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Roger Breedlove
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Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 11, 2009 - 02:12pm PT
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Go forth and multiply a lot less
Oct 29th 2009, The Economist
Lower fertility is changing the world for the better
SOMETIME in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below. This is the “replacement level of fertility”, the magic number that causes a country’s population to slow down and eventually to stabilise. According to the United Nations population division, 2.9 billion people out of a total of 6.5 billion were living in countries at or below this point in 2000-05. The number will rise to 3.4 billion out of 7 billion in the early 2010s and to over 50% in the middle of the next decade. The countries include not only Russia and Japan but Brazil, Indonesia, China and even south India.
The move to replacement-level fertility is one of the most dramatic social changes in history. It manifested itself in the violent demonstrations by students against their clerical rulers in Iran this year. It almost certainly contributed to the rising numbers of middle-class voters who backed the incumbent governments of Indonesia and India. It shows up in rural Malaysia in richer, emptier villages surrounded by mechanised farms. And everywhere, it is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated. At a time when Malthusian alarms are ringing because of environmental pressures, falling fertility may even provide a measure of reassurance about global population trends.
The fertility rate is a hypothetical, almost conjectural number. It is not the same as the birth rate, which is the number of children born in a year as a share of the total population. Rather, it represents the number of children an average woman is likely to have during her childbearing years, conventionally taken to be 15-49.
If there were no early deaths, the replacement rate would be 2.0 (actually, fractionally higher because fewer girls are born than boys). Two parents are replaced by two children. But a daughter may die before her childbearing years, so the figure has to allow for early mortality. Since child mortality is higher in poor countries, the replacement fertility rate is higher there, too. In rich countries it is about 2.1. In poor ones it can go over 3.0. The global average is 2.33. By about 2020, the global fertility rate will dip below the global replacement rate for the first time.
Modern Malthusians tend to discount the significance of falling fertility. They believe there are too many people in the world, so for them, it is the absolute number that matters. And that number is still rising, by a forecast 2.4 billion over the next 40 years. Populations can rise while fertility declines because of inertia, which matters a lot in demography. If, because of high fertility in earlier generations, there is a bulge of women of childbearing years, more children will be born, though each mother is having fewer children. There will be more, smaller families. Assuming fertility falls at current rates, says the UN, the world’s population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, at which point it will stabilise (see chart 1).
Behind this is a staggering fertility decline. In the 1970s only 24 countries had fertility rates of 2.1 or less, all of them rich. Now there are over 70 such countries, and in every continent, including Africa. Between 1950 and 2000 the average fertility rate in developing countries fell by half from six to three—three fewer children in each family in just 50 years. Over the same period, Europe went from the peak of the baby boom to the depth of the baby bust and its fertility also fell by almost half, from 2.65 to 1.42—but that was a decline of only 1.23 children. The fall in developing countries now is closer to what happened in Europe during 19th- and early 20th-century industrialisation. But what took place in Britain over 130 years (1800-1930) took place in South Korea over just 20 (1965-85).
Things are moving even faster today. Fertility has dropped further in every South-East Asian country (except the Philippines) than it did in Japan. The rate in Bangladesh fell by half from six to three in only 20 years (1980 to 2000). The same decline took place in Mauritius in just ten (1963-73). Most sensational of all is the story from Iran.
When the clerical regime took over in 1979, the mullahs, apparently believing their flock should go forth and multiply, abolished the country’s family-planning system. Fertility rose, reaching seven in 1984. Yet by the 2006 census the average fertility rate had fallen to a mere 1.9, and just 1.5 in Tehran. From fertility that is almost as high as one can get to below replacement level in 22 years: social change can hardly happen faster. No wonder the explosion on the streets of Iran this year seemed like a clash between two worlds: 15-29 year-olds, one-third of the population, better educated and with different expectations, against the established regime and the traditionalists.
Why has fertility fallen so fast, so widely? Malthus himself thought richer people would have more children and, as any biologist will tell you, animal populations increase when there is more food around.
