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Page added on August 1, 2015
Getting It Right on Population
There was a time when we worried about a “population explosion,” with ever more people fighting over ever fewer resources. Yet, the population growth has decreased since the late 1960s and resources have not run out.
There are still population problems, but the two main ones are likely different from what you think.
The UN expects 2.4 billion more people by 2050. But contrary to common knowledge, this is not mostly about couples having lots of babies. Remember, the average woman in the developing world had 5.4 children in the early 1970s, but today that number has dropped to half at 2.7.
Even if every man and woman just had one baby survive, world population would still increase by 1.9 billion by 2050. More children only explain half a billion of the population increase. That we live longer explains another 0.4 billion. But the most important factor – 1.5 billion more by 2050 – is simply because we’re still a young world, where many youngsters are still to have their own family.
This doesn’t mean the half-billion is unimportant. If families have fewer children, they can invest more in their future, giving them much greater earning potential. As countries get more prosperous, their birth rates fall. Mothers have fewer children who are better-educated and themselves have small families.
Increasing prosperity is shared among fewer people. This is what first happened in the Old World during the Industrial Revolution, and the living standards of Europeans rose rapidly. More recently, a number of East Asian countries have gone through a similar transition, none more so than China. The good news is that it could work anywhere, also allowing African countries catching up fast.
The Chinese government slowed the growth of its population by imposing a ‘one-child per family’ rule. This may have been good economically, but was also an infringement of human rights. Fortunately, there are other, less drastic, ways to travel this road, particularly by making modern contraception available to everyone who wants it.
Population is just one key issue on the agenda for the international community at the moment. The problem is that, although everyone agrees that we should be doing everything we can to make poor people’s lives better, prioritizing a particular set of targets is difficult. Governments and NGOs have been working together to agree how best to improve people’s lives in the period to 2030, but there are still literally hundreds of possible targets, all of them stoutly defended by someone.
Having hundreds of priorities is like having none at all. That is why my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, is trying to help focus on the most effective targets, using the tools of economic analysis. Although economics doesn’t provide the entire picture, understanding where we do most good is at least a very good starting point.
Groups of top economists are looking at each of nineteen possible issues and making their recommendations. On the population issue, Hans-Peter Kohler and Jere Behrman from the University of Pennsylvania argue that making modern contraception freely available is a phenomenally good investment. Providing contraception to the 215 million women that today want to avoid pregnancy but can’t, would cost about $3.6 billion. It would annually result in 640,000 fewer newborn deaths, 150,000 fewer maternal deaths and 600,000 fewer children who lose their mother. Estimating this misery in economic terms may seem cold, but it makes it possible to compare contraception to other big challenges. In total, contraception would avoid about $145 billion in human misery. That alone means that every dollar spent will do $40 good.
But experts also estimate that with fewer kids, the parents can afford better schooling, while society benefits from fewer costs from kids and more income from a larger working population. Those benefits total $288 billion per year, making a dollar spent on contraception do $120 worth of good.
But population also means growth in older people and possibly shrinking populations. This is already happening in Europe and Japan, but will also start soon in China and eventually most places. Today, 12% of the world’s population is above 60 years, but in 36 years time, that will almost double to 21%.
Although aging may seem a less pressing problem than global population growth, it is real and has to be tackled. Policies aimed at increasing the birth rate in Europe and elsewhere have not been successful, but there is a better solution: allow more migration. Properly managed, this can benefit the receiving nation (getting more workers), the migrants (getting better pay) and the sending country (getting remittances). In total, it turns out that the benefits are more than forty times the cost.
There are other promising targets, which are more difficult to cost – discouraging early retirement and dependency, for example. But overall, the economists make a powerful argument for why contraception and migration should be prioritized on the list of global targets.
14 Comments on "Getting It Right on Population"
penury on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 1:57 pm
Another PuffHost piece long on dreams short on facts. Why anyone thinks that an “economist” who basically have been wrong about everything for at least the last thirty years should be allowed to pontificate upon “population” is a mystery to me.
Jerry McManus on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 2:06 pm
“Groups of top economists” are looking at it. Well, what a relief, now all our problems our solved!
Only an economist could look at a sprawling slum and see “wasted earning potential”.
