I think friend should go out and find a life.
There are lots of good fish in the sea.
10
‘the human race is increasingly facing a “global fertility crisis,” not just a European or American or Japanese baby bust. It’s a crisis that threatens ever-slower growth in the best case; in the worst-case, to cite a recent paper by the Stanford economist Charles Jones, it risks “an Empty Planet result: knowledge and living standards stagnate for a population that gradually vanishes.”’
And the UN is predicting the global population to increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years.....
42
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
Edward Abbey
94
Well, to be honest you just have to see the hormone fed meat etc that both the poor in both China and USA will be eating, to see that both nations health bills will implode when you read this article.
The Chinese government must have a food crisis if they're allowing this type of chemically fed food into China. Not enough quality grain fed food in the world is the problem, because the world population is too high.
And I read another article, elsewhere, in the NY Times that said about anti-biotic resistant drugs; well, if you're eating meat or whatever, that has been hormone fed, that, indirectly, will probably lead to antibiotic resistant drugs for humans.
Note also in this article that if USA had stayed in the TPP free trade agreement they would have 47% tariffs removed.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12301664
5
Ion 1960 the world had about 2.5 billion people, IUn 1987 5 billion, in 2000 6.1 billion, and this year about 7.8 billion. Where did anybody get the notion that not enough people are bing born. The problem is xenophobia and racism. Most of these people are not the preferred ethnicity for Japan or China or Europe or the US. There are plenty of willing people to fill all of the available jobs, even very skilled ones. These problems can be solved with immigration. The world has too many people. We are clogging the ecosystem with our effluent.
43
Communism is not the cause of the one-child policy. Under Mao, everyone was poor, but were encouraged to have large families. Traditional Chinese values are responsible for why the families don't want daughters, not communism. "Women hold up half the sky" was a communist saying. After Mao, with encouragement from the West, traditional Chinese values were allowed to reemerge.
14
As the concentration of wealth increases the birth rate declines.
17
12 billion is enough. The world is too small for everyone. The real crisis is continuing to demand the "go forth, be fruitful and multiply" Commandment in the era of impending massive global climate change. China will be VERY happy in 100 years if they have 3 generations of population reduction. They will have far fewer people to migrate away from the flooding coasts.
40
Mr. Douthat completely overlooks another result of the one-child policy: since families could only have one child, they aborted girl children in order to have a boy. This has led to a skewed ratio where there are too many males and not enough females. China might not be facing this crisis had they valued women more.
26
Just because I think we’re suffocating in our own waste doesn’t mean I am a misanthrope.
43
South Asia has no such problem and won't for quite some time. Neither does Africa. By that calculation, most of the worlds people will be South Asian or African. Western and Chinese/Japanese societies will need their skills. Is the world ready to accept this?
16
China could easily "fix" this problem with legal immigration and assimilation. There are people who might want to live there and make a life for themselves with the Chinese way. So no sad tears from me on this one.
18
Communist China did the world a great service when it instituted its one-child policy. Can you imagine four times as many Chinese, each one wanting the American standard of the good life with McMansions, SUVs and yearly overseas vacations?
India should take note, and every country whose people cannot support its population, creating diasporas which then explode into target countries of migration, should immediately counsel birth control and fertility planning.
I love my half-siblings and my children, but whereas my mother had four kids, my three mates and I have four children among the four of us. We have replaced ourselves, but no more than that.
Each of our children was precious and wanted and raised as an "only child". They are free to enjoy each other's company now as much as they wish, as well as their friends, their own children and careers meaningful to them.
We think of procreation as a personal matter and what China did as a necessary, state-mandated fiat, only enforceable through its authoritarian system of government.
William Pitt the Younger once said: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
But he lived in a different time and a different world.
23
This assumes economic "growth" is a necessity. It's not. Just as the one child mandate was a policy, so can a policy be made to help secure a better future. Using up the planet's limited resources to, for example, take care of the elderly is ludicrous.
29
Ironic that mankind has to come up with technology to solve climate issues when the simplest solution would be to stop burning down forests. Nature will tend toward balance regardless of the human consequences.
17
Douthat takes it as a given that continued growth, economic and population, is a sign of a healthy society. But the past 50 years has shown us the limits and costs of growth. It's no accident that birth rate declines spontaneously as countries develop, regardless of economic system, culture, and religion. It was inevitable that there would be a demographic bottleneck of more elderly than young people when adults realize that most of their children would survive than in the past and choose to have fewer kids. We are in that stage now, and will enter a more balanced state when the current generation of the elderly (including me) dies off. The new balance at lower population levels may enjoy a higher standard of living due to decreased demand for limited resources and less adverse environmental impacts. China could have foregone the harsh one child policy and instead relied on developing its economy to bring it's population under control.
16
Seriously? You can’t imagine the earth’s human population at a steady state? It’s only endless growth or an “empty planet”? Nothing in between?
If our imagination fails us as yours already has, then there’s not much hope. Unbridled population a growth, if it is accompanied by concomitant consumption growth, WILL make this planet uninhabitable, sooner or later. (I see even you acknowledge this fact.)
Don’t worry about the old people who will need care as the population ages. Old people have been quite effective in taking away resources from the young. Worry about your grandchildren, Ross.
39
The thing that economists and conservatives can never seem to grasp which is immediately obvious to anyone who took middle school math is that indefinite exponential growth is impossible in a world with limited resources and space. If there is any hope for this world whatsoever it is in immediate and drastic reduction in birthrates. There will be some pains, certainly, but much less than those of a massively overpopulated world where people fight to the death for food and water.
46
Mr Douthat equates a declining population with a "stagnant" society, declining living standards, and a lack of "growth". None of this is borne out by evidence of countries with aging populations. Japan has a declining population, so does Portugal and Italy. Somehow or other, people in those countries continue to manage to live decent, productive and fulfilling lives. Nearly all western countries have a population growth below long-term replacement level.
A growing population doesn't make a society dynamic - interesting and engaged people do.
34
In this week's column, Douthat attempts to equate the pro-choice movement with the crushing authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. This one is seriously strange.
Ross, the pro-choice movement is all about Individual Autonomy (ie personal freedom.)
The Chinese Communist Party is dedicated to crushing the personal freedoms of individuals.
How strange that you don't understand that.
31
Yes the Chinese restricted birth rates. Mandated them. But that policy probably allowed China the opportunity to afford moving 100's of millions of Chinese to the cities where they could have a higher standard of living. Not sure China will always be able to feed itself, but they seem much less dependent on food from the rest of the world. Now, western observers are saying it is a crisis yet to come.
Not sure that China can't get done what it needs to with a static 1.5 BILLION population. China, India, Pakistan (3 billion of 7.7 billion). Enough ?
18
So you wanted China to become like Bangladesh with only a quarter of Chinese GDP per capita but many more children without a future?
The Earth is finite, so the growth will have to stop someday. This is a simple fact. "Traditional family structures" will simply lead to mass starvation and death in this case.
China was extremely wise to stop the population growth that while they still have resources to manage the country and soften the blow
35
Easy to criticise China. Fashionable too. And westerners are resentful and fearful of China's success.
But many western democratic societies are not child friendly either.
Why not make children count? Make the political class take children's interests into account?
And we could do that by giving every mother a vote in trust for each child under the voting age of 18.
Societies would become much more child friendly.
9
Articles on China here and elsewhere are often tainted with a strong stench of partial truths without examining pros and cons. First of all, GDP equivalents between China and the U.S. are meaningless. There is no comparison as to living costs. As for rates of childbirth, about 50% of our own children births are funded by Medicaid.. Does not anyone wonder what percentage of these parents are gainfully employed taxpayers? A one child policy in an era of vast starvation with an exponentially growing population seems infinitely more reasonable than most alternatives. We seem to be vastly more critical of other nations rather than peering into the mirror.
21
Population bomb fizzled? Is this a joke? More like, the population bomb is exploding.
40
Way back in the last century, when I was in my freshman year of high school, my civics teacher required that we memorize some statistics, one of which was the population of the U.S. at that time. It was 180,000,000. It seems that in my brief lifetime, that number will likely double.
While in college, as an undergrad, I had a delightful professor who was a professional demographer as well as an instructor. He talked a lot about rates of population increase, and how "doubling times" would get shorter and shorter until... population growth would eventually stall and then reverse. He sort of chuckled as he told us not to worry, we wouldn't be standing on each other's shoulders. I find it interesting that his hypothesis seems to be fairly accurate. This was long before the Chinese one-child policy, by the way.
9
Ridiculous article. The writer would have us continue to overpopulate the earth in the name of 'growth'. Most of the world's problems come down to too many people.
51
Douthat, China has old age wired unlike anyone else and Fertility stats aside, China will print money and pay for larger families through rewards.
Do you have a population limit for our planet or should we be fruitful and multiply forever?
22
Suggesting that we will go extinct is reductio ad absurdum
17
An intellectually lazy, throw away analysis of the environmental hazards of over population is not a counter-argument. It's patronizing. The author obviously doesn't care about humanity's impact on the natural world, so why he bothers to pretend that he has taken it into consideation escapes me.
26
The biggest crisis in all this is there aren't enough young people to take care of the older. Think about that for a minute. White birth rate is falling faster than minority birth rates. So all you older white folks out there....who exactly is going to be taking care of you?...You aren't going to be 'replaced' by minorities. They are just going to be the ones putting on your Depends. And charging you for it. And unless you pay them decent wages, social security benefits will have to go down. The trust fund was built up with good middle class wages. Which no longer exist. Don't worry, Mitch has your back.
8
A regime that enforced the policies of one-child per family, forced abortions, sterilizations and infanticide is morally and politically capable of adopting a policy of forced euthanasia, dispatching the costly and inconvenient elderly.
10
Father Douhat believes that women exist to be impregnated. China solved it’s over-population problem. Good on them.
26
A foolish article. China cannot keep increasing the living standards of its population since China is rapidly depleting its natural resources and causing environmental havoc globally. All NYTimes reporters should at the very least understand the importance of reducing global population for mitigation the effects of climate change.
21
Communists might be cruel and the west might be foolish, but every country needs to have a shrinking population to save our own selves, ironically. We can figure out how an aging society works, but we can’t eat money. Every country needs to follow suit.
12
I really hope none of the overpopulation doomsayers have kids. That would be some serious hypocrisy.
1
Millions of people ignorant of overpopulation are fleeing their homelands due to war, famine, pestilence and water shortages.
It is the children of "hypocrites" who may just save this planet lest they have to flee their homelands, too.
10
One possible solution to the low birth rate problem in stated countries is a more open immigration policy. Any comment Ross?
13
The only four words that matter to Douthat are “be fruitful and multiply.”
The two words that matter to our future, or lack thereof are “carrying capacity.”
I was born at the end of the postwar baby boom, in 1958. The planet hosted under a third of the souls struggling on it now. Yet Ross Father Doubt That’s favorite hobbyhorse is a putative lack of fecundity.
Carrying capacity. Google it if you don’t know what it means, Ross.
13
We live on a finite sphere, Ross, with an almost infinite capacity to reproduce. At what point do we solve the problem of said capacity?
10
There is no doubt the forced birth control by China was horrific and morally bankrupt. That cannot be overstated. So please don't get me wrong, I am well and truly with you on that point. However, any discussion of "under population" seems to fly in the face of the bleeding obvious. There are vastly more people than can be sustained. Your reference to the climate crisis lacked intellectual rigour, and came across as an untested opinion.
One way or another, population will stabilize. We should hope that that comes through a feeling of contentment and security in every one of us. Not through a brutal dictum or a self inflicted cataclysm.
15
The world population has TRIPLED since my birth in the 1950s. Overpopulation is a main driver, if not *the* main driver, of famine, disease, pollution and climate change.
The populations of Africa and South/Central America are growing at rates 40-50% higher than the rest of the world.
I applaud any country that has a negative population growth rate.
23
Yes. The Chinese have a demographic problem created by misguided governmental policies and now young people's personal aspirations. But when you look at their southern neighbor's problems it is like a rich man with a problem. India's over-population explosion teetering to 2 billion i.e 1/3rd Earth's population, China's problem seems to pale in comparison. India with a 7%-8% growth of G.D.P fails to provide basic necessities to sustain life. Maybe the answer is immigration to countries with zero or under zero population growth. The immigration would stabilize demographics in over and under populated countries and also solve sustenance problems on both ends. Unfortunately, immigration as it stands now is a dirty word.
6
Huge gratitude to all the people who choose not to procreate or limit their families. We must implement economic and social policies that encourage conservation of our finite resources. Ponzi scheme unsustainable population is a ticket to environmental disaster and human misery.
16
Judging by the number of nonresidents such as the Chinese who buy houses in my city and other large Western cities and then don't bother to live in them, I suspect that there is a significant number of very wealthy people in what is supposed to be a Communist society. (Of course, there always are.)
The comparatively large number of elderly people in China may or may not be be a crisis, but if it is, it is obviously a temporary one. Is China bothering to do anything about getting ahold of some of its privately-held wealth to support a temporarily burgeoning number of old people?
7
And when there is no bread for the 4.5 BILLION Africans of 2100 plus the larger European populations RD hopes to see, what then? Qu'ils mangent de la brioche?
6
Unlike the author that again try to sneak his Chaotic religious anti birth control agenda China is already addressing this by leading world in robotics research which will replace the need for a large manufacturing human industrial workers without sacrificing growth.
6
Homo sapiens came close to extinction fairly recently in evolutionary terms (less than a hundred thousand years ago) and will almost certainly become extinct at some point. When that happens, Earth will not be “empty.” She will be about as full of life as she is now. Recognizing this does not make me a “terminal misanthrope.” Get over yourself, Ross.
23
maybe China will start treating non ethnic Chinese more humanely when they are needed? maybe the "walls" need to be broken down in the US, too, which is facing its own crisis in care for the elderly
6
l'm 83 years old and just had my left knee replaced. So, we decided to hire two local carpenters to replace our second floor deck, a job I had planned on doing. The carpenters had another job going and worked off and on until below freezing weather and rain or snow hit us in late November. We fired them when it became obvious that the job was going to drag deep into winter.
I have just finished putting in all the planks and steps and will do the underneath work when it its warm enough to patch and paint.
Meanwhile, I had a heck of a time...and got a basement full of new(toys) tools.
Old people like me don't need millions of slackers to replace us. Most of us will do fine.. We have an adopted daughter and a second grade granddaughter (with a six figure 529 College Savings Account). They will also do fine.
This planet will also do fine with a smaller population and less consumption.
18
It's always fascinating to read Ross's columns to see which minor problem he's chosen to worry about today, which far more real, far more serious problem he's been told by his faith or his political agenda to ignore, to pretend doesn't exist.
11
Mr. Douthat is insane. His ideology/values are overriding the evidence of his senses: the extermination of other living things not deemed "useful" to people, the decline in quantity and quality of fresh water resources, air pollution, water pollution, soil erosion, global warming, coastal algal blooms, reduction of ocean fish populations by 90%, the absence of habitat for any living thing except people, and not least that the people already here are tired of being smushed together and stacked on top of one another.
18
"For these choices — the one-child policy, and the forced abortions and sterilizations and ....". All abortions are "forced".
The Times now has three right-wing columnists regularly making pseudo-scientific claims based on "studies" they've read and news articles they've seen, also written by reporters with no credential in the relevant study.
Douthat, for his part, is an instant master economist and expert on the consequences of population growth.
One day, the robot are taking all our jobs (which ought to make societies much richer, as productivity goes through the roof).... The next, we're running out of people.
But no matter: anything to blame the liberals.
15
Wow, just have to love Mr. Douthat’s contortions to back onto the Catholic Church’s position: “We just can’t have enough humans.”
26
I am leery of anyone pontificating on population issues without appearing to have a full grasp of this planet’s ecosystem’s finite ability to sustainably support Homo sapiens and the realization that endless GNPs are a race over a cliff.
18
“ your misanthropy is terminal “.
The most delicious irony I’ve read in this publication for years, considering the source.
Sir, your personal, extreme religious beliefs may be clouding your judgement. Any sentient person with a scintilla of common sense would consider this “ news “ from China to be a positive development, for the future of the entire Planet.
Do you truly believe that food, water, land area, etc. etc. etc on this Planet are unlimited? That there is not ANY point at which the human population becomes unsustainable? That Human Overpopulation does NOT greatly contribute to other Species becoming extinct ?
A small suggestion : Perhaps you might limit your work to your areas of expertise, i.e. conservative Religion and the use of professional victims.
Cheers.
24
Do you have blinders on, Ross? The world population is expected to reach 9-10 billion by 2050. That’s not a slowing, that’s too many people. Estimates of 500 million ideal human planetary load have been suggested. 20 times that seems excessive.
14
What utter tripe!
Anyone who seriously believes China has an underpopulation problem needs to go live in China for at least a full year as the average Chinese lives
-- in crowded jam-packed concrete block-house high-rises in crowded jam-packed cities --
with open sewers along-side mazes of jam-packed narrow "streets",
with jam-packed public toilets with stalls with absolutely no "privacy" in the sense that privacy is expected in the USA,
and where the entire notion of even a semi-private one-person stall for "genderless" users is inconceivable
-- and even in the so-called "countryside",
in hundreds of crowded, jam-packed so-called "villages" --
with actual populations upwards of 10,000 each --
with similarly open sewers along-side similarly jam-packed mazes of streets and similarly jam-packed public toilets.
Americans like Douthat really need to go and live that for a full year without spending even a single hour in a Western-style hotel of office building -- nor even in any kind of Western-style church mission or NGO facility -- and certainly not in the luxury homes of China's wealthy elite.
The only people who benefit from endless population growth in the tens of millions annually are those who want to employ -- i.e. exploit -- a large supply of cheap -- and desperate -- labor.
25
I had to clean my computer screen off from the mouth full of morning coffee I was drinking when I read this line: "First, China will have to pay for the care of a vast elderly population without the resources available to richer societies facing the same challenge." Bwwwwahahahahahahahaha! I would like to know what Mr. Douthat is smoking, honestly! The thought that China "will have to pay" for care of the elderly - seriously, who does he think he's kidding? As for climate change being "mitigated" by China going kaput - day late and a dollar short. We've already passed the tipping point on climate change, but it appears that Mr. Douthat, rather like an ostrich sticking his head in the proverbial hole in the ground, chooses to ignore evidence of global climate change and catastrophes reported in his own employer's newspaper. China is toast, and not because the population is below "replacement rate." And now, Trump and the Republicans are turning our country into a second cesspit, just like China.
11
Douthat is the most thought-provoking commentator out there. I rarely agree with his judgments on issues, but I read every one of his columns, just for the intellectual kick.
3
So many presumptions hidden below the surface of Mr. Douthat's opinion, it's hard to know where to begin. I wonder what his thoughts are about senicide?
4
You can blame Mao for a lot of things but not the one child policy. It began in 1979 under the the market friendly reformer Deng Chou Ping
4
We just watched the documentary one child nation that focuses on the implementation of China’s one child policy and it’s implications for births, abortions Infanticide and orphans in the country. The same propaganda is now being used to promote a two child policy. With China expanding its influence all around the globe I worry how this totalitarian society will deal with its shortage people.
1
Just name this column Western Elites Blame of the Week, make it one short paragraph, and be done with it.
5
What global fertility crisis? There will be Darwinian selection of people who like children.
2
Human life is probably doomed on the planet or at least civilized life due to C02 emissions. The human race has
committed suicide and we can only attend to the travails of
Harry and Meghan and whether our grifter President attempted to throw an election. Its amazing we have lasted as long as we have.
10
The NYT and its writers inexplicably continue prescribing the cure-all of growth, economic and now population, while its readers overwhelmingly sense the folly of such policies. I'm with the readers!
Start with an earth that has a volume of "stuff" (material possessions) equal to just one cubic meter. After 3,000 years of 3% growth (for many an ideal/desired rate of economic growth), that one cubic meter would grow to about 1 times 10 to the 38th power cubic meters. For reference, the earth's entire volume is about 1 x 10 to the 21st power cubic meters. Thus, the volume of this stuff after 3000 years of 3% annual growth would grow to 100 million times one billion earths (sextillion earths)! This is not fake news - it's the power of exponential growth. The earth is NOT infinite.
We should thank our lucky stars our ancestors failed to achieve this goal. All earthly life would have been extinct long before we were conceived.
The media, though, is mesmerized by growth. Is it the influence of our own selfish focus on money and greed? Or the power of corporate advertisers and the capitalist elite - who would revolt against the suggestion of reduced or even negative growth?
Humankind used to philosophically debate over the common good, humanity, and true happiness. We have been conned by a racket that values only material possessions, wealth and power - a racket that is unsustainable. Our ancestors will bear the horrific consequences.
8
It's not a demographic crisis, Brother Douthat...it's wonderful news.
The only thing preventing you from seeing it is your lifelong attachment to a reckless medieval theology that promotes reckless 'be fruitful and multiply' religious behavior.
I would like to address your half-hearted, half-baked 'aside'.
Who says a stable, zero population growth or slightly decreasing population is 'stagnation' ?
Who says stable or slightly decreasing populations create a stagnant society ?
Technology will proceed just fine with the current 7.7 billion humans on the planet....and technological progress will do fine with 'only' six billion or four billion humans since necessity - not overpopulation - is the mother of invention.
And an 'empty planet' isn't anyone's goal...except for those who aid and abet the Gas Oil Petroleum party that seems religiously committed to stepping on the gas pedal of manmade fossil-fuel-based global baking.
7.7 billion humans on the planet is an environmental disaster of biblical proportions caused largely by religious patriarchy, scientific ignorance, and the cancer of 'growth'.
Rather than blaming China and secularism for this 'crisis', you should be thanking rational contraceptive minds for bailing the world and Mother Nature out from the destructive religious effects of mindless multiplication of the human population to satisfy an imaginary 'God'.
Current World Population
7,758,440,258 (and counting)
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
23
WHY does money rule the world; because governments are largely parasites.
Earth and the universe will strike back at this hubris and egregious behavior - read population.
I can't wait for the earth to reset. Maybe in the next iteration, humans will actually be in harmony with this planet and the industrial 18th/19th/20th centuries will be seen for the hellscape it's been.
4
Mr. Douthat is simply wrong. The only demographic problem the world faces right now (the world, not human beings or any subset of human beings) is a plague of human beings polluting the earth and driving other species to extinction.
