1 Are too many people being born?
Journalists and campaigners are sounding the alarm
about population growth. But demographers don’t
seem to be panicking. Let’s look at what they are
studying: the numbers. And, in particular, at the birth
rate.
SOMEOnE hAS TAKEn the trouble to calculate
that during the course of one day at least 200 million
people on our planet will have sex.
Don’t ask how they know or what definition of
‘having sex’ they are using. Suffice to say that it’s
happening and while, today, most of those people
having sex will be using some form of contraception,
many millions will not. Which might well contribute
to the next figure.
Every 10 seconds – about the time it’s taken you to
read thus far – 44 people are born. That’s around 140
million new babies over the course of a year. If you
subtract the number of people who will die during the
year, it’s still adding another 83 million people to the
world. That’s the equivalent of another Germany or a
quarter of the US.
1
It mounts up, and in the gap between my writing
this and your reading it, any precise figure for current
The Essay on Teens Are Stereotyped People One Sex
Have you ever met someone who acted just as teens are stereotyped Not many people have because they do not exist. Real teens are poorly portrayed in the media and are the complete opposite of their stereotypes. Books and TV shows make teens out to be wild or crazy, irresponsible and out of control. One hardly ever hears about teen-heroes. Instead, newspapers and magazines are plastered with ...
global population will have become out of date. So
let’s settle for a nice round seven billion of us.
That’s up from 5.9 billion a decade ago and by
2045-50 there are likely to be at least nine billion
according to the Un’s medium projection. Or there
could be just under eight, if you go with the lowest
projection. Or over 11 if you go with the highest.
Bewildered? You are not alone. But the middle
projection of nine billion is the one that most
demographers are going with, so let’s stick with that
(see chart page 13).
Before the 20th century no-one had ever witnessed
1 2
Are too many people being born?
the doubling of global population. now some people
have lived through a tripling of it. And not so long
ago, global population was a subject that fascinated
few people apart from family planning professionals
and demographers – a group of people described as
being ‘like accountants but without the charisma’.
Today, the dramatic escalation of human numbers
is sprouting headlines across the world and causing
agitated debate on the airwaves, in cyberspace and
across kitchen tables. Such-and-such-a-number is ‘too
many people’, someone confidently asserts. ‘no, it
isn’t,’ someone else counters, with equal confidence.
A trawl of headlines from various countries throws
up the following:
‘Global population explosion could cause wars and
starvation’ (Daily Mirror, Britain);
‘howare we going to cope with the world’s
burgeoning population?’(Brisbane Times, Australia);
‘Ageing populations may crimp the world’s finances’
(New York Times, US);
‘number of Muslims in Canada predicted to triple
over next 20 years’(National Post, Canada);
‘high population growth will be our doom’ (Daily
Nation, Kenya);
‘Population time-bomb will hit Earth by 2020’
The Essay on Natural Increase Rate People High
Identify those areas of the world which have very high rates of natural increase in population today and give reasons for them. Rate of natural increase is defined as the rate at which a population is increasing / decreasing in a given year due to a surplus or deficit of births over deaths, expressed as a percentage of the base population. The birth rate (Br) is the number of live births per 1000 ...
(Metro, Britain);
‘Population growth, climate change, grim pair’
(Victoria Times Colonist, Canada);
‘Population tide may turn’ (Financial Mail, South
Africa);
‘Anglican Church says overpopulation may break
eighth commandment’ (The Age, Australia);
‘The population time-bomb is a myth’ (Independent,
Britain).
In spite of this outpouring, which has been building
momentum in recent years, it is still claimed that
population is a ‘taboo’ subject that ‘nobody’ is
prepared to discuss. ‘Why don’t you deal with the
1 3
real problem?’ readers, listeners and high-profile
campaigners complain, ‘which is overpopulation’.
What are we to make of this? To try to find
out I headed for the Moroccan city of Marrakech
and the 16th International Population Conference
of the International Union of the Scientific Study of
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2050 2000
Ten-year
increments, bn
Rate of
increment
Rate of
growth
Total,
bn
F’CAST
Notes: Solid line represents rate of growth
Blocks represent rate of increment
One reason the rate of increment is declining is because the fertility
rate is falling.
Warning: UN demographers currently offer eight variant projections for
the future, with the median (just over 9 billion) being the most cited.
All projections are conditional assessments based on current numbers,
age structure and trends and reasonable assumptions about the future.
This 2050 projection ranges from slightly under 8 billion to slightly over
11 billion.
World population
Source: United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs – Population Division, World Population Prospects: the 2008 Revision
1 4
Are too many people being born?
Population (IUSSP).
The Term Paper on World Population Developing Countries
... for most population programming. Countries which have adopted population polices, whatever their nature, have registered significant reductions in fertility rates. Several sources ... in 1992, and h 20-30 percent of married women wanting to avoid pregnancy yet not using contraception. Sterilization ... 6. 1 children to 3. 9. Regardless, more than one-half of the developing world s population will be ...
It’s the main body that brings
together those who study population trends around
the world and I understand around 2,000 of them
will be gathered there. I’m hoping they might be able
to shed some light.
Fertility dips
Two small boys are picking olives off a tree in the
central reservation on the road leading to the Palais
de Congrès in downtown Marrakech where the week-long conference is about to begin.
The boys place the olives in a bag before moving on
to the next tree.
That’s it! That’s what’s missing. Small boys!
I had been trying to work out why Morocco felt
so different on this occasion compared with my two
previous visits to the country. The first, in 1975,
left me with a memory of being constantly besieged
by gangs of small – and not so small – boys. They
were offering their services as guides or porters or
protectors from other boys offering their services as
guides, porters or protectors…
On my second visit, in 1987, I was doing a feature for
the United nations Population Fund (UnFPA) which
involved following the story of a woman who had just
gone into labor. Back in her village a couple of days
after the birth, the young mother still looked exhausted.
She said she did not want any more children. Five was
enough. ‘She seems quite determined,’ I commented to
the midwife who had arranged the visit. She shrugged.
