For people versed in the Malthusian gloom spread assiduously by Lester Brown, Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome, the prospect of declining human numbers can be hard to imagine. However, evidence is accumulating that demographic contraction is not far off, and indeed is happening already in quite a few places.

Much of the reporting about contraction - and one of its main consequences, which is the aging of the population - focuses on affluent nations. The Jan. 7th issue of The Economist, for example, contains a pair of articles about Japan, where the fertility rate fell below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman 30 years ago. As pointed out in the magazine, low rates of reproduction are not at all irreconcilable with sustained improvements in living standards. The key is productivity growth.

However, a graying population must face the challenge of financing pensions and health care for its seniors. Appreciating this challenge full well, Peter Costello, the treasury minister of Australia (which, along with the United States, is one of the few rich countries where human fertility is enough for replacement), called on his fellow citizens to "do their patriotic duty" by having more children.

By no means are human numbers going down only in affluent parts of the world. The shrinkage is more dramatic in the old USSR. Reproduction has become a rare occurrence in Georgia, for example, with women bearing 1.1 babies on average during their lifetimes. In Russia, human fertility has fallen to just 1.3 births per woman - exactly the same as in Germany, Italy and Japan. Meanwhile, stress-related illness, which is broadly defined to include alcoholism, has reduced life spans. Hence, the population is declining by nearly 1 percent annually.

Many are surprised to learn that human numbers are on course to peak and then fall off a few decades from now in a number of developing nations. China, which is abandoning its one-child-per-family policy now that its fertility rate has fallen to 1.9 births per woman, is one of these places. But so is Thailand at 1.8 births, which never followed the Chinese lead in practicing forced abortions and sterilizations.

Many are surprised to learn that human numbers are on course to peak and then fall off a few decades from now in a number of developing nations.

What about Latin America, where the vast majority of people profess Catholicism? As always happens where women enjoy a measure of economic empowerment, human fertility has plummeted. Examples: 2.1 births per woman in Brazil and 2.2 in Chile and Mexico. Similar changes have occurred in Muslim nations. In Algeria, where the typical family a generation ago boasted seven boys and girls, fertility stands at 2.7 births. Shiite theocrats control Iran, yet women there have two children on average. Only in Sub-Saharan Africa does fertility remain well above the replacement level, although family size is declining there as well.

Benefits accrue as the population stabilizes. Among these may be a decline in terrorism. Just as the University of Chicago's Steven Levitt has demonstrated that declining crime rates in the United States during the 1990s were mainly the result of diminished fertility in impoverished, crime-ridden communities after the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973, cohorts of young men disaffected because of a lack of economic opportunity and therefore open to recruitment by al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah will be smaller two decades from now if the current demographic trajectory continues.

But universal peace and harmony may not prevail. Consider Iran. Aside from reflecting the desire of its leadership to commit genocide against Israel, the country's development of nuclear weapons may be motivated by a desire to grab resources from neighboring lands. One good target would be Qatar, which has fewer than 1 million inhabitants but enormous reserves of natural gas. Does Iran view acquisition of these deposits as a way to care for its senior cohort, which will become increasingly numerous in the 2030s and beyond?

Few countries will mount wars of conquest just to meet the challenge of smaller and grayer populations. But make no mistake about the severity of the challenge the developing world will face this century. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute puts things in proper perspective: Nations such as Germany, Japan and the United States grew wealthy before being obliged to deal with a shrinking and aging population. In contrast, China, Brazil and Iran will confront demographic contraction and all its consequences without ever experiencing widespread affluence.




Contributed by Douglas Southgate, a professor of agricultural economics at Ohio State University. Reprinted with permission from Douglas Southgate, originally printed in The Columbus Dispatch.

To read another Global Envision article by Douglas Southgate, see Freer Trade Would Benefit U.S. the Most.



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