12
Folly is thinking that 1.4 billion Chinese represents “underpopulation.”
12
Douthat persists with his baby mill theories. Large families don't "replace" they increase the population. We do not need to keep increasing the population for economic success, quite the contrary we just need a better distribution model so that we eliminate the wealth hoarders. The other lifeforms on this planet will thank us for it.
10
For the power of clueless, this one wins, hands down.
Nothing can grow forever. Nothing. Human population included. If your entire economic system is based on never ending population growth, you are doomed to collapse.
"Ageing Society" is a side effect of a simultaneous reduction in child mortality and growing life expectancy for the old. These are both good things, not bad things. Parents can have fewer children because they have a well founded expectation that all of their children will survive. Finding ways to take care of the old is simply an economic adjustment of the society and can be a source of new economic activity.
Coercive policies are almost always bad, but lower fertility by itself is not bad. Compare China to India and ask which one is doing better economically for her people?
Finally, here is the most clueless part. Rapid population growth of the XXth Century outran the capability of Western Civilization to accommodate. Just look at the calculus of raw materials, like oil. The civilization needs time to adapt to that, never mind to continuing population growth. Adaptation means developing new technologies, particularly for energy generation. This takes time and effort. Pause in growth or even decline in population is a welcome respite.
Get a grip.
10
This article tilts in the wrong direction; the world suffers from over-population and all that that brings in human misery and suffering: climate change, malnutrition and starvation, poor societal systems and delivery of human services, and on and on. Eventually the world’s population will decrease because it is unsustainable. Either through climate related events, mass migrations, war, famine, and disease, Mother Nature will find a way to rebalance the population to a sustainable level. It won’t be pretty, perfect or fair, but Mother Nature will have her way. “Advanced” societies’ declining birth rates are a result of birth control and an educated generation aware that the current population trends cannot continue.
7
This is not a crisis. It is an opportunity for the Chinese to learn that misogyny is bad for a healthy society. Just as forced birth is wrong in the USA, so too is forced abortion in China. The healthy elders can take care of the non-healthy elders. In addition, all the single men who will never marry due to all the millions of “missing” Chinese women, will also be able to take care of their elders. Perhaps if all that fails, China can open its doors to immigrants from other overpopulated countries like India.
5
"China, is headed for a demographic crisis....it's birthrate" too LOW?
HUH?
In case you didn't notice it, Mr. Douthat, the "population bomb" (as Paul Ehrlich termed it) has gone off!
The world's population is exploding far beyond its capacity to sustain itself. Over-population, poverty, and disease are rampant... we're running out of basics like water! And yes, a large part of an entire continent is on fire!
The earth desperately needs a declining population rate, to something that's vaguely sustainable. If humans are to survive on earth. And the earth itself is to survive without being turned into an exhausted, used-up wasteland.
9
Simply put, a decreasing human population is a good thing.
10
If we are serious about curbing green house gases we need to decrease world population. We are going the wrong way dude.
8
The "fertility crisis" is the good news. Just about every big problem in the world today is a symptom of overpopulation. Bear in mind that human evolution from a chimpanzee like ape involved falling fertility: fewer births per female and more investment per child and productive adults.
4
Falling birthrates is the only good news we have these days.
Less humans destroying the planet and themselves is very GOOD news. We can only hope it doesn't come too late.
Stop. Having. Babies.
Stop it!!!
10
In the words of the late, great George Harrison:
“ My Sweet Lord “.
The most polite, civil response possible to utter nonsense.
Seriously.
8
The "underpopulation" narrative is so irresponsible. The overwhelming evidence is that "net" rampant overpopulation is the root reason for the Earth's very much related dire environmental and conflict problems.
Sure some countries may have "declining" populations but overall? There are too many people on this planet. It's like a cheek by jowl public swimming pool seething with bacteria and bad behaviour. Just add extinction as the denoument and you have our current situation.
But why the push back on "overpopulation" while simultaneously embracing a clarion call re "global warming" which essentially stems from overpopulation?
The answer to why many "underpopulation" advocates refuse to accept our current reality is simple and disappointing - the current mania for identity politics.
Addressing "overpopulation" requires cutting back on spikes in population growth and those spikes are occurring in non predominately White populations in Africa, South Asia and Central America (the latter a key root of the migration crisis). Is it racist to suggest these countries should introduce family planning? Apparently many "underpopulation" advocates think so. (Others are irresponsible religous zealots.)
To claim these populations on a per captia leave a smaller carbon footprint ignores the aggregate issue and global conflict implications of unchecked population growth in regions without resources to provide for the population.
Stop trying to make the "underpopulation" narrative happen.
7
Ross is grasping at straws again. as people get richer and more educated they have fewer kidd. demographic end of story. but Ross wants to blame egghead westerners, without proof. he also wants to sneak in as much Roman Catholic theology as he can, which on abortion shows how his alleged conversion from being an evangelical yahoo was in fact a march from nowhere to nowhere. no movement at all.
5
How can 1.4 billion people be an ’underpopulation crisis’?
This article is completely nonsensical; does Gouhat know nothing of the planet’s environmental crisis, depletion of natural resources and the explosive population growth in Asia the last 50 years?
4
"First, China will have to pay for the care of a vast elderly population..."
No, it won't. The government of Emperor Xi will simply let them die in poverty, with little or no medical care.
The racist suppression of minorities will have limited success in maintaining the Han majority in China; the U.S. is an instructive model. White America has been trying for generations to repress immigration and the birthrate of non-whites. Not only has it failed, the pace of replacement is accelerating as the policies of the ruling class have resulted in the decimation of the white underclass.
Heart disease related to obesity, cancers related to chemical despoiling of the environment, guns, alcohol and drugs, both legal and illegal, are destroying white working-class America. The administration has not noticed this.
There was a time when America seemed to offer hope for a more democratic, equable world. That time is gone and the experiment has failed. Douthat's bizarre religious obsession with human reproduction is meaningless.
What's wrong with misanthropy? It's not like this species has covered itself with glory. If Homo Sapiens disappears, through a man-made apocalypse of bombs or biochemistry, or if we just dwindle away, the planet will be able to breathe again, a huge sigh of relief.
Dan Kravitz
6
Animals all across the world are ecstatic over this news. Fewer humans means a better life for virtually every other species.
11
So the Chinese have a population "crisis" and it's because of Western liberals and women's rights? My goodness, Mr. Douthat, is there anything else you'd like to blame on liberals? How about climate change (those liberals were for coal miners back in the day, right)? Or nuclear proliferation (the two A-bombs were dropped on Japan under a Democratic administration, so North Korea's bombs must be liberals' fault)? Or allowing married priests in the Catholic church (clearly yet another plot by liberals)?
No matter what problems ail Douthat's world, I'm sure he can find a way to lay them at the feet of the liberals he so detests.
6
This is the most hilarious title for an article, almost thought it is farcical. Ecological collapse catastrophe, climate change denial crisis, unsustainable growth delusions, these are all appropriate use of hyperbole. But underpopulation bomb?
Thats GOOD NEWS lol
9
China is an over-populated nation for many years. A smaller size population my be better for this poverty stricken communist country. They should have another Great Leap Forward movement and another Cultural Revolution. I visited China many times there are still people everywhere. I hate to go outside of my hotel room. Too much noise.
8
19th Century folly.
The World is teetering on the edge of a climate sluice gate, and we have a call for more human population?
Honestly, give your head a shake and read up on what the rest of this century has in store. In truth, we could use population controls, or at the very least, remove all incentives to have more children until we get through the climate crunch and are successfully into 'Drawdown'.
You lament the shortage of creativity or talent and new technologies that those new babies represent to you? That talent is already out there...squandered in the slums of cities across the planet. Go 'water' those seeds first.
8
Just about every article Ross writes somehow is tied to procreation.
Why does this guy want us to pro-create so much?
We are seeing the ill effects of humanity pro-creating too much already. When the population of ANY living creature gets out of control, nature pushes back with a vengeance. If recent headlines all across this planet are not proof enough that the human population is too high, I don't know what is.
6
Jeez, you could have made the same points in half the space had you left the self aggrandizing vocabulary out. Unnecessary complicated. Though you cite sources, you cite no sources of supporting numerical data, so yes it’s an opinion piece, unsupported, and not terribly newsworthy.
1
this was the first good news of the day!
3
Douthat, like most conservatives, sees the world through the myopia of growth-at-any-cost. It's very clear that the Earth is fast approaching the point (if not already past it) at which we're consuming planetary resources faster than they can replenish themselves. Personally, I'm far more worried about crashing the planets climate and trashing the environment than I am about a "fertility crisis". Douthat must be drinking the same Kool-Aid that Elon Musk is, when Musk says he's gathering the finances necessary to put a colony on Mars by 2050.
4
I profoundly disagree. Fewer people in China will be better.
6
Wait until you see how rich everyone gets when half the population dies of the plague. Underpopulation is NOT a problem on this planet.
8
China became an economic giant because of its one child only policy. The US has over populated cities with not enough affordable housing, over crowded schools, hospitals, highways, and mass transportation.
Africa, Asia, and Central America are over populated with people who have 5 or many more children that they can’t afford to feed and educate. When these kids grow up there is no job for them. And then they look to the US or Europe as their future, receiving welfare as soon as they drop their anchor babies. They should be given free birth control and sterilization. It’s the only way these women can save their countries. The men won’t do it.
4
An article that in its eloquence somehow fails to make its point.
4
Perhaps the Chinese government could/should have offered one-child-only couples too-good-to-refuse incentives (money, vacation time?) so that they would not abort their female child, which would have reduced the likelihood of today's huge gender imbalance.
1
And when parts of the world, like the middle east with it's huge youth bubble, blow up in extremism, much of it due to catastrophic policies over the last hundred years by the western powers, we'll just bomb the population down to something more manageable. Sounds like a plan.
A question for all parent wannabes: As a responsible adult, can you make a concurrent claim that you could become a responsible parent? Your planet is either freezing, drying, burning or flooding. Your air quality is decreasing, your natural resources are endangered and your planet's leading government has all but declared war on both scientists and their findings.
Is this the type of world you would want your child to face?
3
I think every NY Times commentator who criticize this article and those like it should be asked to forgo any retirement and support during it. All your pensions, social security, and even the value of your savings rely on next generations that you wish were never born.
1
A declining human population is the only thing that gives us hope these days.
It's the ONLY way we will survive.
7
An aging population is only a problem if your political leaders eschew imperialism.
China's leaders have smartly developed its economy and will depend on the resources of its neighbors to fill gaps in its own economy. The other countries won't like it much, but right now there are not a lot of options for them, as the USA has decided to absent itself from collective trade agreements.
'... an empty planet wouldn’t have a climate change problem at all...'
Indeed, planets don't really have problems, do they?
1
Re population, one needs to think exponential. Exponential growth (compound interest) has a doubling time (just as exponential decay has a half life). For most of human civilization, doubling time was a bit less than 1000 years. But something happened in 1776 - no, not some skirmishes in the backwoods of nowhere - James Watt introduced his condensing steam engine and population doubling time fell to 135 years. It must have felt like someone strapped on rocket boosters. They did, it was the industrial revolution - the age of coal. It happened again around 1940 - doubling time fell to a bit over 40 years - the age of oil.
Population growth peaked around 1990. Stable population requires a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman. In most developed countries it’s now 1.5 plus or minus. It it was 1.5 for the world, population would peak, then start to decline with a halving time of 75 years.
Can you imagine a “growth economy” when there are half as many people around when you die as there were when you were born? Half as many houses needed (would houses be “free”), half as many schools, stores, factories...
The only place where population is growing, today, is Africa. Yes, the Donald, the world is becoming, dare I say it, black.
Re climate emergency - population collapse will be far too late to save us. Climate crisis will kick in around 2030 and population collapse won’t start till about 2050. Unless, of course, oh, war, epidemics, mass migrations...
Silly article really...
1
Chinese are driven by financial rewards as most of us are. The government must once again financially incentivize women to have children. The problem will be solved in a generation.
I have problems understanding this worry about having enough young people to care for an aging population. Trust me: old age is horrible. It will be horrible if your child gives up their life to care for you and it will be horrible if you die alone starving and demented in the streets. I really don't think we should base our population strategy on exchanging one kind of horrible for another for the elderly. We should think instead of the long term good for our species: how do we get there?
3
I am a rancher. My grandfathers cleared the land many years ago. My wife and I have let these trees grow back. We breed cows completely on natural grass. we have invested heavily in genetics and have a good idea of how many cows per acre are sustainable The trees complicate the calving and droughts play havoc with pregnancys and cause the cow teeth wear to increase. When cows are experiencing a drop in grass growth they refuse to get pregnant . Douthat would probably write an opinion that our cows are stupid.
7
RD confirms, once again, that we couldn't critically think our way out of a stick and box trap, two decades into the 21st century, and many more into the Anthropocene.
I am so sick of hearing the suicidal mantra of "growth." Unless something changes, and in a relative hurry, we're nothing more than an infestation to this planet. Get over the Intellectual Meets Religious nonsense of our existence and how we supposedly exist in spite of the universe, and have some sort of mandate to be here. It's an ignorant and childish worldview, becoming more so by the day. Want solutions? Start by stopping the adolescent panic over necessary changes and corrections in our condition. Open your eyes and see that the transcendent that you derive from conjured beliefs and kneelers actually manifests through the natural, the finite.
Want that established intellect to mean something? Stop pretending you can't imagine a sustainability-based world over a growth-based one, and get yourself some help imagining it.
9
(1) Theology. Once in a while you lapse into one of the few embarrassing tenets of traditional Christianity. Like now.
Your program for population growth and ecological catastrophe is : "Chill. God will provide."
Why load it on God? Why sit back and watch Him straighten out our messes? Why not do our bit? "Pick up thy cross and follow me" is a call to action, not passivity.
Or, as the great American aphorism has it: "God helps those who help themselves."
(2) Your economic assertions are quackery.
Don't take it personally. Pop economics has taught the public to agree with you.
Your caricature of economics serves those for whom growth means personal enrichment: the developers, the construction magnates, the bureaucratic empire builders.
And it serves two inhuman causes.
First, population increase gives more soldiers for the elite's power trip. And more cannon fodder. Amerika braucht Maenner.
Second, it provides young people for the old to exploit. That's your program, that of those economists who moan about declining population, and that of the latter's patrons, the developers.
Here's what you do.
If you have more people to support and fewer workers, you need austerity.
Turn the Party billionaires into little millionaires by taxation, and extend the pension system. More effectively, reduce the living standard of the vaunted and well-coiffed middle class back to the level of the working class.
I won't bill you. It's too obvious.
5
Why would a country with 1.4 billion humans and is an environmental nightmare want even more humans ? This is the kind of thinking that is annihilating all the non-human species.
6
I love the Pope and Catholicism, but this is nonsense. Human beings are on the edge of extinction? If China or any country's population declines....well let's jump forward. Show me a country today that has a crisis caused by underpopulation? Millions of starving children and senseless death in America and all over the world through overpopulation are happening in the real world today. Douhat does not care. He is wringing his hands and whining because he thinks the Chinese, for him, are not having enough babies?
5
Another reason to be anti-abortion, Ross? Another warning to women to do their womanly duty to be fruitful and multiply (and not compete with men for jobs)? Another plea to men to 'man-up' and carry the weight of the world on their shoulders? All this so you can have your 'stay in your place' world with everyone toiling away while looking at the heavens for salvation.
No thanks.
7
Aw, come on, Mr. Douthat. Why don't you just come out and remind us anew that your convictions are those of a 16th Century Roman Catholic who'd sooner have our planet congested with trillions of starving children than see even one of God's potential critters aborted by a mother who's already watched her other children starve to death? If the proliferation of our species was all that's required to lift a given nation to a level of unmatched prosperity, why don't hear about all those sub-Saharan African states in which parents and grandparents are living out their lives in unprecedented comfort as their children turn banana harvests into gold or find six-figure jobs on every street corner of Kinshasa? Just keep those kids coming and we'll all be rich!
10
That critique of China's one child policy is right on but that's not all.
Take a look ar our environmental contaminants that promise a fertility collapse such as falling sperm counts, DES sterility in men, effects of BGH on children and the painful truth that at exposure levels far lower than any standard anywhere, hormone mimicking chemicals can and do neuter animals including us.
The line: "The Western effort died away as the population bomb fizzled," is simply ignorant. The bomb is lit and the fuse burning. The columnist should read reports and articles beyond politics. For examples, bird populations in N. America have decreased by 30% in last 5 decades, or mammal biomass on the planet is 96% humans and their livestock, wild animals get the other 4%. Even insects populations are dropping alarmingly. These observations are the large yellow canaries in the coal mine. A falling China population is inconvenient, a growing world population is catastrophic.
5
Mr Douthat, it appears your article has raised a few hackles, mine among them. Are your opinions based on facts? I implore you to content your readers with opinions based on solid evidence, otherwise it is a waste of time, time that is sorely needed to assure men that there will be enough slave labor to prop up their unending thirst for more power and money.
4
If China, Japan, or even the US feels like they are having a problem with a decreasing population, a problem finding people to take care of their elderly there’s over 500,000 refugees still in Kenya left over from the civil war in Somalia that I’m sure would be more than willing to help. The last thing this world needs is more people, we have enough people, stop with the racism, the ethnocentrism and let these people into to your countries to help if you feel you don’t have the population you need.
4
Overpopulation=climate change=mass extinction=worsening struggle for life by every human being.
The idea that we can just reproduce at will to whatever number is madness and not recognizing that the Chinese prevented further mass starvation is mindless.
3
Building a society that accommodates having children with generous maternity leave, affordable daycare, financial incentives etc. does not solve the birthrate problem, as many European countries have shown.
The only realistic way to increase the US population and GDP in its wake is by mass immigration and it's not going to be from Norway. That, of course, is an uncomfortable truth Ross Douthat and others with Republican "values" just can't face.
4
Our economic systems are not very sophisticated.
If we have the need, desire, willpower, resources, skills, and organization to do something and the only reason it doesn't get done is money, then there's something wrong with that system.
Also, every country with significant national debt is subject to manipulation by those holding their paper. It is a source of weakness.
If we must operate within the confines of an economic paradigm, it needs to be modified and improved.
1
The world population in 2019 was 7.7 billion. In 2030, it is projected to reach 8.5 billion. We are not running out of people! The alarmist, ominous tone of these articles on Japan, Italy, etc. where women are (finally) able to decide whether or not to have children, wholly ignores the larger reality that on a global level, we have a growing supply of humans, arguably too many, if we consider how our overpopulation is driving other species to extinction. Humans have always migrated, it is natural, and if China wants more people, they could take in some of the 70 million displaced refugees, or just figure out a way to facilitate immigration. We are NOT running out of people.
5
The assumption that an ever increasing population is needed to support the elderly assumes that per worker productivity is fixed. It's not. Fewer people farm now than before, but yet more food is produced.
How the elderly are cared for is less about resources and more about structuring of society. In most societies, it was assumed this care fell to adult children or grandchildren. That's no longer working but yet most countries pretend it is.
There's also no real way to reverse the trend in declining birthrate, so we'd better all just get realistic about it.
3
In the late 1980's when I was a university biology student, one of our instructors said (to the astonishment of many of my classmates,) that programs like food aid to Africa should be discontinued since it only continued an artificial situation in which a population was encouraged to grow in a place that could never sustain that larger population. Thirty years later the entire world is in that same situation. Many people in our country seem to be unwilling or unable to take the long view, this columnist included. Get back to us when you come up with a better solution for supporting an aging population. Population increase is not it.
6
Hmm ... 12 years ago I had the opportunity along with several others to visit with the deputy foreign minister of India. In response to questions about India's "overpopulation problem" she discussed the demographic future of India and China. Her main point was that over the long run India would overtake China as a world power because they valued human reproduction and the talent that is created through people. She said China's "one child" policy in which boys were favored will have a negative impact on China. She noted women's civilizing effect on men and that the lack of women in China did not bode well for a peaceful or prosperous China. Mr. Douthat is on to something. Time will tell if he and she are correct.
2
Consequences of overpopulation are the essence, not an aside.
Calling it a predictable argument does not invalidate it.
Even if climate change can be solved through technology and countries agree on common action, say massive CO2 scrubbing, we do not have the resources to sustain 7.5 billion people with a Western lifestyle. The battle for rare earth minerals has already begun, with China buying African mines, for one. The Saudi's have been buying up farmland in the US for years.
As our planet warms, which is inevitable as reversing (as opposed to slowing) climate change is beyond anyone's realistic expectation, tensions will rise between countries and displacement of peoples will become a bigger issue.
Economic growth has been depending on natural population growth for too long. Germany, which has a huge birthrate problem, took in a million refugees. How about that, Mr. Douthat?
5
This is the fatal flaw of Capitalism. The main statistic economists always focus on is rate of growth. The assumption that we can keep increasing population and resource consumption is somehow the main point of the economy is folly. We have this same paradox here. The native population is not replacing itself, but somehow "conservatives" think restricting immigration sharply while jobs go open is somehow reasonable. We must reduce consumption to survive as a species. An economy focussing on growth is suicidal.
6
Our economic systems are not very sophisticated.
If we have the need, desire, willpower, resources, skills, and organization to do something and the only reason it doesn't get done is money, then there's something wrong with that system.
Also, every country with significant national debt is subject to manipulation by those holding their paper. It is a source of weakness.
If we must operate within the confines of an economic paradigm, it needs to be modified and improved.
1
It's not just China. The birth rate of the U.S. middle and upper-middle classes (the people who make society go: the teachers, doctors, policemen, engineers, skilled production workers) is far below replacement.
The Old Order Amish are wonderful people, but they are not going to maintain a technological civilization.
The threat to our civilization is demographic collapse.
2
How anyone can lament a decreasing global human population is beyond me. The human species has wrecked havoc on this planet bringing it to the verge of a 6th mass extinction. A paradox of nature exists where improving human lives translates to further deterioration of nonhuman life. The author talks about climate change like it's some inconvenience. The truth is that climate change is an existential threat not just to humans but to the entire biosphere. Rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 has increased the acidity of the Ocean by one third which is stressing oceanic ecosystems to the point of impending collapse. The author clearly is living in an anthropocentric world.
6
Thought 1: It's not China I'm worried about. India has roughly the same population (1.3 vs 1.4 billion) and less than one-fourth the per capita GDP. India is following Douthat's recommendations and I'm worried it's not going to be pretty.
