Too much of a good thing?

How should one react to the fact that one-fifth of all humans to have lived in the last six thousand years are living today? As the UNFPA observed World Population Day yesterday, there were 6.5bn of us around to celebrate, with the figure rising at rates unprecedented prior to the 20th century. The glass may seem half full or half empty, depending not only on your ideological position but also on which part of the globe you happen to inhabit.

Unlike what Malthusian doomsayers may argue, a high population figure in itself is not a problem. Japan, for instance, succeeded in converting its high density of population into an asset. Now comfortably perched among the ranks of advanced economies, it is battling an extremely low population growth rate, fuelling worries of a bleak future with a tiny working-age population supporting a vast majority of dependents. The situation in many developed economies is similar, inducing their governments to offer lucrative social security benefits to people opting to have children. Rather counter-intuitively, it seems people want fewer children when they can provide for them. Also, generally speaking, the better a society’s gender empowerment record, the lower its population growth rate. Take Taiwan for instance, where nearly half the women of marriageable age are single and childless.

On the other end of the spectrum are developing countries like India, still trying to rein in their population growth rates. Home to half the world’s young population of 3.5bn, developing countries are struggling to provide health, education and other facilities to their ever-swelling ranks and to create out of them a talent pool that will fuel their development. However, one of the reasons why some experts are more optimistic about India’s longterm growth prospects as against China’s is that India has a more balanced population composition, unlike China’s which has been severely skewed by the one-child policy. This is not to say that unchecked population growth is desirable. The Gaia Theory and the Doomsday Argument warn that the end of humanity may be nearer than we think, brought on not by food shortages but through dangerously high pollution levels. Proponents of family planning may well have the last word.