‘Maybe. But her husband wants to have more. It’s a
question of status for him.’
Since then, Morocco has experienced a sharp
decline in its fertility rate. Instead of women having
seven or eight children, as they did in the 1960s and
1970s, they now have between two and three.
I flick though the two fat booklets provided for
the population conference. There are hundreds of
1 5
sessions on many different aspects of the subject. But
there seems to be little relating to a global population
explosion. Are these researchers living in a bubble?
Don’t they hear the raised voices of concern outside
The Dissertation on Contemporary Challenges Facing the Child Population in Bulgaria
Contemporary challenges facing the child population in Bulgaria related to health and safe future are troubling and complex. This necessitates the need to create an effective system of security and child care, which focuses on preventing cumulative effect of several risk factors. Therefore, the growing importance for the society of so-called "economically active" children, whose number is ...
their discipline?
As I continue looking, though, I see that from
midweek onwards there are some sessions on the link
between population and environment.
But for the moment, the issue of ‘total fertility rate’
– that is how many children women have during the
span of their reproductive lives – seems to be the focus
of attention.
Since the 1970s, fertility has declined considerably,
The jargon
Demographic transition
When child mortality declines, couples eventually have fewer children,
but the transition will usually take at least a generation. In the time
it takes for the birth rate to get into balance with the death rate,
the population may rise sharply. Demographers call this evolution
‘demographic transition’. It’s not a universal rule, however.
Demographic dividend
Countries can benefit from certain demographic changes. For example,
when the birth rate falls, school rolls follow, educational resources
are not so over-stretched, and there is more money available per
child for education. Or when a generation of baby boomers finish
their education and enter the workforce, there is a sudden influx of
economically active rather than dependent people which may help a
country develop.
Total fertility rate
This is the average number of children a woman would expect to bear
in her lifetime.
Replacement fertility rate
This measures the number of children each woman would need to have
to replace a country’s population. The current rate is 2.1 children per
woman in a fairly affluent country but it may need to be higher than that
in a poorer one with a higher mortality rate. So, for example, 2.5 would
be a more accurate rate for South Africa. ■
1 6
Are too many people being born?
not just in countries like Morocco but worldwide.
This makes for a global average of around 2.5
children per women.
In 76 countries the fertility rate has actually sunk
below replacement level – which is set at around 2.1.
The Term Paper on Population Growth Rate Inindia
... the rate of population growth is not incompatible with a dangerous population increase in a country like ... the family and the community through high fertility. Modernization is slowly changing this situation, ... requiring intimate contact and conversation with women are invariably reserved to female doctors ... will result. The anonymous abandonment of children to charitable agencies is the another ...
This means the current population is not reproducing
itself. About half the world’s people live in countries
where this has already happened. It’s most noticeable
in Europe but there are examples from every continent,
including Africa.
2
In ‘developing’ or Majority World countries the
average fertility rate fell by half, from six to three
children, between 1950 and 2000. In 31 of these
countries the total fertility rate is estimated to have
dropped below replacement level.
3
But in sub-Saharan
Africa women are still having five or more children on
average. This last fact is often cited as evidence that
the world’s population is still ‘exploding’.
But hania Zlotnik, Director of the Un’s Population
Division, comments: ‘At this moment, much as I want
to say there’s still a problem of high fertility rates, it’s
only about 16 per cent of the world population, mostly
in Africa.’
4
It should also be pointed out, though, that in the 17
sub-Saharan nations where birth rates are highest, life
expectancy is 50 years or less.
The Unprojects that the world will reach
replacement fertility by 2030 and dip below
replacement at 2.0 children per woman by 2045-50. ‘The population as a whole is on a path toward
non-explosion – which is good news,’ Zlotnik says.
4
The rate of population growth is likely to be
highest in Africa. By 2050 its population is expected
to have doubled. In terms of the big global numbers,
however, what happens in India and China, the two
most populous countries, has the greatest impact.
India today has a fertility rate of 2.7 (down from 3.5
in 1997) and is expected to hit replacement level in
1 7
2027. China’s drop from 5 or 6 per woman before
1970 to around 1.5 today looks likely to persist.
‘The accumulated evidence suggests that lifting the
one-child policy would not lead to a resurgence of
uncontrollable population growth,’ say researchers
from the region. China, they say, ‘would benefit
The Essay on Population Growth in Developing Countries
Perceiving that a local reporter needs help in understanding the conditions of people in developing countries who live in places where the land can neither provide for the immediate needs of the people nor their secondary needs, different options are provided for them to enhance their lifestyle and living conditions. For the purpose of this study, there will be five available options for the ...
from learning from its neighbors, Korea and Japan,
how difficult it is to induce people to increase
childbearing once fertility has fallen to a very low
level.’
5
As a consequence, China’s population should
start shrinking by 2023.
According to the United nations, 21 countries
In almost all nations women are tending to have fewer children
The most populous countries with below-replacement fertility are China,
Brazil, Vietnam, Iran, Thailand and Korea, in order of population size.
Shrinking families
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
World More developed countries
Less developed countries
Replacement level
Number of children
Least developed countries
Source: United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs – Population Division, World Population Prospects: the 2008 Revision
1 8
Are too many people being born?
already had declining populations in the period 2000-2005. A further 45 are expected to shrink by at least
10 per cent between 2010 and 2050. Many of these
countries are in Europe but they also include populous
countries like the US, Russia and Japan.
2
Chickens and eggs
The rapid expansion of family planning and
contraceptive use around the world is one reason for
this decline in fertility. Population worriers make much
of the projection of nine billion by 2050. But were it
not for three decades of successful family planning that
figure would be closer to 16 billion, points out leading
Australian demographer Peter McDonald.
In Morocco, for example, only five per cent of
women used contraception in the late 1970s – today
63 per cent do.
6
But another crucial factor is the
progress made in getting girls into school. This,
more than anything, delays childbearing, encourages
greater spacing between children or even opens up the
option of not having children at all.