The really creepy part, if you take this argument to its logical conclusion then by far the best investment that could be made would be several thousand death camps.
For pennies on the almighty dollar you can march a few hundred million people into the gas chambers each year and “avoid” hundreds of billions of dollars in human misery.
Job well done! Drinks all around to my fellow masters of the universe!
Kenz300 on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 3:01 pm
Food shortages, water shortages, electricity shortages, climate change, species extinction, lack of jobs and employment opportunities, pollution, poverty, suffering and despair…….. yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house, and provide energy and water for every year.
If you can not provide for yourself how can you provide for a child or two or three……. keep cutting that pie into smaller pieces until the whole family starves to death.
dubya on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 3:48 pm
“allow more migration”
Presumably migrants wish to go where the standard of living is higher. At some point populating an ’empty’ country like Australia from a ‘full’ country like Bangladesh will result in a balance of population density and living standard, at which point there will be an equilibrium between Australia & Bangladesh. Thus Sweden, Somalia, The United States & Uruguay, Canada & Cambodia will all contain the maximum possible population.
At this point economists will no longer see globalization as a profit opportunity.
Davy on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 6:31 pm
We are near the cusp of a paradigm shift of a population rebalance in conjunction with a consumption collapse. We will likely be in a dual dynamics of an aging population dying prematurely from lack of medical resources and food and fuel shortages ending population growth.
You can’t grow population without increasing food and fuel. Changing eating behavior is not going to matter. This is about economics at large scales. If you can’t produce and distribute huge quantities food you can’t grow population.
Peak oil and food dynamics are nearby and permanent until we rebalance to 500Mil to 1Bil population. This is the basics of thermodynamic and ecological systems.
The question for us is timing. Timing in regards to the start date and the duration. The degree of impact is another factor. Degree and duration of a population rebalance is critical for survivability of that species.
So many variables involved but the direction appears clear. Growth limits and declining marginal returns to societal development is not a recipe for population growth. All it will take is a second year of a poor global harvest to create conditions for food insecurity, hunger, and famine. We are close and this is irreversible. Population must rebalance.
jjhman on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 9:12 pm
The entire concept of solving social problems by increasing population has to border on insanity unless you consider that bearing children is one of the definitions of being alive.
However we do not live in a linear world. When the human population was small enough to have minimal effect on the ecology and humans were just another species swept up in the majesty of the biosphere increasing numbers meant increasing wealth and an increase in human ability to resist the ravages of nature “red in tooth and claw” as well as things like bubonic plague.
But when humans dominate the ecosphere and become the major threat to it the population thingy has become close to a definition of evil, a cancer.
Fewer people, better educated, should have the wherewhithal to manage an older population much better than any scheme that includes increasing population, either locally or globally.
BC on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 9:53 pm
jjhman, say “Amen”, brother (or sister). 😀
Human ape population went from 0-0.4% for most of the existence of our species until the fossil fuel-induced Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, culminating in a log-periodic, super-exponential acceleration of population growth reaching a compounding doubling time of ~35 years in the 1960s-70s.
We are f&$king the species to unprecedented scale of pi$$ing and $hiting in our planetary nest and creating the conditions for mass die-off this century, i.e., the “anti-bubble” trajectory of the super-exponential population bubble blowoff trajectory in the 1950s-70s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOV8mBjHHYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLVrtfQ6Udk
The plot of the 1970s film, “ZPG” (and Sol’s “going home” in “Soylent Green”), will cause many (most?) people to cringe and fear ceding too much power over individual liberty and choice to an unaccountable totalitarianism state. However, our collective choices to date have made such an outcome that much more certain given what we are likely to experience in the decades ahead as a consequence of Peak Oil, the inexorable decline in net energy per capita, overshoot, and the path into the bottleneck.
WRT to “evil”, the root of the word is yfel, which is commonly transliterated as “up from under”; that is, the state of mind and self-identification as feeling vulnerable or inferior such that one acts in such a way as to become superior to “other” (whatever that might be, including other human apes, Nature, etc.).
Clearly, if there is such a thing as “evil”, the human ape species (and to a similar extent our primate predecessors, the chimps) is the principal source and purveyor of “evil” in Nature.
