Major Issues: Rethinking Global Population
Rethinking Global Population
It’s time to take a new and closer look at the demographic trends that are shaping our world. Since Thomas Malthus first penned An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, the population debate has been divided, seemingly, between those who believe that population growth must ultimately outrun food production and those who believe that advances in agricultural productivity allow for virtually unlimited numbers of people.
Neither of these conceptual frameworks recognizes the complexity of demographic change and its implications for the human condition. Old paradigms die hard, but it’s time to rethink population.
Demography may not be, as Auguste Comte once proclaimed, our destiny; but population growth and other demographic trends are reshaping—and radically so—the world in which we live and posing challenges that Malthus never contemplated.
Our world is awash in demographic change. Demographic trends wrought changes of history-making proportions in the 20th Century and they will do so again in this one. There is scarcely a major problem today that is not heavily influenced by demography. Everything from climate change to genocide in Africa to the price of oil is—in the long run—impacted by demography.
Global population, currently 6.6 billion, is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. During the past few decades, rising agricultural productivity and declining fertility rates have diminished concerns that population growth rates might lead to global famine, but population growth rates in many areas of the world have significant implications for efforts to relieve poverty, improve maternal and child health, and halt environmental degradation. While fertility rates have declined dramatically in Europe and East Asia, fertility and population growth rates remain high in much of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
In some parts of the world today, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, a high percentage of the population is between the ages of 10 and 24. “Youth bulges” in counties like Afghanistan and Pakistan may be contributing to global instability. In other parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, high population density is leading to deforestation. In places like Rwanda and Darfur, population pressures have been contributing to political unrest and even genocide. Meanwhile, global population growth has—and will continue to fuel—the demand for oil and fossil fuels. While 97 percent of future population growth is expected to occur in the developing world, much of that growth is in nations, like India, where per capita consumption of fossil fuels is expected to soar in the next few decades.
The issue of global population is complex. It's not one-dimensional; it’s multi-dimensional and it requires careful analysis. Consistent with our mission of promoting the use of accurate population data, the Population Resource Center educates policymakers on important population trends and help policymakers understand how those trends affect the world in which we live.