It’s the perfect chicken and egg. Education means
lower fertility – and lower fertility can mean more
education. One of the immediate benefits of the
so-called ‘demographic dividend’ that comes with
fewer children being born is that school rolls fall,
educational resources are not so over-stretched, and
there is, in theory at any rate, more money available
per child for education. In practice the money may
be wasted or misdirected. But in South Korea, for
example, where the demographic dividend was
invested in education, the results in terms of economic
and social development over the past few decades have
been astounding.
The same felicitous connection exists between
health provision and fertility rates. Statistically,
a child’s chance of survival improves hugely in a
smaller family where resources – both physical and
1 9
emotional – tend to be more concentrated. And if
children have a better chance of surviving, their
parents will not feel they need to have so many. The
flipside of this is that the countries where there is the
greatest poverty – those of sub-Saharan Africa, for
example – are also those where women both have the
most children and lose the most children as infants.
No sex please, we’re Japanese
At lunch I get talking with a researcher from Italy,
which (at 1.4) has one of the lowest fertility rates in
western Europe. She tells me: ‘The traditional idea
of motherhood is still very strong in Italy. Modern
women who work and have careers don’t want to be
sucked into all that. They do not get enough support,
from either the state or their partners, to be able to
work and have children.’
In Japan, too, a growing number of women are
childless – hence a national fertility rate of just 1.2.
Young Japanese women are better educated than
their mothers and have more career opportunities.
In spite of this, traditional, patriarchal family values
prevail. Though there is a ‘departure from marriage’
and a third of marriages end in divorce, cohabitation
is still frowned upon, as is having children out of
wedlock. The rate of ‘celibacy’ is high for both sexes,
compared with the West.
In South Korea the taboo against unmarried women
having children is so strong that the overwhelming
majority seek abortion or adoption. A woman who
chooses to go ahead with a pregnancy and, worse still,
keep her child is socially ostracized. She may lose her
job, be rejected by her family and will be denied state
benefits available to other parents.
Despite such harsh attitudes towards single mothers,
policy-makers in the region are getting anxious about
falling fertility. According to noriko Tsuya of Japan’s
Keio University: ‘The Government has promised
2 0
Are too many people being born?
to beef up child allowance but so far attempts to
encourage people to have children are not really
helping.’
The anxiety is partly fueled by national, cultural
and psychological fears. ‘A population in decline
suggests decay,’ observes demographer Paul Demeny
of the Population Council, a leading research body. ‘It
is associated with the collapse of ancient civilizations.’
7
Perhaps a smaller population will reduce a country’s
clout on the world stage, the thinking goes. Or it
might slow down economic growth.
Future growth
During 2010-2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of
the world’s projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria,
Ethiopia, the US, DR Congo, Tanzania, China and Bangladesh, listed
according to the size of their contribution to global population
growth.
Future decline
During 2010-2050, 45 countries are expected to decrease in population
size. They include Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Cuba, Georgia, Germany, Greenland, Guyana, Hungary, Japan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Niue, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine.
The top 10 most populous countries
(in millions)
China
India
US
Indonesia
Brazil
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Nigeria
Russia
Japan
1,346
1,198
315
230
194
181
162
155
141
127
Source: UNPD, World Population Prospects: the 2008 Revision, 2009 Source: UNICEF The State of the World’s Children 2011
2 1
But even Japan’s pronounced fertility decline is
‘far from cataclysmic’, according to Demeny. The
country’s population is set to dip from 127 to 102
million in 2050 – still higher than its 1950 figure of
82 million.
For Demeny, the global trend towards falling
fertility means ‘we are moving towards negative rates
of growth, and stabilization at a lower population
size.’
7
Numbers
But how does that tally with growing numbers
of people in the world? Remember that median
projection of nine billion by 2050 or earlier?
One effect of falling fertility is that our current
population growth is temporary. According to the Un
projections, world population peaks at about 9.2 billion
around mid-century, then declines and stabilizes.
That’s not to brush aside environmental concerns
or the need for treating population projections with
caution. But it does put into perspective the alarmist
claims of runaway population growth or even an
explosion. In terms of birth rates, the main baby
booms are already over.
It is true that world population will continue to
grow over the next three decades, and that will put
pressure on resources, both natural and social. If
we don’t make significant changes, it will multiply
the damage we are already doing to the planet. We
have problems, as climate change is now telling us,
and we look at how population relates to this in
Chapter 7.
But, for those who feel that the planet is too small
for us all, it’s worth noting that you could fit all the
people in the world today in an area the size of Texas
and they could live there with the population density
currently enjoyed by the citizens of new York.
3
And while the idea of a population ‘time-bomb’
2 2
Are too many people being born?
appeals to excitable headline writers and celebrities
corralled to the cause, it pushes few buttons for
demographers. In the words of one, ‘it’s a bit passé’.
They seem far more interested in falling fertility and
one of its already visible effects – the changing age
structure of populations, with fewer people who are
Ten is too many
Vigorously bucking the global trend is the small Indian Ocean state
of Timor-Leste. At 7.8 children per woman, Asia’s newest nation has
the world’s highest fertility rate. Some locals blame the island’s
coffee, which they liken to Viagra. But there are other reasons why the
Timorese are having babies like there’s no tomorrow.
Up until 1999 the country was brutally occupied by Indonesia, which
forced family planning upon the people. Some 102,000 Timorese lost
their lives due to conflict during the occupation and many went into
exile, leaving behind the poorest and least educated.
During the course of his research, demographer Udoy Saikia of
Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, found that men on the island
wanted numerous children and would not hear of family planning.
‘There is,’ says Saikia, ‘something of a psychology that they have to
replace people who died.’ One man told him: ‘Look at that hill. That hill
used to be full before. It is empty now.’
The society remains highly patriarchal. Decisions about desirable
family size are left to men and 80 per cent of women don’t use
contraception.
‘In the fields I asked women how many children they wanted to
have. “My mother said I must have many because I am the only girl in
my family,” came one reply.’ Another was told by her grandparents that
she must have nine children. This is in a country where one fifth of the
population lives below the poverty line.*
Saikia relates: ‘I asked one of the men how many children he had.