Thought 2: It is more likely that a child raised with the resources of two educated parents will have the wherewithal to "innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently". Douthat's climate change deus ex machina is not more likely to appear simply because families are larger.
4
Hmmm. Global human population growth is still growing at more than eighty million per year. Some demographers projecting Africa's population possibly reaching fourteen billion by the end of the century.
A Swedish demographer used the phrase "braking distance" to describe the time necessary for populations to stabilize, even if fertility rates immediately were at zero. It would take three quarters of a century for population growth to halt - because the population of those moving into their reproductive years would still be growing. And that is a key reason why populations overshoot carrying capacity.
The challenges of shrinking nations are myriad, but part of an evolutionary process that progresses toward sustainability, healthier lives, stable governments, and healthy environments.
Lets discuss what those processes and policies should be.
5
Ross Douthat needs a wake up call. The earth is overpopulated and cannot sustain the number of humans we have now, let alone the 80 million our numbers rise by every year.
If we want everyone to live the same lives as the billion or so that live in first world countries, places where per-person consumption is roughly 20 times larger, a sustainable number of humans is maybe a billion. And that assumes everyone behaves responsibly and governments work together for the sake of the planet. Good luck with that.
Since we’re unlikely to act before it’s too late, wars, pestilence, and environmental collapse will probably do the work.
5
If the world's population fell by 50%, there would still be more people than there were in the middle of the 1960s. I can remember the 1960s. The world was not underpopulated then.
13
@pjdm
In the forties and early fifties California was such a treat for us hicks, isolated in paradise by an impossible drive, or a long train trip, or multi-landing unaffordable flight to the East, whence our kinescoped four-hour-delayed TV news.
And our working class San Francisco. How to say it? I can't describe it. But I feel it every day.
There were 7 million people during the War. We were poor, so many of us, but nature was like an extension of our gardens.
It was a joy to travel through the Redwoods on twisting one-and-a-half lane roads, or over the northern Sierra on dirt tracks whose ruts were originally from settlers' wagons. From Santa Barbara to Point Conception was sometimes bare of other cars.
10 hours to LA. Three days to Seattle. Today, they aren't far. But they look a lot more like each other than in our time.
Your posterity can have it back, but only after generations of 7 million population.
2
I'm one of those who applauds low birth rates - there are already too many humans - human ingenuity and corporate greed will keep the planet provided with technology etc - growth seems to be about creating more and more billionaires and more drones for their treadmills and consumers for their throw away, poor value. polluting products. Happy days.
7
Ross: This is about your paragraph:
"An aside to answer a predictable objection: Yes, in an age of stagnation, CO2 levels won’t grow as fast, delaying some of climate change’s effects — but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently. And yes, an empty planet wouldn’t have a climate change problem at all, but if that’s your goal your misanthropy is terminal."
Really, Ross, this is just "shifting sands"...a term from argumentation theory, pointing to a type of reasoning that sways like a drunken sailor from one extreme to the other.
The planet got along very well with fewer humans for a long time. Why should there be a crisis if we return to the population levels of 0 AD (estimated at 170-400 million). That's still a lot; the decision of a family to have fewer or no babies is not "misanthropy".
The world is completely overcrowded by humans now. The UN rates demographic pressures as the worst threat of the future.
10
I get the part about China not having achieved sufficient riches to support an aging, retired population, but otherwise this hand-wringing over declining population numbers and stifled economic growth puzzles me. Anyone who has given a moment's thought to our climate change calamity realizes that excess population is a major part of the problem. Also we are reminded frequently that robots and automation are going to increasingly make workers, particularly low-level workers, obsolete and unnecessary. Douthat completely ignores those considerations. It seems to me that declining populations are just what the doctor ordered.
9
I actually consider this good news. Yes, China will have to figure out how to handle its aging population, but is the rest of Douthat's analysis a cause for distress? First of all, it's a bit alarmist to say that just because birthrates are falling, it will result in a world population of zero. Second, I just don't see the correlation between fertility rates and "innovation." Human beings have been innovative since the day we evolved. A smaller population means a smaller economy, but that's relative, not absolute.
5
GDP is not a good measure of human welfare. Insofar as it can be measured through economic measures GDP per capita is what's relevant.
This means that automation it simply replaces workers who have retired is it good thing for the overall society even if there's no increase in GDP.
It is better to live in the county where GDP grows at 0% of the population shrinks at 1% then it is to live in a country where the population grows 1% and the economy grows 1%.
Finally our world would be better off for its resources bring up poor people through immigration than through additional births.
1
The biggest problem which Douthat ignores is capitalism Urbanization combined with capitialism almost inevitably reduces birthrates. As the Chinese urbanize their isn't the need for the populations in rural, farm, areas. It is nice to find ideology to blame but demographics and economics are more powerful.
4
I see many false assumptions here. Lower population increase does not equal reduced technological progress, for the first one. Elderly does not equal useless, for the second one. Growth is necessary for economic progress is the third one.
Quality over quantity may be an answer for the best progress ever. Each individual is full of potential. In the past, crowding often left that potentiality unrealized. Wanted children, educated children, loved children, each person more useful than ever and every person more valued than before. No reason that can't be the wave of the future, with the elderly using their own good minds to educate themselves and help out. Most humans in good health can work 4 hours a day without overtiring themselves up through the age of 80 and even beyond. And their minds last, too. It's the social system, not their lack of ability, that sidelines them.
10
Douthat seems to have gotten this almost entirely backwards. Among the five largest congregations of human population in the world: Africa with continuing unconstrained population growth is falling into greater and greater economic (and political) misery; India and South America, each with only partial reductions in their rates of population growth are looking at cloudy futures; China, having broken the back of unconstrained population growth continues to progress economically extremely well; the U.S., with population growth arrested has a strong economy and still a promising future; Europe (and Japan) with the greatest population deflations of this group are shifting effectively to "less work - more life satisfaction" models. Arresting global population growth is essential for a prosperous and even a habitable planet.
10
I could hardly believe what I was reading here. The entire cause of the current climate crisis is too many people. Although I sympathise at the individual level about the hardships that people face, from a global perspective there are going to be consequences that are going to be very distressing, but unavoidable. We humans are not an endangered species and don't need encouragement to reproduce. If stating this makes me a misanthrope, so be it.
13
Anyone who has spent time in China can attest that it does not need more people, and that it needs to reduce its population.
The planet is overpopulated and countries like China and India are in the forefront of this alarming population boom.
Chinese people are resilient. Taking care of its elderly will be a challenge. However, these are people who have endured a lot of hardships. They will adapt.
In order for the human race to survive in the long run, we're going to have to reduce our numbers. It will present some daunting challenges, but nothing that we can't deal with.
7
Seven and a half billion people aren't enough?
Mr. Douthat seems to believe that there's no limit to how many humans the Earth can sustain.
How bizarre. I certainly don't know the limit but I'm quite certain there is one. If we pass it we will then experience a population crash and that would be ugly beyond belief.
We're projected to have about ten billion by 2050. What is this business about the population bomb being defused?
It seems that Mr. Douthat can't imagine an economic system that doesn't depend on population growth. How can he not see that we have to learn to live with a stable population size?
10
I believe this post has some biases and misconceptions of China’s birthrate in general. Yes, China does have the one child policy but the whole purpose of it was to control the population to be LOW since the birth rate was huge and people in general ignored the two-child policy that existed before; China is facing a demographic crisis because there are too many people existing in the country. As we all know, China is a communist country, and those who do not follow the rules have consequences, which is usually a huge problem to the middle class people and lower, so families registered only one child to the government and the others will be "ghosts." My friend is from China and she has three siblings, but only her sister is registered, and the rest is registered as Vietnamese - since their father is Vietnamese and live there - because of the policy. Rural areas in China don't even register sometimes because they simply don't know how to or it's too far to even write up a form.
You cannot ignore the reality behind the policy and make a hasty decision according to the documents and numbers shown to you. Also, it is not the Chinese government's fault that the population is shrinking and getting old. The Chinese government themselves are the reason why the official documents show like that: to at least "show" that the population is shrinking so the government can manage the country with the given number they have in hand. China is not in underpopulation, and it's not a problem.
3
All species have their populations regulated by nature one way or another, even humans. At least until the industrial age, when vast leaps in science permitted a human population explosion, which is clearly unsustainable, as confirmed by rapid, human caused global warming. By endlessly increasing human populations, as Ross would have it, we not only doom other species but inevitably our own. The subtext of this editorial is clearly along religious/moral grounds and has nothing to do with science.
6
Ross is missing the big picture. 8 billion people ensure that the planet will not be empty. One in every 5 humans is chinese. Technology makes China future more dependent of strong education that increased numbers of children. The real crisis is for Ross to learn urgently some demography
3
GDP is not a good statistic for reflecting the human experience. Insofar as economic indicators reflects The human experience GDP per capital
This population debate highlights two opposing worldviews - the libertarian worldview and the Malthusian worldview. In the libertarian worldview, a larger population means that there is a larger absolute number of inventors and innovators. A larger population size increases society's demand for resources, which increases the demand for innovation (see industrial agriculture) in order to met that demand. That increase in innovation is fulfilled by the larger population size having a larger number of inventors. This is the overarching philosophy that the author has.
On the other hand, the Malthusian worldview suggests that the increase in population will eventually outstrip the demand for resources. Although I see merit in the libertarian worldview, I think it is definitely possible that the demand for innovation as a result of human's consumption of resources ends up exceeding the supply of solutions. Industrial agriculture is an effective solution in terms of raw food output, but that solution itself does come with some environmental cost. Admittedly, climate change is an issue (with population growth as an exacerbating factor) in which the supply of solutions from the market has not met the demand.
The libertarian worldview is risky, which is why I concede to the left on the population issue. Of course, this should be done through incentives rather than central planning. And birth rates that are too low is bad for social cohesion.
1
China's debt/GDP ratio is now over 300%. The US debt/GDP ratio is just over 100%. China has been outperforming the US economy for decades and by one measure China's citizens are actually better off than Americans. What do the Chinese know about Modern Monetary Theory that we don't?
3
Any economic paradigm that depends on everlasting population growth is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. The mistakes and cruelty of the Chinese experience should not dissuade humanity from urgently pursuing strategies to reverse our disastrous abundance on this over stressed planet.
6
“But even after years of growth, Chinese per capita G.D.P. is still about one-third or one-fourth the size of neighboring countries like South Korea and Japan. And yet its birthrate has converged with the rich world much more quickly and completely — which has two interrelated implications, both of them grim.”
Very unsatisfactory economic analysis! But the basic problem is the numbers are wrong.
When you compare GDP per capita, always (emphasise) always use constant PPP (purchasing power parity) figures for consistency. I will not go into why but consult any decent economics textbook.
The World bank data show that in 2018 the GDP per capita for Japan, Korea, China, and India were respectively: $39,294, $36,777, $16,182, $6,888
Where does Mr Douthat get one-third from. Does he take into account the initial resource conditions and the time it took for Japan and Korean to reach that level of GDP.
His comparison should be India and is he proposing that India boost its birth rate?
1
Our economic systems are not very sophisticated.
If we have the need, desire, willpower, resources, skills, and organization to do something and the only reason it doesn't get done is money, then there's something wrong with that system.
Also, every country with significant national debt is subject to manipulation by those holding their paper. It is a source of weakness.
If we must operate within the confines of an economic paradigm, it needs to be modified and improved.
We cannot reduce the rate of global warming and rescue the environment unless we reduce the human population. We are already making the planet inhabitable for other species except those we raise for pets or food.
We should encourage people to have fewer children even pdf it means younger people will have to make sacrifices to care for the elderly. Otherwise, human population will be reduce through traditional methods--war, famine, pestilence and death.
5
Birth rate too low? Here is what Wikipedia has to say on past abortion policy in China:
"In the early 1950's, the Chinese government made abortion illegal save when 1) the mother had a preexisting condition, such as tuberculosis or pernicious anemia, that would cause the pregnancy to be a threat to the mother's life; 2) when traditional Chinese medicine could not settle an overactive fetus and spontaneous abortion was expected; and 3) when the mother had already undergone two or more Caesarean sections. Punishments were written into the law for those who received or performed illegal abortions."
They can return to that policy with a snap of Xi Jinping's fingers.
I present the following inconvenient truth.
Let's begin with all the "stuff" (material possessions) on earth occupying a volume of one cubic meter. Now apply 3 percent annual economic growth (a typically accepted goal today) to that amount of "stuff". After 3,000 years of 3% growth, that one cubic meter would grow to about 1 x 10 to the 38th power cubic meters. For reference, the earth's entire volume is 1 x 10 to the 21st power cubic meters. That means the volume of stuff accumulated over 3000 years with 3% annual growth would be 100 million of these one billion earths (sextillion earths)! This is not fake news - it's the power of exponential growth. The earth is not infinite. We ought to thank our lucky stars that our ancestors failed to achieve 3% annual growth.
The power of exponential growth applies to population as well.
The media's focus on growth perpetuates a racket invented by corporations and the capitalist elite. I suspect a conflict of interest exists, since the readers' comments overwhelmingly recognize they are being conned. Our ancestors will have to deal with the horrific consequences if we don't change course.
5
@Winemaker I meant heirs not ancestors.
1
Why is Mr Douthat bemoaning China’s growing crisis? From a western perspective, this is a good thing no? Also, why is growth always good? Seems to me that growth has ruined the ecosystem and is causing all kinds of long term sustainability issues.
But what is going unstated is that the US, if it were to open the immigration tap a bit more, could, in a few decades or more, have a population close to that of the shrinking Chinese population.
Size matters. Let them shrink.
4
One point Douthat misses is the enormous gender imbalance of the “one child” years. Boys were overwhelmingly favored, so there are many fewer women to birth those babies. One man can impregnate many women, but each woman can only birth at most one baby a year for a few decades (assuming she’s willing to be nothing but a baby machine, which is a huge stretch).
I have a Chinese friend. He has a great job and lives in a good size city. He is college educated and speaks fluent English. He is almost 40 and never had a date. He’s good-looking and personable but not rich. There is an entire generation of men who simply will never father children. The future is truly frightening.
132
@Cooofnj
Except the imbalance is NOT enormous. Stop parroting anti-China talking points.
Is there an imbalance.. absolutely. Note: there was also an imbalance well before the start and end of the one child policy too.
The real challenge for young men inside China now days is many are poor and under-educated.. and most urban Chinese women will simply not seriously date or marry them... because they expect a male spouse to be successful, have a good career, and a healthy income. In other words.. as has always been the historical norm in urban China... women want successful men as spouses.
Rural China is a different story entirely, and China never applied the one child policy to rural China.. because rural China is the bread basket to China and is labor intensive, largely smaller family farms, and families were allowed to continue to be multi-child to support ongoing farming success.
23
@Cooofnj Why is that frightening? Sad for this man. For the Chinese society, it is basically a population control mechnism for the society as a whole. If the sex ratio is 55:45, 10% of the population will not reproduce. That's a big number. I wonder sometimes if the Chinese leadership did not endorse sex-selection abortion for that reason.
10
@George Tyrebyter Because there is absolutely no one there to take care of the aging population. In many societies (US included) it falls heavily on women to care for the young and the elderly. With few women, there will be enormous costs for caring for all these single old men. Remember, most of them had no other siblings, few cousins, and if they have any family they are either tied up with their direct family or they are men.
Perhaps the fact that I am female makes me much more empathetic tothe future plight of lone men and overworked women. Even today in the US, women provide the bulk of care (not all - please I know that so don't jump down my throat!). The professional Chinese women I know of say 25-40 are not jumping into marriage and children. They know that if they do, in 20 years they will have their parents, their husband's parents, and their own kids to care for. Many have simply said "no thanks".
I don't think the Chinese leadership endorsed sex-selection so much as the population did. They KNEW that the boy is financially responsible for taking care of his parents, as his wife would be physically responsible. So the best option was to have a boy, if you could only have one child. Unfortunately, when too many people chose that option you have the problem they have today. The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Maybe it's the Chinese people I know. My thoughts are colored by many, many interactions with young, educated (first generation) mainland Chinese.
9
Imagine growing up without any brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and not having any nieces or nephews once you get older.
Pretty lonely....
That's the damage the one-child policy has done to Chinese family structures. It has eviscerated the familial support structures that most Chinese people have historically relied upon.
69
@Matt
This is complete and uninformed nonsense.
I have multiple inlaws in China, all who grew up during the one child policy era, and all had only one child... daughters in all cases by the way.
These families are just as strong and vibrant and follow traditional norms in terms of family support, including taking care of their parents. The kids are doing great, and love their grandparents.. and each of three daughters married good men with good careers, and each has now had two children and the grandparents love taking care of the grandkids, just as the grandkids love spending time with both parents and grandparents.
Stop peddling media stereotypes.
38
@Matt Imagine growing up without fish in the oceans, animals in the forests, no clean drinking water, polluted skies.... depressing. That’s the choice now. so not having relatives around is a small price for mankind’s drunken bender in the rental property called earth. There are consequences to actions.
52
In fact, at least one group of Western demographers recommended a two child policy - with the second child required to be spaced 10 years after the first. This would have had a similar effect as the one child policy and was advocated to avoid mass unrest.
1
One thing the world does not need more of is people: we are like a cancer. Surely the are better ways to deal with the problems Ross cites other than just having more babies! And what’s more, the global population continues to rise. No, please, let’s be a bit less short-sighted and come up with real solutions that address shared prosperity, climate, extinctions, inequality, all of it.
4
Young people are constantly presented with the negative side of having children. It's expensive, your child could have a birth defect, teenagers can drive you crazy, a world headed for disaster, etc. They are stunned when I tell them that in my day marriage and children went hand in hand. You got married and you had children. You didn't think about it. You might wait a few years, but you knew you were going to have children.
3
@Paul Its so much better that people, now have a choice, how awful to be a child that is unwanted and resented by its parents
3
Extending the last paragraph I offer............and we should celebrate the intelligence of the Zero Population Growth movement which explained to all humans the folly of uncontrolled growth in spaceship Earth.
5
This story makes me furious. What this planet needs the least of is more human beings. This shortsighted perspective of ‘who will take care of the elderly’ and ‘we need more kids to deal with climate change’ is ludicrous. 7.7Billion people. 65Billion animals killed for food every year. Our oceans overfished to the brink and filled with mountains of plastic getting worse everyday. Wildlife extinctions, pollution, nuclear waste, rising sea levels... Less children in the most populous country on earth is not a crisis! It’s a glimmer of hope, albeit tiny.
7
Survival demands a reckoning with facts that are not bent to satisfy greed, privilege, or pride and that are devoid of superstition and dogma. Absolutely, we must free ourselves of hydrocarbons and planet destruction. We must embrace population reduction as a goal.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs lists basic physiological needs as primary and those needs include sex, intimacy, love. Repression of those needs is crippling, deranging. Did the Chinese prevent sex? Do religions demonize sex?
3
Immigration, mostly from Latin American and Asia, will help the United States (although Lyman Stone argues that it only postpones the crisis). No one wants to immigrate to China.
1
I hope Ross Douthat reads the many intelligent comments here that carefully and persuasively argue the untenability of his position.
I also urge him to read Sapiens (2015), by the Israeli scholar Yuval Noah Harari. The author traces the causes of the rise to dominance of Homo sapiens and then delves into the misery that ensued not merely for all the other species on the planet, but for human kind as well.
P.S. Waiting for the day passionate Catholics give up their views on women and birth control is like waiting for Godot. Mr. Douthat's many columns on fertility, women, women's choices, population, demonstrate this in spades.
5
The writer obviously is under the delusion that replacement rate growth is a precondition to innovation. It is not. Simply put there are too many people in the world. The biosphere cannot sustain it much longer. We don’t know when but closed systems can’t grow forever.
9
The silver tsunami of a temporarily aging planet can be mitigated by increasing the retirement age. And why don't you integrate your ideas here with the the fact that technology will replace much labor, creating the real crisis of many unemployable people. Catholicism is wrong on this issue, padre.
3
So easy to say "increase the retirement age." Should we work until 70 or 75? Should we work until we drop dead? Will you hire and pay me at 70?
3
But if the world can’t support enough children, isn’t lower population a good thing? Perhaps you’ve answered that.
1
I generally like Roth Douthat’s essays even if I rarely agree with him but this essay seems at odds with his other work for its intellectual dishonesty. An empty planet??? There are over seven billion humans on planet earth. We can’t grow our population infinitely. To suggest we are in danger of vanishing makes a mockery of serious discussions of the legitimate issues he raises. Color me disappointed.
5
This isn't a crisis, it's our salvation.
7
"...the human race is increasingly facing a global fertility crisis”
We've overpopulated the planet. Consider that this may be humanity subconsciously beginning to correct its trajectory.
4
Again, more insight into the political implications of Chinese fecundity.
Try this more local fecundity matter in NYC:
In an April 1978 issue of Ebony Magazine an interview of prolife activist, the late Dr. Mildred Faye Jefferson MD, pointed out that black women in NYC had more pregnancy terminations than births. Fast forward to 2015: https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/nov/25/cynthia-meyer/cynthia-meyer-says-more-black-babies-are-aborted-n/.
What are the many implications of such high rates of elective pregnancy termination in this group and city?
There is another side effect the one child policy had. The one child policy applied to Han Chinese people but ethnic minorities were exempt, one ethnic minority in particular took advantage, the Muslims. Han people were having one child the Muslims were having 3+. 50 years later and 1/3 of China has a massive Muslim population, in the hundreds of millions. They even call china East Turkistan.
Human over-population is the root cause of every problem and horror on this planet today.
How reckless to promote MORE humans for a country that went from 670 million to 1.4 billion in 60 years.
This is exactly why we are doomed this century
4
The author fails to point out that although China's one child policy was partly responsible for the mess they're now in, it was the parents who were ultimately responsible by aborting their females in favor of the more desired male.
1
@Jim Tagley
And I might point out that the Male is also still favored in the west. I have friends with 3 daughters still plugging away for that boy.
1
My aunt wanted a girl. She had 6(!) boys before she gave up. And they drove her crazy when they became teenagers.
This is the same overreaction as the population "bomb" of the 1960's . Witness "Soylent Green" or "The Mark of Gideon" of Star Trek. Bumps in any statistical curve can be extrapolated to the worst.It always tracks to the mean.
