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The Economist: Fertility rates fall; still, it's a tiny planet

By FROM THE ECONOMIST

Last update: November 1, 2009 - 7:25 PM

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Thomas Malthus first published his "Essay on the Principle of Population," in which he forecast that population growth would outstrip the world's food supply, in 1798. His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then that made nonsense of his ideas. As industrialization swept through what is now the developed world, fertility fell sharply. When people got richer, families got smaller, and as families got smaller, people got richer. Now, something similar is happening in developing countries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places -- such as Brazil, Indonesia and even parts of India -- that people think of as teeming with children. The fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less -- the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called "the replacement rate of fertility." Sometime between 2020 and 2050, the world's fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate. At a time when Malthusian worries are resurgent and people fear the consequences for an overcrowded planet, the decline in fertility is surprising and somewhat reassuring. It means that worries about a population explosion are themselves being exploded -- and it carries a lesson about how to solve the problems of climate change.

Today's fall in fertility is both very large and very fast. Poor countries are racing through the same demographic transition as rich ones, starting at an earlier stage of development and moving more quickly. The transition from a rate of five to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain -- from 1800 to 1930 -- took just 20 years -- from 1965 to 1985 -- in South Korea. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006 -- and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.

Falling fertility is a boon for what it makes possible, which is economic growth. Demography used to be thought of as neutral for growth. But that was because, until the 1990s, there were few developing countries with records of declining fertility and rising incomes. Now there are dozens, and they show that as countries move from large families and poverty into wealth and aging they pass through a Goldilocks period: a generation or two in which fertility is neither too high nor too low and in which there are few dependent children, few dependent grandparents -- and a bulge of adults in the middle who, if conditions are right, make the factories hum.

Malthus' heirs say all this misses the point: There are too many people for the Earth's fragile ecosystems. It is time to stop -- and ideally reverse -- the population increase. To celebrate falling fertility is like congratulating the captain of the Titanic on heading toward the iceberg more slowly.

The Malthusians are right that the world's population is still increasing and can do a lot more environmental damage before it peaks at just more than 9 billion in 2050. That will certainly be the case if poor, fast-growing countries follow the economic trajectories of those in the rich world. Growth is helping hundreds of millions to escape grinding poverty. But if the poor copy the pattern of wealth creation that made Europe and America rich, they will eat up as many resources as the Americans do, with grim consequences for the planet. What's more, the parts of the world where populations are growing fastest are also those most vulnerable to climate change.

In principle, there are three ways of limiting human environmental impacts: through population policy, technology and governance. The first of those does not offer much scope. Population growth is already slowing almost as fast as it naturally could.

If population policy can do little more to alleviate environmental damage, then the human race will have to rely on technology and governance to shift the world's economy toward cleaner growth. Mankind needs to develop more and cheaper technologies that can enable people to enjoy the fruits of economic growth without destroying the planet's natural capital. That's not going to happen unless governments use both carbon pricing and other policies to encourage investment in those technologies and constrain the damage that economic development does to biodiversity.

Falling fertility may be making poor people's lives better, but it cannot save the Earth. That lies in our own hands.

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