Astonishing falls in the fertility rate are bringing with them (developing countries ?) big benefits

 THOMAS MALTHUS first published his “Essay on the Principle of Population”, in which he forecast that population growth would outstrip the world’s food supply, in 1798. His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then which made nonsense of his ideas.

As industrialisation swept through what is now the developed world, fertility fell sharply, first in France, then in Britain, then throughout Europe and America. When people got richer, families got smaller; and as families got smaller, people got richer.

Now, something similar is happening in developing countries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places– such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India–that people think of as teeming with children. As our briefing[1] shows, the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less–the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called “the replacement rate of fertility”. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.

(..)

Today’s fall in fertility is both very large and very fast. Poor countries are racing through the same demographic transition as rich ones, starting at an earlier stage of development and moving more quickly. The transition from a rate of five to that of two, which took 130

years to happen in Britain–from 1800 to 1930–took just 20 years—from 1965 to 1985–in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006–and to just 1.5 in Tehran.

That is about as fast as social change can happen.

(..) for the first time, the majority of mothers are

having the number of children they want, (..)

greater security for billions of vulnerable people. (..)

(..)

(..) economic growth. (..)

(..) they pass through a Goldilocks period: a generation or two in which fertility is neither too high nor too low and in which there are few dependent children, few dependent grandparents—and a bulge of adults in the middle (..)

(Maar de welvaart hiervan verdwijnt ook sneller. Bovendien is het de vraag of de ontwikkelingslanden hiervan de vruchten gaan plukken, omdat ze anders dan de Westerse wereld afhankelijk zijn van het Westen.)

 The Malthusians are right that the world’s population is still increasing and can do a lot more environmental damage before it peaks at just over 9 billion in 2050.

(..)

29 oktober 2009 Categorie: Divers / Geschiedenis, Globalisering / Nationalisme, Lifestyles / Identiteit, Macro-economie, Nieuwe economie, Vergrijzing  Meer van: