Aspen, CO -- The opening panel at the Aspen Environment Forum was devoted to the grim news that the UN now projects that instead of leveling out at 7 billion people, world population may well keep on climbing to 10 billion. But behind those numbers is a world rapidly spinning off in wildly different directions.
The entire increase of 3 billion will come from a relatively small group of nations that currently have only 18 percent of the world's people -- 1.1 billion. These nations are largely in Africa, but also include Pakistan, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Bolivia among the major contributors. So nations with 1.1 billion people will almost quadruple their numbers by the end of the century. These are, by and large, the poorest, worst-governed, and most resource-deprived countries.
A second group of nations, which includes most of the industrial world except the U.S., plus China, Brazil, Korea, and Bangladesh, are going to have significantly smaller populations -- unless massive in migration makes up for their small family sizes.
And a third group, the U.S. plus India and Indonesia, will end the century more or less as big as they are today.
Each one of these groups of nations will face major demographic and economic challenges -- with the third group (since its age pyramid will change the least) probably facing the smallest stresses.
What's behind this striking divergence? Clearly, looking at the list, it's not religion, nor poverty, nor region.
The panelists had some differences of opinion, and voices in the audience had still other perspectives, largely on the question of how large a factor access to family planning and contraception is.
But, fundamentally, what we have playing out here seems fairly well-documented.
If most children die in childbirth, if women have no access to education or employment outside the home, then people end up having large families. They do so for simple survival -- to make sure some kids make it to adulthood. They do it because children, or at least girls, have as their main value the unskilled labor they can provide and the children they can bear. It doesn't make sense to invest in their education or advancement, because those pathways are closed. And unsurprisingly, if you think about it, women in a family in general want smaller numbers of children because they have the burden of bearing and raising them. So if women have less power in the family, then fertility rises.
But once education and outside employment for women become available, even accepted, pathways out of poverty, families face a choice: Have a smaller family and treat each child as an investment by educating them, or have a large family and forgo economic opportunity. Educated wives bring in income. Wives who bring in income have more say in family decision-making. They opt for still smaller families. All over the globe they are choosing to have fewer children. Investment, not unskilled labor, has become the preferred model for thinking about family size in a huge variety of cultures -- where those opportunities exist.
That explains the disparity between Pakistan/Nigeria and China/Korea. Education is a far more culturally ingrained pattern out of poverty in China and Korea. In large parts of Pakistan and Nigeria, education is simply not available at all.
What about the middle group of nations -- the U.S., India, and the Philippines? Ironically, and this should make Americans squirm, these are countries with partial levels of commitment to education and women's equality. In India, the disparities are largely regional -- India has some states with very low fertility, others with high family sizes. The Philippines has very unequal dissemination of educational opportunity across social classes. In the U.S., the continued prevalence of both a poorly educated underclass and a group of anti-modern, science-skeptical religious communities who reject equal opportunity for women makes us the "least developed" industrial society.
One way to react to the new UN projections is to see them as very bad news -- and a world in which the next three billion people are almost all added to the world's most desperate societies will be a very grim place. But what this study shows is that family preference is not hard-wired -- it's the result of the presence, or absence, of a few simple cultural patterns and investments -- and it shows how important it is to get education and women's opportunity right everywhere -- including here in the somewhat backward United States.
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Robert Walker: Observing World Population Day
John Sauer: New Approaches: A View from Aspen Environment Forum 2011
Census Report: Increase in Asian Population in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill
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Uganda: Nation's Population Growth - Political Dynamite Or a Demographic Dividend?
Surveys of women around the world show that women are giving birth to 30% more babies than they want. When women do not control thier own reproduction, the global growth rate will compound at a rate 30% faster. If you combine that with the US crime rate dropping after Roe v Wade (the biggest correlation for anti social behavior is being born into a family where you are not wanted) that extra 30% is going to add a chaotic/dysfunctional influence on society.
We have the technology, we can solve any problem! Bwahhhhaaahhhh!!! Right.
great contribution: you're cynical and disengaged. ok, we geddit.
