There has long been an ongoing debate about whether a large population of a country or a large global population is a problem or an asset in attaining economic growth and development. More recently, the human population has been blamed as a key reason for the climate crisis by its proponents.
Globally, birth rates have been declining steadily for many decades; the total fertility rate now averages 2.4 children per woman, although high rates of fertility persist in many regions throughout the world. The replacement fertility rate is 2.1, which would maintain the current population number – provided a low child mortality rate.
By 2017, more than half of the world’s couples were producing fewer than 2.1 babies per mother. In the United States, it’s 1.8. In China and the United Kingdom, it’s 1.7. In Canada and Poland, it’s 1.5. In Hong Kong, Japan, and Spain, it’s 1.4. In Italy, Greece, and Portugal, it’s 1.3. In South Korea, it’s 1.1. The only reason population in the US, Canada and Australia is not falling is due to continuing immigration.
Prof B. Hartmann from Hampshire College explains that “the main reason the world population will likely grow by 2 to 3 billion more people before it stabilizes is that a large portion of the population in the Global South is young and approaching child-bearing age. Over time, this ‘demographic momentum’ will peter out as the present large generation of young people gets older and birth rates continue to decline worldwide.”
The fertility rate has to be seen in the context of the prevailing death rate. Where the death rate is high and the expected average length of life is low, the population growth rate will be lower despite a high fertility rate. If current trends continue unabated, sub-Saharan Africa will go from 1 billion people to 3 billion, but that assumes that the population continues to grow linearly by the present rate. This expectation however, may be unrealistic, and death rates have a tendency to decrease as development outcomes improve.
In 2020, Lancet, the medical science journal, published a massive study, giving population scenarios in 195 countries. According to their forecast, the global population will peak in 2064 at 9.79 billion, and gradually decline to 8.79 billion by 2100. By then, the fertility rate will have dropped to only 1.66 globally. The study estimates that the global population will likely peak below the carrying capacity.
Many countries are now investing in controlling falling birth rates to overcome a shortage of workers. For instance, Japan and Russia are struggling to give incentives for population growth.
The average consumption per person in Britain is 25 times what the average consumption per person is in many developing countries, according to Prof M. Connally at Columbia University. The per capita energy consumption in the US is 30 times what it is in many developing countries.
Statistics from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization show that from 1961 to 2002, the available food supply per person went up by 24.4%. Similarly, recent and past reports of the high-level panel of experts on Food Security and Nutrition, and also the UNDP, explain that there is enough food and water to go around (L. Mehta). The largest increase in food production was observed in developing countries, particularly in India and China (Sen, 1998),
In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, P Ehrlich popularised Malthus’s ideas of impending doom by a growing population and a scarcity of resources – Ehrlich predicted that by the 1980s, famines would be commonplace and global death rates would rise. But like Malthus’ own predictions in the 1800s, this prediction also proved wrong - death rates continue to drop and globally average calorie consumption has increased.
From 1980 to 2020, J Simon’s Abundance Index, which calculates the ratio of the price of basic commodities and hourly wages – how much people can buy, rose many times over, showing a much-enhanced purchasing power.
“In most developed countries, greenhouse gas emissions per person peaked in the 1970s and where population growth has been low, as in Europe, total emissions have since declined. However, this direct decline in emissions in rich countries is deceptive. Higher impacts per affluent person accentuate the impact of any population increase and the benefits of a population decrease. Moreover, increasing trade means that rich countries consume goods made in other countries, with the emissions associated with making those products assigned to the producing country”, according to Prof. I. Lowe at the Griffith University in Australia.
The top ten economies (by PPP. not nominal GDP) of the world show that a large population is not at all necessarily an economic disadvantage.
In population literature, carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of organisms that an ecosystem can sustain indefinitely.
What is the carrying capacity of the earth for humans? There is disagreement among scientists on how to calculate that, and estimates vary dramatically. Generally, estimates lie anywhere between 4 billion humans and 16 billion on the higher end. But some pessimists think it’s just 2 billion, and some optimists think it could go as high as 100 billion. Therefore, there is such fundamental disagreement on the method that estimates have no credence.
As discussed above, in the West and most parts of the developed world, the population has been declining for the last few decades. During this century, exponential population growth is projected, primarily in Africa. The continent’s population growth is a result of demographic transition: mortality rates are decreasing faster than birth rates, partly due to new medical solutions that help fight infections.
There is nothing unusual or exclusive about Africa’s demographic transition. For example, in Europe, this transition occurred in the second half of the 19th century, when the population of Europe grew from 224 million in 1820 to 498 million in 1913. At the end of the process, both rates are lower, leading to a population that is stable or shrinking.
In parts of Africa, censuses are conducted rarely and selectively, so the actual population growth rate may be slightly lower than reported. Secondly, the growth rate cannot be endlessly extrapolated at the same rate, it varies dynamically due to many factors.
Since the population in the West has already been in a decline since the 1970s, population alarmists by implication mean that the population in Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America needs to be reduced significantly to stop what they see as overconsumption and degradation of natural resources and to alleviate the climate crisis.