First good news I've read in months.
3
When population growth falls, this can only mean that we don't love each other (or ourselves) as much as before. What's changed to produce such societal self-loathing?
Why did it take Ross nine paragraphs to get to the communist (socialist) menace? What were all those advanced-degreed, ivy-league educated, progressive-voting, know-it-all academics thinking?
Maybe it had a little to do with China's post-WW2 agricultural productivity and its pariah-state classification by the wealthy and productive west along with its falling out with the Russians. Does anyone ask Vladimir P. who lost China? The Chinese had a feed the country problem in the mid-late 50s, exacerbated by our fiercly anti-communist at all costs Secretary of State J. Foster Dulles and his CIA Director brother Allen. China had to find the means to avoid starvation; the one-child strategy was doing something now because they had little else.
Ross also managed to include his other favorite hits, forced sterilization and abortions, and for good measure, classist, sexist, and racist Western intellectuals; he only forgot to mention who they vote for.
3
It is a shame that Climate Change Believers have such a strong overlap with hardcore Malthusianism. They still have not learned that innovation and education evade the always just around the corner overpopulation bomb.
This article is just foolishness. China could not keep growing. If it had kept growing, its people would have starved. There isn't enough food in the World to feed a continuing growing Chinese population. I know economist believe in the magic of the market, but in real life there is no magic. The World environment sustains us and if we destroy it, nature will make our population adjustments for us and that will not be pleasant at all. The Chinese (and the rest of the World) are going to have to make the adjustment to a zero growth World eventually. It is better now when we still have an environment left to sustain us than later when nature makes the adjustment for us and half the World dies in a great famine.
475
@Tony Mendoza
We may not be far from a great famine as the world's environment is deteriorating fast.
30
@Tony Mendoza Across the board, countries that have developed economically have experienced huge declines in their birth rates. Douthat would say that China wouldn't have really needed to implement a one-child policy because much of the birth rate decline would've happened anyway, and I think a lot of demographic experts would agree.
15
@Tony Mendoza Douthat seems to dismiss any concern about the actual carrying capacity of our planet as elitist liberal intellectual puffery. The wrenching economic and social changes implied by limits to growth are going to happen, whether China or anyone else plans for them or not. But his other point has a lot of validity: The one-child policy was ham-fisted and destructive of the family life that has been the foundation of Chinese stability for generations. Birth rates fall naturally when parents no longer worry about who will look after them as they grow old, and China's health care system has done a better (and less disruptive) job than the one-child policy at restraining population growth.
25
Remember durning the Graduate movie when “I want to say one word to you, plastics” ....my one word for the future is robots and China got the edge. Humans are weak, fragile, and susceptible where robots are not and just maybe the future will be a blend of both.
37
Slowing human fertility poses a near term economic problem while unrelenting population growth poses an existential threat to humanity. A Nobel-worthy goal would be developing an economic theory for sustainable population levels within the Earth’s carrying capacity for humans.
367
@Harvey Herman Daly did just that with his Steady-state economic concepts beginning 1970s
7
We keep getting one article after another about the crisis of declining population. In a world where population is outstripping the resources, we have to face the fact soon that the population of earth needs to decrease.
5
I don’t understand the “population crisis” argument here when all around we hear of un(der)employed youth and employer abuse, and the population explosion in developing countries; yet on the other hand, I read NYT articles of how AI and the Gig economy are progressively eliminating jobs in manufacturing, and now service, even analytical sectors. Isn’t there a contradiction here?! In fact forecasts everywhere are pessimistic even cataclysmic, particularly regarding global warming, driven essentially by population growth. However a logical argument says that AI will enable (increasingly) fewer “young” workers to provide and increase output of goods & services ie. GDP for all; and if ever there is a need, then immigration & training can deal with the shortfalls. Am I missing something?
3
To "cite a recent paper by the Stanford economist Charles Jones, it risks “an Empty Planet result: knowledge and living standards stagnate for a population that gradually vanishes.”
I disagree.
Theory holds that there are only two sources of economic growth: improvement in productivity and growth in population. If Japan improves its productivity by 0.8% per year but population declines by 0.8%, in the aggregate there is no growth, just stagnation. It now looks like total population peaked around 128 million and may not stabilize until it declines below 80 million. GDP will downsize too.
But this does not mean that "knowledge and living standards stagnate." Individual lives are actually improving at 0.8%. You can have a downsizing aggregate economy that is still vibrant and improving at the individual level. You can see this in Japan where rural areas are returning to forest land while urban centers remain vibrant.
4
Your prior columns and expressed faith lead me to believe your solution is the reverse of the Chinese government, namely, forced birth.
I urge you to wait and see and support Mayor DeBlasio's attempt to instead make it easier for a couple to have and raise children. People should be offered taxpayer-funded quality child care from birth. Public schools should be fully funded and supported. Raise teachers' salaries, as money in our society is respect.
When conservatives like you are ready to put your money where your mouth is, I will be a lot more interested in what you have to say. When you start genuine reflection and problem solving instead of chanting you ideological, "government is the problem, not the solution," "cut taxes," "guns are the solution, not the problem," and "Christianity is being oppressed," we'll talk.
Until then with humans numbering over 7 billion, I am not worried about the disappearance of my species. Guided by conservative principles, more and more of the growth in the US's GDP is going to the top of the economic pyramid. Let's reverse that and see how the birth rate responds.
2
The real challenge is to maintain prosperity, not growth, in declining populations. growth in itself is not desirable in a finite environment, already compromised, surely we see the limits of that. The CO2 now in the air will be there for centuries, will we be. The rolling apocalypse has already started, way before any scientist dared predict, afraid of being an alarmist. they weren't alarmist enough. fewer people. wider prosperity, sustainable energy and resource use, and we might make it. but not with 15 B people
7
Meanwhile global population continues to grow, and climate change argues for finding a sustainable balance. Seems to me this is less of a crisis and more of an argument for a clear-eyed, robust improvement in immigration policy (read: much more of it!) - creating dynamic, multi-cultural first world societies that will raise the standard of living for everybody and ensure that someone is there to care for Mr. Douthat as he grows old.
1
According to the World Bank, our planet is being buried with trash, and yet Mr. Douthat makes no mention of the corollary between human growth and growing waste production. Not surprisingly, most population growth advocates provide little, if any, consideration of the consequences of increasing waste generation. During the past thirty or so years an increasing percentage of this waste stream is plastic, which significantly complicates current sustainable waste management practices. Both landfilling and incineration of plastic waste are harmful waste management practices. Currently, China produces about 15% of all municipal solid waste generated in the world, and that percentage has been increasing for years. Unlike developed nations such as the US and Canada that are willing to spend a lot of money to ship their waste to other less developed countries, China is compelled to manage its waste within China’s boundaries. Lands used for landfilling waste are no longer able to support human population. Contaminates that leach from poorly engineered landfills pose a threat to water quality in aquifers and surface waters. Methane production from landfills adds to greenhouse gas that threatens global climate. Human population growth is a looming threat to life as we know it on our planet, and not the panacea envisaged by Mr. Douthat.
8
“Any organism that spawns unchecked in a contained environment will eventually drown in its own waste.”
I remember this as a quote from Asimov, but a Google search doesn’t indicate that he said it. Either way, it seems pertinent to the discussion.
2
First of all, it is a technological race against time. Will AI and robotics be able to make up for the declining workforce. I'd also like to point out that encouraging family planning and the use of
birth control is not purely the product of anti-religious beliefs. It is only really a problem for the Roman church.
8
In the 1960's we accepted the notion that population growth, being exponential, would inevitably lead to a ballooning population out running the natural resources available to support it and there would be mass starvation and all the apocalyptic things which go with that. The "population bomb."
Now, we are told with declining birth rates, and, ultimately, declining populations, we are headed toward apocalypse because we cannot support our population with an aging work force.
What both of these narratives share is they are untestable hypotheses.
If you believe Andrew Yang, we are approaching the time on this planet when technology will obviate the need to work and what we really have to plan for is an epoch of excess.
I'm guessing we'll never find out because another untestable hypothesis will get us first: Climate change will burn us alive, or drown us.
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say...in ice.
But what I've tasted of desire...
1
Not buying what Douthat is selling. Chinese women are educated. Educated women have fewer pregnancies. I’m not worried about reduced technical innovation, that won’t happen. I’m worried about western consumerism becoming the norm.
9
Chinese leadership is if anything, pragmatic. I see no reason why they won’t increase immigration. If their economy demands more people, they will find a way, there are no constraints such as politically isolationist, anti-immigrant populism. Of course, China has also constructed a surveillance state, they will no doubt continue keeping a close eye on everyone.
1
Why do the media think only in terms of "crisis?" Not every change is a crisis. China's population was spiraling out of control. So was Mexico's. China's response was the "one child policy." Mexico's was widespread corruption and mass murder based on competition for the U.S. drug market. In the U.S. "deaths of despair" and lack of interest in bringing more babies into this cruel world are curtailing the birth rate. The real question is: Why is this happening? There is some instinct telling us that our time is over, that the species that will supplant us will be mechanical. How many parents have been disappointed by their children? How many children disappointed by their parents? How many spouses disappointed by their spouses? Maybe we're not so thrilled to be alive at this time in history. There is no question that the official policy of our president is "Get rich or die." He and his party couldn't care less about humanity. Nor does his boss in Moscow, nor many other so-called "leaders." China has adopted our nihilistic materialism. What's the point of living in such a world?
7
Thank you for this very interesting article. This really does a good job showing how deranged the world view of the right is.
World Population continues to go up, not down. That seems to be a fact the author ignores. While population growth control is difficult and painful, the alternatives are far worse.
Interesting that the author doesn't spend much time talking about other ways we can manage our limited resources on earth and find a more equitable division of those.
11
I wouldn't worry about a decline in the human population until our appetites no longer destroy our ecosystems. It would be perfectly feasible, given existing technology, for maybe a billion of us to live happy, productive lives, co-existing with coral reefs, arboreal forests, tropical rainforests, wolves, and natural wildfires. Improved technologies would allow higher numbers of us.
5
The population bomb is real. Our mistake was thinking that it would explode over a decade or so. Now we understand the explosion has been in process for at least a few decades, and will continue for at least several more, assuming that the world's political class continues its present self-serving course.
And already we experience the epic melting, extreme weather, rising, warming and acidifying seas, and species die-off (e.g., insects) of a global population of 7.5 billion. Most projections are for world population to rise to the 9-10 billion level by midcentury. That's a 25-35% increase--reached after three more decades of steadily rising atmospheric carbon. And suppose nothing serious is in place to change things thereafter? Well, we know the answer to that.
Douthat feels China's one-child policy was misguided, but he says nothing about quite ordinary rising American consumer demand, which of course our glorious free-market economy and sound-business-sense Republicans knew had to be satisfied, making postwar United States by far the biggest carbon polluter in history and leaving poor nations now to face some of the worst environmental consequences.
8
Well China could choose to welcome immigrants. Persons of Han Chinese descent form the largest expatriate community in the world. The problem for China is that tens millions of its citizens would leave China if they had any means way to do so. Those who already have and their decedents have no incentive to return to repression.
5
It is not overpopulation, it is underpopulation?
Who would have thought?
By the way, economic problems usually have solutions -- like guest workers.
3
An odd article. The world's population is still expanding by more than 100,000,000 people a year. It is 7.8 billion now. In 1920 it was 1.8 billion. That's an increase of 6 billion people in a century - within the lifetime of thousands of people living today. The victims of that quadrupling include the rest of the animal kingdom - many species have been driven to extinction due to habitat destruction, which has been rampant as more land has been placed under farming - and our environment, which is placed under ever greater pressure.
The article frets about a population decline suppessing economic growth i.e. production. But a country with a falling population doesn't need to increase production each year to raise living standards. With flat production, incomes per heads would be rising. And neither is there any evidence linking innovation to high birthrates - the five leading centres for scientific research today, for example, are the USA, China, India, Germany, and the UK. 4 out of 5 of these countries have below replacement fertility, India being the only exception, and India's birthrate has fallen by more than half since 1980. The countries with the highest fertility rates are Niger, Angola, Mali, Burundi and Somalia - among the poorest in the world.
17
Love you Ross, but wouldn’t it have been useful to inform readers as to how your Catholicism influences this point of view. Assuming your point is correct, lets compare the problems of ‘underpopulation’ (with 1.3 billion people!) with the problems faced by a China with 2 or 3 or 4 BILLION people. Any challenges the Chinese face today are vastly preferrable to trying to manage a nation of that size. Overpopulation is very real. The bill is just coming due.
Paul Rosenberg, Sunnyvale
14
We should reserve particular opprobrium for those who arrogantly are making the great problem of the 21st century worse. The article makes a strong case for the problems create by forceably limiting population growth. But from where we all currently sit, the great problem of the 21st century is climate change. The writer makes the magical thinking assumption that by limiting population growth, we have deprived ourselves of the individuals or culture that will “cure” this problem. But as of now, we are likely sentencing those recently born to a planet whose habitability will be drastically limited with all of the chaos and violence that is likely to provoke. Those of us older than 40 may blithely concern ourselves with the issue of who will pay for our care in our “golden years.” But with little on the horizon that will provide our grandchildren with a planet anywhere close to the one we have lived on, it is obvious who particular opprobrium should be reserved for.
6
What Ross calls a demographic nightmare, others might call demographic maturity. Just as humanity has had to learn how to cope with the disruptions of the industrial revolution, the atomic age and now the information age, we must also learn to cope with the demographic disruptions that will inevitably occur while the population stabilizes at a lower and more sustainable level. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me at all to read that a conservative Catholic would think that a falling population is some sort of catastrophe.
12
What Mr Douthat fails to understand is that, while speaking of population control has become politically incorrect, it is the only solution in the long run. We live on a small planet. Earth is effectively a closed system. It cannot and will not sustain infinite population growth of any species. As the number of people increases, the space and resources available to support each of us decreases proportionally. These resources are the raw materials that support our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
The only choice we have is how far we will go down the road of seeing our per capita resources shrink. As each person's 'piece of the pie' gets smaller, so too will the range of lifestyle choices and standards of living available to each of us. Left unchecked, this process will impose a general loss of liberty more drastic than any dictator or political system we've ever seen.
The only real debate is how severe we will allow constraints on our liberties to become; how spartan a lifestyle we are willing to accept. For Malthus, we might have reached that tipping point some time ago. Mr. Douthat seems willing to march blithely on into a future of ever-diminishing liberty and opportunity for each of us. While past efforts at population control may have been imperfect, we can be sure that future ones will be even more grim if we do not move toward thoughtful and humane policies that bring us into equilibrium with our environment.
9
I hope you are able to realize that the ideas you mention are incredibly wrong, and insidiously very dangerous, just as Malthus was over 200 years ago.
I very much doubt he thought the world would ever inhabit 7 billion humans at the same time.
We have shown that the idea of this “pie” being the same size and people needing less of it has been debunked.
Malthusian ideas have led directly to eugenics and social Darwinist policies that have contributed to the terror of millions.
It will not be good for the liberty you rightly champion to have someone (government, technocrats, dictators?) decide who and how many are allowed to exist.
We have as a species come up with ways to feed and support billions. It is up to us to figure out how to continue to do so. I am of the optimistic notion that we will.
"Global fertility problem", is an oxymoron, unless it is taken in the opposite of the meaning intended. Our planet is a finite entity with populations of humans increasing exponentially; now at nearly 8 Billions. Each human demands and consumes more earth resources than multitudes of other forms of life which are being driven into extinction ahead of us. The UN and World Bank estimates that there are 2 Billions of humans that do not contribute a cent to the global economy. Their lives, at a bare subsistence level, serve no apparent purpose but to prove Malthusian theory. Nations must consort to work out a scheme to reduce population growth rates. Set 100 year goals towards reducing a world population to environmentally sustainable levels before we suffocate under a mountain of plastic and other useless detritus. Your socio/religious attack on China is too focused and omits citing the exact same problems in much of the rest of the world.
5
The climate crisis we are already in and the one we facing in the immediate future is a direct result of a world population that doubled in approximately 60 years, which is to say in my lifetime.
If we want to save what remains of a viable planet, we need less people, not more.
That is a cruel thing to say for someone who has three children and three grandchildren but it is a scientific fact.
6
"we should reserve particular opprobrium for those who chose, in the arrogance of their supposed humanitarianism, to use coercive and foul means to make the great problem of the 21st century worse."
Will this also one day be said about those who are climate change warriors? And vegan warriors?
1
The population bomb didn't "fizzle." It has already exploded. The result has been an enormous and steadily increasing demand for energy and other resources, leading to the climate crisis and the ongoing collapse of the environment. infinite growth is not an option.
A greying population is inevitable. It's a Chinese problem, a Japanese problem, an American problem. But controlled immigration would help a great deal. In this, we Americans have huge advantages,
We have successful experience in integrating people from a variety of cultures. We are still the preferred destination for people looking for a new life. We are like a company with a variety of job openings and a line down the block of people who want to apply. We can pick and choose, to their benefit and ours.
We also need to recognize that the climate crisis will result in the massive movement of peoples. We should be doing what we can to help them stay in their homelands. But Trump says there is no climate crisis, no environmental crisis, and works hard to make them worse.
We should be working these problems, making rational policy decisions based on the country's needs. Trumpist racism, greed, and religious bigotry make it impossible.
Step one toward solutions: Vote Blue. Dems are imperfect, but no plausible Democratic contender is like Trump, "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know."
8
American isolationism is taking a toll. In contrast, On a proportional basis, immigration rates to Canada are over three time higher than the US.
3
Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb, raised Malthusian concerns that the (limited) Earth's resources could not support unchecked population growth. Soon after publication, it was criticized as needlessly alarmist. And while the Ehrlich's predictions have not come true in time, that storied scenario was designed to help us all think about our collective future.
I offer one question phrased in that same context; "What dire necessity demands humans create offspring". What is the religious, self-actualized or other philosophic reason for procreation without compunction? A related part of that conversion should consider potential hardships for children fostered into a future filled with relevant unknowns such as happiness and competitive survival.
My partner and I have two adult, motherless daughters who honestly consider that question. Most specifically they've considered how benevolent and promising can they make the future world their children will inherit. And they both actively work to make the world better but have doubts alongside that work.
3
Declining life expectancy, surging suicide rates, rampant opioid use, public education in decline, crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional government. That’s us, not China.
5
There were about 2 billion people on the planet in 1900. The planet was not empty then, nor was there a lack of innovation. The columnists fears are totally groundless. There will be growth in population in Africa, maybe we will see innovation driven by people living there.
6
‘Demographic decadence” - really?! All species of life a appear to have a sweet spot, in which the number of individuals is in balance with environmental resources. It’s clear that humans have far surpassed this balance point through overpopulation; now we are just beginning to pay the price as natural environmental limits reassert themselves and the physical limits of space and resources on earth become ever more obvious. Blindly assuming that even more people will somehow solve the problem is ridiculous. Odd that Ross appears so deeply religious, yet rejects the very limits that one might assume G-d integrated into creation; he prefers to see humans as somehow godlike themselves, impervious to the restraints and structure of a balanced, holy creation.
8
Ross makes a great argument for socialism. It is, indeed, hard to have children without a large family and plenty of siblings or sufficient social support. The solutions are either to provide government support (daycare, help with college, support for the handicapped) or to provide nothing and hope for a pyramid scheme where each generation has 4 or more kids to provide the support people need at certain points in their lives.
And "Empty Planet? Seriously, Dude? The world's population has more than doubled in your lifetime and you think UNDER population is the problem?
10
"...what China is experiencing is part of the common demographic decadence of the developed world, which is enveloping developing countries too."
india, the second largest country, is now near or at the replacement fertility rate of 2100 lifetime births/1000 fertile women. indonesia, the world's most populous muslim country, has only a slightly higher fertility rate. thailand, korea and japan have comparable fertility rates to china. china's population is expected to start shrinking in about 10 years, as japan's population and russia's population are already shrinking (and getting older in the process).
africa and parts of the middle east are exceptions to this global trend of low fertility and aging populations.
for countries that follow the trend, immigration is one policy that can vary across countries. immigration policy is obviously influenced by politics and nationalism.
the author should note that the one-child policy in china is now in the dustbin of history, and the fertilty trend in china, like trends elsewhere, are driven largely by women's market/economic opportunities and the desires for a modern lifestyle, higher education levels for both women and men, and modern forms of birth control (even the latex condom can be considered a modern and reliable form of birth control if used properly).
finally, no modern malthusian article is complete until it discusses over-population and _pollution_, including from human waste: the chinese pollution crisis
4
"…at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently."
Bwahaha! "Innovative enough"? Sheesh!
All we have to do is slash our consumption and WASTE of the Fossil Fuels that are creating our climate crisis. No "innovation" needed. Drive less, drive slower, drive smaller. Don't fly unless absolutely mandatory. Don't eat meat - especially beef. Build smaller, better houses - stop the leaks, turn the thermostat up/down. Stop WASTING energy - we WASTE 2/3 of the energy we produce, including 75%!! of our transportation energy. We WASTE half of our food.
This is not some mysterious problem that needs to be solved by technological "innovation"! We're the Fossil Fuel addicts. We're burning the stuff, and we can stop burning it - if we care enuf'. Do we?
7
I just do not understand why conservatives think the world's problem is not enough people. They really need to start thinking in longer time-frames.
9
@John
Conservatives love cheap labor. And over-population gives us LOTS of that!
1
Cruelty seems universal, and the one's paying for those in power, usually, corrupt, are the poor. Shouldn't we teach solidarity, and the 'golden rule', since childhood? You mentioned the vices of communist countries; all true; but how about the savage capitalism when ethics flies out the window...while selfishness and avarice remain, and revealing a rising, odious, inequality? Supposedly, we live in a democracy; but, to make a real, we must start participating in politics (the art of the possible), and contribute via public supervision and healthy regulation...so that corruption in the exercise of power (and Trump is a strong reminder) is banned? Critizing other regimes is fine...as long as we keep looking at ourselves in the mirror.
5
Two generations of elderly people willing to give up life when they cannot care for themselves - I am 64 and would happily sign on to this - would take care of any "crisis" and move us toward a population the earth can actually sustain. Douthat has no understanding of monster of climate change that is already destroying us. It's probably too late anyway. If only we had started limited population growth 200 years ago.
