Official Optimism, Journalistic Hype:
The UN 1996 Population Projections by Lindsey Grant December 1997
The United Nations a year ago distributed its periodic population projection World Population Prospects. The 1996 Revision. The media have belatedly discovered it and distorted it almost beyond recognition. What was a moderate and mildly optimistic adjustment of the 1994 projection has been read as a revolutionary portent of a new population era, to the joy of some but the dismay of other commentators, who display an irrational addiction to continued growth and a visceral fear of its end. A less panicky look is needed at what the UN said, what it may mean, and how much credence can be given to the numbers.
Last April, a Hollywood reporter began a UPI story with these breathless sentences:
Wonderful news, indeed, if it were true. The problem is that the reporter promoted a mildly optimistic UN forecast 2 into a glorious new dawn.
The hype seems to be originating primarily with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is funded heavily by business interests, and publicized by the Journal and the Times. A Journal article in October avoided the errors and "adjustments" but had much the same message: that world population growth is about to turn around, and that a turnaround will be catastrophic.4 A New York Times article in November was distinguished primarily by the tenor of the headlines: "How to Fix a Crowded World: Add More People," "Problem for a Crowded World: Not Enough People" and (in a California paper running the article) "Now the Crisis is Underpopulation."5 Ben Wattenberg, another AEI associate, reappeared (see note 1) in another Times article titled "The Population Explosion is Over" on November 23rd. This was a bit less hyperbolic than the others, even recognizing some advantages. Like the others, however, he treated a recognized trend as a dramatic discovery. (The UN statisticians, as we shall see, have been very consistent in their projections over the years.) And presumably to sell the article, he pretended that environmentalists have been saying that population will grow forever, when their point in fact has been that it cannot. It sounds like an orchestrated effort by business, following up on its opposition to immigration reform in 1996, to downplay the population issue and thereby reduce potential opposition to large scale immigration. Am I being too suspicious? Several themes were more or less constant in these articles:
We are confronted with the remarkable scene of a journalistic panic at the prospect that some nations may be on the way to stopping or reversing population growth ö although stopping it has been an objective of the United Nations for decades, of most third world leaders 6 , and of all the world's major national and international multidisciplinary scientific societies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.7 Perhaps we should see just what the UN statisticians really said and what the implications are. What the UN Statistical Division Said A graph may be a useful way to compare the most recent projections for key regions. Much of the change from the 1994 projection reflects Chinese and Indian success in bringing fertility down — in China's case despite excoriation from the United States. The changed projection for Europe reflects a reassessment of Russia and Eastern Europe; the projection for western Europe declined only 1.8%. The signs that led to the optimism can be read in Figure 2, which shows selected historical and projected fertility trends. The projections necessarily reflect the mindset of the UN statisticians. They project trends as they understand them, anticipating fertility and mortality changes that have not yet happened. By way of comparison, they also run a "constant fertility" projection. If fertility and mortality should stay where they are now, world population would pass 14.9 billion in 2050 ö if the ecosystem could support such a staggering number. Diverging Futures
The Blurring Middle. Low fertility is spreading to the newly industrializing countries, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Total fertility (TFR; or the number of children expected per woman over a lifetime) is now below the U.S. rate of 1.96 and below replacement level in ten third world nations, including a key one, China. I would challenge anybody to make the case that Africa can support two or three billion people, or even the 1.7 billion of the low projection. If it cannot, population growth will slow and stop, indeed, but for the wrong reason: rising mortality. Europe and the "Dependency Ratio" A drop in fertility first lowers the dependency ratio, because there are fewer children, and then raises it as their parents move out of their working years. (This phenomenon is dramatically illustrated by the projection for Africa, which shows a very good ratio by 2050 ö Figure 3 ö but the plunge in African fertility ö Figure 2 ö would lead eventually to crushing dependency levels in the following two generations as smaller cohorts of children enter the labor force and the larger cohorts