“Three,” he said.
How many would like to have?
“Seven,” the man replied.
Joking, I asked: Why not 10?
He answered: “I’m not employed. I have no income How can you
think about 10?”’ ■
* The countries with the fastest-growing populations are often the
poorest. Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, and Uganda as well
as Timor-Leste are projected to increase their populations by 150 per
cent between 2010 and 2050.
Source: ‘The world’s highest fertility in Asia’s newest nation: an investigation into reproductive behaviour of Women in Timor-Leste’,
by Udoy Saikia, Gouranga Dasvarma, Tanya Wells Brown, IUSSP, 2009.
2 3
young and more who are old.
We come to this in Chapter 3. But first, a look at the
chequered history of population concern and control.
1Carl Haub, ‘2010 World Population Datasheet’, Population Reference Bureau
2010. 2United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs – Population
Division (UNPD), World Population Prospects: the 2008 Revision, New York
2009. 3UNPD, World Population Ageing 2009, New York 2009. 4Robert Kunzig,
‘Population 7 Billion’, National Geographic, Jan 2011. 5Noriko Tsuya, Minja Kim
Choe, Wang Fen, ‘Below Replacement Fertility in East Asia: Patterns, Factors and
Policy Implications’, paper for IUSSP, Marrakech 2009. 6Therese Locoh/Zahia
Oudah-Bedidi, poster session at IUSSP, Marrakech 2009. 7Session at IUSSP,
Marrakech 2009.
2 4
2 A brief history of population
The story of counting people and trying to control
fertility is intense and mixed, with episodes of both
radical liberation and brutal coercion. Racism, class
prejudice, sexism and eugenics have all had roles to
play in its murkiest moments.
BEFORE ThE DEVELOPMEnT of agriculture in
around 10,000 BCE, the world is believed to have
had a population of about one million. Fast forward
to 400 BCE and the idea of ‘population control’ made
an appearance in Plato’s Republic, which proposed
that the ‘guardian’ class could be bred to rule, with
the ‘unfit ’ left to die. By 300-400 CE, the combined
eastern and western Roman empire alone numbered
around 55 million people. Recurrent plagues halved
Europe’s population between 541 and 750. By 1340
world population had risen again to more than 440
million, but so devastating was the Black Death that
by 1400 human numbers had dropped by nearly a
quarter. (It would take roughly 200 years for Europe
to regain its 1340 level.) During the Middle Ages, Ibn
Khaldun (1332-1406), a north African polymath,
produced the first scientific and theoretical work on
population, development and group dynamics – the
Muqaddimah.
After 1400 world population grew more steadily. One
reason was food. new crops that had come from the
Americas to Asia and Europe during the 16th century
contributed to population growth on these continents.
The indigenous populations of the Americas, however,
were decimated by diseases brought by European
colonizers. During the agricultural and industrial
revolutions in Europe, child life expectancy improved
dramatically. The percentage of children born in
London who died before the age of five decreased
from 74.5 per cent in 1730-49 to 31.8 per cent in
2 5
1810-29. Europe’s population doubled to almost
200 million during the 18th century, and doubled
again during the 19th century, thanks to improved
living conditions and healthcare. But Europe’s gain
was Asia’s and Africa’s loss, as colonial exploitation
continued to cause poverty and hunger. Between 1877
and 1902 India and China alone had suffered 30 to 60
million deaths from famine.
Enter Thomas Robert Malthus
At the end of the 18th century, a Church of England
curate and mathematician of the land-owning classes,
Thomas Robert Malthus, concluded that, if unchecked,
populations would be subject to exponential growth.
hisinfluential 1798 Essay on the Principle of
Populationargued that population growth would
outstrip growth in food production, leading to ever-increasing famine and poverty. he based this on the
assertion that population grows ‘geometrically’ – the
larger the base of population the larger the increase
with no ‘effort’ needed. Food production, meanwhile,
grows in a slower ‘arithmetic’ way – each incremental
increase requiring the same extra effort no matter how
much food was produced to start with. The result,
he argued, was that populations would outrun food
production, until famine or the misery of war restored
the balance.
Events in his own lifetime proved him wrong:
population continued increasing but so did food
production, thanks to improvements in agriculture. his
pessimistic view was a reaction against Enlightenment
thinkers Antoine-nicolas Cordorcet and William
Godwin who had argued that social misery was caused by
defective institutions and could be addressed by reform.
Malthus reckoned that poverty was a simple and natural
consequence of population growth – not of inequality.
Welfare measures merely intensified impoverishment
since they allowed the poor to breed more.
2 6
A brief history of population
During the period of industrial expansion Europe’s
population increased rapidly. This was often considered
a good thing by governments and opinion-makers,
who associated prosperity and military security with
growing numbers. Racial and Darwinian thinking
encouraged the idea that the presumed ‘superior’ and
‘fittest’ people would flourish and grow. But the British
privileged classes noticed – and became obsessively
concerned – that the ‘unfit’ lower social classes seemed
to be reproducing even faster than they were.
For heterosexually active people of any class
fertility was a mixed blessing. In Britain during the
19th century the average age of marriage declined and
the number of children per woman rose – and with
it the risk of death in childbirth. In the latter part of
the century, 1 in 200 births was fatal for the mother.
Among the upper classes one in ten babies perished
before their first birthday; in working-class families it
was more like one in seven.
In 1877 Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh
published a pamphlet by Charles Knowlton called
The Fruits of Philosophy, which advised people on
how to have sex without getting pregnant. Methods
included condoms, douches, sponges and withdrawal.
The devices were hardly new – Casanova had used a
condom in 18th-century Venice – but describing them
all in one publication was revolutionary. The Fruits
of Philosophysold 133,000 copies before Besant
and Bradlaugh were put on trial for publishing an
‘obscene’ pamphlet. The 29-year-old Besant put up a
spirited and erudite defense, quoting Malthus, Darwin
and Dickens, among others, and arguing that it was a
‘crime’ against society to bring children into the world
for whom one could not provide. She and Bradlaugh
were found guilty but released on a legal technicality.