But the stark reality is that the West and developed countries consume 20 to 30 times more per person than is consumed by people in developing countries. And per capita CO2 emissions are far higher in the West, especially when manufacturing facilities based abroad are counted. So, a reduction in the population of the West and developed countries will be 20-30 times more effective per capita, for the purpose. Rationally then, a population reduction ought to be focussed on the West and in the high-income economies rather than on very low-consuming African, Asian or Latin American countries. Interestingly, the population alarmist Activists often receive funding and training for their activities from the West.
Alarmists about population growth commonly begin with an acknowledgement that it is the combination of such growth and increased consumption that is responsible for what they fear is catastrophic environmental decline. As Prof R. Fletcher at the Wageningen University in Netherlands) puts it, “yet in so doing, they frequently shift quite quickly from a brief nod to the latter to sustained focus on the former, contending that while of course it is overconsumption in a few wealthy countries that is the principal source of environmental degradation currently, imagine how much worse the problem would be if all of the world’s poor end up consuming at similar rates as well… And in the process, inequality itself is actually defended in the interest of sustainability”.
People make decisions in light of realities. In countries without social security for the elderly, children and sons are seen as a support in later years. In poor countries, giving birth to more children is a way to potentially increase incomes. In poor rural areas, more offspring meant more people to do the work. In many cultures, girls go to the other family after marriage. So do their grandchildren.
A study by M. Rubio on fertility decline in developed countries, such as Japan, found that it was more of a function of the rising cost of childcare and children’s educational needs and that of women’s emancipation which resulted in delayed marriages and a rise in the number of people preferring to remain single. In affluent countries, children are a significant financial burden, so people often defer childbearing to establish their career and home, then limit births to ensure they can provide well for their children.
“The demographic transition to low fertility occurred in country after country as parents gained confidence that their first few children would live. Then there was no advantage and plenty of disadvantage to having large families,” according to Sterling & Platt at the University of Pennsylvania. In general, many people can agree that family planning is an appropriate response to unwanted fertility, and that a broader development approach is called for to deal with high desired fertility.
Large populations offer the advantage of internal economies of scale and are also a highly lucrative and attractive market for external businesses.
Studies by economics Nobel laureate Simon Kuznets have shown that there is no clear link between population growth and economic growth or poverty. “Kuznets explained that the direct relationship between population and growth or poverty is difficult to establish… any ‘direct causal relation’ between them ‘may be quite limited’… [Others], likewise, reasoned that rapid population growth is the consequence and not the cause of economic and social inequalities. Hence, there is a need to address economic development first and the decline in fertility rates will naturally follow… the problem of shortage is caused principally by the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources among the world’s population rather than the increase in numbers… Antonio, et al.(2004) further argued that the Philippine experience proves that higher population densities do not translate to lower personal incomes… Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea have higher population densities than the Philippines, yet they have higher personal incomes as well,” (Rubio, for SEPO, Philippines).
A population number does not tell us whether it is too much or not. It depends upon so many other things. Large populations offer the advantage of internal economies of scale and are also a highly lucrative and attractive market for external businesses.
Lyla Mehta at the IDS at Sussex University emphasizes that “this fixation with overpopulation diverts attention from more crucial issues… we need to link population debates with issues concerning unequal and skewed patterns of consumption, allocation, and distribution… rather than drawing on simplistic universalizing notions of scarcity…There is currently an explosion of food banks in the UK, and about 8% of the population is food insecure. The UK is the fifth richest country in the world by nominal GDP. Malnutrition and hunger in the UK are not because of overpopulation but instead due to government policies of austerity, cuts, and due to rising poverty, and inequality… the scare of scarcity and overpopulation remains a means of diverting attention away from the causes of poverty and inequality that may implicate the politically powerful.”
Population alarmists’ talking points sometimes make vacuous arguments, for instance, that if the world were to have just 1 billion, people there would be so many available jobs for everyone! That fails to understand that with so many fewer people, the world’s economy would also shrink – there would be a massive drop in available jobs. Another argument not thought through is that with fewer people, the total consumption would proportionally go down. That is quite unlikely, since if there are fewer people and the same resources available, the consumption per person would almost certainly go up, and that is often the aim when planning a small family.
The developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America ought to be clear that a growing population is not a burden, but must be fostered into their greatest asset.
Discussing the relationship of population growth, capacity for food production, and the abundance of African land, Allen Kelly’s paper cites Nikos Alexandratos' (1986) study of 38 countries which concludes that "...a country’s capacity to feed its growing population... depends only weakly on its land endowments per se..." Gale Johnson (1984) is unequivocal on this point: “... there is not the slightest shred of evidence that continued poor performance of food and agriculture in most of Africa is in any way related to resource restraint."
Fletcher summarizes “until this obscene inequity, and the economic system driving it, are adequately addressed, all the attention to population growth in the world will do nothing to halt our environmental and poverty [concerns]… in discussions of sustainability, population growth should be the last issue addressed, while instead, it is increasingly becoming the first, if not primary, problem to be identified.”
The developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America ought to be clear that a growing population is not a burden, but must be fostered into their greatest asset. The rationale for countries is the welfare of their people. The people are nurtured through proper healthcare, education, social protection and by facilitating their economic enterprise. When individuals in a country get the opportunity and are supported in reaching their potential then those countries flourish. States have to live up to their responsibilities for good governance and equal opportunity for all, as they are entrusted to do by citizens. A large population does not cause poverty, but bad governance and bad policies do.