7
How many people should there be on the planet? 10 billion? 20 billion? More?
What standard of living do you wish for these people?
I don’t think Ross Douthat can answer these questions, but if he’s going to lament the changes in population, he should try.
7
Think of it...China has a billion more people then the US....they have more children then the US population....their domestic resources are finite and degraded by pollution. The mindset for this opinion story is oblivious to China's environmental conditions...again a billion more people then the US
5
Another argument for why immigration may be this nation’s savior, continuing to grow our population (declining on its own) with youthful motivated workers and entrepreneurs.
China has no such advantage—like Japan—effectively banning immigration into a racially pure society.
Once we get past Trump and his minions of white nationalists, we’ll hopefully wake up to this wonderful, renewing strength of ours that will enable us to compete well into the future.
2
It would add something here to note the historical (and ongoing) bias towards having male children.
That has created a huge cohort of men who simply won't get to have marriage and children. That's a huge problem.
And, since that selection is ongoing, it means the below-replacement birth rates are worse than they appear.
3
I have to somewhat disagree. While citizens of the West had better get cracking and start having more kids, if the Chinese continue on their path as current I think that's a good thing.
China is a world of it's own. It manages to be expansionist yet xenophobic to everyone not Han. Internally it represses everyone. Minorities like the Uighers worst but also the majority Han. It's a totally authoritarian nightmare with capitalist tendencies.
For the rest of the world the diminishment of China back to a third world country could only be a good thing.
And yet global population is expected to increase by billions in a relatively short period of time. Of course, most of those new people will not be "us", and therefore we should all be worried? Perhaps we will just have to let some of "those people" come to our country and infuse our nation with their energy and economic potential that immigrants always bring. China, and other countries worried about population decline can do the same. Perhaps we can send recruiters to overpopulated countries and compete with other countries for their "surplus" populations. Or maybe we can help the countries that produce those immigrants become prosperous so that they can start having lower birth rates themselves. Because like it or not, without limitations eventually overpopulation will be a problem. I don't think we need to worry about humans becoming extinct because nobody is having babies anytime soon. It is far more likely we will destroy the world with human stupidity long before we will ever run out of people.
5
A comparison of China with India during the past 70 years (age of the PRC) is instructive in regard to the 'One Child Policy'.
China and India both faced an over population crisis in the midst of endemic poverty. China has defeated the poverty that India remains mired in. India has a half-billion children to fuel the author's 'dynamic youthful economy'. The results of that dynamic fertility are apparent and horrendous.
The West is more horrified by Chinese abortions than by India's child starvation and pediatric fatalities.
Why is that? Christianity or a competing economic model?
3
I have to wonder if the writer really understands the world and what's good for it.
declaring a country with 1.3 billion people 'in a population crisis' belays a real misunderstanding of what the word 'balance' means.
We have been out of balance for a long time. A late-stage capitalist view of a world that must always grow and grow and grow is, clearly not sustainable. Some would call that cancerous.
I think this slowing down and eventual evening out (and if we're lucky, shrinking) human population, through natural means, is a good thing.
And thinking this is...misanthropic? Really? The only misanthropy happening here is a columnist who wants unneeded and unhealthy growth for the sake of growth.
6
Women know what’s going on, on for our poor Mother Earth. Just like the previous story, Women are Creating Peace in Aleppo.
Guess what no more wars for men. We will have less children, I have none, raised foster children
Best decision I ever made.
5
Children, repeat after me: There is no shortage of people anywhere in the world, there are probably three or four billion too many.
7
I wonder if Ross has walked along a beach recently. Any beach, any where in the world. If he has he likely found that it was covered plastic, tiny particles to large pieces.
Do we want more plastic on our beaches? Then continue to grow the global population, in the never-ending pursuit of economic growth. Do we want pristine, plastic-free beaches? Then we need fewer people, and less consumption.
Please, let the marine animals live, play, and reproduce in clean water. Let their populations grow.
6
The underpopulated North American colonies produced Washington, Jeffferson, Franklin and the Declaration of Independence. 300 million Americans can only come up Trump, Pence, Pompeo and reality television. Do more people really give an advantage?
6
Just another massive human problem wrought on a great people by the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party. It's disgusting to hear the CCP propaganda machine brag about how the CCP "lifted a billion Chinese out of poverty." In fact, the CCP put them all into that poverty. The capital and technology of the West lifted up the Chinese.
.
Yet even today, about a billion Chinese are still poor by just about any standard. And they live side by side with the greatest number of billionaires, all of whom are indebted to the CCP one way or another. The rich got theirs. The poor got nothing.
.
The CCP, who are actively working to export their "system of government" are the biggest threat to humanity today. We better stop ripping ourselves apart and deal with that, or the decades ahead will bring a much darker future to our own kids.
1
Articles from conservatives like this are another drop in the bucket of an overall obliviousness to the crisis of our planet. So what if Douthat doesn't get it? So what if every day our burgeoning planet has 200,000 too many children for it to sustain? So what if there's another fire, another flood, another melting spot in the arctic, another species gone extinct? So what if we elect another world leader who doesn't steer us in a direction to avoid what is coming as this planet we all call home breaks like a broken toy? Better than misanthropy, right?
If it ever was interesting to hear conservatives offer up scenarios that created a worthy debate, now it's just irresponsible and an utter waste of a platform.
2
Hasn't Ross Douthat heard that massive overpopulation is a major factor in causing climate change? Thanks to the Chinese for reducing their population. Let's do it in the US, too!
4
Planet earth is already in a state of overpopulation, we don’t need religious dogma to make things worse. If you want to make earth a better place, stop funding the military, fund schools and teachers to make our kids wiser.
4
One of the upsides of the population bust could be the end of wars. One of the drivers of a lot of wars has been a surplus of young men who could be used to forcefully enlarge a country's area of control. How many countries would be stupid enough to commit large numbers of valuable young adults to the risks of war? Also, a stable or declining population makes territorial enlargement unnecessary.
4
Did I miss something or did we not get to the part about maximum human capacity for planet Earth? It might be a worthwhile part of this discussion.
4
We already have ways of dealing with overpopulation: famine, war, and plague. I just wonder, with our current level of genetic prowess, if the next plague will be engineered.
5
The Scientist explains that our function is to procreate;
The Pope has reminded us that we are not rabbits;
The World News advises us that around 350,000 Syrians, mostly 'women and children', have fled a renewed Russian-backed offensive in the opposition-held Idlib province since early December, and have sought shelter in border areas near Turkey, the United Nations said on Thursday (Reuters);
The Parent refers to Our Lot in Life, but what The Child has to say, remains mute to our ear, when love is not enough to carry us through.
1
I'm sorry, but this blind faith in eternal economic growth must end. Please go to Haiti and walk around. See the reality of people living without hope of a better future, suffocating to death in their own pollution. Only sickness, poverty, suffering in a deforested landscape with all natural animal life extinct. There is one root cause: unchecked overpopulation. This is the canary in the coal mine but the world isn't getting it yet.
5
The « Empty Planet » author says « We can not know for certain what will happen in the future. » So even that author sees that a diminishing population need not end up being a bad thing. RD presents this as if we know for certain that a contracting population will have a huge negative effect. Again the “Empty Planet” author says that with proper allocation of resources every thing could be fine. Maybe with fewer people we won’t feel so compelled to fight so hard for our own bit of space on this planet. Maybe with fewer people could come fewer wars. Even the author that Td cites says we just don’t know.
3
Absurd. It's clear to any thinking individual that human population absolutely must decrease for us to retain any quality of life.
People like Douthat talk about problems like global warming and mass extinction like suddenly.... all of a sudden...(!!!) a clever innovation will appear to solve it. We just need to keep popping out new brains, because the ones that are already here just aren't the quite-right ones to think of the solutions.
Yet, the problems of depopulation are inherently unsolvable, so the only solution is to keep adding hungry mouths to an ever-growing pot of demand.
We can either solve problems, or not - it can't be both.
3
It's too bad that the 1.3 billion people of China aren't (conservative) Roman Catholics. If they were, the country might have a population of 2.6 billion with an economy like the Philippines.
3
For the vast majority of time humans have been on the earth, the total human population was about 30,000. Or, if you share Douthat's world view, it was two before it fell from grace. Like rats in a cage, the end will be grim if we don't face the reality of continued population growth.
4
Mr. Douthat won't write the last chapter of his coming thriller "The World Needs More People" -- Mother Nature will.
6
You must be kidding.
The first step in saving the world environmentally is stabilizing human population growth.
It looks like China has a chance.
India, forget about it.
5
Douthat's article echoes what I've seen in this population, stateside: that is that what is being patterned in Chinese culture is the worst of what the West has to offer, while rejecting (or more often being entirely ignorant of) our best qualities. The situation is self-destructive in more than one way.
1
We need a decreasing world population. Yes it will cause some difficulties but those difficulties will be less severe than going down the path we are on now: 11,000,000,000 people by 2050 (at least).
Anyone advocating for more people, at this point, is a lunatic.
5
China’s does not have a “population crisis”! China’s does not need a “growing” population in order to thrive. If producing a baby boom was the key to national prosperity then Afghanistan and Pakistan and much of Africa and Latin America and most of the other Islamic nations would be prosperous! They are not.
5
“ . . . but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently.”
Seems to me that society in general — both those that are thriving and those that are stagnant — is struggling to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis. We’re no closer to solving the problem than we were 30 years ago. It’s ridiculous to think we can breed our way out of this problem. Ridiculous.
5
Those who think that humans are at the center of the universe should really get out more.
4
Anything that can't go on forever, won't. This includes the earth's population growth. We can't sustain a Ponzi scheme whereby ever more young people support the old. Civilizations have long endured with stable population size. We'll have to make adjustments to declining birth rates. We can't expect every generation to be bigger than the last.
429
@semaj II
If homo sapiens would develop efficacious, sustainable welfare-type programs (planet-wide), we'd not need Ponzi schemes or other climate destroying nonsense. All other human-caused problems aside, of course.
10
@semaj II So well said....brilliant.
11
@semaj II
We can't expect every generation to be richer in material wealth either. This my friend is the ponzi scheme that tops all ponzi schemes when all is based upon the lessening of earth's essentials. This comes to essential questions of capital that capital would rather not have questioned. Denial by capital.
19
Our planet and its inhabitants - human and otherwise - would be better off with a human population of 2-3 billion rather than the current almost 8 billion. The path to that goal has to start sometime and somewhere.
5
WE also face a crisis. The working age Americans is falling and the elderly increasing. SS depends on working Americans to pay in. We are seeing fewer of these. Many Americans are out of the work force and the age of "despair" is one reason. We have 4X the deaths in younger people since 1999. Drugs alcohol and depression. College is very expensive and is becoming more important to get a good job. WE have income inequality and education inequality.
It is estimated we could use 3 million more workers in the future and these can only be supplied by immigration.
1
Why not write thoughtful opinion pieces? Why take up our time writing a piece touting a single factor in a complex economy like China's. It's just as likely the Chinese will automate or find efficiencies in production that continue to create growth well into the next century.
4
The planet very clearly needs fewer humans!
Where ever humans go they destroy the environment and eat up every thing in sight.
This does not mean that we have to enact laws. We just need to educate people.
Everett Koop the Surgeon General during the Nixon years convinced the American Public to stop smoking cigarettes. It took awhile but it worked. There was no such program in Europe and they still smoke a lot over there.
To increase the Human population on this planet makes no sense.
6
Odd Ross doesn't mention that, unlike the US, and to a lesser extent, much of the EU, China cannot tolerate substantial immigration, for both cultural and political reasons. America's nativists should ponder just how backward and stagnant our society would be today if we had not had the infusion of tens of millions of immigrants in the past 50 years.
4
According to UN projections, in some thirty years hence we're going to go from some 7.2 billion people currently, to some 9.6 billion. It took us to the 1800's to get the first billion, the 1920's gave us the second, and we've been on a tear ever since. Reducing the population closer to levels that the planet may reasonably sustain, isn't asking for total extinction, but that is a real possibility if we are become as an untreated cancer, with ever increasing growth until all the resources of the host, and indeed ourselves will be consumed.
14
Underpopulation seems the opposite of the problem. Also, people who have claimed China is in crisis since 1980 have usually been on the losing end. Imagine Chinese writers examining America right now: they have corrupt politics, deaths of despair, lack of trust, monopoly business––they are doomed to fail! Societies as a whole plug along pretty well once they've reached the development stage. Corruption and bad policies can affect their trajectory, but it seems the more developed countries there are, the better off the world is through some self-reinforcing mechanism.
1
I totally disagree. Clearly trying to break the cycle of endless population growth creates a period where the ratio of workers to retirees is off. But the answer isn't endless growth, it is to deal with the rough patch, get past it and end up with a more sustainable world. Climate change is nothing more than a symptom of human overpopulation. Any attempts to change it without deal with the population component are fool errands.
11
Douthat: "Like the United States and most developed countries, China has a birthrate that is well below replacement level."
This is the first really GOOD news I've heard in a long time. Now if we can provide the women in the less developed countries with the ability to choose when to have children, and how many to have, we might be able to save the planet.
11
The demographic "crisis" is not a population crisis, it's a crisis for Capitalism which needs to re-invent itself into a more sustainable model. It is good news for the planet, which cannot withstand the pollution and destruction caused by human beings. Humans will survive but not certain about Capitalism under a no-growth model.
7
My wife and I recently saw the film "One Child Nation". I've made about 40 trips to China over the last 12 years to help the government improve air quality. Most of my experience has been in Beijing, as that's the capital, but I've made many visits to other cities, and have biked and hiked regularly in the towns and mountains around Beijing. My observations are based on my experiences.
I agree that China will face a crises, and sooner rather than later. There is little to no support structure for the elderly. Their pensions are minimal. Likewise, health care is uneven and "Western" healthcare is very expensive- more than the US (I know from one visit to a clinic that I had to make- a routine visit cost me 50% more than it would in the US, and they demanded dollars in payment.) You almost never see a wheelchair or disabled person in a Chinese city. There is no "ADA" law. Even brand new subway stations require patrons to walk up and down many flights of stairs (though some have a chair that you can activate if you call a subway worker).
Those who are in their 20s to 40s are not having children, even though they can. This is due to many factors: Women wanting to work, wanting to own material possessions, narcissism (they're only children themselves), and not wanting to incur the expenses necessary to raise and educate a child.
Then, the quality of new construction is substandard. I've seen cracks 2" wide by 25" long in new 5-star hotel stairways. These buildings won't last
3
Please do not assume that people with no siblings are narcissistic. A Chinese citizen is quoted saying this about herself as well, in the column.
As a teacher of elementary age students I note that children with or without siblings can exhibit narcissistic tendencies; in my experience, there is no correlation.
4
“an Empty Planet result: knowledge and living standards stagnate for a population that gradually vanishes.” Hogwash! With a reduced population resources are not as strained to the point of vulnerability - what happens when it inevitably breaks from the demands and greed of overpopulation? And with climate change it will break sooner.
The only reason to increase the population is to sustain the unsustainable growth of the wealth hoarded by the owners of the world who do nothing more than skim the wealth created by those below them. It's not as if much increased wealth of the new additional masses born will ever go to them - growing population or not.
Interesting how humane contraceptives to control unsustainable population growth are ignored and so maliciously objected to by those "in the arrogance of their supposed" piety - indeed, they depend on more and more desperate people to dominate and sustain their cruelly pious ways - they are no different than the communists they condemn for their cruelty.
"the population control crusade is recalled as a mistaken extrapolation" - sorry, but the numbers and real world limitations don't lie, as unchecked parasitic growth prove over and over again.
8
And the thing that makes the US resistant to the same collapse: immigration. Without it, our below-replacement birth rate would cause many of the same issues (although we do have the money - some of us - to deal with them).
1
I don't know how Douthat manages to think that the U.S. is "dealing with" the retirement crisis in the U.S.:
1. Social Security is on course to reduce its benefits by 21% across the board in 2034 and no one is dealing with it
2. The majority of Americans have saved nowhere near what they would actually need to retire comfortably
3. The U.S. healthcare costs are through the roof but it finds none of the political courage to override the selfish wants of a select few.
4. Several large private pensions are under the risk of going under in the next 5 years due to the extremely low interest environment but I see no one actually dealing with it.
5. The birth rates in the U.S. are now heading in the direction of Europe and Japan. If it were not for new immigration, it would start shrinking within 10 years. But most people seem completely unaware that this is happening because it is some dark secret no one wants to discuss because it is market forces that have brought us here.
What is the "wealth" that Douthat thinks the Western economies are using to deal with these problems? I do not see any sign other than empty talk that they are doing anything at all. It cannot even handle the simpler tasks of avoiding crashing its own pension systems or fixing its own infrastructure let alone deal with the transformation that would be required to reconfigure its economy for the 21st century reality of climate change.
3
@Larry L Douthat has the larger platform but he is not the smarter man
1
Jeff Bezos has all the wealth
1
As feminist I am against forced abortions and forced sterilizations for the same reasons I am against forced birth. One is as 'cruel' as the other. However, you only seem to think choice matters in one matter, seeming to think you can preach the need for population without considering the cost for women. As if there is no correlation.
This is the problem again and again. In China and elsewhere. Do we want less or more children. Appeal to women. We can make women be willing to have replacement level children by making it worth their while. By not making it a punishment. Just as giving them options ensure they will not overproduce children.
But this remains impossible to conceive for men. They would rather threaten us with the apocalypse than actually change how we relate to women. Figures.
8
Where did she say that?
If we want women to have children, they need living wages. As it is now, people work long hours and still cannot afford the basics. And then we wonder why they don’t have more babies. Well, duh!
And this is hardly making the government pay for everything. If workers got living wages, there would be a lot less need for help from the government.
1
A society which promotes fertility is no more inevitably vibrant than a society which discourages fertility. Many countries in Africa have exceptionally high fertility rates. That's because large families mostly substitute for absent social safety nets. You wouldn't need large families if there were broadly shared access to health care, education, retirement security and other markers of a fully industrialized world. More people doesn't necessarily mean vibrant. It means more people.
I happen to live in a vibrant economy with a relatively high fertility rate. One of only two US states above replacement level. Let me tell you. Big families aren't what makes the economy vibrant. Not unless you count housing shortages and overburdened social programs as vibrant.
What makes the economy is vibrant is an entrepreneurial culture combined with high levels of education and relative economic opportunity backed by a lenient but responsive public and government. Our biggest employers are generally government, finance, and health care. Tech startups piggy back all three. However, restaurants, tourism and hospitality recently secured a re-branding on state alcohol laws.
Fertility doesn't have much to with it. If you reduced birth rates, we'd just work harder to import labor from some other place. The difficulty is finding labor trained to excel in the areas where we are talented. Comparative advantage and so on. Many outsiders are actually turned off by the unusually high birth rates.
5
Ummmm....excuse me but declining birthrates is commonly shared amongst many wealthy nations of which only one had instituted a one child policy (but also note that the one child policy was not imposed universally). Declining populations will surely impose economic management challenges but if climate change is our most significant existential risk, declining population should do more to mitigate that risk so are declining populations truly a bad thing? On the other hand, if you feel like declining populations represents some kind of crisis and want to analyze the causes, maybe focus on the elevation of material wealth and the pursuit of it and their effects on declining birth rates.
1
Demographic transition is a drum that Mr. Douthat likes to beat, but he seems unwilling to wrestle with the skyrocketing human population, which is a far worse problem. There are two ways to reduce population growth: increase the death rate or decrease the birth rate. Does Mr. Douthat prefer the former? If not, let's talk about how to manage the inverted population pyramid instead of decrying its existence.
4
Mr. Douthat, I'm glad to see you give mention to population control having a positive impact on climate control. This is the most important part of your article. Population control is one significant factor policymakers throughout the world must accept as necessary to resolving the climate change. Now try and persuade Mr. Krugman to see this the way you do.
4
Ross's problem is one of logic. And of arithmetic, which is the same thing.
It always and inevitably comes down to this: Countries need, by a considerable margin, more young people than old, for a variety of reasons having to do with assumptions about economic growth and, especially, care of the elderly.
The unsolvable logical problem is this arrangement requires an ever-increasing population in a finite world.
And I do mean "ever." All those necessary young people who will support today's elderly will themselves get old, requiring even greater numbers of young people in the future. This never ends, except when it crashes hard against physical realities. Which is already happening on a monumental scale.
Ross's logical inconsistency is evident when he complains that we "know now" that the "population bomb" "would have defused itself" without population-limiting policies. But that self-defusing is presently happening and is the very thing Ross regularly complains about, particularly in developed countries that have no population control policies.
Unless we can figure out how to reach a stable population of a healthy, sustainable size, we are doomed. And that stable population cannot, as a matter of logic, have the proportion of young-to-old that Ross requires -- else it would not be stable.
One wonders to what extend Ross's oft-stated religious beliefs bridge his logical shortcomings. After all, with the Lord all things are possible, including growth without end.
9
It is easy to criticize existing conditions in China, while ignoring the centuries of starvation that proceeded the one child policy. Mr. Douthat’s thoughts are always skewed by his Catholicism, and a desire to rationalize and justify the disastrous results of the church’s refusal to modernize. Maybe Mr. Douthat should have focused his population article on the poverty, environmental destruction, and political unrest of Latin America brought on by the Catholic church’s rejection of any rational form of family planning.
To be fair, societies around the world with rapidly growing populations and the resulting disaffected youth are suffering similar political unrest, not just predominantly Catholic countries. Douthat, of course, completely ignores these problems.
Like most people with a strong religious affiliation Douthat tends to work backwards from his religious dogma and then rationalize his world view to those beliefs. Were the Catholic Church teaching a one child policy and radical environmentalism, no doubt Douthat would be singing the praises of those policies.
7
If a society really needs indefinite exponential population growth to innovate and prosper, then we are certainly doomed. Luckily, this is not true. What puts our future in peril is, instead, the reproduction-above-all paradigm that Ross Douthat and many more have been preaching for too long. A system that needs constant population growth is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme and will therefore inevitably fail.
10
Yet another reporter blinded by endless growth. Yes, China will have difficulty paying for the retirement bubble of seniors as its population growth slows, but what is the alternative. The alternative is endless growth, unsustainable, environmentally disastrous, climate changing growth. Asia needs more people like Trump needs more questionable lawyers. More is not the answer to every economic question.