grow old.) The speed at which fertility declines, and to what level, determine how far the dependency ratio rises. Figure 3 gives a graphic comparison. Sweden dropped to a TFR of 1.65 in the 1970s (then considered remarkably low) but is now back to about 1.8. Its dependency ratio is expected to stay much more favorable than Italy's, where fertility has dropped suddenly to 1.19. Italy, indeed, is something of a special case. Worldwide, only Italy, Spain, Greece and Japan are expected to have dependency ratios higher than 80% in 2050. Overall, the curve for Europe in Figure 3 is hardly a cause for concern; it will turn around. Right now, when the principal economic problem in Europe is unemployment, fears of labor shortages seem a bit unreal. Nevertheless, the increased proportions of old people in the low fertility countries will require adjustments. Europe and Japan may need to reconsider their retirement and medical aid programs. People can find ways of retiring in their forties in some European countries without a substantial loss of income. Modern societies tend to write a blank check for medical care, in an extremely expensive effort to extend human life if not its pleasures. A more balanced approach, making it more attractive to stay in the labor force and recognizing that death at some point is inevitable, may preserve some social support systems that are already heavily stressed. To leave the mathematical for the speculative, there will indeed be social and political adjustments as the population grows older. Less risk-taking, perhaps, and a more conservative electorate. Nevertheless, Florida has a very old population and Utah a very young one, and both seem to function in their fashion. Most of the other consequences of population decline would be positive:
Most important, a smaller population would make it easier to correct the environmental problems that now trouble Europe, to manage the transition away from fossil fuels, and to participate in the global effort to control global warming. At any level of conservation and pollution-control technology, the level of damage is proportional to the number of people being served. 10 Perhaps Europeans and Japanese are groping toward a population level that will lead to a more benign style of industrial and agricultural activity and a less crowded environment. A transitory rise in the dependency ratio is inevitable, unless population growth is to continue forever, simply as part of the process of ending growth. The phenomenon is temporary. When population stabilizes at a new level, the dependency ratio tends to settle in the 60% range. Even in the extreme case of Italy, the medium projection, extended, suggests a decline in the ratio from 93% in 2050 to 80% in 2100 and 60% in 2150. The higher transitional levels are manageable, given the productivity of labor that has resulted from the technological revolution and the mobility of labor in the European Union; a move to a somewhat less drastic fertility level would of course lower the peak.
Sub-replacement fertility leads eventually to zero. At some point, Europe will have to bring fertility back to replacement level or tolerate mass immigration, but they have time to consider a question that is now almost never asked: what would be the optimum? They may well be better off with the population levels they left behind two or three generations ago than they are now, or smaller. Italy, again, represents the extreme case. China talks about the "one child family" but averages about two children; Italy is down almost to one child. Only six other countries, all of them in Europe, have fertilities below 1.4. Because of population momentum, Italy's population would drift downward to 22 million by 2150 and stabilize there even if Italy returned to replacement level fertility in 2050. That takes it back to the 19th Century. Perhaps not a bad idea ö Italy created the Renaissance with a lot fewer people öbut they and the six other countries should be holding national debates now about where they want their population to go, and how to get there. So should we, but for a very different reason: continuing growth. Is the UN Projection Right? An optimistic vision. Not so fast. A convergence of sorts will indeed occur, in the sense that the third world must stop growing, but that limited convergence could well conceal vast differences in fertility and mortality, or a worldwide deterioration of living conditions. Fertility. The key to the UN projection is the assumption that third world fertility will continue and indeed accelerate its decline. Figure 2 should take some of the mystery, and perhaps the magic, out of demographic projections. In brief, the demographers have simply assumed that all regions will converge to an average total fertility rate (TFR) at or near 2.1 children per woman before 2050. The 2.1 figure is of course that magic figure, beloved of demographers, which would lead eventually to a static population at low levels of mortality.11 Mortality. The middle projection calls for life expectancy, worldwide, to rise from 66 years now to 77 years in 