To understand why wealthy people differ from well-fed animals, imagine yourself a dirt-poor (male) peasant 50 years ago. Your fields are in the middle of nowhere. Your village has no school, hospital or government services, certainly no pensions. Few goods come into it from outside, though disease is rampant and security fragile. Ploughing and reaping are done by hand. But if the harvest is normal, you usually have enough to go round. In these circumstances, the benefit of an extra pair of hands to gather the harvest outweighs the cost of feeding an extra mouth (which anyway falls on your wife more than you). And when you can no longer work in the fields, your children will be the only ones to look after you. In such a society, all the incentives point to having large families.
The abandoned hamlet
Now imagine you are a bit richer. You may have moved to a town, or your village may have grown. Schools, markets and factories are within reach. And suddenly, the incentives change. A tractor can gather the harvest better than children. Your wife may get a factory job—and now her lost wages must be set against the benefits of another baby. Education, thrift and a stake in the future become more important, and these middle-class virtues go hand in hand with smaller families. Education costs money, so you may not be able to afford a large family. Perhaps the state provides a pension and you no longer need children to look after you. And perhaps your wife is no longer willing to bear endless offspring. Higher living standards, better communications and more education enable you to rely on markets and public services, not just yourself and your family.
Macroeconomic research bears out this picture. Fertility starts to drop at an annual income per person of $1,000-2,000 and falls until it hits the replacement level at an income per head of $4,000-10,000 a year (see chart 2). This roughly tracks the passage from poverty to middle-income status and from an agrarian society to a modern one. Thereafter fertility continues at or below replacement until, for some, it turns up again (see article).
The link between living standards and fertility exists within countries, too. India’s poorest state, Bihar, has a fertility rate of 4; richer Tamil Nadu and Kerala have rates below 2. Shanghai has had a fertility rate of less than 1.7 since 1975; in Guizhou, China’s poorest province, the rate is 2.2. So strong is the link between wealth and fertility that the few countries where fertility is not falling are those torn apart by war, such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where living standards have not risen.
Family research adds detail to this sketch. Indonesia’s Family Life Survey showed that, on average, each birth reduced by a fifth the likelihood that a woman would have a job—lowering household income and pushing some families into poverty. So smaller families made middle-class status more likely. Between 1974 and 1996, Bangladesh turned a district called Matlab into a giant demographic experiment: some villages and households got family planning, others did not. According to one study of the results, fertility in the areas that received help declined by around 15% more than in those that did not. And over the two decades of the experiment, indicators of the well-being of women and their children—health, earnings, household assets and so on—were all higher in the villages that got the planning. Does this suggest that lower fertility causes wealth, or that wealth lowers fertility? It would be better to say that the two things go together.
What parents want
The link between wealth and fertility does not explain everything. In some countries, poor women have the same number of children as rich ones. This suggests that other factors are at work. The most obvious is that many people in poor countries want fewer children, and family planning helps them get their wish.
A surprising amount is known about how many children parents want, thanks to a series of surveys by the Demographic and Health Surveys programme. The picture it paints is of huge numbers of unplanned pregnancies. In Brazil, for example, the wanted fertility rate in 1996 (the most recent year available) was 1.8; the actual fertility rate then was 2.5. In India the wanted rate in 2006 was 1.9, the actual one, 2.7. In Ghana the figures for 2003 were 3.7 and 4.4. The rule seems to be that women want one child fewer than they are having (except in some rich countries, where they say they want more).
One study in 2002 estimated that as many as a quarter of all pregnancies in developing countries in the 1990s were unintended. Yet another found that more African women say they want to use contraceptives but cannot get them (25m) than actually use them (18m). Unmet demand in turn implies that fertility in some countries could be even lower than it actually is if more family planning were available. The proportion of women using contraception in Latin America and East Asia is four times the African rate.
That points to another big reason why fertility is falling: the spread of female education. Go back to the countries where fertility has fallen fastest and you will find remarkable literacy programmes. As early as 1962, for example, 80% of young women in Mauritius could read and write. In Iran in 1976, only 10% of rural women aged 20 to 24 were literate. Now that share is 91%, and Iran not only has one of the best-educated populations in the Middle East but the one in which men and women have the most equal educational chances. Iranian girls aged 15-19 have roughly the same number of years of schooling as boys do. Educated women are more likely to go out to work, more likely to demand contraception and less likely to want large families.
