“Be Fruitful and Multiply” –Genesis 1:28
I have heard recently that the new President-Elect of the United States, Barack Obama, may make some drastic changes in policy on the first day he takes up office. Among them are undoing the Mexico City Policy, which assures that US taxpayer money is not used to fund international groups which participate in the practice of abortion, and also giving taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a tyrannical organization. One of it’s faults – though not in-and-of-itself the worst of it’s faults, has been the leading of an ineffective cash-for-condoms effort to provide aid to Africa. Unfortunately one does not solve real problems by attacking symptoms. As economist William Easterly has pointed out, a condom is one of the cheapest products on the global market. Handing them out to people whom one may believe cannot afford a simple condom but can afford food, clothing and shelter for eighteen years, is just lunacy. Therefore, throwing condoms at population doesn’t do anything. They don’t want condoms, they want the kids. Families in poverty tend to have more children as breadwinners and their actions will reflect this incentive. That is not to say learning about condoms is not important. I subscribe to a Palinist view of sex education which rejects both special interests and abstinence only in favor of a combined teaching of contraception and abstinence alongside one another. But, the point is, Africa needs to develop economically through good policy and protection of property rights to solve it’s woes. UNFPA has run into a stone wall on this issue for decades and will likely continue to do so.
In 1798, early British economist Thomas Robert Malthus published his work An Essay on the Principle of Population, stating his theory on how population growth might affect a society. Malthus believed that while total population increased exponentially, food production would only increase arithmetically. This meant that over time the ratio of people to food would increase, leading to mass misery and starvation. Malthus’s theories have had a profound impact on the world as we know it today. You hear a lot of talk about the issue of “overpopulation” as an issue. Many academics and famous figures such as Jacques Cousteau and Ted Turner advocate population control to combat this “problem.” It is my strong opinion that the severity and presence of overpopulation is highly exaggerated. Overpopulation is not the problem that the problem it is made out to be. In fact, sometimes, a larger population can be beneficial. The impacts of this misconception on the world have been disastrous.
There are a few key reasons why many people today feel that population growth at its current rat is a bad thing.
Finite resources: Resources may be scarce. Therefore, a higher population would strain consumption of them. An example is food. If there are too many people and not enough food, it will lead to famine.
Increased Standard of Living: The rationale behind that is if there are less people to reap the benefit from society than they will benefit more because they each get a larger slice of the pie.
Environment: As there are more people consuming within a society, the surrounding environment will suffer as a result of production and industrialization.
Jobs: This is a big concern in China, where the number of jobs in the marketplace does not necessarily correspond to the large amount of people.
Ok, so now onto why the truth says otherwise. The world population reached 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1975, 5 billion around 1990 and 6 billion in 1999. As of today, Monday, June 16, 2008, the total world population is 6,674,493,715. There may be a little margin of error on that. If you view that on a scale from the beginning of time to the present, there does seem to be a major explosion. Let us look at what else has happened in the past 200 years.
According to studies done by economics professor Gregory Clark, real income per person in England increased by over 500% from 1800 to 2000. By contrast, from around 1260 to 1800 the figure for real income per person was relatively constant. Real income per person rose shortly afterward in other countries. So, while there is a major explosion in population there is also a major explosion in real income per person. This seems to contradict the idea of increasing standard of living by reducing population. So, if population, shot up exponentially and real income per person, shot up exponentially, then the wealth of society as a whole must have really, really, shot up exponentially. Nothing in human history had ever been seen like this before. What caused this phenomenon? The Industrial Revolution, or, as Gregory Clark calls it, the Great Divergence. Ironically, Malthus’s idea that scarce food production would hold back society was relevant to the world before him. But right after he discovered the way the world worked, the world stopped working that way.
The Industrial Revolution happened first in England, but once it happened in England, the spread of ideas meant that anyone could tap into it. Not every country has done so. The world is now divided into developed nations and developing nations. However, from 1960 to 1998 in both rich and poor countries population doubled but food production tripled. So much for population growth overtaking food production.
The prevalent trend is that poorer families in poorer nations tend to have more children while richer families in richer nations tend to have less children. Therefore, once a nation develops past a certain threshold, the population for that nation falls rather than rises. Economic development is the only way a nation’s population stops growing. The reason is simple: people respond to their incentives. When a country develops, the people want less children and have less children. But they won’t want less children until they have wealth. If they’re in an underdeveloped country, they’ll continue to have as many children as they want no matter how many condoms you toss at them. As soon as the whole world develops past the threshold, population will slow down. It is for this reason that the rise is expected to plateau in the late 21st century.
While I was in China on a month-long trip in May 2007, my tour group and I met with Ding Ning Ning, a Chinese government official with years of experience. He spoke about many interesting topics and I was impressed by his knowledge. Looking back now I’d say he had high ethos and good vocal variation. He could have had a little more eye contact. I caught a lot of chalk from him that day. One of the most insightful things he said was on government attempts to control the internet. But that’s another story. He remarked that he did not believe environmental worsening around the Beijing area would stop until population growth stopped. I was not as crazy about that point.
As the world develops, it is the development process, not the population boom, that has the initial devastating effect on the environment. However, part of development is finding a way to solve environmental problems by developing in a way that is efficient for the environment. The environment is a collective good, which should be protected. This is why we strive for energy-efficient ways to do things. Perhaps, in a couple of centuries, humankind may live primarily in arcologies-large ecological architectural structures, while making peace with much of the world’s environment.
Now, onto jobs. There is a conventional wisdom in the air that shortages of certain kinds of jobs in different parts of the world justify population control. However, the globalization element is left out of the equation. India has a good approach to development and the second largest population in the world (at the current rate it will someday become the largest.) That approach is taking advantage of outsourcing. They can take such jobs by moving to a different country or working on the phone/internet. I think by this point we’ve all heard from Indian telemarketers. And, according to Timothy Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Work Week, there is a tendency of those he calls the “New Rich” to hire Indian personal assistants to handle busy work. I saw an interview with an Indian official recently on 60 Minutes where he commented that “borders don’t exist anymore.” He is referring to globalization and globalization is the solution here. Although a shortage of jobs might exist on the national level, those sectors are offset elsewhere in the world and the increasingly dynamic global economy helps provide opportunities everywhere. The solution, therefore, is Capitalism, not Population Control.
So, if population controls itself through development and the environment will follow, why should you care about this issue? That is a fair question and it deserves a fair answer. The cost of the burden of unwarranted population control is transferred elsewhere. The opportunity cost of it can be spent elsewhere. If the US renews aid to UNFPA, tax dollars will be wasted on it which could be back in our pockets.
There is also the human rights aspect of the issue. Population control measures supported by the United Nations have taken shape in North Korea and China, among other places. The governments of these countries have engaged in forced abortions and sterilizations to enforce their population laws. The shame of these acts is surpassed only by the shame of them occurring for a defunct rationale. Perhaps it’s time we examine the benefits of a larger population. The more people there are, the more likely one of them will cure cancer or AIDs or make some new discovery that will benefit human civilization and the environment. Maybe he or she will develop the world fast enough that the next few generations won’t have to worry about world poverty scale at all.