2045-2050, with the most dramatic gains occurring in the least developed countries. Statistics do not always track reality. In some regions, particularly Africa, the reality has probably left the official statistics behind. There has been widespread economic retrogression; the International Labor organization says that the modern sector in Kenya has "collapsed" and that real wages have fallen 50% since 1975 in Kenya and 80% in Tanzania. Food availability per capita in sub-Saharan Africa has declined for decades. Nevertheless, the UN believes that African life expectancy has risen throughout that period and it projects a rise from 53 years now to 72 years by 2045-2050. It recognizes that AIDS presently raises mortality in some African countries, but it assumes that AIDS will be brought under control in the next decade and begin to taper off. There are reasons to question the UN statisticians' optimism.12 The two improvements that generated the population explosion are in jeopardy:
City services such as water and sewage cannot handle the influx. Diseases of filth and poverty such as cholera have reappeared. The World Health Organization has pointed out that the conditions that made low mortality possible are being wiped out by population growth. Into this cauldron, add the increasing resistance of pathogens to medicines. The assumption of a continuing decline in mortality becomes tenuous indeed. Disease will not stay in the third world. It crosses borders. The industrial countries are better equipped to handle epidemics, but there is no assurance that third world problems will not affect mortality in the industrial world.
Those are the looming costs of past failure to adjust fertility when we changed the demographic imbalance by lowering mortality.
The UN demographers recognize that the poor and rich worlds are mingling, but they don't expect it to continue. The projections phase out most international migration by 2005 and all of it by 2025. They are betting that the industrial nations (and the more prosperous developing countries that are now drawing migrants from their poorer neighbors) are going to be willing and able to stop immigration. Indeed, immigration is a very hot issue right now, throughout much of the world, but there is little reason to believe that it will stop. In fact, most of the debate has been about whether to enforce controls on illegal immigration, not whether to lower legal immigration. Many third world countries have enforced draconian deportations apparently to the satisfaction of their citizens, but there is no indication they are succeeding in stopping the migration. One wonders whether recipient countries will be ready or indeed able to stop it. The UN assumes that immigration into the United States will stop in 2025 and projects our population at 348 million in 2050. The U.S. Bureau of the Census, which does not make that assumption, expects that it will be passing 394 million. Quite a difference for 25 years' migration, and a measure of the importance of immigration to our national future. Worldwide, if the UN assumptions about migration turn out wrong ÷ and I think there is overwhelming reason to believe that they will ö the error will throw out all the projections. It will, particularly, raise the population figures for the industrial countries, since migration is a much more important demographic variable for them than for the developing world as a whole.
Rather than the benign convergence suggested by the projections, there may be a different kind of convergence: population growth slowing and perhaps reversing, everywhere, but under vastly different conditions: rising mortality especially in the third world; a continuing gap in fertility between rich and poor nations, as there is between rich and poor individuals. Testing the Limits I have argued elsewhere (note 12) that the Earth's ecology and the climate issue suggest that a world population of perhaps two or three billion might be sustainable. The world was at that level fifty years ago. The 1993 long term "low" projection would lead to a world population of 4.3 billion in 2150, which is about where we were in 1980. On the right track, but probably still well above the optimum. Misquoted as it was, the UN Statistical Division's 1996 message was simply that the world is making some progress toward solving the population issue in a comparatively humane way, by lowering fertility rather than allowing mortality to rise to close the gap. Statisticians are supposed to be value-free, but perhaps they will forgive me if I charge them with compassion. The medium projection is in a sense an artifact: the demographers use it to draw a picture of a tolerable future. They recognize, if businessmen and politicians and some journalists do not, that perpetual growth would lead to chaos and collapse. The medium projection can be fitted ö with a bit of hope ö to present trends. The problem is that others who don't want to think about the consequences of growth then pick up the "low" series and interpret it as an assurance that the population problem has gone away. They should