Lastly, a special case: China’s one-child policy, which began nationwide in the early 1970s. China’s population is probably 300m-400m lower now than it would have been without it. The policy (which is one of population control, not birth control) has had dreadful costs, including widespread female infanticide, a lopsided sex ratio and horrors such as mass sterilisation and forced abortions. But in its own terms, it has worked—20m people enter the workforce each year, instead of 40m—and, to the extent that China is polluting less than it would have done, it has benefited the rest of the world.
The Goldilocks moment
Higher standards of living, then, reduce fertility. And lower fertility improves living standards. This is what China’s government says. It is also the view that has emerged from demographic research over the past 20 years.* In the 1980s, population was regarded as relatively unimportant to economic performance. American delegates told a UN conference in 1984 that “population growth is, in and of itself, neither good nor bad; it is a neutral phenomenon.” Recent research suggests otherwise.
Cutting the fertility rate from six to two can help an economy in several ways. First, as fertility falls it changes the structure of the population, increasing the size of the workforce relative to the numbers of children and old people. When fertility is high and a country is young (median age below 20), there are huge numbers of children and the overall dependency ratio is high. When a country is ageing (median age above 40), it again has a high dependency ratio, this time because of old people.
But the switch from one to the other produces a Goldilocks generation. Because fertility is falling, there are relatively few children. Because of high mortality earlier, there are relatively few grandparents. Instead, countries have a bulge of working-age adults. This happened to Europe after the baby boom of 1945-65 and produced les trente glorieuses (30 years of growth). It is happening now in Asia and Latin America. East Asia has done better than Latin America, showing that lower fertility alone does not determine economic success. Eventually developing countries will face the same problems of ageing as Europe and Japan do. But for the moment, Asians and Latinos are enjoying fertility that is neither too hot, nor too cold. According to David Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health, the “demographic dividend” (his term) accounted for a third of East Asian growth in 1965-90.
Slowing fertility has other benefits. By making it easier for women to work, it boosts the size of the labour force. Because there are fewer dependent children and old people, households have more money left for savings, which can be ploughed into investment. Chinese household savings (obviously influenced by many things, not just demography) reached almost 25% of GDP in 2008, helping to finance investment of an unprecedented 40% of GDP. This in turn accounted for practically all the increase in Chinese GDP in the first half of this year.
Lastly, low fertility makes possible a more rapid accumulation of capital per head. To see how, think about what happens to a farm as it is handed down the generations in a country without primogeniture. The more children there are, the more the farm is divided. Eventually, these patches become so tiny they cease to be efficient. This is occurring in Bangladesh.
The importance of tackling such problems, which go by the ugly name of “capital shallowing”, was discounted in the 1980s but has recently made a comeback. Hu Angang of Tsinghua University estimates that half of Chinese growth per person in 1978-98 can be attributed to the increase in capital stock per head.
This link between growth and fertility raises awkward questions. In the 1980s the link was downplayed in reaction to Malthusian alarms of the 1970s, when it was fashionable to argue that population growth had to be reined in because oil and natural resources were running short. So if population does matter after all, does that mean the Malthusians were right?
Not entirely. Neo-Malthusians think the world has too many people. But for most countries, the population questions that matter most are either: do we have enough people to support an ageing society? Or: how can we take advantage of having just the right number for economic growth? It is fair to say that these perceptions are not mutually exclusive. The world might indeed have the right numbers to boost growth and still have too many for the environment. The right response to that, though, would be to curb pollution and try to alter the pattern of growth to make it less resource-intensive, rather than to control population directly.
The reason is that widening replacement-level fertility means population growth is slowing down anyway. A further reduction of fertility would be possible if family planning were spread to the parts of the world which do not yet have it (notably Africa). But that would only reduce the growth in the world’s numbers from 9.2 billion in 2050 to, say, 8.5 billion. To go further would probably require draconian measures, such as sterilisation or one-child policies.
The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Dec 11, 2009 - 02:14pm PT
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The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.
Not in the demographic populations that matter!
My mother-in-law established a nation-wide family planning system in
Zaire in the 70's. Do you thing that even exists now?
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2009 - 02:22pm PT
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Just to save everyone the trouble of thinking, writing, posting, reading, digging in, posting, reading, becoming shrill, posting, etc, I have included the comments to made to the Econmist website when the article was published.
AB3Vv9RywD wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 12:32 GMT
I can't believe what I read in that article. Was the editor being intentionally obtuse? Is he totally unaware of the demographic tragedy about to overtake Europe?
There is no country in Europe today that has a replacement level of 2.00, which is required to maintain a culture, or a civilization. Once a nation hits 1.9 or below, the downward spiral becomes almost unstoppable.
In fifty years the indigenous populations of Europe will have almost vanished. Europe, most notably the UK, will be nothing but outposts in an ever expanding Muslim sphere of influence. Eurabia, if you will. The intellectual and political classes of Britain are making the obvious attempt to avoid this reality, but the tsunammi is coming.
What the writer fails to understand is that capitalism is the result of Western culture...its freedom, its creativity, its respect for the individual, and dare I say it?..its Christianity.
Wow. You guys are so obviously done, you could stick a fork in you.
D.Gunz wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 2:40 GMT
Kroneborge/
Is there any source or mathematical methods used in calculating your ambitious claim that the planet earth can only sustain 1-3 billion middle-class citizens?
For your information, the planet does already support far more than a billion middle-class citizens. Take the western world, add Korea, Japan and Taiwan to that, and take a bit from each of the developing countries - the sum is definitely A LOT more than a billion and probably inches closer to 2 billion.
And if those numbers continue to go up? What of it? Malthusians, while prudent, always fail to take account of the ingenuity of the human race and the bountifulness of the planet Earth. The push for renewable energy should be a cause for hope. We also recycle more and more. Perhaps space exploration will become handier. And even on Earth we did not even scratch the surface, literally.
idunnAeon wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 7:10 GMT
Color me a Malthusian. While a welcome trend that birth rates are falling closer to a sustainable 2.1 children per couple, it does not negate the fact that this world's human population may very well exceed 9 billion souls by 2050. That would be about 7 billion more than this planet can accommodate in a reasonable fashion. So while as a group we might be slowly going in the right direction, possibly, not nearly as fast as our demands on this planet's finite resources are expanding.
China is a good case in point. Even with decades of a near draconian family planning program, a nation of some 1.3 billion people is still grossly overpopulated. All the more in the context of a rapidly developing economy and standards of living which exponentially increase the amount of oil and all other resources they will consume.
The common dictum is that if everyone in this world lived by the standards of the American middle class it would take 6 (six) planet Earths to supply them enough resources. In oil alone, America, with about 4% of the Earth's population, consumes 25% of its oil. This when China is demanding more and more, and with the advent of Peak Oil there will actually be less and less. This same principle might be extended to most anything else we use or abuse. Only 10% of large fish remain in the world's oceans, with many local fisheries having entirely collapsed from over fishing. 85% of the forest on Madagascar has been wantonly cut down; I forget how many acres of rainforest Brazil loses every day. The fact is that whether one is talking about copper, or wheat, or water that each can be defined in finite terms, as in just so much and no more.
We at last have to live within our means. That means within the natural capacity of this planet, in best practice in conjunction with her. That has been anything but business-as-usual to date, but if we do not change our ways we will learn to our regret that Mother Nature has only so much tolerance.
It is true that rapidly dwindling populations make a demographic nightmare for economists and those trying to rationalize pension schemes and good deal else. But the reverse is nearly as true, if not more so, evident in a rapidly changing climate we are directly responsible for, which will have a direct and very bad consequence for all living things on this planet by 2100, and indeed before. Indeed, now. Just how many forests and coral reefs have to die, or entire species go extinct, before we really pay attention? For in the end it will be us as well. It already is if one were to ask the 3 billion or so people extant who live on $2 per day; I don't see too many large SUVs in their future. Or perhaps anyone else's if we continue to act like we can do what we want with impunity forever without consequences.
What a marvelous place we live within. A wonderful home, and virtual cornucopia to meet nearly any want or whim. But within measure. Within balance.