Besant went on to publish a pamphlet of her own,
The Law of Population, in which she insisted that
famines – such as those afflicting India and China at
2 7
the time – were ‘caused entirely by overpopulation’.
It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was
translated into German, French, Italian and Dutch.
Across England the birth rate began to fall – most
sharply among professional couples and their domestic
servants. The pattern was repeated across much of
Europe for the last two decades of the 19th century.
The birth of birth control
On the other side of the Atlantic, in a run-down
district of new York, a young girl was observing
the toll on her mother of having given birth to 13
children. A few years later, working as a visiting nurse
on Manhattan’s impoverished Lower East Side, the
young Margaret Sanger saw women on the brink of
death due to septic abortions. She was determined to
do something about it. ‘no woman can call herself
free who does not own and control her own body,’
Sanger was to declare. The ‘birth control’ movement
was born. Opposition was fierce and included the
Catholic church. One bishop warned: ‘the races
from northern Europe… the finest of people… [were]
doomed to extinction, unless each family produces at
least four children.’
Like Annie Besant before her, Margaret Sanger was
no slouch when it came to challenging authority. The
Comstock Law prohibited the sale of contraceptives
but she openly promoted them in her newspaper The
Woman Rebel. She further challenged prosecutors by
setting up her own birth-control clinic in Brooklyn.
Arrested, she refused to be fingerprinted, threatened a
hunger strike and spent 30 days in jail.
Sanger was operating in a period where pro-natalism
was at its height. The 1914-18 World War, and the flu
pandemic that immediately followed it, had claimed
millions of young lives, prompting nationalist calls for
patriotic families to have more children.
In Italy there were harsh penalties for anyone
2 8
A brief history of population
interfering with the social duty to add to the nation’s
stock. At the same time, the ‘science’ of eugenics
was taking off on both sides of the Atlantic. Sanger,
like fellow campaigner Marie Stopes in Britain, was
caught up in the eugenicist agenda to ‘improve’ the
human race. Eugenicists had long been critical of the
indiscriminate promotion of birth control because
they said it was reducing the fertility only of women
who were educated enough to use it. Marie Stopes
reassured them: ‘Constructive Birth Control will
fill the comfortable cradles, and empty the gutters.’
Sanger was more explicit, saying: ‘There has never
been any birth control movement that did not lay
stress on the eugenics side of it.’
Eugenics triumphs
In the US, racist fears that black people might be
breeding faster than whites and that immigrants
from China and elsewhere were ‘overwhelming’ the
Anglo-Saxon population became widespread in the
early 20th century. Campaigners wanted immigration
control, fearing the ‘extinction of the Mayflower
descendants’. In 1924 the natural Origins Act
barred immigrants and also expelled many who were
not white. Eugenicists also won the passage of a
compulsory sterilization law. By 1931 California had
sterilized 7,500 people deemed unfit to reproduce.
Racially inspired population policies were popping
up in other parts of the world. In 1936 Soviet officials
withdrew contraceptives from the market, made
abortion illegal and offered mothers cash payments
to bear large families, while deporting entire ethnic
groups considered ‘un-Soviet’.
Meanwhile, in Britain, imperialists argued that the
maintenance of the Empire required a steady increase
in the population of the ‘English’ race. Such concern
led to the establishment of the Royal Commission
on Population in 1937. When the British Eugenics
2 9
Society set up its Population Policies Committee in
1938, the aim was not to increase fertility at random
but to ‘improve [the] reproductive power of the
eugenically good’.
But the country that took ‘population control’
to its cruellest extremes was Germany. Back in
1905, eugenicists had formed the German Society
for Racial hygiene. Before hitler came to power
in 1933, diverse social movements had pushed for
pro-natalism, improved healthcare, eugenics and sex
reform. The nazis used these ideas and pressed them
into the service of racial purity and antisemitism.
Under hitler, groups were empowered to implement
eugenic matchmaking, massive sterilization programs
and the secret killing of disabled people. ‘hitler would
explain the conquest, depopulation and resettlement of
eastern Europe as “the planned control of population
movements to restore the numbers and quality of the
Aryan race”,’ writes historian Matthew Connelly.
The horrors of nazism, and the role that eugenics
played in the murder of millions of Jews, Roma,
disabled and homosexual people, meant that after
the Second World War such views were less popular
or explicitly expressed. But eugenicist thinking and
practice persisted. In the US and Scandinavia, programs
to sterilize people – whether for ‘feeblemindedness’ or
anti-social behavior – accelerated. Post-war eugenic
sterilization laws were passed with ease in Denmark,
norway, Sweden and Finland.
Booming babies
While the Second World War was claiming millions
of lives, it was also bringing many millions more into
being. In Japan, for example, the population grew by
2.5 million people between 1940 and 1945. Soon a
post-war baby boom was echoing around the world.
Birth rates increased rapidly in the US, Britain and the
Commonwealth countries.
3 0
A brief history of population
Population was growing – but not just because of
new babies. War-time food rations had paradoxically
improved the general state of nutrition in many cases,
while the development of antibiotic drugs, vaccines
and pesticides were adding five million people who
would have otherwise died. Though later rejected for
its harmful side-effects, DDT was highly effective in
reducing deaths from malaria across the world.
In 1947 the United nations Population Commission
met for the first time. Concern about population had
become global and with it the sense that something
could be done at a global, international level.
Margaret Sanger and others involved in the ‘birth
control’ movement were able to secure generous
funding for their campaign work, which took off
around the world.
The Un was now gathering more precise figures on
population growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At the same time, colonial powers were beginning to
lose their hold in these areas. One British governor in
Kenya insisted that high fertility and poverty would
drive unrest in the colony. The French authorities were
warned that the ‘decisive problem’ in colonial Algeria
was ‘a demographic one’.
