The Looming Global Population Collapse

One of the indications of the success of human civilization has been the enormous growth in population that has been supported.  Malthusian predictions of doom have been voided thus far, but few argue that population can continue to grow indefinitely.  Global warming and pandemics can be pointed to as indicators of too great a population.  Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson have claimed that population relief is on the way in their book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline.  This population decline will not be the result of mass starvation or global plagues, but mainly because the people of earth are trending, for various reasons, toward much lower birth rates.  To have a hope of a stable population females must produce about two children each on average.  Many countries already have birth rates much lower than that, and birth rates are decreasing almost everywhere.

“The great defining event of the twenty-first century—one of the great defining events in human history—will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline.  Once that decline begins, it will never end.  We do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust—a relentless generation-after-generation culling of the human herd.  Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“The United Nations forecasts that our population will grow from seven billion to eleven billion in this century before leveling off after 2100.  But an increasing number of demographers around the world believe the UN estimates are far too high.  More likely, they say, the planet’s population will peak at about nine billion sometime between 2040 and 2060, and then start to decline…By the end of this century, we could be back to where we are right now, and steadily growing fewer.”

For many years Japan has been the model for this demographic phenomenon.  Its fertility rate, about 1.3 births per female, has long been below the replacement value, and, in spite of the increased longevity of its senior population, the baby deficit has caused the population to fall.  The new champion in population decline is perhaps South Korea where the fertility rate has fallen below 1.0.  This means that a childbearing generation now will produce a childbearing generation to follow that will be less than half its size.  Proceeding a few generations at this pace can produce a population that is plummeting.

“Populations are already declining in about two dozen states around the world; by 2030 the number will have climbed to three dozen.  Some of the richest places on earth are shedding people every year: Japan, Korea, Spain, Italy, much of Eastern Europe.”

“The big news is that the largest developing nations are also about to grow smaller, as their own fertility rates come down.  China will begin losing people in a few years.  By the middle of this century, Brazil and Indonesia will follow suit.  Even India, soon to become the most populous nation on earth, will see its numbers stabilize in about a generation and then start to decline.”

The only region still projected to have a significant reign of population grown is sub-Saharan Africa, but even there the authors claim the UN projections are too high.

The authors’ book appeared in 2019 just before the Covid pandemic hit the world.  What has the pandemic done to their gloomy outlook?

This source provides info for the United States.

“After a steep drop in the first year of the pandemic, US birth rates rose only slightly in 2021, according to provisional data published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.”

“It was the first time in seven years that the US birth rate increased. Births had been dropping by an average of 2% a year since 2014, including a decline of twice that much between 2019 and 2020.”

“Nearly 3.7 million babies were born in the US in 2021; that’s about 46,000 more than were born in 2020, but the 1% increase still put the number short of 2019 levels.”

The US had a declining birthrate accelerated by the pandemic, but it may be too soon to determine long-term effects. 

The article How birth rates have evolved after pandemic-driven downturns provides information about the world as a whole.  It appears the birthrate behavior in the US was representative of most countries: a sharp decline in the first year of the pandemic followed by some recovery in the second year.  However, each country still seemed to have its own characteristics.  Consider this plot of birthrate data from several nations.

The Nordic countries generally bucked the trend with some net gain in birthrates.  The European countries suggest a slight acceleration of an existing trend thus far.  The data from India provides support for the claim of Bricker and Ibbitson.

“But perhaps the biggest 2021 news in demographics was that India recorded a fertility rate below the replacement level fertility threshold for the first time (2.1 children per woman). The pandemic may have been an influencer here, but the rate had already been falling long before. The drop will have no short-term effects. The current rate of 2.0, even if it continues to decline, will not lead to population decline (1.375 million today) or even negative natural growth for several decades, most likely. The generations of women of childbearing age are extremely numerous, so there will continue to be more births than deaths. But the population, which now has a median age of 28, will age.”

“With the addition of India, about two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries with fertility rates below 2.1. The other third is almost entirely in sub-Saharan Africa.”

The fertility rates spread across most of the world definitely indicate a collapse in human population is approaching.  It may take another generation or so to really kick in, but it seems inevitable.  The question we should be asking ourselves is whether this is a bad thing or this is a good thing.  In the short term a falling population can cause problems as society gets older.  Society will need to make fundamental changes to accommodate that transition.  That accommodation is not impossible.  It may even be beneficial to all.  In the long term, reaching lower population levels can only be beneficial.  The problems that most burden us today, global warming, pandemics, and food security, are indicative of a planet with too many humans on it.

The traditional response to the prospect of a declining population is to try to reverse the trend with social policies.  Perhaps, it is finally time to respond with social policies encouraging population decline.

You can learn a little about a lot of things or you can learn a lot about a very few things. Guess which is the most fun.