But we can rationalize our unique characteristic to project our fear against other human apes and Nature as a highly successful adaptation to permit our survival and reproduction at increasing scale of resource consumption per capita and thus capacity to continue to perpetuate our “evil” deeds.
Yet, think about this presumed evolutionary adaptation. In order to successfully further adapt, we need to self-select and reproduce for evermore effective ways to engage in “evil” acts against “other” as competitors and against Nature such that, on a finite planet; therefore, the logical extension is that only the most “evil”, self-selected, successfully adaptable sub-species of human apes will survive and reproduce as part of the winner-take-all, last-man-standing contest for the remaining resources aboard our finite “Spaceship Earth”.
So, perhaps there needs to be a “cancer” or pathogen developed in a co-evolutionary context that attacks the genetic programming/conditioning for the “evil” of the human ape species. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU5rvBtjsLY
“Living on a razor’s edge,
Balancing on a ledge.
Living on a razor’s edge, you know, you know . . .
The evil that men do lives on and on . . . ”
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Makati1 on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 9:58 pm
“…Policies aimed at increasing the birth rate in Europe and elsewhere have not been successful, but there is a better solution: allow more migration…”
In today’s news:
Channel Tunnel migrant crisis: Man dies as 1,500 try to enter
Europe’s migrant crisis: Thousands storming UK border
‘Swarm’ of migrants crossing Mediterranean, says David Cameron –
Irish truck drivers face threats from migrants with ‘iron bars, broken bottles and machetes’
We’ve rescued 5,500 migrants from sea in three months, says charity
Hungary Says Fence to Stop Migrants Will Be Done by Aug. 31
Calais crisis: Migrant situation reaches fever pitch
France deploys riot police to bolster Calais security
http://ricefarmer.blogspot.fr/
Europe’s population problems are being taken care of by African immigrants today. Lets see if it really helps…lol.
Apneaman on Sat, 1st Aug 2015 11:00 pm
Has the green revolution really succeeded?
“Over the past 50 years, human population has more than doubled, but cereal-crop production has grown even faster. Mechanization, synthetic fertilizers, new high-yield seeds and other advances in intensified agriculture have enabled us not only to keep up, but to actually reduce world hunger, according to a 2014 UN report. 1960s doomsday scenarios of mass starvation have not materialized. Victory may be declared, at least for now–yes?
No, say researchers in a new paper. Quantity does not equal quality. The researchers, from Columbia University’s Earth Institute, point out that the plentiful cereals now grown are generally lower in nutrients per unit weight than old-fashioned crops. Farms are producing more bulk for more people; but many are still not getting enough macronutrients such as protein, nor micronutrients such as iron, needed for good health. The paper, which appears today in the leading journal Science, calls for more realistic metrics to measure and regulate global food supply.”
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-green-revolution-succeeded.html
Apneaman on Sun, 2nd Aug 2015 2:07 am
Baghdad, Iraq, Is Hottest City in World With Temperatures at 120 Degrees
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/baghdad-iraq-hottest-city-world-temperatures-120-degrees-n401601
Scorching ‘heat dome’ over Middle East sees temperatures soar to 165F in Iran
Iran is enduring a “heat index” of nearly 72C while Iraq has called a public holiday due to the sweltering temperatures
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11777843/Scorching-heat-dome-over-Middle-East-sees-temperatures-soar-to-165F-in-Iran.html
Apneaman on Sun, 2nd Aug 2015 3:12 am
Iraq
Iraq’s scorching heat kills 52 children in refugee camps
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/31072015
Apneaman on Sun, 2nd Aug 2015 3:31 am
Toxic Floods From Coal Mines and Power Plants Hit Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/31/vietnam-floods/
Davy on Sun, 2nd Aug 2015 7:17 am
Ape Man said “Has the green revolution really succeeded?” Ape wouldn’t it be more accurate to term it the “brown revolution” since the so called “green revolution” was nothing more than the application of the broad spectrum of fossil fuel applications to growing food?
Boat on Sun, 2nd Aug 2015 11:17 am
dubay,
Are you crazy? The world needs less population. Not more spread out population.
Simple approaches would be to tax children instead of incentive children. Maybe give a huge incentive for 1 child and tax heavily the 2nd. Peer pressure is needed for the world to get to sustainability. Our political and religious leaders have to buy in.