Kroneborge wrote:
Oct 29th 2009 5:29 GMT
How are you going to possibly change resource use enough to allow 9 billion people to live a middle class lifestyle???
Will technology make things more efficient, sure. But resource use still increases dramitically as your lifestyle goes up. Most likely the number of people the earth can support sustinably at a nice standard of living, is between 1-3 billion, and well short of 6-9.
the last aurelius wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 7:57 GMT
This seems like a rather nihilistic opinion piece than an actual news article. Is the point of humanity to simply exist until an asteroid wipes us out or until the sun burns out? Why must our grandchildren and their descendants on be content with only earth? I am sorry but we need population pressure in order to expand and go forth. There is an entire universe out there, why be imprisoned in our cradle?
lockewasright wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 7:50 GMT
The subtitle to this article shows a tremendous bias. I guess by this standard Russia should be exuberant. Their best days are yet to come? This conficted article correctly identifies periods of significant growth that correlate to significant INCREASES in population.
If the world has too many people, maybe the Malthusian crowd could lead by example and reduce their own numbers. Instead, they want to impose their selfish, discredited theory on poor people the world over. How many more examples do we need that misguided government interventions are the real problem? Many observers may think Zimbabwe an unsustainably overpopulated state, since they depend on sundry forms of foreign aid. How is it that they used to be a major exporter of food, with a relatively high standard of living? There are fewer people there now, and it is a train wreck because of failed policies and corruption.
generated3421911 wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 7:06 GMT
"...population growth is slowing down anyway. ...if family planning were spread to the parts of the world which do not yet have it (notably Africa)... that would only reduce the growth in the world’s numbers from 9.2 billion in 2050 to, say, 8.5 billion. To go further would probably require draconian measures..."
Wow, a totally unfounded assumption. Countries as different as Iran and Thailand have used programs consisting of spreading family planning, education for girls, and media strategies to bring fertility rates down from levels around 6 or 7 to sub-replacement levels below 2.0. These are not wealthy countries. With a little monetary help from the first world, there is no telling how low fertility rates might drop in response to a large push to spread such programs. Italy, Spain, and other countries are down around 1.3, and the results from Thailand, Iran, Mexico, and other countries suggest the whole world could go that low and probably lower in a surprisingly short time.
renokid wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 7:59 GMT
I thought this was a well written, well thought out article. There was a different approach to the same issue a year or two ago in this magazine that suggested that dramatic drops in fertility are going to cause extreme economic pressures in China and European countries first, and England and the US next to support an aging population. The article suggested that since the pressure would be worse in China, and less in the US, that the US would maintain it's "super power status" and severly limit China's ability to do so. The premise here was that the cost of caring for our elderly (health care) and mainting power (military) are the great expenditures, and the balance of spending may not change as much for the US as it will in China and Europe.
My primary concern with this analysis, and reinforced by this article, is that China, other countries including the US, will sacrifice care for our elderly. This article seemed to go to extreme length to bring this subject up only superficially in the 3rd to last paragraph making me wonder if the author thinks such sacrifice would be just.
I am not personally convinced that 1 person with a better life style makes a better world than 2 who have to fight for resources. I am not convinced because it would suggest holding back care from our elderly, so that they die sooner, will make the world better in the long run. Life has intrinsic value that is not being measured or accounted for. Celebration of richness may be the coming trend, but it will be by a different people. I would not be surprised if the latch key kid who never had to share a toy struggles more with finding spiritual happiness and strength than the impoverished child in the favella who knows the value of hard work, sheer luck and a delicious meal. Spiritual here, meaning what it has always meant, a connectedness to life!
The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 3:09 GMT
I do not share the author's glee when it comes to falling population. It is not a coincidence that a robust pool of young men and women coincided with rapid growth (not just economic, scientific and technological as well) in Europe and the USA after the second world war, as well as in parts of East Asia.
In my view, technological and scientific progress is mainly a consequence of energetic, ambitious and inquisitive young men. Now that the number of young in the population is set to plummet, we can expect this progress to slow or even decline, not only because there are fewer young people, but also because they will be burdened by a larger number of the aged. This burden may also concievably put the few young that remain off reproduction, further exacerbating the cycle.