11
There is a nice way to control population growth and a not nice way.
The nice way involves humanity's leaders understanding that we've reached or surpassed the limits to growth imposed on us by the resources present on this planet and planning humane paths to the population reduction needed for rebalance that use effective incentives.
The Chinese Communist leadership used positive and negative incentives and the negative incentives were often brutally enforced. My personal preference is for planning for a sustainable population level through positive incentives: the nice way.
The not nice way, the natural way, is a population die off through war, famine, plague and pestilence. These things will bring the human population back into balance with the resources available to sustain human life, as they always have.
Human induced climate change is accelerating this natural process. I submit that we are already seeing the first minor effects of this acceleration. the effects will get much worse if we allow climate change to continue.
We are going through what will be a severe transition. Humanity will look very different when we have passed through it. We can find pathways that will bring our population back into balance sustainably or we can suffer through what comes about naturally. Those are our choices.
7
I think what we're seeing is that we do not need population control measures at a political level. Around 80 countries today now have below replacement fertility levels. It happens when a) women gain greater access to education and employment b) women have access to birth control and abortion c) infant mortality rates fall d) the cost of raising children becomes higher than the value of child labour e) under urbanisation. There are no developed countries with high fertility rates.
1
@Edmund Langdown
Also, the default expectations of marriage/children/suburbs and the shaming and stigmatizing of the childfree need to end.
2
Sorry Mr. Douthat, but the reasons for the reluctance of young Chinese to not have children are almost exclusively economical. Housing costs in almost all Chinese cities are astronomical, the term "house slaves" is often used for families or individuals who are forced to spend the majority of their incomes on housing. Most young people in China simply can't afford apartments to raise a family. Educational costs and commitments are also skyrocketing in China, as in the US, making it extremely difficult for families to afford real opportunities for their children. It is rampant state capitalism and real estate monopolies in the hands of a small communist party oligarchy and their associates that squeezes the savings and productivity of the population. Young professionals in China are expected to work according to a 9-9-6 schedule (from 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week). How can you raise a family under these conditions ? This will not change when suddenly all Chinese become good Catholics.
5
You couldn’t raise a puppy with that kind of a schedule, let alone a child.
1
No, no, no, this is all wrong. China is leading by example. I'm optimistic they will solve the (transient) elder care crisis by pioneering robotics and A.I. to replace or supplement the human labor that may temporarily be missing for those tasks.
The problem is that not all developing and emerging countries are like China. The environmentally developed world, that is those countries who stopped adding to overpopulation, need to develop policies to make the rest follow suit. Sanctions for those who continue to mass-export overpopulation their countries are unable to sustain.
Every human on earth should some day be able to enjoy a civilized life with all the comforts we have. The only way to achieve that goal is to reduce the global human population drastically. Obviously not by killing people, just making net population growth negative.
13
Good article about the challenges facing China. They are in a window of well being at the moment. It was easy to look good and prosper when they were feeding off the USA. They are about to stand on their own. It was wise for them to try to deal fairly with the rest of the world so they can continue to rise. But it will still be difficult. The demographics are against them. They still have a massive unemployment problem. They rule in a sloppy way. Their regulations are not protecting their food supply. This will all catch up with them. The populace will eventually revolt against the communist rule. I wish them luck and best regards, they have their work cut out for them.
1
Arguments for population growth are a kind of Ponzi scheme: for the government to support the older population it has to have new, younger workers in the labor market, who in turn will grow old and will require more younger workers, etc. The end result is overpopulation, CO2 in the atmosphere, the extinction of animal species, in short the Anthropocene era. The solution on a macro scale is sustainability where the old balance the young and the population is stable. To reach that point will involve some economic adjustments in the scope and cost of social services, but this is inevitable. Bernie Maddox's investors learned they weren't as rich as they thought; we will discover the same thing.
4
Many decades ago, I mistakenly took a university class, that I thought was a geography course, turns out to be a course in demography. I attended the first class, with the intention of trying to transfer out to the geography class---but, the Professor started the class with this statement written on the chalkboard--"demography is destiny." Well, I stuck around to find out what our destiny was---amazing, that this professor predicted all of the demographic shifts and their consequences that Mr. Douthat's lists in this piece.
1
A nice dose of reality would help Mr. Douthat. The planet simply cannot sustain unlimited population growth. Do we find a solution now, or do we wait (as humans sadly are wont to do) until it is actually too late?
With robots and machines taking over many of the duties that used to be performed by humans, the issue should be trying to harness their work to improve the lives of those who are already here rather than longing for an old-fashioned and outdated solution involving the production of ever more people who will likely become surplus workers during their lifetimes.
With over 7 billion of us it is actually laughable to conjure up a vision of an empty world.
7
Douthat, please don't do that. Underpopulation "bomb?" Uh, no. Getting past peak humans to a time when people and the planet can both survive, that's the task now and for the foreseeable future. The planet can't get bigger.
10
@Carl Safina I agree.
1
Harken back to the “good” old days in the United States, circa 1900-20, when women had almost no access to contraception and consequently bore many children. My grandmother wad born in Dublin in 1870, emigrated to New York at the age of 9 months (her father identified as a “gentleman and a hatter”), married in the 1890s, lived in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, and bore 10 children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. My father was the last, born in 1914. He described a life of grinding toil and poverty in that Brooklyn, and commented once “All the families were large, and the children were resented.” Mr. Douthat’s evident disdain for contraception permeates his column. One of the great achievements of the 20th century was giving women agency on birth control. Unthinkable to return to the world that left my grandmother exhausted and ill by age 50.
865
My maternal grandparents had 14 children only 5 of whom survived. That generation produced 9 children, of which I am the youngest. The next generation produced 12 children. Thus far those have produced 12. This is basically an Italian Roman Catholic family.
Starting date basically 1900 to present.
The lack of reproduction is/was a combination of medical & choice decisions.
Ross would not be pleased.
48
@William Colgan My mother was from a large family - 10 or 11 children beginning when her mother was 15. My father's family of six was smaller. My mother and father had the five of us because there was no affordable or reliable birth control. We five were resented, a burden to them; their lives were little pleasure, mostly backbreaking farm work. The country family doc was opposed to contraceptives so he did nothing to help prevent my fecund mother from being mostly. Reliable/affordable/accessible contraceptives are a blessing from "above". I agree that returning to the world of my mother/grandmother is unthinkable, too horrible to comprehend.
85
@William Colgan My grandparents were tenant farmers and lived in poverty in a house with neither running water nor electricity. My grandmother also bore 10 children, 8 of whom survived. She ended up with a prolapsed uterus and incontinence and had to use a pessary for the rest of her life. I have no doubt she would have welcomed contraception had it been available.
60
I am no longer thrilled by the idea of another machine being sent off another assembly line as I once was when I was another teenager of the late to the table baby boomer generation.
I regret we have decimated the need for labor of most crafts people as a result of our service to the clock.
I regret the passing of wildernesses, even though I would not likely have spent any time deep inside of them.
I'm simply astonished our kind made it this far.
"Son, everything in moderation." ~Dad
4
A focus on quality not quantity will produce all the creativity and innovation needed by our species. One example: the Golden Age of Athens possibly the most innovative moment in history, was created by a few thousand people; political genus, literature, philosophy, science, mathematics all created by people who also spent time plowing their fields. It's a matter of purpose, attitude--culture--not numbers.
Human potential is wasted even more in a situation where every individual has no chance to reach her full potential as a creative member of society, than when cramming as many people as possible onto a planet with no chance for 99.99% of them to do anything but obey.
4
I have listened to young people for many years and they tell a story that differs markedly from the tale spun by Mr. Douthat. Too many of the young couples have spoken of their decision to remain childless as a choice made in response to the right wing, neoliberal policies that affect their lives. They have made the conscious choice not to bring children into a world of economic inequality, economic uncertainty, climate change denial and a government committed to waging endless war.
I urge you to listen to the young men and women you work with and those you meet socially. I urge you to listen to your children, grandchildren and their friends. You'll learn what is on their minds and what is affecting their decisions. I promise you that you will learn a lot about the choices they are making.
414
@OldBoatMan My parents had five children because they did not have access to reliable and affordable contraceptives. My mother was pregnant for most of 10 years and with each additional child, she was more worn down emotionally and physically.
Coerced into marriage, she did not really want children but did not know how to prevent them. The five of us were born in the 1950s/60s rural South - unwanted. We were inconvenient, a burden and were told that our being born had robbed our mother of her dreams. My father, a hard-working poor farmer, was overwhelmed. I'm the oldest, now 69, childless by choice. I made a conscious choice not to bring children into the world. I don't regret that decision.
82
@OldBoatMan
Yes, I can't imagine anyone having children when their college debt is as much as a mortgage!
34
@Peyton Collier-Kerr Thank you for your reply. Your story is similar to many others I have heard.
18
Population growth is only good if you have good jobs, infrastructure and schooling to support it. A look at Sub-Saharan Africa and India shows that population growth does not equal economic growth and improved standard of living. The situation in Africa is so dire that thousands throw themselves desperately to the desert, Libya and the sea to get out.
China’s population issues will not necessarily cause economic harm when they have millions of people that are still poor. Millions.
In America, automation and outsourcing will continue to reduce the number of good jobs available. Like China, the US can’t provide a decent education to millions of its children. So if the population declines, it should make it easier to fund education and have fewer competitors for the few good paying jobs.
247
"Yes, in an age of stagnation, CO2 levels won’t grow as fast, delaying some of climate change’s effects — but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently."
Unfortunately, this misguided faith in technology is pervasive. There is no technological innovation that will solve the climate crisis, nor the ecological crises present in China and elsewhere.
I do not understand why it is so difficult for these writers - most of whom have presumably taken at least a high school course in chemistry, biology or physics - to understand that the real world which we inhabit and depend upon is not composed of bytes and bitcoin, but of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, phosphorous, potassium. Or to understand that increasing entropy precludes the viability of the latest and greatest perpetual motion machine.
China's population control policy can can critiqued in terms of whether it was needed or how ethically it was implemented. But whether it occurs organically or through some type of government policy, control of population is critical, for several reasons - not the least of which is the need for a 3,000 daily calorie supply for every human on the planet. Among the challenges faced by China, degradation of its arable land and depletion of critical soil nutrients is the most severe. They will not be manufacturing their way out of this crisis.
276
@childofsol
There is "no technological innovation that will solve the climate crisis?" It's hard to believe scientists & engineers are not capable of coming up with breakthroughs in the coming decades when you look at the breathtaking innovations in the 20th century. Carbon-free energy, and/or carbon capture, may be the only hope of avoiding a hothouse Earth where living conditions make it difficult for much of the world's population to have a family. Getting humans to make big sacrifices to reduce their carbon footprint is just as difficult as changing fertility rates.
11
@Jeff : I refer you to the laws of thermodynamics:
1) Conservation of mass/energy
2) Entropy increases in a closed system
3) The universe is a closed system.
What this means is that there won't be a technological fix to the basic problem: resources are limited, can't be expanded, and (due to entropy) are slowly becoming more scarce. The Earth has a fixed amount of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, calcium, and the other elements we need to stay alive. This means the population can't keep growing forever - at some point, we'll run out of water to drink, food to eat, oxygen to breathe.
I know economists don't believe in physics - but the computer I'm writing this on wouldn't wok if the laws of thermodymanics were not correct.
19
I am afraid that Mr. Douthat has got it exactly backwards. The slow growth in China’s population is directly responsible for its continuing economic growth. China’s major cities are already of comparable wealth to those in developed countries, although the countryside is still lagging behind. Further, his numbers seem to be out of date: for China, the per capita GDP (purchasing power parity) is already about $20,000. South Korea is about $40,000 and the US around $60,000, but China’s economy is growing much faster.
In sharp contrast, the economic situation in much of Africa and South Asia is disastrous precisely because most of their population consists of children, which the countries are unable to feed, clothe, educate, or employ when they become adults.
Finally, for a sustainable future of the earth and its people, in terms of climate, air, water, food, etc., we will eventually need to DECREASE the population of the earth back to levels of 100 years ago. The last thing we need is to encourage unrestrained population growth anywhere on earth. Malthus was right; technology just delayed things by a couple of centuries.
814
@AKJersey Yes, but why use purchasing power parity per capita GDP—the only valid metric—when you can use a misleading statistic (nominal per capita GDP) to bolster your point? Intellectual honesty has never been a strong point of Mr. Douthat's.
42
@AKJersey
"Finally, for a sustainable future of the earth and its people, in terms of climate, air, water, food, etc., we will eventually need to DECREASE the population of the earth back to levels of 100 years ago."
Do try to keep up, Erhlich's "Population Bomb," and accompanying dystopian vision it proselytized is the cause, not the cure for crises like those impacting China, Japan, and us soon enough, if we don't resist our anti- immigration No Nothings." His work has also been falsified time and again.
2
@Ryan H
absolutely correct.
5
There must be a way to determine the proper population for our planet, one that that is feedabe, housable, employable etc. Douthat implies that constant population growth is sustainable, which is obviously false. We do not occupy the earth. We are adaptations to its environment.
13
@Okbyme
orrect. The self correcting demographics occurs only after significant damage has been done to the environment. What is lost, is lost forever.
5
Yep, in that sense, climate change contains its own solution- your self-correction. It will reduce the population by a few billion. So why worry!
1
Thanks. Just what I wanted to know. Birth control could solve the problem in 30-50 years.
1
Ross Douthat could use a basic biology course focused on the trade-offs between population growth, human potential and earth's carrying capacity.
The one child policy was a huge price to pay for slowing human-induced ecological degradation. We should be thankful that China's sacrifice gives all of us more time to figure out how to stop fouling our only nest.
18
Douthat always searches for some deep fundamental root cause, usually ending up with too little religion or liberals or both as the answer. He seems to work backwards from his conclusion in general to pick something, anything to reach there. He’s ruined many promising columns this way, including this one.
Life in China is exhausting and competition is constant. I lived in Beijing, and every little daily routine is a struggle. Just going to Carrefour to buy groceries is more of an epic quest than shopping. You and your trolley are just carried along in the tide of shoppers. The competition to get into and keep your children in the rising prosperity is intense beyond anything elsewhere. Middle class parents need a flat, the right hukou, a good job, the right network, and more to get their children in the right school. If you think club soccer and chess club is over scheduling junior’s time, try China where entire shopping malls are dedicated to engineering your child’s future. Every evening and weekend there is a flow of parents and children from piano to gymnastics, to math to dance, to Lego . Yes, even playing with Lego’s is part of the plan. In rural areas parents often spend months apart working remotely in distant cities. Children often remain in their parents’ hometowns staying with grandparents .
Beijing removed what they thought was the barrier to birth rates, but the real constraints are more basic than policy. There’s not enough time or money for two.
14
It is impossible to predict the outcome of a large and complex system where humans are a part of it. But playing with the natural rhythm of nature by a centralized government may prove disastrous. Population in developed countries self controls. We shall see what happens soon enough.
1
This assumption that humans are entitled to dominate the planet - to kill and to eat everything they can run down - is our enduring liability. Until we are ready to accept a modest share of this planet we will remain pariahs to all Creation.
33
@George Matteson We don't run down our food, whether animal or plant, we grow it. Most plants and animals we eat would not exist except for farming. Species come in and out of existence and have been since the beginning of life on earth and and ours will be no exception. We are heading in the direction you recommend though not by the route you would like. Rather than reduced populations causing peace and harmony among all creatures, our lack of resources may cause widespread civil unrest in a diminished population.
Our nation historically, if inhumanly at times, has always accepted immigrants. We must continue to do so and be the nation of opportunity for all who seek it.
Finally, far from being pariahs we are the only species who acknowledges Creation and throughout human history we have been giving thanks to that Creator and are rewarded with the Creator's blessings.
1
If couples of child-rearing age are hesitant to have kids, it is more likely because they feel insecure about the social and economic environments that they and their children will experience.
And if all children were actually wanted and planned for, I cannot image a better outcome for them, their families, and our society.
But the Catholic church has not yet got itself around to that position. I wonder if it ever will?
25
@Duane McPherson Not just the Catholic Church. Other Christian churches discourage family planning, too.
2
I've now lived long enough to fear both the "population bomb" exploding and an "empty planet" because humanity won't reproduce. The truth is none of us can see that far into the future, but love to exaggerate. Fear is fun, at least in the movies. The truth is that children are neither that expensive, nor difficult to raise. Long term they are a joy such that humans aren't likely to give them up totally. And, who knows, they might catch on again. Think of the entertainment. For now, we love looming disasters as entertainment. Good stories require tension and logic is mundane. Yet, in the long run, there is a kind of peace in rationality. Personally, I could use a little. If it's boring, I'll deal with it.
5
I am very concerned about overpopulating the earth and have been since the 1970s. Falling birth rates in both US and China are good news for me. Redistribution of wealth and resources plus concentration on climate change are my main concerns.
34
Conservatives used to be exaggerating the China threat with yellow peril. When China installed the 1 child policy 40 years ago that was a direct threat against God's plan to be fruitful and multiply. Now because of this policy China has been on a phenomenal growth on the last 40 years and a economic threat of U.S. to be number 1. The threat become under population and under growth. I would think Mr. Douthat would be thrilled that China's population will be decreasing, but apparently that will be a threat also with China becoming green and rich and dealing with the coming climate apocalypses with innovative solutions beyond the capacity of Western Democracies.
12
Government shouldn’t be making family planning decisions for women; not only does it lead to human rights violations and fail to reach the set goals, but has unanticipated adverse consequences.
Yet Douthat would have OUR government make OUR decisions on when and how many children to have in banning abortion.
OUR right wingers would have OUR demographics planned by the State, touting the benefits of population growth and children as the reason behind a rolling human rights violations.
All of you are not able to make better decisions that women about the best use of their fertility. Just. Stop. Already.
21
The Earth is suffering from a plague of humans, going from 3 billion in 1960 to 7.7 billion last year and still growing. The peak may be 9 or 10 billion. The percentage that have or aspire to a “western level” of consumption is also growing.
The Earth cannot sustain our taking ever increasing resources to benefit just our species. I would welcome a human population decline. Our economies can learn to adapt.
43
What is the population growth rate needed to maintain a healthy ratio of young people to old people? If we have a relative growth rate of just 1% per year, we would have 1 trillion people on the planet in 500 years.
14
I think we could help Mr. Douthat. Without even mentioning political or religious bias. A week or so in school, best, high school, but a few elementary school teachers could also do the job. To make it interesting, start with a little biology class, growing some vivid stuff in a Petri dish as a microcosm of a finite planet. Possibly leaving a few nice dinosaur posters up as a hint that there really has been such a thing as billions of years here with no traces of supernatural anything. Provided that Ross survives that, let’s venture toward high school math. Specifically, exponents and logarithms, graphing functions.
Then again, maybe he’s too old for revelations.
24
Hey, Ross: I will stop being a misanthropy if the world only have, say, under 1 billion people (I don't care if they are "Western" people or not) in it, living within systems (cultural, economical, ethical) that do not treat the natural world as a thing to exploit.
21
China WAS headed to a different demographic crisis, and a very immediate one. They have 1.4 billion people now. If they hadn't done anything, it would have been 2 billion by now. That is an extra two United States' population.
So the fix was not an unmixed blessing. Astounding. Most things in life are unmixed, right? (That's sarcasm.)
What is the world going to do about sex selection of babies, and below-zero population growth? Together, they produce even lower future populations.
Is that a good thing?
Does China/the World have too many people now?
A country can "grow" its gross product without actually growing its per capita product, or even with a shrinking per capita product. That is not real growth, it is an artifact of numbers and borders and how things are counted. The people living it don't see progress.
A country can also "shrink" its gross product without shrinking its per capita. Japan has done that for a couple of decades. All of its people are better off per capita, yet the gross number is lower because of shrinking population. That is not collapse either. The people see progress in their lives.
Now I know that individual Japanese also see a very uneven, unequal distribution that has left out the younger generation. That's a separate problem. The US has that problem too. China does not. They are better off in that than we are, than Japan is.
7
Nothing wrong with misanthropy. The climate crisis is actually a population crisis where we are using more resources than we should be.
23
In terminal terms, our anthropocentrism will be a bigger problem than anyone who joins the questionably misanthropic Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (vhemt.org). Maybe China's tech push can make the country rich while obviating manual labor globally; humanity excluding the blue-collared would be grateful. Pity the human rights abuses, yes, but don't deny the benefits of focusing on quality of life that come from a reduced quantity of children.
Birthrates below replacement seems like middle ground for non-human species whose populations are less than half what they were just in 1970, as the dual "never-ending growth" obsession in economics and demographics is the logic of cancer and does worse than neglect holistic planetary health. Anyone who's been in a Chinese train station or on the streets during a holiday there would be happy to sweat the troubling numbers in a few decades in exchange for some more elbow room.
14
And yet global population continues to grow unabated.
Soon "conservatives" will reach into their dark history and resurrect Malthus' ideas that war is the moral way to reduce populations.
They certainly don't believe in planned parenthood - projects that result in less abortions in blue states, than red states. They certainly don't love contraception. Come to think of it, conservatives like Douthat don't like any humane idea to reduce populations; well, except war of course.
20
Oh please. What is the population of China? Of India? Just to pick the 2 most over-populated nations. Their problems are going to be magically solved by the constant growth miracle? When China and India each hit 2 billion in population, individuals are still going to get older, so then they will need to hit 3 billion each in order to pay and care for their elderly.
Where is the natural defuse of the population bomb? Now we know what that looks like - global warming and all that comes with it, which kills off individuals in far worse ways than struggling to find ways to look after a naturally aging and declining population.
Since when does a modestly declining population mean that it must go all the way to zero? That innovation, creativity and ideas only comes from ever-growing populations massively skewed towards youth?
Managing a declining population is a challenge and problem. But all things considered, it is the by far preferable problem. And no, it does not mean an Earth with zero humans. Some smaller number (6 billion? 4 billion?) is still a lot, but can be sustainable.
23
There were 2.5 Bn humans on our planet in 1950, now we are 7.5 Bn on a planet in an existential climate crisis. We are heading for 10 Bn and when those 10 Bn aspire to have our western level standard of life, the planet will burn. Population decline is good and necessary.
