Underpopulation, Not Overpopulation, The Real Global Problem
Washington Post; Sunday, March 18, 2001

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in
Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. This article is
adapted from a longer one in the current issue of Foreign Policy
magazine.]

It may not be the first way we think of ourselves, but all of us alive
today are children of the "world population explosion." Thanks to sweeping
mortality declines, human numbers leapt from about 1.6 billion or 1.7
billion in 1900 to more than 6 billion in 2000.

In certain circles within Washington (and outside the United States), that
unprecedented leap in human numbers fueled an anti-natalist obsession. But
continuing preoccupation with high fertility and rapid population growth
leaves us poorly prepared to comprehend (much less respond to) emerging
demographic trends.

Three of these are poised to refigure our global profile in surprising --
and not always beneficial -- ways. The first is the spread of
"sub-replacement" fertility regimens: patterns of childbearing that will
eventually result, all else being equal, in indefinite population decline.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 83 countries and territories are now
thought to experience below-replacement fertility. Those places encompass
nearly 2.7 billion people -- roughly 44 percent of the world's total
population.

Today's global march toward smaller family size flies in the face of many
prevailing assumptions about when rapid fertility decline can and cannot
occur. Poverty and illiteracy (especially female illiteracy) are widely
regarded as impediments to fertility decline, yet they have not prevented
Bangladesh from reducing its fertility rate by more than half over the
past quarter-century. By the same token, "traditional" religious attitudes
are commonly seen as a barrier against low fertility. Yet over the past
two decades, Iran, under the tight rule of a militantly Islamic clerisy,
has slashed its fertility level by fully two-thirds, and now apparently it
stands on the verge of sub-replacement.

What accounts for the worldwide plunge in fertility_ The honest answer is
that nobody really knows -- at least, with any degree of confidence. If
you can find the shared determinants of fertility decline in such
disparate below-replacement societies as the United States, Guadeloupe,
Thailand and Tunisia, then your Nobel Prize is in the mail.

While causes might be uncertain, results are quite predictable. Global
population growth will decelerate markedly over the coming generation. By
current projections, in fact, slightly fewer babies will be born worldwide
in the year 2025 than at any point over the previous four decades.

Thanks to extreme birth dearth, depopulation is now imminent for both
Europe and Japan. In Europe, immigration must nearly quadruple -- to an
average of almost 4 million net entrants a year -- to prevent a decline in
the size of the 15- to-64-year-old "working age" population over the next
50 years. In Japan, where net immigration approximates zero, more than
600,000 newcomers a year will be needed to keep the working age population
from shrinking.

Will these territories opt for indefinite decline -- or for ethnic
transformation_ Given the arithmetic, they have no other options. Low and
decreasing fertility levels will accelerate the tempo of social aging --
the second great demographic trend of the coming era.

We all know about the coming pensioner problem in Western countries -- but
Western countries are rich. Many of today's developing countries, by
contrast, will become "gray" before they become "rich." One of the most
arresting cases of population aging is now set to unfold in China. Between
2000 and 2025, China's median age will soar -- in fact, it may exceed
America's within 25 years. By 2025, roughly 200 million Chinese will be 65
or older. Caring for China's elderly will inexorably become a domestic,
and global, political issue -- for nothing remotely resembling a national
pension system is yet in place in that country.

The third, and most ominous, demographic trend of the coming era involves
unexpected and brutal mortality spikes. In our era, we have come to
presume that death rates inevitably decline during times of peace and
order. That happy presumption must now be discarded. By Census Bureau
projections, nearly 40 countries and territories will have lower life
expectancies in 2010 than they enjoyed in 1990. More than 750 million
people -- one-sixth of the world's current population -- live in such
spots. Many of these countries are today's sub-Saharan victims of the
HIV-AIDS epidemic.

But the international health setback is not just about Africa and AIDS. In
Russia -- an urbanized, industrialized, peacetime society -- lifespans are
shorter today than 40 years ago. In a dozen other post-Communist
countries, life expectancy is lower today than in the 1970s.

Since virtually no one predicted these foreshortenings of national
lifespan, we cannot yet claim to know which countries will be afflicted by
-- or spared from -- uncontrollable bouts of mortality in the years to
come. Before too long, unfortunately, our current era's widespread anxiety
about health-driven global population growth may look remarkably quaint
and naive.