding pool of substandard survivors that is eroding the quality of human resources. And this large pool of substandard survivors, because of its poverty, illiteracy and under development, is most resistant to family-planning programs and therefore they produce more children who are also poor, malnourished and illiterate. High birth rates and rapid population growth in poor countries would divert scarce capital away from savings and investment, thereby placing a drag on economic development. High fertility give rise to high dependency that requires the economy to divert a considerable part of resources that might otherwise go into capital formation to the maintenance of a high percentage of dependents who may never become producers. In other words, rapidly growing poor population can itself reduce human capital formation and physical capital formation, therefore population control is a must for human & physical capital formation. The proven method for curbing population growth is to eradicate extreme poverty and give people better lives. With better lives, parents then have chosen for themselves to have fewer children. Population growth causes poverty and poverty causes population growth, thus vicious cycle is established. This vicious cycle can be broken by population control (family planning, education etc) and poverty reduction (direct economic aid, jobs, capital investment); both measures to be taken concurrently.

It is now well-documented that as countries grow richer, and people escape poverty, they opt for smaller families. It is almost unheard of for a country to maintain a high fertility rate after it passes about $5,000 in per-person annual income. GDP per capita is inversely correlated with TFR barring Israel and Saudi Arabia. A broad consensus has developed over time that as incomes rise, fertility tends to fall.

Vice versa, reduced fertility does improve the economic prospects of families and societies i.e. reductions in fertility and declining ratios of dependent to working age populations provide a window of opportunity for economic development and poverty reduction. Fertility reduction is by no means an economic development panacea and is certainly not a sufficient condition for economic growth, but it may well be a necessary condition, establishing conditions in which governments can invest more per capita in education and health, thus creating the human capital for sustained economic growth. Likewise, with fewer children to care for and raise, families can improve their prospects for escaping the poverty trap. At both the macro- and micro-levels, moderating fertility enhances economic prospects. Countries which have incorporated population policies and family planning programmes in their overall economic development strategies have achieved high and sustained rates of economic growth and that they have also managed significant reductions in poverty.

It is capitalism and freedom that lift humanity out of poverty, vanquish overpopulation, and offer a sustainable future. Powerful evidence comes from pairs of countries that had the same culture and history and much the same standard of living when they split apart after World War II — East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Taiwan and China. In each case the centrally planned communist country began with less population “pressure”, as measured by density per square kilometer, than did the market-directed economy. And the communist and non-communist countries also started with much the same birth rates. But the market-directed economies performed much better economically than the centrally-planned economies.

In 1960, South Korea and Taiwan were poor countries with fast-growing populations. Over the two decades that followed, South Korea’s population surged by about 50 percent, and Taiwan’s by about 65 percent. Yet, income increased in both places too. Clearly, rapid population growth in short run did not preclude an economic boom in those two Asian “tigers” but a sizeable fraction of their impressive economic growth was attributable to high levels of savings and investment facilitated by earlier fertility declines. The relationship between population growth and economic growth is clearly negative when viewed over the long run. Today both Taiwan and south Korea have low fertility rates, 1.218 children per woman in Taiwan and 0.98 children per woman in south Korea. Had they continued high fertility rate of 1960s; their standard of living would have fallen.

Population growth is so rapid in many developing countries that they can no longer manage to build their human capital (education and health). Strong population growth in developing nations can be curbed by rapid urbanization and by large migratory streams. Urbanization may be the best compromise in the face of global population growth. But this can only be achieved if urban planning is significantly improved and city services are properly maintained. Evidence from developing nations show that their urbanization leads to slums, crime, disease, and utter dehumanization of the under-class. Urbanization of western nations led to improved quality of life but the same could not be replicated in many developing nations.

I propose a square to convert developing country into developed country. The four angles of square are, high quality human capital, free market economy, birth control & family planning, and bring population out of extreme poverty by any means. All the four angles will run concurrently.

Declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancies are causing the population to age. Today we have one in nine persons aged 60 or over but by 2050 it’ll be one in five. Aging population raises questions about how working populations will support large numbers of elderly people. Aging population is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth but evidence is equivocal. There is a myth that never-ending population growth is a necessary means of offsetting an ageing population. In fact, for any population to stabilize, it is essential that it adjusts to a gradually ageing population as part of the process. That halting population growth inevitably leads to changes in age structure is no excuse for bemoaning drops in fertility rates, as is common in European government circles. Reduction of population size in those over-consuming nations is a very positive trend, and sensible planning can deal with the problems of population aging. China’s aging population issue is different from that of other more developed countries, like Japan. China is facing the problem of becoming grey before it becomes rich.

There are several benefits afforded to nations as their populations age. While these nations must pay more for eldercare, they also have fewer children to birth, cloth, bath, house, and educate. Demographers maintain that crime rates tend to fall as populations age since younger people perpetrate most crimes. As a result, aging regions can spend less on policing, crime investigations, and jails. It is a misconception to associate an ageing population with immense medical and social care expenses. It has been researched that approximately a quarter of all health-related expenses in a person’s life are spent on their last year of life and do not tend to increase with age. Furthermore, it is more likely that health care expenditure on the last year of life decreases with age, as the elderly cannot physically endure extensive medical procedures.