29
Over and over we read the same stories. People are economically stressed , we are taking care of our parents trying to pay for our children’. We work all day, work all night
Who has time to worry about the president taking away the few rights we have
We are being crushed by politicians who are worthless and China will just be fine they have plenty of people and we will have robots
The world is safe for another decade
1
Before we told Mao to get lost, China -- devastated after Japan's occupation during WW2 -- asked for US help with economicl development.
The US sent advisors who told Mao that China -- then 600 million -- was in a race against time as economic development and food production couldn't grow as fast as China's population. US advisors -- public health experts from Columbia University -- told Mao that China faced mass starvation and sustained subsistence poverty without population control.
They devised a quota system based on China's village birth registries with birth quotas enforced by village chiefs that limited every couple to just one child. Births were regulated by village leaders who were punished or rewarded based on meeting quotas. Abuses were rampant.
China had no modern contraception, minimal health capacity and few trained health professionals. Also, China was historically an agrarian society that relied on large families as the basic unit of production, plus a cultural bias for boys (the so-called Chinese social security of caring for aged parents).
Medical caravans traveled through small villages, usually once a year, that performed abortions. Pregnant women faced a very narrow window for medical termination -- a few days a year -- which lead to invasive fertility monitoring and forced late abortions.
Douthat should direct his opprobrium where it properly belongs: it was America that advised China to kill its babies.
3
Years ago when I was in grad school, Erlich was one of my basic foundation for my thesis: today's population growth is unsustainable. I was ridiculed, laughed at and one of my thesis committee members refused to work with me because my hypothesis was "unfounded". I did get my degree with the support of saner voices in the department, and years later, the UN published its yearly report, citing a growing population as the #1 problem contributing to climate change, civil unrest and general human suffering despite millions being brought out of poverty in many parts of the world.
I'm heartened to see the vast majority of comments on this board show that, not only was I right, but that the tables have turned. I'm not the crazy one now, but rather the belief that we can multiply like locusts and still advance our societies is what is crazy. So again, stop encouraging women to have babies! They'll have them regardless, but the less the better for those who are born.
23
I think ever since the West overtook China as the leading civilization there is this “original Chinese sin” thing in the West.
No matter what China do, it is always negative. It could be because China isn’t Christian, isn't western, or simply because it have so much potential to change the world order.
China endured decades of criticism to uplift its people and even now still being criticized for eating too much food, building too much housings, creating too much tourists, having too much influences on global corporations, too much trade, etc. Everything positive China is doing have more detractors than admirers in the West.
Could you imagine the uproar and racist shades that’s going to be thrown if China have 1.8 billion people instead of 1.4? At a time the world is literally burning?
7
Certainly forced sterilizations and abortions are terrible. But the world needs to stabilize its population, the sooner the better. Having a hugely populous country such as China reaching zero population growth (and even population decline) before they achieve the levels of wealth of the US, Europe and Japan is, in the long run, a good thing for the earth. All countries need to find a way to prosper with ZPG or we will destroy the very earth we live on.
15
Yes, another nail in the coffin of progressive politics. "The chickens are coming home to roost", "it's not nice to try and fool Mother Nature", and so forth. It all should have been obvious from the beginning.
Now what are we going to do? Pensions gone, Social Security broke, savings minimal. Poverty and loneliness is the future for many.
Call it divine justice.: reaping the whirlwind of our own selfishness.
This is a ridiculous column: He says "Both are mostly retrospective: The Western effort died away as the population bomb fizzled" Well, news to Mr. Douthat: The bomb has not fizzled, but it is not on the news at this time. Our human population is 7,600,000,000 or higher, and it grows by millions every day. The devastating issues of migration are driven by population pressure. Our problems in the USA with illegal immigration from Mexico are driven by the huge increase in population in Central American countries and in Haiti. We do not need more people. Abortion is a vital tool for population control.
16
Population and sustainability a larger topic than found here.
China’s economy is already about four trillion dollars larger than the U.S. economy, according to the World Bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.KD. Per capital comparisons favor developed nations but with growth rates multiple American’s standards of living will close; where China suffers statically is their ‘inequality’ exceeds ours, many first generation rich; the difference Xi has a plan to abolish poverty by 2024.
For people coming out of intense poverty ‘old before rich’ must sound like a joke?
China’s population policies are attributed with preventing more births that the total current population of the USA.
Years down the road, in the forecasted troubling world environment, such a record may well be reevaluated.
The Chinese seem not to be concerned.
The Black Death killed approximately 50% of Europe’s population in the mid 1300s and those cultures/civilization were never able to recover.
Yeah, right.
One wishes Mr. Douthat Could bring a broader perspective to his essays.
8
"....but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently"
Well, the world hasn't been "stagnant" for the last 20-30 years and yet we are nowhere near escaping the climate crisis in spite of dire warnings from every single credible scientist in the world. So, your argument doesn't fly, Mr Douthat.
Besides, the world population will continue to explode on the planet even if it doesn't in the West or China. Unless you are a nativist/racist concerned about populations within certain borders or of certain appearance, all the alarm bells on underpopulation are false.
9
The problem with the demographic change is that the proportion of productive people is declining. What if we could make those all those old people youthful again?
Douthat's views population growth as a Ponzi scheme. People born earlier reap rewards funded by those born later. Understandably he's fearful that the scheme will fall apart if population growth stalls.
5
There seems to be a lot of hostility and hatred expressed against elderly people in the US who collect social security payments, as if they were robbing the young. 1. working people pay into social security, but not everyone lives long enough to collect it. We may never collect as much as we've paid in. 2. a lot of young people, including children, receive social security payments. 3. poor children also get Medicaid benefits, but the elderly can't get them until they are destitute, and sometimes not even then. My friend's mother is destitute - my friend is also poor - but her mother still does not qualify for Medicaid. Those who have Medicare benefits usually have to purchase supplemental plans. When my father went into a nursing home for temporary rehab, my mother had to pay for it.
Please stop portraying the elderly as parasites sucking the blood of the young. Sometimes the elderly are still subsidizing the young. Social Security is taxed. In New Jersey, the elderly pay school taxes until they die.
13
@Stephanie Wood Some elderly people who collect Social Security benefits want to work but face age discrimination in the workforce.
2
At 7 billion people on this planet our greatest existential crisis is changing the political, social, and economic behavior of the most invasive species on the planet: us. Perhaps the low fertility rates of "developed nations" will force us to confront an unsustainable economic model that over emphasizes growth at the expense of quality of life. With China's deplorable human rights record, particularly toward their own minorities, perhaps they will discover that all of their citizens have to be valued to maintain healthy economy and society. We would do well to heed this perspective as well.
6
"First, China will have to pay for the care of a vast elderly population . . ." Er. No. It can avoid this without consequence.
"Second, China’s future growth prospects will dim with every year . . ." Nah. You are assuming a future where cheap labor turns out shoes and caps. Imagine China making computer chips, genetically engineered pharma, and AI enabled vehicles. Then this observation has no basis in reality.
These are just two, among other, laughably wrong inferences in this article.
Human existence in China today is infinitely better than the mass starvation and malnourished population they once had. If China's population halves, and its GDP doubles, it will still be just an emerging country (with per capita GDP still less than half of the US).
6
Chinese probably will contribute less pollution, waste, and consumption to the world. This is positive.
On the other hand, China is one of the leading nations in innovation now. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of them, and will help lessen the demand for manpower in manufacturing, healthcare, and custom services.
In a way, due to the shortage of young people, China is forced into innovation to solve the problems. Just like us, we are forced to integrate immigrants into our society to contribute.
The bottom line is that families will have fewer children due to society progress. Chinese government just claimed that their average income is US10,000.00 per person. This is a big hurdle to overcome. After that, the sky will be the limit.
3
There are other populations that need room to grow: those of non-human species. Wildlife has been decimated not only in China, but in the world's oceans, air, and every other land mass. Until humans numbers reach those of, say, wild pandas, we should rejoice at any decline.
13
First, the population of the planet needs to be reduced. With each passing day we stare into the maw of global environmental devastation. I don’t believe that RD is in denial of our environmental challenges. So why such a narrow view. Along with the other developments going on to build a cleaner planet global population needs to be sustainable. It needs, in some way, to be under control. China’s policies, however misguided, are a view to the problems and programs people will experience when we finally address population socially and politically. Addressing population socially and politically is to face it in order to act humanly and fairly. Or you can just go off on China, not bother in your writing to even mention that they manage 1.5 billion people and walk away. No worries. Nature does a great job of controlling unsustainable populations.
7
This a description of a local demographic problem. The specific issues are contemporaneous. Our populations are not static nor can they be 'controlled' by a single government, no matter how wealthy or culturally advanced (whatever that is). This article sounds like a back-handed plug for the Catholic Church.
Predictions of future demographics are really good fodder for Sunday op/ed articles and university papers and books by so-called academics but invariably have little relation to what is going to happen, or not happen.
7
@Clay Sorrough
So the Chinese government didn't control their population when they instituted a one-child policy? News to me.
Your thoughts about this are so eighteenth century when the world changed at a snails pace. The changes going on now keep my head spinning.....from climate change to technology to mass migrations to starvation to refugee camps to destroying the ecosystems which allow this planet to operate and run like a well oiled machine. Being able to adapt is what will save us and the transition is never an easy one.
5
Keynes postulated in the 1930s that population growth rates were a natural human response to increased demand for labor created by the industrial revolution. By extrapolation of trends, he opined that it would self-correct as capital growth and technological advance enabled human beings to provide material wealth with less and less direct labor - that we would advance beyond the observed degradations of industrialization, where "foul is useful, fair is not". The human race is a natural interconnected organism adjusting to the availability of real resources.
The cruelty or immorality of China's policies aside, population decline per se is not necessarily a bad thing. It may well require us to be productive later into life, and that we will need to reorganize our welfare arrangements and our economic systems, no longer assessing well-being and success in terms of GDP or stock market growth, neither of which accounts for decline in real global resources brought about by excessive consumption.
In holistic terms then, the decline in birth rates is a natural response to capital growth, the perception of resource degradation, and the medical advances that have reduced infant mortality and rendered redundant the necessity of large family structures. It will be a challenge to overcome the forces of reactionary institutional self-preservation interests (as Ross's opinions so frequently show) but when has progress ever not been a challenge?
14
It seems to me that these population blips in different countries could be fixed very easily. Increased immigration from areas with higher percentage of young people.
1
The population bomb was merely simply reset with greater agricultural production, mostly from fertilize that is mostly derived from fossil fuels that are ultimately limited in supply.
The only resource we can really count on for millions of years is the sun and the natural carbon cycle that it feeds. That means we can only reliably support a population that can be fed using organic farming methods, albeit improved ones with technology such as drip irrigation, and electrically powered farm equipment. We won't be back to horse drawn plows, but it won't be the same yields we have today either. Perhaps we could support a couple billion people at most?
Unfortunately we will return to our our sustainable population size one way or another, the question is, do we want that to be through fewer births, or deaths through mass starvation? Let's not let Thomas Malthus wag his bony finger at us as we figure it out the hard way.
4
I am always surprised that no one suggests that all countries with low birth rates and large aging populations will evolve to 1.) support and embrace greater robotic and AI assisted innovations to replace the helping hands family members once offered. 2.) there will evolve euthanasia plans for elderly to choose their time of death. 3.) embrace immigration as a way to build a younger, tax paying work force.
As for the climate, our powerful suppression of climate action will provide increasing additional population deaths. As far as feeding the current population: we have enough food, but we have greater greed than desire to solve that problem.
1
Sir David Attenborough said, " All of our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder - and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people."
Mr. Douthat, is he wrong?
26
My thoughts, visiting China a few years back, was that their "one-child" policy suffered from poor marketing. It seemed really to be the case and should have been hailed as the "two-parent" policy. Each child I saw looked exceptionally well cared for, polite, well groomed, well dressed and busy with a parent, usually seen rushing off to some after-school activity. The result of this two parent policy is the rapid creation of a modern industrial economic powerhouse that is the envy of the developing world.
Contrast that with the American model of two or three kids being raised by single parents. The results speak for themselves.
10
You've lost me here, Ross. My guess is that China's standard of living would have risen much faster if not for Mao's disastrous decision allow a huge increase in China's population in order to intimidate the West back in the 50s & 60s. Your attitude is a type of cruelty in itself. How can you write articles like this when places like Australia & Korea are on fire? Climate change is complex, & is caused by many factors, & rapid population growth in the last 70 years if a big one.
21
It is not the absolute rate of growth which matters. It is the rate of growth per capita which increases national well-being.
4
Before you denigrate the conclusions of the Population Bomb don't overlook the possibility that the Malthusians may have right about the number of people the planet can sustain. Global climate change is resulting in large measure from the need to clear cut forests to sustain our burgeoning population on the planet--- especially if that population aspires to the carnivorous dining habits of the West. And even more insidious is the draining of aquifers and the potential water shortages that will result. Given the way we're headed we may end up re-balancing our global population the old fashioned way: famine; disease; and war. As one of the other op ed pieces points out, we need less finger pointing and more hand holding if was want a more peaceful and less contentious plant.
25
@WFGERSEN, there is no question that famine, pandemics and war will be the future faced by the descendants of our children, grandchildren and relatives. Or does everybody think that hungry, cold and thirsty people in China are just going to sit and die quietly in their own countryside while the Chinese oligarchs and their offspring move quietly to the United States and the coastal areas of Canada?
2
Rarely do I read an article in the NYTimes, which is quite as wrong as this op-ed piece.
Mr. Douthat, do you know that there are more humans living on the planet now than all the humans who have ever lived and have passed away in the history of mankind, combined? (And, yes, the 'history of mankind' means tens of thousands of years.)
Overpopulation is still the number one problem facing mankind, and it is getting worse very rapidly. Despite the one-child policy Chinas population has expanded greatly, more than doubling in the last half century.
Yes, China may face some problem taking care of their elderly in the future. But these problems are nothing compared to what they have would have faced without the one-child policy.
You may be guided by the "go forth and multiply" directive in your bible. Let me be clear: This leads to exponential population growth and is the sure recipe for the destruction of mankind.
65
So Ross wants populations to grow. The question is how do we feed them,educate and employ them and give all a quality life? How will climate change effect the populations of the world? Millions are fleeing economic and social disaster that are all man made. So Ross ,lets make what we have better before we worry about a declining birth rate.
34
This is an essay straight out of the Vatican, where no level of poverty is too great to call for restraints on population, where no family is too big to permit birth control.
There are over 7 billion people in the world, and 1.3 billion people in China, which is the size of the United States. But restraining population growth there is a bad thing?
Only in the Vatican, where, ironically, there is no population growth at all.
67
Reducing ALL populations is exactly what needs to happen.
We've vastly exceeded the earth's ecosystems' Carrying Capacities, with agriculture barely keeping up.
At some point, probably in this century, the human population is in for a huge crash. Billions will die, which is horrible and yet will be necessary for the earth to recover.
Humans are a planet-wide scourge because of our insatiable greed and inability to plan more than a year into the future.
29
@Ambient Kestrel, I agree with you. What I think most Americans, and probably people in general, fail to understand, however, is that climate change is not a here today, gone tomorrow phenomenon. It is here to stay and it's past the point where we can really do much to "halt" it in its tracks. We're looking at a process that is going to take several hundred thousand years and will end in a great global ice age, just like the one that ended about 11,500 years ago that finally allowed the few rag-tag bands of humans to settle down, establish civilizations and begin to grow their populations. How do we know this? Because core samples from around the world accumulated by researchers over the years show us that these cycles have occurred at least three times prior to today. it's coming, we can't reverse, we could save more people if we started developing and implementing mitigating policies worldwide now - but we haven't, and we won't. People would rather remain in denial, and therefore, civilizations WILL die, and so will billions of us with them.
4
As a senior myself, it's probably for the best that we all plan to take care of ourselves to the greatest extent possible, as long as possible. Having children available to change my Depends when I am unable to do so isn't a sufficient reason to procreate. And grey hair doesn't automatically confer senescence.
The thing we haven't planned for over the last 70 years of population explosion is how to help seniors be more fully engaged - stay employed and active, use the wisdom they have earned.
Because - the current population "bomb" others Commenters have cited owes as much to increased longevity as it does to high birth rates. We should take advantage of those years by making them more meaningful.
33
Thank goodness population growth is slowing in China and much of the developed world. The huge current human population has wreaked havoc on the environment and other forms of life on our planet, and the human population is projected to keep growing. Modern medicine has succeeded in extending lifespans but has not been nearly as successful at preserving the health and quality of life for the aged population. As a result, the societal and personal burden of caring for the elderly has mushroomed and is sapping resources so that the prospects for the quality of life for younger generations is diminishing. When will we realize that we are not meant to be immortal and accept that we have a limited time on this Earth? We used to have natural checks on population growth, but they have been vastly reduced by modern medicine. The World would be in much better shape with far fewer people depleting its resources and destroying the environment. That’s the big picture Mr. Douthat.
33
In spite of all the hand wringing over the rise of automation and big data, it results in fewer people necessary to create uncreadible wealth. If only our social structures can evolve to distribute that wealth more equitably, it would result in a world that is less destructive to the planet and all the other life forms that we share it with.
12
Shrinking populations are a crisis if your theory of economic success requires a growing population to power growth. Otherwise, it's not per se bad, and might be very good. In fact, it could be seen as the predictable correction of population size that inevitably results when population grows beyond carrying capacity. Nicer to have it happen this way, with fewer people having babies, than through some disastrous sudden loss of millions.
52
Not only is there a low replacement rate but the babies that are born are skewed male. This is a cultural problem that will make it more difficult in the future for China to achieve a stable population.
Unfortunately, I have read articles that the government is trying to remedy this problem by restricting women's rights to choose vocations. This is the wrong way to go and only serves to devalue women further. It's more government intrusion.
9
Meanwhile, as the human population continues to grow, insect populations have plummeted with resulting, startling, declines in bird populations. More ocean fish on our dinner plates are farm raised than wild caught as fish populations around the globe have decreased to unsustainable levels due to over fishing and pollution. The Amazon rain forest, supplier of a goodly percentage of the worlds oxygen is steadily being burned and turned into farm land. And the list goes on and on. The human population will most likely never go to zero, but would certainly benefit the rest of the living things that we have to share our planet with. To suggest endless population growth is pure folly.
62
@DonS, don't be too sure that human life won't go extinct like billions of animals and plants around the world will go extinct. Or has nobody been paying attention to what's been happening during the Australia bush fires? Estimated already more than a billion animals dead, and some populations predicted never to return. Gone - in fire. I cannot believe the degree of denial human beings are in regarding what's happening already and how much worse it's going to get. There's no magic wand out there folks, that will make it all go away. Science isn't going to save any of you. I'll be dead and buried, but you'll still be around to face it - at least, for awhile... Don't be too sure that ANY part of this cycle of human control and development will survive, including homo sapiens sapiens.
5
I, and many, are glad to hear the earths human population is finally shrinking. The planet just can not support the billions of human animals without severe loss of other forms of life and the continued destruction of the environment. A shrinking human population is not something to lament, and it doesn't make us misanthropes. Solutions can and will be found for the necessary problems that will arise with fewer people.
37
@steve
The human population is unfortunately not shrinking. Sub-Saharan Africa is working on adding a Billion over the next 30-40 years..
1
Let me try to take a more positive attitude. We have trillions of dollars sloshing around in the stock market that can be taxed.
Robots are going to be increasingly making the stuff we need to live.
So just tax some of that capital, vigorously fund worldwide pension funds, and robots can allow the old folks to retire in comfort. Why is that irrational?
16
I wonder if the problem was framed differently a solution would appear to China's demographic "crisis".
Should the Chinese overcome eons of prejudice, recognize that people are more similar than different, allow in-migration of workers from around the world, production could continue to grow as well as economic well being.
I guess the same thing could be said about the US.
11
A few very wealthy countries have managed extremely well with consistently small populations; Singapore, Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, come to mind, but there are more. None lack dynamism, or creativity, or inventiveness. These countries, with restrained populations, are at the top of all good quality living indexes, and also have clean air, and clean water, clean natural spaces, for the time being. They are so attractive that most of the rest of the world want to live there.
35
@Broman I suppose that suggests that if the Chinese can live through this unbalanced period, no worries.
2
The U.N. projects a world population of 12 billion in 2010. This writer can remember when there was said to be 3 billion people in the 1960s. Was there disastrous underpopulation in those days? Per capita economic growth doesn't come from births, it comes from technological development.
24
@hepcat
2019 2030 2050 2100
World 7 713 8 548 9 735 10 875
in millions
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Highlights.pdf
1
Wrong wrong and wrong.
We can dislike the extreme tactics taken in enforcing policy but still admit that it has achieved some positive outcomes.
Imagine a China with another half billion people. The idea its citizens would be better off is absurd. Even after one child policy, it struggles with pollution and is crowded in most coastal areas.
Expecting China to reach USA per capita income as a test of the policy is a mistake. Compare China to India and other developing countries and you have to admit it has made amazing progress over 30 years.
China will not face the same issues as USA. The Chinese pension system has not made same promises as those in USA and the healthcare system is nowhere as expensive. The USA spends double on healthcare what any other country spends and it’s mortality and morbidity is worse. Healthcare costs are the reason wages have stagnated in the USA for many. China does not have this problem and has benefitted from our dysfunctional system. While we may not like it, China is likely to surpass the USA in cloning, stem cell research and other areas where our “values” keep us from learning.
For 100 years American grew productivity by moving people from farms, adding women to workforce and increasing education. China is still doing all of these and the effects will outweigh aging. China is younger than the USA and will be so for another decade.
Lastly, the policy is irrelevant. Women everywhere are having fewer kids.
31
@Jack S. Amen! I was going to make some comments, and add similar observations as you did, but to that part, I'm just going to say DITTO!
Also, like you said, one-child policies are probably not the way to go, but please stop encouraging women to have children!! Just STOP!!! Adding more humans to the planet for the sake of the "economy" is not the answer. Perhaps some economist superstar out there can instead come up with economic policies that better address the problem of an aging population instead of encouraging young people to keep multiplying! Relax, homo sapiens will not go extinct. If they do, it will likely be due to their own greed, war, disease (which BTW spreads a lot faster the more people are added to the population), and self-inflicted wounds to society and the planet. Not because the Chinese are having less babies.
1
Many on the right and left, many “economists and crazy people” (per Vaclav Smil), are believers in the Doctrine of Infinite Plenitude. China’s great disaster in the annals of family planning will be used as evidence to support this doctrine, but don’t buy it. The kind of capitalist society that the right treasures will have a much easier time generating technocratic solutions for gradual population decline than solutions to a destroyed planet. There is no Earth II.