What world do you inhabit, that you deform the English language so grievously? I think LoneTree understood far more than you do.
"Nothing new here people, move along!"
What do they say about Aspen? It's one of the fews places where the millionaires are being chased out by the billionaires.
The Sierra Club finds these places amenable.
Do I think we have a potential population problem, yes! Do I like the Sierra Club looking down their collective nose at many of us? Belittling us! Look at how much money per capita Red States give to charity verses the Sierra Club Snobs!
Oh, I understood. Just don't care for the messenger or his tone!
Sc** them!
This also means that many mothers subconsciously reject boys as "other," and do not empathize with them; nor do non-working mothers know how to mentor boys or girls in earning/providing/competing in the job market/working in organizations.
I'd like to see men step up and do more of the unpaid work and the emotional work of parenting, including taking a stand for work/family balance in the corporate world. This would then get men and women out of conflict with each other, make marriages more stable, and enable children to have real childhoods that prepare them well for adulthood. Men and women will then have children only when well-prepared to do so, not out of some misguided effort to get something they needed but didn't get as children, or needed from a spouse and can't get from him/her.
People in rich countries have lots of kids because, well ... they don't have lots of kids, do they?
You've taken yourself out of the real conversation, which is about how much longer mankind has left before overpopulation goes off seven different ways and results in The Slow Armageddon.
Most people walking around on the planet right now don't have a clue what is going to happen with population growth and climate change in the future. Most think oil is the resource that is really going to impact the planet (it is) but clean drinking water is the real issue.
What do you mean - I can go buy it at the local store?
It is going to get very, very ugly.
I think the U.S. should stop giving tax credits for people having kids myself.
First, if anything, every recent study shows that females in the United States are doing better than males in the United States at every grade level, college, and now even in advance degree programs. One can hardly claim that women's education oppurtunities are oppressed in the United States when the results show the exact opposite.
Second, the author's premise relies on the idea that, on average, more educated women have fewer children than less educated women, so a country that doesn't have a falling population must have inequality and a lack of oppurtunity for education in comparison to a country with a falling population. Let's assume that's true. One problem. The population of the United States, unlike 99% of all other countries, is heavily impacted by immigration. Without immigration we would very much fall in line with many countries in Europe. The author's entire premise is faulty. If you bought his theory, at the very least it should compare birth rates of citizens from one country to the next, not population growth.
I could go on and on, but I'm out of room. Needless to say, this article needs some more work.
For example, the United States has an annual net increase due to immigration of 4.31 immigrants per 1000 in population giving the U.S. a signficiantly higher percentage of population increase due to immigration then the European powerhouses like the UK (2.16), Germany (2.19), and France (1.48). Keep in mind that these countries get more immigration than the average European country (many are negative) as these are where the better jobs are and where people immigrat to from the rest of Europe to work. Basically you are looking at immigration per population rates in the U.S. that are basically much more than double than the average European rate.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?t=0
A bit of an overstatement, but none-the-less a concern in these times of wealth disparity and conservative retrenchment. We need to get our priorities straight and recognize that high quality human life is the most important investment that we can make. We must create with care and forethought and nurture with unbreakable determination :-) We must take responsibility for the human race. We can't leave our fate to the whims of chance (or religious speculation).........never have, never will :-)
Just because some religions view men and womens roles in the family and in their church as being different does not mean they are hillbillies and believe women should be uneducated rubes.
You are an simple minded ignorant fool to believe that.
Funny, I don't hear those women who were 'assigned' their roles by religion crowing over how joyous is it quite as loudly as you do. Turn around...the womenfolk ain't enjoying doing the washing up anymore, Buddy.
So basically, we will have tripled our population, but quadrupled (or more) our consumption, mainly due to globalization. Who can argue with a poor country that wants to bring itself out of poverty? The US can hardly be one to throw stones... but it magnifies the real problem we face. If we're consuming double what our planet can sustainable provide, imagine what it'll be like 20 years from now when globalization is in full swing, and population finally starts leveling off.