Population growth was being described as an
‘explosion’. neo-Malthusian worries about food
scarcity resurfaced. now the people deemed to be
‘breeding too fast’ were those in the so-called Third
World. By 1956 US sociologist JO hertzler was
writing: ‘These people are problems, even hazards, for
all those countries of the world… as areas of economic
dependence, as explosive centers of unrest and as
possible disturbers of world peace.’
In 1958, Yale University demographers Ansley
Coale and Edgar hoover produced a seminal thesis
that rapid population growth had a negative impact
on economic development. India had by then become
the first country to adopt a formal population policy,
3 1
though by 1958 it was still fairly ineffectual. That
year Sweden’s government became the first to include
family planning in its foreign aid budget. The US
followed suit with big money for countries prepared
to commit to programs to reduce their birth rates.
For some countries, Bangladesh for instance, such
commitments were to become a condition for foreign
aid and even loans from the World Bank being
granted.
‘The Population Bomb’
During this Cold War period ‘strategic demography’
was taking off, with experts examining population
growth in terms of security risk. One specific fear was
that the burgeoning yet impoverished South might
be inclined to communism. Population was growing
fastest in Asia and John Robbins’ 1959 book Too
Many Asianswas typical of the period. For him,
the Indian state of Kerala exemplified the problem:
this populous state had just elected a communist
government. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best-seller, The
Population Bomb, warned of mass starvation. Like
those of his predecessor, Malthus, Ehrlich’s dire
predictions did not materialize. But his book was
highly influential, nonetheless.
Its opening chapter set the tone for an era. Describing
his arrival by taxi on a ‘hot stinking night’ in Delhi,
Ehrlich wrote: ‘As we crawled through the city, we
entered a crowded slum… the streets seemed alive
with people. People eating, people washing, people
sleeping, people visiting, arguing and screaming.
People thrusting their hands through the taxi window,
begging. People defecating and urinating… People,
people, people, people.’
Ehrlich called for population control everywhere.
In the US, it should be done through incentives and
penalties – and through compulsion if these methods
failed. In poor countries and communities, it would be
3 2
A brief history of population
a condition of receiving food aid.
When Ehrlich went to India, to study butterflies,
he seemed unaware that the country was already in
the throes of a controversial drive to reduce births,
through sterilization and insertion of inter-uterine-devices (IUDs).
The US-based Population Council had
sent one million IUDs to India, before a factory was
built to produce them locally.
Big financial incentives came to the Indian
government through USAID, the World Bank, the Ford
Foundation and the Un. Together, these organizations
provided most of India’s $1.5-billion aid package. Cash
incentives were offered not only to men who would
accept vasectomies but also to family-planning staff and
motivators. The poorest people were the main targets –
during a famine in Bihar, hundreds of thousands came
forward to be sterilized in exchange for cash.
Meanwhile, the IUDs being provided to Indian
women were causing infection: 28 per cent of 13-24
year olds fitted with an IUD had to have the device
removed before a year was up due to excessive
bleeding.
When Indira Gandhi came to power in 1966, she
was determined to give family planning a higher
priority. She herself had nearly died after the birth
of her second son, Sanjay. But, ironically perhaps,
it was Sanjay she put in charge of the program that
was to be her political undoing. In 1976 Gandhi
used state of emergency powers to force a dramatic
increase in sterilizations. From 1976 to 1977 the
number of operations tripled, to more than eight
million – six million vasectomies and two million
tubectomies.
Family-planning workers were pressured to meet
quotas; in some states, sterilization was a condition
for receiving new housing or other government
benefits. There were cases of police rounding up poor
people and taking them to sterilization camps. Foreign
3 3
donors responded not by withdrawing funding but
by increasing it. Sanjay Gandhi’s population policy,
combined with his ruthless slum-clearance policy,
outraged the Indian people, however. In the general
elections that followed, Indira Gandhi was ousted
from power.
Particularly controversial had been the fact that
men were targeted – yet the sterilization of women
was still promoted. Women continued to be seen as
the cause of the population ‘problem’.
China’s one-child policy
During the 1970s, population became an increasingly
politicized subject. Controversy raged; consensus was
rare. Was high population growth the chief obstacle to
development or was poverty at the root of population
problems? And who had the right to say whether a
woman should or should not have children?
Feminists like Germaine Greer openly challenged
the patriarchal orthodoxy that had ruled policy-makers, population professionals and demographers
– in spite of the existence of leading women
campaigners like Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and
Elise Ottesen-Jensen.
At the stormy World Population Conference in
Bucharest in 1974, the main message to emerge was
that ‘development is the best contraceptive’. The
following two decades saw a rapid expansion of access
to family-planning services on all continents, with a
widening range of technologies available. But coercive
practices in Bangladesh and Indonesia, as well as
India, continued to undermine public confidence,
arouse suspicion and give family planning a bad name.
The most extreme experiment in population control
was yet to come, however.
It all started in 1978 when Chinese missile scientist
Jian Song went to a conference in helsinki and
learned about a team from the Massachusetts Institute
3 4
A brief history of population
of Technology that was running simulations to model
the effects of increasing population and resource use.
The results were published as a report, The Limits
to Growth, which warned of overshoot, collapse
and exhaustion of all known oil reserves by 1992.
When Song and his team ran the calculations through
computers to predict China’s future, they concluded
that if Chinese women had an average of three
children the population would grow to four billion
by 2080. This spelt doom. If China did not reduce
its fertility to 1.5 or even one child per woman, the
resulting depletion of resources would be disastrous.
Conversely, if it were able to contain this growth,
China could become prosperous.
Actually the fertility rate in China was already
going down – it had decreased from 6.4 to 2.7 over
the previous decade. But Song convinced China’s
leadership to launch a campaign to halt all population
growth by the year 2000.
The first step was to collect data. China asked
for international assistance with improving data
and obtaining computers to process it. Brigades,
production teams and street committee leaders were
instructed to monitor women of childbearing years.
Some officials made women submit to monthly
gynecological exams. Women who opted for an
abortion earned 14 days’ paid vacation – 40 days if
it occurred in the second trimester and was quickly
followed by sterilization. Incentives included subsidies
for only one child, priority in housing and extra
retirement pay. But parents who then had a second
child would have to repay these benefits. Those who
had more than two would have their pay docked by 10
per cent for 14 years.
