What's the Deal with Population Growth?
BY CARA-MARIE FINDLAY
PRINCIPAL
What’s the Deal with Population Growth?
This past February (2022) the United Nations published a 2021 study entitled “Global Population Growth and Sustainable Development.”
The report explores
Some of the key takeaways, according to the official 2022 key messages document, include:
Global population is expected to continue to grow rapidly over the next few decades.
A decline in fertility can create a window of opportunity for accelerated economic growth.
And Higher incomes contribute more to environmental degradation than population growth.
Interestingly enough, there are a few parallels with the 2021 U.N. study and a 1974 United States National Security Memorandum.
The 1974 memorandum stated that higher rates of population growth:
All dimensions of development, as mentioned in the UN report’s summary.
So What’s the Deal with Population Growth?
Why should we care?
Arguably the greatest takeaway from both both the introduction to the 2021 U.N. report and the 1974 memorandum is the fact we are living in a time of
“unprecedented [population] growth”
(U.N. Policy Brief Introduction Paragraph; Memorandum Highlights of Current Demographic Trends paragraph).
And as both documents make clear, population growth directly affects other dimensions of life, to include: social and political order, economic development, and the environment.
Population Growth and Development
According to the 1974 memorandum, the relationship between Population growth and development could be summarized as the difference between “ensur[ing] survival for a larger population, rather than on improving living conditions for smaller total numbers.” (Section 11 bullet point 5).
As added context, the 2021 U.N. report starts by examining population growth since the 1950. However, the 1974 memorandum, starts even earlier giving a brief overview of population growth since the 1800s:
“At the rate of growth estimated for the first 18 centuries A.D., it required more than 1,000 years for world population to double in size. With the beginnings of the industrial revolution and of modern medicine and sanitation over two hundred years ago, population growth rates began to accelerate. At the current growth rate (1.9 percent) world population will double in 37 years.
By about 1830, world population reached 1 billion. The second billion was added in about 100 years by 1930. The third billion in 30 years by 1960. The fourth will be reached in 1975.”
UN Projection of Population Growth by the year 2100
Source Figure 1
According to the 2021 Report, although the pace has slowed considerably since 1970 (about the time of the 1974 U.S. National Security Memorandum) current projections “suggest that the size of the global population could grow to almost 11 billion [people] by around 2100.”
A UN projection was also mentioned in the 1974 memorandum. It was listed as the “U.N. ‘Medium Variant’: If present birth rates in the developing countries, averaging about 38/1000 were further reduced to 29/1000 by 2000, the world's population in 2000 would be 6.4 billion, with over 100 million being added each year. At the time stability (non-growth) is reached in about 2100, world population would exceed 12.0 billion.”
With 47 years between the two documents, it is remarkable that the UN projection only changed by 1 billion from 12 billion in 1974 to 11 billion in 2021 by the year 2100.
Causes and Correlations
The 1974 memorandum credited population growth to the industrial revolution and of modern medicine and sanitation; the U.N. report made a similar note -
Source Figure 3
“Rapid population growth is a result of one of the greatest successes of social and economic development: the substantial lengthening of the average human lifespan due to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine” (U.N. pg. 29 and Key Messages)
Both reports also assumed that high birth rates were primarily the result of “inadequate information about and availability of means of fertility control” (Executive Summary point 14) or as the U.N. report puts it “a failure to ensure all people, everywhere, have the knowledge, ability and means to determine whether and when to have children.”
Both reports assume that lower fertility rates contribute to faster economic growth (correlation), though the U.N. stops short of detailing any specific solutions to increased family planning and lowering the fertility rate.
The 1974 memorandum, on the other hand, goes further in articulating possible solutions—
birth control:
“Actual family size in many societies is higher than desired family size owing to ignorance of acceptable birth control methods or unavailability of birth control devices and services.” [Page ]
family planning:
“US agencies stress the importance of education of the next generation of parents, starting in elementary schools, toward a two-child family ideal. That AID stimulate specific efforts to develop means of educating children of elementary school age to the ideal of the two-child family” [Page ]
and even abortion:
“No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion". [Page 182]
" -- Indeed, abortion, legal and illegal, now has become the most widespread fertility control method in use in the world today." [Page 183]
Another Perspective
To conclude that lower fertility rates is better for economic development is a very *Eurocentric* perspective, (*the belief that Europe [that is the West or the Global North] is the principal subject of world history) and does not take into account any other possibilities.
Admittedly, the 1974 report is rooted in a Eurocentric philosophy of modernity* (*the belief that societies will develop as they adopt more modern practices, and that “modern” societies are wealthier, freer, and enjoy a higher standard of living) saying:
“Certain aspects of economic development and modernization appear to be more directly related to lower birth rates than others.”
But this dismisses alternative values and philosophies.
Afro-Caribbean philosopher, Walter Rodney, commenting on how the European Slave Trade decimated the population on the continent of Africa said this:
“So long as the population density was low, then human beings viewed as units of labor were far more important than other factors of production such as land. From one end of the continent to the other, it is easy to find examples showing that African people were conscious that population was in their circumstances the most important factor of production. Among the Bemba, for instance, numbers of subjects were held to be more important than land. Among the Shambala of Tanzania, the same feeling was expressed in the saying “A king is people.” Among the Balanta of Guinea-Bissau, the family’s strength is represented by the number of hands there are to cultivate the land.”
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, p. 98
Chart from the Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (p. 97)
In previous centuries, other continents began to experience population growth while “The huge African continent has [had] an abnormal record of stagnation…and there is no causative factor other than the trade in slaves…” (Rodney, p. 97)
Source Figure 2.1
Thus, high fertility rates, especially on the continent of Africa should not be seen as a failure of Development. Rather it could just be an indication that African populations have chosen to embrace more traditional outlooks on population growth and building national strength, an outlook that predates the transatlantic slave trade.
The UN did rightly note that higher incomes contribute more to environmental degradation than population growth.
The philosophy of modernity which is built on capitalism and a consumption mentality has often ignored the cost to the environment in lieu of making as much money as possible as quickly as possible.
Conversely, traditional and indigenous knowledges often place premium value on actively preserving nature and conscious stewarding of natural resources.
Questions we should be asking…
Why do “Global” reports continue to be steeped in eurocentrism?
What is the connection between global population growth and U.S. National Security?
Why is suggesting abortion as a viable solution for lowering the fertility rate problematic?
What can we learn about preventing or remedying climate change from traditional/indigenous societies that we may have ignored because they were not “modern”?
These reports are published and public for all to read. But without knowing when or where or why to look for them, the average person may not seek them out on their own. We also know that these reports are often filled with loaded language that may need to be unpacked.
Part of our work at FHG is making the world of “development” accessible for everyday people, especially those people who are underrepresented, so that they can become better informed in order to participate and lead the development conversations and processes taking place at all levels—local, national, regional, and global.