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THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE

A lot of people? Yes. Apocalypse? No.

There are now 7 billion people in the world. Though resource challenges remain, a child born today has a better chance of survival than decades ago, when food production per person was far inferior.

David Lam

THE United Nations has identified 31 October as the day world population hits 7 billion. Many find the Halloween date appropriate given the frightening prospect of this demographic milestone. As if 7 billion weren't scary enough, the UN projects 10 billion people by 2083, the addition of roughly three more Indias.

But the parents of the 7-billionth person should not be afraid for their child's future. In spite of the daunting challenges facing the world, including global warming, rising food prices and a billion people in poverty, the 7-billionth child will almost surely have a better life than the 3-billionth or 6-billionth child.

How will the world cope with this many people? Consider what the world looked like in 1960, when the population hit 3 billion. Falling infant and child mortality caused population growth rates to surpass 2% per year in the 1960s, probably for the first time in history. At 2% growth, the world would double in 35 years, and that is roughly what happened - world population grew to 6 billion in 1999. World population will not come close to doubling again in 39 years. Indeed, it may never double again. Fertility has fallen rapidly, with many developing countries at or near the replacement fertility rate of 2.1. The world's population growth rate has been falling since its peak in the 1960s, and we may never get much above the 10.1 billion people projected for 2100.

So we've just been through the fastest population growth the world will ever see. It's a good time to look back and see how the world survived it.

There were gloomy predictions in the 1960s about the consequences of rapid population growth, the most famous appearing in Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb. He wrote that 'the battle to feed humanity is already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large-scale famines in the next decade.'

Happily, Ehrlich was wrong. World food production grew faster than population during the last 50 years. Food production per person in 2009 was 41% higher than in 1961.

No country generated more fear about overpopulation than India. But food production there has grown faster than population since the Green Revolution of the late 1960s. Food production per person in India today is 37% higher than in 1961, although there are 2.6 times more people.

Although there are still serious problems with food distribution and malnutrition, we have done remarkably well at feeding the extra 4 billion people added since 1960. This should make us optimistic about feeding the 3 billion more to be added in the next 70 years.

Increased food supply is one reason that children around the world today are the healthiest ever born. An Indian baby born in 2011 has almost double the probability of surviving the first year of life as a baby born in 1960.

The 7-billionth child will also be better educated than a child born in 1960. Big increases in education in the developing world are one of the most impressive accomplishments of the last 50 years, especially given the unprecedented growth of school-age populations. Only about one-third of Indian girls born in 1960 completed primary school, compared with about three-fourths of those born in 1990. For an Indian girl born in 2011 the rate will be even higher.

The probability that a child will grow up in poverty has been going down. For developing countries as a whole, the percentage living below the World Bank's $1.25-per-day poverty line fell from 50% in 1981 to 25% in 2005. India's poverty rate fell from 60% in 1981 to 42% in 2005 and can be expected to keep falling.

Not all countries have done as well as India. But even in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the poorest economic performance, poverty rates have fallen, education has increased and food production per person has been rising (albeit slowly) since the 1980s.

None of this is meant to deny the enormous challenges we face. We survived the population bomb through hard work and creativity, and we will need more of it to continue to feed the world and reduce poverty. But the remarkable experience of the last 50 years teaches us that we should not be afraid to celebrate the birth of the 7-billionth child.                                   

David Lam is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and president of the Population Association of America. This article is reproduced from the Los Angeles Times (30 October 2011).


Seven billion and counting

IS the population bomb ticking again? The world has crossed the milestone of 7 billion people, and there is renewed debate on the impact of a growing number of humans on the planet's finite resources. Neo-Malthusian arguments, centred mostly on environmental concerns, are pitted against the optimistic view that economic development will safely stabilise birth rates. The population question is complex and there is no panacea for the travails of hundreds of millions of deprived citizens who need food, shelter, safe water, and energy. It is distressing that more than 800 million people live in slums and a similar number, mostly women, are not literate. In the popular imagination, growing populations can only have a negative outcome, depleting scarce resources faster - more so in an era of economic uncertainty. The dilemma therefore is whether to enlarge the pie or reduce the number of hands competing for a share. Empirical evidence supports the humane answer, which is simply to have more development. Crucially, this demands sharing the fruits of economic growth with the less privileged through access to education, health care, and welfare, besides redistribution of wealth. Particularly significant is the role played by education and empowerment of women.

Developing countries with higher population growth rates are often viewed as the source of an emerging environmental crisis. That perspective is narrow and flawed, given the patterns of resource consumption. As India's Nobel laureate Amartya Sen observed in a 1994 essay titled 'Population: Delusion and Reality' (New York Review of Books), 'one additional American typically has a larger negative impact on the ozone layer, global warmth, and other elements of the earth's environment than dozens of Indians and Zimbabweans put together.' That was true even before the world had 6 billion people, and the pattern remains unchanged, although a small minority of profligate emerging-economy consumers now have a comparable ecological footprint. What reinforces fears of overpopulation the most is the visibly desperate living condition of large numbers of the poor. It is this that governments must address as top priority. They also need to prepare for a difficult future in which greater life expectancy coupled with falling birth rates would produce an 'inverted pyramid' - an enlarging geriatric population and shrinking numbers of young men and women. Equally important is preserving the natural environment, which has thus far enabled increasing levels of food production. Only a rising quality of life can lead to voluntary stabilisation of the world's population, which is projected by the United Nations to touch 9.3 billion by 2050.                          

The above first appeared as an editorial in the Indian daily The Hindu (1 November 2011).

*Third World Resurgence No. 254, October 2011, pp 42-43 
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