listen to the principal architect of the projections, who has said that "unless couples have access to safe contraceptives compatible with their cultural and religious beliefs, they are limited in how they can fulfill their hopes of smaller families, and population declines are much slower."13 In other words, "keep up the population programs if you want to see that demographic future." Don't just wait for it. If fertility in many developing countries is moving in the right direction, perhaps the governmental population programs have been doing something right. Not all declines in fertility are simply attributable to modernization. In the U.S. Congress, the endless debates about whether to continue population assistance should give way to a recognition of what those programs have accomplished, in our own direct interest. The question should be changed to "how much more 2. World Population Prospects. The 1996 Revision (New York: the United Nations Statistical Division). Projections circulated November 1996. Text to be published in 1998; date uncertain because of editing delays. This Forum is drawn from the tables and press release, in light of the continuing and often erroneous press citations of the report. 3. Article by Steven W. Mosher titled "Too Many People? Not by a Long Shot," 2-20-97. He claimed that 79 countries are already below replacement level fertility ö the actual UN figure is 49 ö and he arrived at his numbers by "adjusting" the UN "low" series downward by assuming that the developing countries' fertility will drop to the present fertility level of Europe ö which he understated. Even the UN "low" projection assumes no such convergence. 4. Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Population Implosion," 10-16-97. 5. Barbara Crossette, New York Times and Orange County Register 11-2-97. To its credit, the Christian Science Monitor on October 22, 1997, carried an article by David R. Francis, "Global Crowd Control Starts to Take Effect," which interviewed several specialists and presented the benefits of halting population growth. 6. See, for instance, the "Statement on Population Stabilization by World Leaders," signed by 75 heads of state or government and presented by Indonesian President Soeharto to the UN Secretary General in October 1995. 7. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society of London issued a warning of the dangers of population growth in 1992, which was followed up in 1994 by a declaration signed by 58 national scientific federations, worldwide. The International Council of Scientific Unions issued a comparable warning in 1992, as did 1600 scientists mobilized by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1992. 8. UN projections have fluctuated slightly over the years. The new "medium" projection for 2050 is 8% below the 1993 long-term projection but very close to the 1982 projection. The 1996 "high" and "low" variants are 6.3% and 3.3% lower, respectively, than in 1994. 9. "Europe" as defined by the UN includes Russia and Siberia, carrying it to our Alaskan border. When I use the common term "western Europe," it includes the UN's Northern, Southern and Western Europe ö the European Union plus a few small countries. 10. For a fuller discussion, see Lindsey Grant, "Europe in the Energy Transition: the Case for a Smaller Population," NPG Forum, 1987. 11. The high projections terminate at TFRs of 2.36 to 2.6 for different countries, implying population growth for the indefinite future. The low projections terminate at TFRs of 1.14 to 1.6 for different countries and would lead to world population of 7.75 billion in 2040 and a subsequent decline. 12. The data for this section are taken from my book Juggernaut. Growth on a Finite Planet (Santa Ana, Seven Locks Press: 1996), drawn mostly from earlier UN reports. 13. Joseph Chamie, Chief of the UN Population Division, interviewed by Barbara Crossette, reported in "World is Less Crowded than Expected, the U.N. Reports," New York Times, 11-17-96.
© Copyright 1997 by Lindsey Grant. Permission to reprint is granted in advance. Please acknowledge source and author, and notify NPG. |
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times have been similarly misled but hardly ecstatic. A February Journal article (built upon a factual error) predicted that much of the world will soon be in a "demographic free fall" and used the occasion to castigate the "population-control crowd." 
The Industrial World. Fertility is below replacement level in almost the entire industrial world. Left to itself, present fertility (the "constant fertility" projection cited above) would lead to a population decline of 15% in Europe 
The European projection, which assumes a gradual trend back up to replacement level, offers a rather attractive prospect, if they have the resolve and the luck to pursue it. Population would stabilize at about 78% of the present level in 2150 ö a level it passed forty years ago ö and the dependency ratio would settle at 61%. (I should note, however, that this sanguine sketch of the future depends on their ability to control immigration.) 