Rural areas, where bearing a son was viewed as
crucial, were hard to monitor. So the authorities
launched crash drives with shock teams led by senior
officials who went from village to village. Failing
3 5
cadres were humiliated, offenders isolated. Pregnant
women – even those beyond five months – were forced
to undergo abortion by caesarean section. Using
these methods, in 1979 China was able to register 7.9
million abortions, 13.5 million IUD insertions, and
almost 7 million sterilizations.
Although reports of these abuses were beginning
to reach the West, family-planning bodies such as the
UnPopulation Fund (UnFPA) kept funding China’s
program, with generous help from Japan. In 1980 staff
at the International Planned Parenthood Federation
(IPPF) became concerned after the BBC reported
cases of abortions being conducted on women eight
months pregnant, of women committing suicide and
of attacks on prospective parents. China’s one-child
policy also had a eugenic hue, with discussion of
measures to prevent reproduction among those likely
to pass on defects, ‘including bisexuality’.
The measures became more coercive. All women
with one child were to be fitted with a stainless steel,
tamper-resistant IUD; all parents with two or more
children were to be sterilized; and all unauthorized
pregnancies were to be aborted. In 1983 more than
16 million women and more than 4 million men were
sterilized, nearly 18 million women were inserted with
IUDs and 14 million underwent abortions.
One of the most tragic consequences of China’s
draconian one-child policy was the rising number of
infant girls being killed by their parents due to the
traditional preference for sons. In 1983, after years of
resistance in rural areas, officials relaxed the rules to
allow people who had one daughter to try for a son.
With the arrival of ultrasound technology, people
were able to sex-select and abort female fetuses, with
the result that many more boys were being born. The
usual rate of 6 per cent more boys had leapt to 17 per
cent by 1995.
The international population establishment failed
3 6
A brief history of population
to speak up for the human rights of Chinese citizens.
It continued to grant financial support in spite of
evidence of mass coercion. This played straight into
the hands of religious and other opponents to abortion,
contraception and family planning. The Vatican –
opposed to contraception as well as abortion – claimed
the moral high ground, as did Protestant evangelical
A tale of two policies
IRAN
Achieved the fastest fertility decline in the world, from 6.6 children per
woman in 1970 to 1.9 today.
How did they do it?
The country’s religious leaders who came to power in the 1979 Revolution
were pro-natalist and abolished the beginnings of a family-planning
system. Soldiers were needed for the war with Iraq. But in 1989, after
the end of the war, a major policy change took place. Iranian population
experts managed to convince the religious leadership that very high
fertility rates were no longer in the interests of the country.
The government mobilized a comprehensive ‘quality of life’ campaign,
with family-planning classes for all and free contraception. Women as well
as men were given condoms.
The campaign coincided with a dramatic increase in the educational
level of younger women, especially in the rural areas. In 1976 only 10 per
cent of rural women aged 20 to 24 were literate. This increased to 37 per
cent in 1986, then 78 per cent in 1996 and by 2006 it was 91 per cent.
Farzaneh Roudi, of the Population Reference Bureau, comments:
‘People outside Iran imagine that the family-planning program must have
been coercive but it wasn’t. There was widespread public education about
family planning; everyone was talking about it. Women had more control
over their own fertility than in the time of the Shah. And it didn’t lead to
many more boys being born than girls, as in some other countries.’
CHINA
Launched the world’s most radical population policy, which is credited
with bringing down the fertility rate from 5-6 children per woman in 1970
to an estimated 1.5 today.
How did they do it?
China’s national family planning program began in earnest in 1971 with
the wan xi shaopolicy which advocated later marriage, longer birth
intervals and fewer children. In 1979 the Government introduced a
3 7
groups with similar objections. The UnFPA, IPPF and
USAID were targeted, with some success; aid grants
were cut and department heads lost their jobs.
Women to the rescue
The religious lobby was powerful, rich and influential
– especially in the US.
radical population program with the ‘one-child family’ policy at its heart.
Enforcement was tightened up in 1981 in urban areas and in 1982 in rural
parts. Severe human rights abuses occurred, including forced abortions
(see page 33).
The policy was relaxed in the mid-1980s through the ‘one
small hole’ shift which enabled couples in rural areas whose first child
was a girl to have a second child. But it was tightened in 1988 and again
in the 1990s.
Today, despite having achieved below replacement fertility for
over a decade, two-thirds of Chinese parents may only have one child.
Parents who don’t comply are punished. So are local cadres, whose
performance is linked to achievement of target fertility in their local
area. Failure may cost wages or even dismissal. This, together with the
complications of monitoring internal migration, is probably leading to
some under-reporting of births. But the current 1.5 fertility rate estimate
takes account of this.
The one-child policy has been blamed for skewing sex ratios. In
1963 the ratio was 104 boys to 100 girls born; by 2007 it was 120 to 100.
Yuhua Yang of the Renmin University of China, says: ‘We need to ban
sex-selective abortion.’ But she is not convinced that the one-child policy
is the cause of imbalance. Rather, this exacerbates a cultural preference
for sons. She advocates more profound change to address this: ‘We need
to tackle gender inequality and to develop need-specific policies to give
preference to females.’
Question: Would China have achieved its birth-rate decline if it had
adopted a policy that was more like Iran’s and not so coercive?
Many experts – including Chinese demographers – think it would have.
As people became richer and girls became better educated, people would
have voluntarily elected to have fewer children, as they have done in other
countries, such as Japan and Korea.
Question:Is China likely to give up its one-child policy?
Many Chinese demographers are advocating that it should do so. The rule
has been relaxed in Shanghai recently. ■
Source: New Internationalist, ‘When sperm didn’t meet ovum’, Jan/Feb 2010
3 8
A brief history of population
But another force had emerged that would oppose it
every inch of the way: second-wave feminism.
