-Caveat Lector-
Counting down
Fred Pearce
THIS MONTH, somewhere in the world--it could be in a London maternity ward, but more likely in a S�o Paolo favela or a Calcutta slum--the 6-billionth member of the human race will be born. The UN will officially recognise his or her birthday on 12 October.
Only 12 years have passed since we hit the 5-billion mark, so the event has been greeted with portentous warnings of a "population time bomb" and a "demographic disaster". But delve behind the words of the doom-mongers, say some demographers, and you'll find evidence that in the not-too-distant future, the world population may actually start to shrink.
According to this very different picture, the world's population will peak some time in the 21st century, then start falling. So while today's youth are exhorted to have fewer children, their grandchildren may be actively encouraged to go forth and multiply.
"Over the past five years, fertility has declined in all major parts of the world," says one of the heretics, Wolfgang Lutz, head of population research at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. "All changes point to lower population forecasts." And on his most recent forecasts, the upward path of population growth, which has been accelerating ever since the Black Death killed as much as a third of Europe's population in the 14th century, will stall and go into reverse in about 70 years.
The signs of a possible decline in the human population have been building for several years now. In the 1950s, women around the world had 5 children on average. Now women have just 2.7 children each. During the past decade, the annual increase in the head count has fallen from 90 million to 78 million. And in one sector of the population, absolute numbers are falling. In 1990, there were 623 million under-fives. By 1995, there were only 614 million under- fives. It could be the start of a trend that will spread right across the age spectrum.
Demographers had predicted a downturn. But it is happening much faster and more widely than they anticipated. Twice in the past three years, the UN's statisticians have lowered their projections of future populations. On the second occasion, late last year, they postponed by four months the "six-billion day" and reduced their forecast of the world population in 2050 by half a billion, from 9.4 billion to 8.9 billion.
The main reason for these changes is the dramatic fall in fertility rates, particularly in the developing world. Across Africa and Asia, hundreds of millions of people are confounding predictions by reducing family sizes. It used to be said that, without the Draconian imposition of birth control, only countries with rising prosperity and increasingly literate and urban populations could go through what demographers call the demographic transition--the switch to smaller families and stable populations.
But in the 1990s, a number of countries have disproved this. Bangladesh, once in the world's demographic doghouse, has cut its fertility rate from 6.2 children per woman to 3.4 in a decade, thanks to contraception, and despite extreme poverty and illiteracy. Fertility rates in many African countries, though still very high, are falling fast as contraceptive use grows there as well.
Lester Brown, director of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC and author of a new study on world population, Beyond Malthus, is well known for his apocalyptic visions of an overpopulated future. But even he concedes: "Demographers have been surprised again and again by the rapid decline in the number of children couples choose to bear throughout the world."
But there is also a dark side to the population slow-down. In sub- Saharan Africa death rates are rising due to the spread of HIV. In some countries, a quarter of the adult population is infected. Last year, the US Census Bureau calculated life expectancy in Botswana had fallen from 62 years to 40 years, and in Zimbabwe from 61 to 39 (New Scientist, 17 October 1998, p 12). In one of the most eloquent testimonies to the social impact of AIDS in Africa, the UN population agency in Zimbabwe this year limited the number of funerals its staff can attend in work time to one a week.
Says Brown: "Tragically, the world is divided into two parts: one where population growth is slowing as fertility falls, and one where population growth is slowing as mortality rises."
The prognosis for the AIDS pandemic is unclear: in the next twenty years much will depend on how quickly science can supply affordable and effective vaccines to the developing world. However, fertility rates may be more predictable. According to the UN's population division in New York, fertility rates are now below the long-term replacement level of 2.1 in 61 countries, including most of Europe, the Caribbean and eastern Asia, including China. American women have 2 children on average, British women 1.7 and in Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain, the figure is as low as 1.2 children.
Some senior UN demographers think this pattern is unlikely to continue. They say fertility rates will eventually return to higher levels. However, they fail to provide a detailed explanation of why they believe this, although some note that many modern women may simply be postponing having children rather than not having any at all. Based on these assumptions, the UN predicts that some time towards the end of the 21st century, the world's population will stabilise at between 10 or 11 billion.
But Warren Robinson, at the Pennsylvania State University, says: "It requires a leap of faith to assume that replacement-level fertility will be the average procreational goal of all couples in the world for generations to come."
And the UN's own shorter-term predictions seem to cast doubt on the 10 to 11 billion figure. World Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision suggests that 18 countries, including Russia and Japan, will lose more than 15 per cent of their population by 2050. Revisions of these estimates provide further evidence of a population decline. In the space of just two years, Bulgaria's predicted 2050 population was adjusted from 7.8 million to 6.7 million. Its population is currently 8.3 million.
Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund, admitted last week: "No country in history has ever succeeded in raising birth rates over a long period once they have started to decline." Lutz predicts that around 2070, the world's overall population will begin to fall. Many UN demographers quietly agree. And less trumpeted is the UN's low projection (see Graph), the latest of which makes sobering reading. It predicts that the world's population will peak in 2040 at around 7.7 billion people and then go into a long-term decline. By 2100, it could be back below today's figure of six billion and by 2150 the projection is for just 3.6 billion people.
The 20th century gave us a world population explosion. It looks increasingly as if the 21st century may see the beginnings of a population implosion. The most immediate impact of these demographic changes will be an ageing population.
China, with its policy of one-child families adopted in the 1980s, has a head start in the ageing process. Current trends suggest that by 2030, it will have the oldest population of any society anywhere in the world ever. By 2050, the country will have 150 million people over the age of 75.
Already in Europe around one in five of the population is over 60. But the population will get older. Lutz suggests that by the end of the next century, half of Europe's population could be over 60. The economic impact will enormous.
Some futurists think new healthcare technology and creative approaches to leisure will more than make up for these changes. But many fear that such rampant ageing, combined with a decline in the overall population, will sap nations' energy as well as social services, starving businesses of innovative ideas and dynamism, and creating a grey, conformist society. In other words, the decline and fall of the human empire.
From New Scientist, 2 October 1999
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