PASSAGE 2: Effects of Changes in World Population

A. Human fertility rates around the world are dropping for a variety of complex reasons. While the population itself continues to increase, the rate of increase is slowing, and sometime in the next 80 years, world population will peak somewhere in the vicinity of nine billion before contracting. That raises an important question: is population contraction a bad thing?

Some think not. There is a school of thought that argues that smaller populations are good. Population control proponents claim variously that (1) we do not have the food to sustain higher populations; (2) our planet already suffers from overcrowding; (3) the environmental impact of increased populations will bring catastrophe either through pollution or consumption of finite natural resources; or in contrast, they argue decreased populations will lead to higher wages and a better quality of life as available supplies exceed reduced demands. These arguments seem reasonable at first, but do not withstand scrutiny.

B. Let's start with food. The worry about mass starvation is a remnant of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb. Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University in California, wrote that in the face of expanding populations, 'the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.'

As Ehrlich himself now admits, this prediction proved faulty. Instead, the availability of food has greatly increased, even with a growing population. Demographer Philip Longman notes that food shortages have become 'a political problem, related to fair distribution, not an issue of inadequate supply'.

How did this happen? In 1965, Danish economist Ester Boserup proposed that population increase fosters agricultural innovation, which in turn increases production. Her theories have been borne out by events, which show that some areas of the world may lack sufficient supplies while the world has an overall surplus.