More insidiously, some parts of the world that have dutifully shrunk their numbers and are right next door to alien cultures with burgeoning populations (take a bow, Europe), are at risk of being overrun and turned into minorities in their own land. If you think this is fanciful, look at the example of the Byzantine Empire, now wiped off the map by the Turks.
I wish all Malthusians a long life to get to see their utopia in person.
Xo7ZmDzYK5 wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 9:58 GMT
This article is positive. But it ignored the < 2.1 birth rate problems of many european countries, russia, and japan. I don't want a world where Germany, Russia, and Japan dissapear or have to be populated by immigrants. Those countries should work to get their birth rates up.
Deebles wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 3:30 GMT
Congratulations to the Economist for a very well-balanced argument regarding the state of play on this very touchy issue.
To various other bodies of opinion on this forum, I'd like to say this:
 To those fearing a massive population-driven cultural shift, have you considered that the fertility rate is dropping in the Islamic world as well? This was nicely lampshaded by the examples of Bangladesh and Iran.
To those with (related) concerns that people of european origin are dying out, have you considered that the fertility trends have been upwards in such populations (while still not looking like going over 2.1 any time soon) in recent years?
To those arguing that we need population pressure to drive us to escape our Earthly gravity well: how much? Seriously, 9 billion-odd people is going to be pretty pressured already, surely. And with both India and China likely to wish to eclipse the superpowers of the 20th century, alongside existing competition between the USA, the EU, and Russia, a three, four or even five-way contest to such feats as a station on the moon hardly seems unreasonable in the next few decades. Also, the more of us there are, the less resources we'll be able to devote to this.
To those arguing that we need population pressure to give us the suffering requisite for spiritual development... wow. I suppose we should starve our kids and beat them too? Yes, there are differences to being one of only 1-3 children (the typical range around which you'd end up with a replacement fertility rate), as opposed to being one of 4-10. But plenty of these are good - kids benefit from extra attention, and, in more resource-limited settings, better access to basic nutrition and education and less pressure to raise money early to support the family.
To those believing that high-fertility countries are going to overwhelm low-fertility countries: history would disagree with you. The European powers did not have a high fertility at the time of their ascendancy; and today, the countries with a very high fertility rate tend also to be among the ones with the most problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_fertility_rate);.
To all those predicting population disaster: Why not give some money to charities providing family planning to try and change this a little?
To those wanting to read more: I recommend this document, particularly parts 1 and 2 http://www.unfpa.org/publications/detail.cfm?ID=138
Sorry if I went off on a bit of a rant or five there...
generated3422001 wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 8:01 GMT
When the world population was 2.5 Billion, I chose not to have children. Back then we had articles like this one. And they were just as much folly.
generated3422039 wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 8:40 GMT
Go forth and Multiply Less was well done! The UN Population Division says that 200 million women worldwide lack access to modern methods of contraception. If family planning were universally available as promised in human rights documents, and in the Millennium Development Goals, there would be less mutiplying and less misery. If you look up www.un.org/millenniumgoals and click on number 5 about Maternal Health you will see under Target 2 this observation: "An unmet need for family planning undermines the achievement of several other goals." Amen to that! I am co-founder of 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund. When President Bush refused to release $34 million in 2002, we started asking 34 million Americans for one dollar. Please see www.34millionfriends.org. This grassroots movement has saved women's lives in childbirth and offered the family planning which empowers women to make choices for their lives and to contribute economically to their families. 34 Million Friends is a wonderful message to the world from the American people. Cheers, Jane Roberts
fwang wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 10:38 GMT
Congratulations to Economist for highlighting this most important social change in human history -- falling fertility rate. At the same time I am also dismayed with the sloppy work on the part of China. First of all, the writers do not seem to be aware of the fact China's fertility dropped to below the replacement level nearly two decades ago. Second, and more importantly, the report repeats the popular myth that China's low fertility is due to the one-child policy. There are numerous studies and reports showing this is not the case. Doing so, though unintentionally, repeats the image that somehow the rapid economic growth and changes in Chinese economic and social systems would not have had any effect on reproductive behavior there. Third and the most inexcusable, is that the report mistakenly dates the one child policy to the early 1970s when it was actually the end of the 1970s, when most of China's fertility decline had completed. And the report repeats the claim that the one-child policy led to 300-400 million fewer births, when most of China's fertility decline took place prior to the one-child policy. Repeating such myth without careful checking only adds to the government's claim that the one-child policy has done good for China and for the world, and should not be abandoned.
ruletheworld wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 3:09 GMT
This is very good, but is still short term. You have mentioned how some cities/countries have a fertility ratio of less than 2.1. This will cause the problems that Japan is facing currently - too many old people to take care of and too few young ones to run the economy.
The problem with births is that its full effects appear only after a very long time, by which time it is too late to do anything anyway. Consider also the change in demographics through population control - if there are too many old people who need help, then naturally the country will look for cheaper labor to take care of them through immigration. This of course has a very profound effect on the demographics of the region, not necessarily in the positive direction.
Son of Max wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 11:03 GMT
The future belongs to those who sustain high fertility rates,
As the old world decides slowly to suicide, others will take their place. Nature abhors a vacuum.
spinlooproll wrote:
Oct 29th 2009 7:53 GMT
Insightful article on the subject.
As usual, the 'answer' (to anything really) is to manage trade off. Balancing resource use and economic growth and prosperity is a great challenge and one that will occupy us for a long time to come. Population control is ONE of the tools, as the author rightly points out.
@Kroneborge: I agree and I think the author does as well. No one solution is the silver bullet. Managing population and using technology to mitigate environmental impact are the two biggest tools available to us and they must be used in concert to achieve sustainable long term growth for the human race.
Innominata wrote:
Oct 29th 2009 7:56 GMT
'Nice' standard of living is a subjective term that changes every generation. Technological innovation and uptake often exceed the rate of population growth by very wide margins (think cell phones in Africa instead of bulky landlines), so don't worry about efficiency keeping up. It's not pop growth that kills the environment, it's bad political management and growth-destroying policies.
Well-balanced intention wrote:
Oct 30th 2009 9:30 GMT
Would be truly interesting to get an estimate of how much additional dedicated aid it would take to supply all (or almost all) the 25m African women lacking contraception with this tool. For the rich world the "Net Present Value" of such an effort would probably be very positive...
...both in increased value of life for the African population, for global environment and in less need for aid in the future.
sustainable wrote:
Oct 31st 2009 11:39 GMT
Pregnancy and childbirth are extremely difficult for human women. Our babies' heads have gotten so large that delivery is a risky endeavour for both the mother and baby.
This article states that people intentionally have the number of children needed for either farm living or for city living, which, I believe, is rarely the case. People have children because they have sex. People are going to have sex even if they have no desire to have children.
The birth rate is declining due to women's access to birth prevention methods. Allow every woman on the planet free and easy access to contraceptives, and the "level" at which the population ceases to increase will happen next year.
Given a choice, women will not have babies until they die or become disabled from pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing.
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cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
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Dec 11, 2009 - 02:44pm PT
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Interesting article for sure, and it was the first I'd heard of it. I feel the need to talk to some population specialists to see what they really think.
It gives me hope, actually...
But we still have a problem - people like ME consume way too much and as a result are responsible for most of the environmental problems. If everyone in the world lived like I do, we're in big trouble. Which is why I think we need to be leaders in generating clean energy, not polluting, conserving water, growing food responsibly, etc.
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zeta
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Dec 11, 2009 - 03:33pm PT
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I do research on family planning and fertility in north-west India. To me, this Economist article is not saying anything that demographers don’t already know…fertility rates have been falling in almost every country since the 1970s (DHS surveys, UN data has showed this) and this is almost entirely due to the establishment of family planning programs and policies. But policies, in and of themselves, do not make a huge difference, unless fertility preferences change.
In Ladakh, India, the preference for smaller families (most women want 2 children) is linked not only to education but also to a number of other factors—the increasing cost of raising larger families, the rural-urban migration (less children to help out with agricultural work); and the increasing unemployment in Indian cities. Son preference is still a factor in many parts of India but it’s not nearly as important as it was just one generation ago. Similarly, women of all 3 religions that I work with (Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu) still prefer and like family planning, despite religious pronatalist pressure to produce more children.