From the mid-1960s, the oral contraceptive pill,
though originally intended for Majority World
use, had helped bring about a sexual revolution in
the West. Women had greater freedom than ever
before to have sex with men andpursue educational,
professional and other activities. They were delaying
having children or even choosing not to have them at
all. Feminist thinking and activism was flourishing;
its effects reaching far and wide. One result, quite
naturally, was a fall in birth rates. In the US, fertility
– which had peaked in 1957 at 123 births per 1,000
women aged 15-44 – had fallen to just 65 by 1976.
The women’s health movement was coming into
its own. ‘Population Control no!’ was the slogan
of the Women’s International Tribunal and Meeting
on Reproductive Rights, where 400 women came
Lower fertility with and without population
control
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
World
5
8
14
3
6
4
7
15
4
7
16
8
16
25
3
Africa
High program eort countries,
largest to smallest
Low program eort countries
Total fertility rate
Saudi Arabia
Algeria
Argentina
Turkey
Brazil
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Indonesia
India
China
Total fertility rate 1950 -1955 Total fertility rate 2000 -2005
Asia Latin America
and the
Caribbean
More
Developed
Regions
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Population (billions)
Medium Low High
1.7
3.11
2.38
3.99
3.22
2.35 2.23
2.35
2.53
3.81
6.22
5.91
5.49
6.6 6.7
6.9
6.15
3.15
7.28 7.18
Source: UNPD/W Parker Maudlin & John A Ross
3 9
together to condemn both population control and
anti-abortion forces. In 1984 the Women’s Global
network of Reproductive Rights was set up. A year
later, at the Un World Conference of Women in
nairobi, feminist activists were to propose and have
accepted the first Unstatement that recognized
not only that women had ‘the basic right to control
their own fertility’ but that this was the basis for
all other rights. US activist Betsy hartmann’s book
Reproductive Rights and Wrongsexposed population
control’s long history of mistreatment of women and
added to the rising clamor for a rights-based approach
to family planning and its separation from population
ideology.
In 1987, a female Pakistani doctor, nafiz Sadik,
took over as head of the UnFPA. She demanded
voluntary programs and threatened to withdraw
funding from those subject to national policies,
quotas and penalties. Family planning was to be
about reproduction and health and not just a means
of population control.
In the words of historian Matthew Connelly:
‘Feminist critics of population control, long
marginalized and belittled, ridiculed and harassed,
would finally redeem the cause of reproductive rights,
and not a moment too soon.’
In September 1994 the United nations co-ordinated
an International Conference on Population and
Development in Cairo. The agenda focused on
women’s empowerment. Despite fierce opposition
from Christian and Muslim religious conservatives,
the conference achieved consensus on the following
four goals: universal primary education and women’s
access to education and training; significant reduction
of infant and under-five mortality; reduction of
maternal mortality to half the 1990 levels by 2000
and half that again by 2015; access to a wide range
of reproductive and sexual health services, including
4 0
A brief history of population
family planning, and active discouragement of female
genital mutilation.
But the Cairo consensus came in for some scathing
criticism from leading women’s groups in India who
saw it as pushing through a western agenda. ‘Surely
it is significant,’ writes Indian health expert and
academic Mohan Rao, ‘that the Cairo consensus not
only had the imprimatur of the World Bank, but was
silent on what the Bank had unleashed on women
and their rights and entitlements globally, through
structural adjustment programs?’
Meanwhile, criticism of decisions made at Cairo
was was soon to come from quite another quarter. The
Religious Right was back again with traditionalists
in the US administration of George W Bush forcing
through drastic cuts in funding for family planning
– to be reversed again by President Obama’s 2008/09
budget.
Today, concerns about biological limits to growth
– that were already being expressed in the 1980s –
have resurfaced with renewed vigor. Climate change
has added urgency to debates on population and the
environmental limits to growth. ‘Population control’
is back on the agenda of certain campaign groups.
This chapter draws extensively from the work of Matthew Connelly and Betsy
Hartmann.
Sources: Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception, Belknap Harvard, 2008;
Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, Southend Press 1995.
Robert Engelman, More, Island Press, 2008; Larry Lohmann, ‘Re-Imagining
the Population Debate’, Corner House, 2003; Frank Furedi, Population and
Development, Polity Press, 1997; New Internationalist, ‘A brief history of popula-tion’, Jan-Feb 2010.
4 1
3 Being alive, staying alive – and
growing old
Women are having fewer children. More of them are
surviving. People are living longer. As a result, the
average age of the world’s population is increasing.
So is the angst around ‘population ageing’…
‘hOPE I DIE before I get old,’ sang The Who in My
Generation. Ironically, it is The Who’s generation of
baby boomers that is proving least likely to die before
it grows old.
Since 1950, global average life expectancy has
increased by an amazing 21 years – from 46 in
1950-55 to 67 in 2005-10. This scale of generation-upon-generation increase has never been seen before
in human history.
1
At its root lies success. There are few events more
tragic than the loss of a child. But in the past 60
years the likelihood of a child dying before the age
of five has halved. And the rate of improvement is
accelerating all the time. In 1990 almost 90 children
per 1,000 did not reach their fifth birthday; by 2008
it was down to 65.
2
Medical advancements such as the discovery of
penicillin, vaccines for polio and treatments for
malaria are commonly given as the reasons for this.
But far more significant are improvements in nutrition
and the standards of living, clean water and public
healthcare.
A child’s chances of survival still depend far too
much upon where in the world she or he is born. But
the survival trend is, in most places, going the right
way. If parents know their child has a good chance
of survival they are less likely to feel the need to have
many children, and, as we have seen, children of
smaller families have a greater chance of survival. So,
4 2
Being alive, staying alive – and growing old
fewer children are born but they survive childhood
and become adults.
As adults, thanks to better health and diet, they are
living longer than their parents and much longer than
their grandparents. There’s still a large gap between
rich and poor when it comes to life expectancy but the
sharpest increase has been not, as is often assumed,
in industrialized countries, but in the Majority World
where people can now expect to live 24 years longer
than their compatriots 60 years ago.
1