The expectation that population growth will outrun its food supply has a long history. However, from the 1950s to the 1990s, which experienced the most dramatic increase in human population ever, per capita world food production increased due to green revolution. There are enough food resources and varieties in the world to feed everyone, but their management and distribution are deficient. In the developed countries, some 30% of food is wasted at the consumption level, while in the developing ones, an estimated 40% is wasted at the production level, due to lack of adequate infrastructure and commercialization networks. It was assumed that the rapid population growth made famine ‘unavoidable’ because a finite land area, with a limited ‘carrying capacity’, cannot continue to feed a growing population indefinitely. However contemporary famine research tends to suggest that insufficient and uneven food supply is less important cause for famine than one might think, and instead emphasizes the role of social-economic inequality, lack of democracy and (civil) war, public policy and violence: in most famines of the 20th and 21st centuries, conflict, political oppression, corruption, or gross economic mismanagement on the part of dictatorships or colonial regimes played a key role.

The only way to feed a population of 11 billion people at the end of 21’st century while addressing environmental concerns is to increase yields on existing lands. Researchers found that yields of the four major crops are increasing at 0.9 to 1.6 percent per year — nowhere near the annual rate of 2.4 percent necessary to double production by 2050. At current rates, only about a 38 percent increase in wheat, a 42 percent increase in rice, a 55 percent increase in soybeans and a 67 percent increase in maize production will be possible by 2050. Technologies to increase yield such as precision agriculture, targeted application of fertilizer and genetically modified crops have a limit and therefore population growth indefinitely is not an option. By trying to grow more and more crops off of the same amount of land, the soil becomes exhausted. Because the soil is exhausted, it is then unable to produce the same amount of food as before, and is overall less productive. Therefore, by using resources beyond a sustainable level, the resource become nullified and ineffective.

By 2030, nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage. This will place those living in impoverished areas that already have limited access to such water at great risk. The most water-scarce areas are typically those with fewer water resources, a relatively high existing population density, and an even higher population growth rate. It is certain that population growth will further impact water availability. Desalination is considered a viable and effective solution to the problem of water shortages. Desalinated water may be a solution for some water-stress regions, but not for places that are poor, deep in the interior of a continent, or at high elevation.

We the humans are responsible for causing sixth major extinction leading to loss of an estimated 30,000 species per year, and we are degrading ecosystem to prevent our future generations to live decent lives. There is a direct link between increases in human population and decreases in the number of species on the planet. This earth belongs to all life-forms and not only for contemporary humans, their domesticated animals and their cultivated plants. Human beings have no right to act so selfishly and destructively. If the current rate of extinction continues, humans will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. As long as Earth is viewed as personal property of the human race, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.

Although there are clearly many environmental, economic and social benefits to ongoing fertility reduction in the human population, the demographic momentum is so large that we will reach 11 billion by 2100. The least we can do is change the way the masses are living: embracing technological improvements like renewable energy, easing up on our use of natural resources, enhancing the way we recycle, using nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently and reducing meat consumption & air travel.

A number of experts say that rather than continuing to increase exponentially, the global population is headed for a steep decline—and in many countries, that decline has already begun. Population growth has stalled – or even gone into reverse – in Europe, Japan and Russia. In the past, drastic remedies for reducing fertility rates were difficult, but they worked. Drastic remedies for increasing fertility don’t seem to work, so far. Even the largest developing nations are also about to grow smaller, as their own fertility rates come down. Population decline leads to aging populations and worker shortages that weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. On the other hand, virtually all of the former Soviet bloc countries are experiencing depopulation today, yet economic growth has been robust in this region, the global downturn notwithstanding. A nation’s income depends on more than its population size or its rate of population growth. National wealth also reflects productivity, which in turn depends on technological prowess, education, health, the business and regulatory climate, and economic policies.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists including the majority of living Nobel laureates say that we are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption, and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats. A 2017 survey of 50 Nobel laureates asked about the greatest threats to mankind has revealed that over-population and climate change are the biggest threat. If we cannot stabilize population and if we cannot stabilize climate, there is not an ecosystem on earth we can save.

With most animal populations, the niches that encase the populations are of constant size. So from a niche point of view, resources are the limits to numbers. However, through invention and diffusion of technologies, humans alter and expand their niche, redefine resources, and challenge population forecasts. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. The environment will be what we make it and not merely dependent on our numbers. But unlimited growth both of population and economy is not possible on a planet of finite resources no matter how intelligent and innovative the humans are. Human ingenuity, adaptability and efforts have limits to fulfil the needs of the increasing numbers. Unlimited increase in the quantity of human population cannot occur without compromising quality of life no matter how innovative and ingenious humans are. On the top of it, there is a negative correlation between intelligence and number of children (fertility). So unlimited population growth of humans is unlikely to produce highly intelligent people with ingenuity capable of curbing poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction that comes with population explosion.

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Dr Rajiv Desai. MD.

September 27, 2019

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Postscript:

There is not a single nation where women are truly treated as equal to men. When women are truly treated as equal to men, population problem will be solved.

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53 comments on “POPULATION PROBLEM”

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Dr Rajiv Desai

POPULATION PROBLEM

53 comments on “POPULATION PROBLEM”

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