In hundreds of interviews, women would say to me that they wanted fewer children because they wanted to control their reproductive futures and they had memories of growing up in families where their mothers had 8-10 pregnancies, with only a handful of children surviving. These women are grateful for the biomedical healthcare available, willing to travel days to be able to have a hospital delivery, where the baby will most likely survive. A final reason these women wanted fewer children is due to the family structure changing—in the past, with large extended households, childcare was shared by all in the family. Now, women talk of how hard childcare is, as more people are living in a nuclear family, without the larger family support nearby to help them. To me, this echoes many of the comments I hear from women in the US, who talk of the difficulty of raising children here because of the cost (daycare, schools, babysitters) and the lack of family support nearby.
I don’t agree with the statement “higher standards of living, then, reduce fertility. And lower fertility improves living standards.” I think that statement is oversimplistic and overlooks women’s actual desires to control and manage their own fertility. The area where I work in northwest India is poor, yet the TFR (total fertility rate) is the 2nd lowest in India. The reason Bihar has such a high fertility is not solely because of poverty—it’s also due to the fact that the state is notoriously corrupt/violent and has invested very little in family planning services. Kerala and Tamil Nadu, by contrast, not only have the highest literacy rates in India, but have also invested a lot in reproductive healthcare. It’s simplistic to reduce fertility preferences solely to economics.
What’s often missing in these discussions is a real awareness of how much access there is to family planning and other reproductive health services (contraceptive availability, abortion, pre and post natal care, rural midwives, etc.). Either people assume that countries in the developing world don’t have family planning (which is clearly not the case!) or they assume that it’s available equally within the country (also not the case, as India’s family planning access differs substantially region to region).
Neo-Malthusians, from my perspective, have been repeating the same message for decades, without being attentive to the specific changes happening throughout the world regarding fertility. It’s easy to take a position that blames overpopulation on 3rd world women, but it overlooks a number of things—the distribution of resources, disparities between developed and developing world, inequities between different populations (how the state/religious groups will encourage certain groups to reproduce while others are subjected/targeted to draconian population policies), and the impact of migration and conflict/war on fertility preferences.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 11, 2009 - 03:38pm PT
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Peak Oink
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 11, 2009 - 05:24pm PT
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Cleo has pretty much pegged it. Population will take a while to reach a peak, before it (perhaps) starts to decline. In the meantime, we'll use a lot of resources. Perhaps we can hurry that transition a bit, in terms of economic and social influences. But we can all choose to consume less, especially us developed countries piggies - even if it isn't forced on us, e.g. by oil prices finally rising in real terms.
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okie
Trad climber
San Leandro, Ca
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Dec 11, 2009 - 08:28pm PT
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Encouraging news for those who have chosen to carry on their family name. Perhaps your grandchildren will have plenty of nourishing soy gruel (soylent green?) and won't have to fight in the Great World Water Wars.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Dec 11, 2009 - 08:37pm PT
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hey t here roger, say, thanks for the post... say, it is far too overwhelming for me to understand fully, but i have at least took a glean...
wow, well---main thing i can at least say, is for folks to love and care for their families, and hug the ones they have... :)
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2009 - 11:18pm PT
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Hi Neebee,
At a personal level it remains simple: a smile and a hug. Happy holidays.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 12, 2009 - 12:20am PT
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We are able to sustain the billions on the Earth through the use of fossil fuels.
We better get our water and energy act together before the oil runs out or even staying even with population won't be good enough
peace
Karl
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
Will know soon
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Dec 12, 2009 - 12:56am PT
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Hi Roger, I'm with Neebee. Wishing you and your family a Joyous and Blessed Holiday Season.
PS, I realize the great importance of all said. Do my best for the planet and pray much. So many unexpected variables can occur at any time. I understand the need to gather information, plan and predict....but the x factor always looms unseen behind the fog of life on this planet.
Thanks for all your support during the past almost two years. lynnie is in Belgium right now and doing pretty well. Peace Always !
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