16
There is a belt of disappearing countries in Europe. Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Birth rates hover around 1.3-1.6. Soon Europe will willingly admit the refugees whom it tries to avoid now; because no other European country have the population to support the others. An example to demonstrate the gravity of the situation: Today, if Greece functions at all, it is thanks to the 750 000 Albanians who have joined the work force. Yet that number was the maximum poor and desperate Albania could provide.
1
@ahmet andreas ozgunes Europe's rise as an economic power came, in large part, due to its lower birth rate. Yes, it does create some imbalances in the work force, but an influx of migrants and refugees is not necessarily going to solve that problem (and no, this is not some anti-immigrant rant). Look at Sweden. The model of working social democratic policies and regulated capitalism. In the past 10 years, it has absorbed over 1 million refugees, primarily from N. Africa and Middle East. Has this solved the problem of labor shortage? Far from it. Most of those immigrants are sadly uneducated and some illiterate, largely due to the fact that they come from countries that did not invest in education, in particular for women.
In order to generate revenue, the government needs a workforce that is educated and skilled, so the short answer is that, no, increasing the TFR would not solve that problem. Increasing education, innovation and addressing what to do with jobs lost to technology would help a lot more.
12
I live in China. I have for two years. I lived seven years in Korea. This writer clearly has never been to China, and almost certainly doesn't speak Chinese. Every semester I teach some 700 students English, most of them (probably 90 percent) female. There is still a lot of pressure in China to have a family, but the educational system if very competitive. So if you have a child, the pressure is to make sure that child is in the best school early on. All throughout life. And that's hard in a country of 1.3 billion people.
Some women, I think, just don't want to get on that demanding treadmill. They don't think it necessarily leads to happiness. It is important to remember that a generation ago people might be starving. Now in China everyone has a smartphone, a nice place to live, a good life.
In my city, I probably see a thousand little kids - toddlers - every day. I'm not kidding. It's a city of 11 million people, but it's not one of the big cities here. And, of my students, probably the average family has 2 children. More have 3 than 1. So I don't think China is going to run out of young people any time soon. You can come over here and see for yourself.
21
I believe the point here is that China's forced abortion policy and the West's support of it should be a scarlet letter for all. That is certainly a valid point but I don't think we need to toss environmentalism in there as the issue. Yes, there are extremists but most of us who want to save the planet want it saved for animals and children. There is no interest in killing off species. Mr. Douthat often tries to wake us up to the lingering extremes of liberalism but most progressives are not extreme. I simply don't want my children to inherit a burning planet.
16
China's per capita income is about $18,000 in 2018 which is still growing annually and certainly high enough for a good standard of living for the 1.3 billion Chinese IF the income were shared equally. Income distribution is far worse than the U.S. and that means many millions live in poverty. That is the real problem for China.
China wastes much of its national income on irrational investment to benefit the rich and companies. It has not addressed its terrible air and water pollution. Its autocratic government is not meeting the needs of its people.
Low birth rates are not China's major problem. Another large developing country Brazil similarly had cut its birthrates to U.S. levels and greatly increased the well being of its poor in recent decades. Like China, low birth rates are not the problem.
6
Douthat makes a fundamental error in saying that population growth is essential for innovation.
In their total population of more than a billion people, China already has hundreds of millions who are undereducated.
Educating Chinese children who already exist will add more educated minds to society than will be added by simply having more babies, all of whom will consume resources, but many of whom won't be properly educated.
Sadly, the same can be said about America, as our own expensive educational system is also inadequate and doesn't properly serve vast swaths of the population.
15
Actually, if you want to talk about communist folly, why not talk about how Mao ignored the advice of his scientists and engineers and launched into initiatives that resulted in large scale environmental destruction. Sounds a lot like the Republican Party's dismissiveness towards the findings and recommendations of climate scientists. Sometimes people's ideological rigidity causes them to become that which they hate. Another example would be the rightwing's news media propaganda machine, which is the sort of top-down mind control I thought we were fighting against back when the Soviet Union was our number one enemy.
Mr. Douthat at least acknowledges that climate change is human caused, but he still denies a human capacity to collectively solve problems that we collectively create, believing instead that innovation is population-dependent, and that we must keep expanding our population to hatch the one baby who will grow up to solve our climate problem. And then he seems to judge modern science by a book, The Population Bomb, written in 1968, when the world population was half what it is now. Apparently he thinks that all those additional human lives, plus computers, have led to no advances in the capacity of science to predict consequence.
Most telling is the paragraph with "an empty planet wouldn't have any climate change problem at all." Is he suggesting that anyone who cares about life beyond humanity is a misanthrope? Love people AND nature, for the good of all life.
16
Your description of the “limits to growth” thinking as a quaint mistake fading from memory reflects a common misconception of what happened. Yes the world’s population and economy have continued to grow despite the dire predictions of the late 60s and early 70s, but they’ve done so by borrowing from the future to produce more food with massive amounts of petroleum-based fertilizers and by drawing down freshwater aquifers at unsustainable rates. These and other limits remain, and now when they bite they’ll be even more consequential in a world with 9-10 billion people rather than one with 4 billion people. China’s approach was, of course, horrific, just as is pretty much everything about the regime in China, but the fact remains (as discussed at length in the recent book Sapiens) that humans are locusts devouring everything in front of us with unprecedented short-term success, with unsustainable long-term consequences. You may think it blessed to procreate at the rates our parents and grandparents did, but you and I can only pray we don’t live to see the result.
22
It seems to me the horror being expressed here is based on a reaction to the delusional belief that the human race, any species really, can grow forever. Really? Growth forever within such a limited domain, this Terrarium Earth?
This, I would submit, is an unnatural and fantastical perspective on the reality of life. As the old song goes, to every thing there is a season. There is an ebb and flow to life. Periods of fecundity interlaced with periods of retraction, death and withdrawal which sets the stage for the next cycle.
So given this what we should be doing is preparing ourselves for a fallow period. We're entering a time where the philosophy of restoration, of ourselves and the land, is at hand. Every gardener understands this. Every farmer knows that there comes a time to renew the soil and prep for the next season to come.
So as long as our sole domain is the Earth it would be wise to inculcate this perspective into the social mind and roll with it. It's no big deal, really, excepting in how the "growth forever" mind reacts in so horrific a fashion to this fact. It's simply natural. I would submit that the reaction to it is what's unnatural..
John~
American NetZenm
15
Or we can let populations control themselves through warfare, disease, famine and pestilence. Douthat, as a religionist, can get behind that. I read the article twice and couldn’t see what it’s point was other than that growth(greed) is good.
23
@Thomas well said!!
1
The earth's population will either continue to shrink or continue to grow. For the former, the results will be. as Douthat points out, problematic. For the latter, the results will be catastrophic.
I chose problematic.
26
The major source of our climate problems is the unbridled increase in human population. This must therefore be brought to a stop or to a decrease. Mr. Douthat's points about the problems with the decrease in birthrate (now in China) are certainly real ones. However, we should be able to learn how to cope with a lower percentage or working population; automation and increased technological efficiencies are the road. Whether we can succeed in doing that becomes a political and social question. It would help to learn more about that.
9
@David
In the US, our duly elected representatives have been robbing the SocSec savings of American workers, using those funds to instead pay for Vietnam and the Oil Wars, and of course huge tax benefit for the self-chosen few. Instead, we have a pyramid scheme dependent on increasing numbers in younger generations to temporarily cover this theft. Meanwhile, the unbalanced growth of human population has robbed us of most species, natural resources while our refuse poisons the waters and skies and ultimately cooks the planet to lifelessness. Thank God for population reduction as a first step to good stewardship, which our youngest folks recognize as a last desperate chance for this once green planet's survival, along with the life it was built to support.
4
I am not a scientist. It is an overstatement to say that if population declines, we will eventually disappear. Humans are ingenious, we will adapt, a decline is inevitable and good for our world and population. Technology will replace some of the humans that China is missing and lastly, once there are less people and life is a bit easier, people will reconsider having more kids.
9
Hello? Growth meaning population growth forever? Have you done the math? Growth in GDP in developed and of course more importantly in less developed countries, yes. Decrease in violence, yes. Increase in health-care availability, regardless of income, yes. But growth = more people = more structures = more energy use, not a good long term answer.
8
So what is the answer? We have to learn how to run societies that have stable or even somewhat declining populations, since any increasing trend leads eventually to horrific natural correction mechanisms. The fact that some of the methods aimed a population limitation were morally repugnant does not change the fact that totally appropriate factors that lead to population control will provide some of the same social stresses. I think it is a huge challenge to learn to operate humane societies under conditions of stability, which means the stability has to arise by choice. No technical or moral solution will allow the population to increase without limit.
3
Let me lay out a few basic principles of economics. There is the earth, but for this comment let’s call it a pie. The pie is finite. In other words, it can only be cut into smaller pieces as more people want slices. Adding more people doesn’t make the pie bigger nor does it make the slices bigger. Nor does it make it more likely to enlarge the size of the pose because the pie is finite.
Seriously Mr. Douthat, your argument that more people make it more likely we’ll solve the climate crisis has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in my life. We already know what caused the climate crisis, too many people coupled with capitalism that doesn’t require energy producers to pay the true cost of the use of their products, thus obscene profits while the rest of us struggle to clean up their mess and we already know how to fix it; regulation to drive us away from a carbon based economy.
29
Judging overpopulation to be a central factor in global ecological and environmental crises can no longer be disparaged as fringe and racist. What is extreme is the belief that the solution for all the great perils that excess growth has wrought is more growth.
However, we must acknowledge that this belief -- that we must stay the course to meet the imperative for growth -- is still a central organizing principle of almost all political and economic persuasions, dominating the earth. That growth is the all purpose cure.
Perhaps essential for the health of capital, growth as enabled by fossil energy and industrial agriculture has greatly imperiled the climate, bio-diversity and environmental services. The measures of "progress" have masked the plethora of diminishing returns. Nathaniel Popkin wrote: "Earth is rapidly shedding life and the systems that sustain it. We know this but we don’t seem to be able to face it, for ours is an age of loss disguised as plenty."
( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/climate-change-sea-level-rise.html)
So we need to seriously think about what it would really mean to envision a way to live on earth that took as its central guiding light "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World" (Henry David Thoreau). What would it really take to implement E.O. Wilson's prescription for 50% wild?
What would it really take to put humility back in humans? The realization of limits.
Ask this please at the next debate stage.
25
Something that the US has going for it, at least in the short term, is immigration. Legal and otherwise. We are still the newest and, arguably, most desirable country on the planet. People moving here from all over the globe will help support and build out our economy, including younger Chinese. I feel bad for these older cultures that are feeling the “unintended consequences” of what was a well meaning implementation of the one child policy. But always remember, no good deed goes unpunished.
4
When reading the comments, it's comforting to see that all 25 comments I read disagree with M. Douthat. Human population decline, which is not happening yet, is a good thing for all life on earth. I'm puzzled by the mindset that believes in infinite growth.
39
I don't support the Chinese government or their methods. At the same time, I have to call Douthat out on his highly speculative conclusions. We have no idea what would have happened if China had not imposed a one child policy. It is ridiculous to assume that cutting population growth in a country like China resulted in a decrease in innovation. In addition, too many other factors are at play, such as fossil fuel companies' promotion of climate denial and obstruction of solutions.
We need to cut the population of the planet; we don't need so many people, and I personally feel that my quality of life has decreased as a result of the population growth in my urban area. Growth is not the point of life, happiness is.
18
The world population in 1900 was about 1.5 billion. It is now about 7.8 billion. Global warming forces us to ask what is the carrying capacity of the earth. We are already perpetrating the "Sixth Extinction" on the planet. If we 7.8 billion adopted sustainable lifestyles we might save it, but that is a tall order. Emerging middle classes in developing countries like China and India will ask why they should not be entitled to air conditioning and automobiles that Westerners have enjoyed for a century, and Westerners do not seem inclined to give up their luxuries.
Perhaps our current environmental crisis answers Fermi's paradox. Maybe we haven't found exoplanet civilizations because at a certain point they implode.
18
China got its unsustainable population because Mao, believing in strength in numbers, promoted patriotic women to have many babies. TFR approached seven. This resulted, along with the industrialization of agriculture, in a starvation of 20-40 million people. The first scientific assessment of China's carrying capacity put it at about half its current population. An aging population is inevitable and, yes, China will have immigration, as Taiwan and Japan do.
9
The one child policy grew out of the mistaken idea that China's population was growing so large that the state would be overwhelmed by it. This was a particularly atrocious decision on several levels. The US has a problem with declining birth rates and growing numbers of retired people getting retirement and health benefits. The Ukrainian coup was based on a stagnant economy and the state that was obligated to support a large populace retirees. The dismal situation is made worse with people having no economic future and remorseless corruption. China will come up with a government imposed solution that will maintain the CPs tight political control. Probably along the lines of draconian warehousing of people. The US will try to cut benefits bringing back the blight of old age poverty while at the same time maintaining the flight of capital to the wealthiest.
3
Birth rates are decreasing worldwide. The world doesn’t want more human beings. More human beings consume more resources and use more space, and lately this has resulted in eliminating unique wildlife and environments, ie, a negative effect on overall quality of life. Technology will increasingly let us do what has to be done with less need for humans. So let’s change our priorities and think rather how societies should evolve as populations decrease. Let us work for a world where human welfare is universal, where people are happy and have all the basics, where civilization can keep on progressing, where medicine can keep on improving, where science can continue to discover the secrets of the universe, where we can incrementally improve our quality of life, but all this with increasingly fewer human beings. Say evolution.
15
I teach English in China. One of my softball questions is tell me about your family. Nearly every student has brothers and sisters. Some come from a family of 5 siblings.
These are Han Chinese with a few identifying as Hakka born in small town and rural Guangdong from 1995 to 2000. 90 percent are female and from the status of my school, they come from poorer families from the average. This is just an observation but I have spoken to about 3000 students
I suspect the one child policy was not as rigidly enforced as often reported. Maybe it was subtle undermining of a government policy. Maybe the home of the Canton Exodus with its overseas connections and manufacturing base was too powerful a province to allow a draconian birth control policy.
Interested in hearing from others with first hand knowledge of modern Chinese families.
11
If innovation requires more than 7 billion people, how did we innovate our way to the productive and medical technologies that made us 7 billion?
29
Population decline is only a problem for the economic model of perpetual growth the world is currently following. It is possible to evolve into an economic model in which a stable population is entirely supportable. All that has to happen is to lower the general standard of living to a sustainable level. The current "growth at all costs" model is already threatening collapse through global warming.
20
"China is growing old without first having grown rich."
Mr. Douthat:
The young people of China should not be counted out so rapidly!
Yes, the pure numbers (people numbers and ages of said people) tell one story, which you outline as progressively reduced productivity.
The numbers you don't note, and, are hard to both see and write about is:
The relative productivity of a young Chinese person (worker) and a young American or European person (worker).
We have a little bit of a window into this right now IF you want to look.
The private schools of America, in need of money, have admitted large numbers of the children of the new wealthy in China. Indeed, my kids are going to school with them.
Those children of China, at those private schools, all across America, define the meaning of sustained, willing, enthusiastic, hard work. I mean, hard, hard work.
My children, both currently at expensive private schools in the Northeast, who have friends in the Chinese community, will tell you that the average Chinese born student know how to really work, how to really study. The Chinese students are simply tireless in their efforts to succeed.
My children, who, by American standards, do have a great work ethic, are routinely amazed at how long a Chinese born student can sustain a library study session.
So, Mr. Douthat, don't count China out based on Demographics. The average Chinese person can do the work of four Americans - and easily.
12
@Michael What an excellent point. I notice the same thing myself. We have been underestimating China for several decades now, always thinking China will start to decline, that America will prevail because somehow we are better. Not when it comes to work. Chinese-born students usually do work much harder. Ultimately, a nation's most valuable resource is its people, and while Chinese growth may stumble at times, China is going to blow right past us. The Chinese as a group are harder working, they are becoming better educated, their creative juices are beginning to be freed and there are many more of them than us. It is not really a competition any more -- just a matter of time. The only likely thing to upset this is climate change, where North America, for many reasons, is better positioned than the other continents.
3
@Malcolm
China does have one more threat to its future: Too many people.
Talk to anyone who was born in China and they will tell one tale after another of trash piled high in streams and waterways, unbreathable air, chemical pollution from factory smoke deposits, there are no trees left in China (hence their aggressive deforestation of jungles worldwide).
So, working hard can compensate for a lot of things, but, a dead landscape is not one of them.
Since the US was nearly completely de-populated of humans as part of European resettlement here, we still have some natural resources that are not completely exhausted, and, although Trump is doing his best to poison the environment again, people will push back.
I am not optimistic about America, but, I would not count us out quite yet.
3
Ross, you should also comment on the other demographic crisis awaiting China: the fact that so many abortions specifically targeted girls to ensure that the only allowed child would be a boy. That has resulted in a very skewed gender ratio which points to trouble as millions of young adults fail to find partners.
15
I can only hope that the rest of the planet would experience the "underpopulation" that China is now facing. Our planet is overpopulated with people, resulting in global warming and environmental pollution on a massive scale. While we all need to live more sustainable lives, our population also needs to decrease to save our planet. We need to figure out how to care for all generations while transitioning to a more sustainable human population.
19
Sadly, Ross is trapped in a false choice. It's not between an "empty Earth" and his idea of "Earth Paridiso". It's between a planet that committed suicide and a planet with a sustainable biosphere.
When it comes to population growth Mr Douthat, please don't "Do that".
12
Global population is increasing by 1% annually or 82 million per year. The rate of increase is slowing somewhat, but the issue Ross highlights is more a national one rather than global. Nonetheless, the impact on developed nations is and will be real.
Sadly, Ross is trapped in a false choice. It's not between an "empty Earth" and his idea of "Earth Paridiso". It's between a planet that committed suicide and a planet with a sustainable biosphere.
When it comes to population growth Mr Douthat, please don't "Do that".
8
Demonstrates the ultimate weakness and failure of Capitalism: the need for continued growth to infinity. Obviously not sustainable or desirable and will only lead to misery. Someone please explain the details of how you can have growth forever. Of course you can’t. War, pollution, disease, starvation, etc will take care of that problem since our species will never have the will to control ourselves. This is the great, rarely addressed truth. We did not evolve with the will to limit our population but evolution will ultimately do it for us whether we like it or not and it won’t be pleasant.
18
The tragedy of the one-child policy is brilliantly depicted in the recent Chinese film "So Long, My Son."
2
China's main demographic dilemma is the imbalance of men and women. Because of the one-child policy in an ancient agrarian culture that values boys over girls as farm labor and property heirs, male preference has skewed China's demographics with more men and fewer women.
According to The NYTimes, there are 33 million more men than women in China. Overall 48.78% of China are women while the global average is 49.55%. The problem is exacerbated in the interior of China, which is less developed than coastal provinces.
But gender disparity isn't the only or even the main reason for China's birthrate decline.
Post-WW2, economic growth with greater access to education and jobs for women is credited with declining national fertility rates and smaller average family size. Given a choice, women decide whether they want to be mothers and keep house or if they prefer independence.
China's rapid economic development with a surging middle class is why China's birth rate has declined.
Is it a disaster? Unlikely for both its aging population or its economy. Chinese may not have large families now but clans and villages are alternative forms of elder support, reinforced by a powerful cultural deference to elders. Also Chinese are intensely social so there's less isolation.
Chinese are voracious savers not spenders. They save more than they spend, which is the basis of China's national surplus.
China's not in crisis but we are with Trump.
12
My slightly misanthropic goal isn't exactly an empty planet, but a human population that is proportional to the size of the Planet Earth and sustainable. That would be, according to E.O. Wilson, roughly 3 billion humans. I can live with that--even though none of us will be around to see it happen.
26
The same thing is happening in Iceland.
3
Perhaps a terminal misanthropy is what’s needed to save the billions of species that aren’t destroying the planet for greed.
We’ve had our time.
17
Ross thanks for a mid-20th century economic analysis for mid-21st century China. The planet cannot sustain this much longer, population must shrink and there are more or less pleasant ways to get there (we have no choice). China will be much better off once that enormous generation is gone, they are playing the long long game.
20
I'm sure a global population of 5 billion diverse individuals will find ways to innovate too, just as a population of 7 or 9 billion. Why do we need to crowd out every resource in order to progress?
28
i'm puzzled that the underproduction of more humans is "the great problem of the 21st century."
but then i always prefer data, such as the mauna loa daily CO2 readings, or scenarios grounded in explicit assumptions, such as the IPCC SR-15, to moralisms such as: "classist, sexist, racist, anti-religious program."
personally, i can't see any reason why there have to be more than 500 million people on the planet at any one time. i just can't. especially with all the knowledge, resources, wealth and technology we have accumulated. it's not misanthropy, truly, it's just that human looks more noble to me when it isn't clogging the turnpikes.
true, you can add more people, but the imperative for that is capitalism, not demography. read your adam smith: a "continually increasing population" is one of the essential ingredients behind "the wealth of nations."
forget free markets, specialized labor, colonial inputs, return on investment ... just make more people, and make them work, and burn lots of carbon, and profits will grow forever. it's been the capitalist secret sauce for almost three centuries.
meanwhile, what is there really to fear? in the 14th century the european population declined by one third due to plague. what happened after? they call it "the renaissance."
wouldn't a renaissance be something fine to give to future generations? no selfies, no snacks -- just a rebirth, a high cost of labor, cheap land, cheap housing, and a healing planet?
23
Actually, there is a whole lot more nuance to the China demography problem than Douthat would have us believe. His article is an exercise in hindsight.
In the 1960's and 1970's, China did indeed face a catastrophically exploding population. It is way too glib to suggest that the problem would have been ameliorated naturally when, as we now understand, birthrates decline as nations become more prosperous.
First, the relationship between prosperity and declining birthrates was not fully appreciated in the 1960's, because only a few nations, the US and a handful of European countries, had experienced it.
Second, in the case of China, there was absolutely no rational reason to believe the nation was actually going to become prosperous. 1960's China was a dystopian state in the midst of insufferable political convulsions, recovering from a famine that had just killed 20 million. To suggest that it would soon be a rich nation would have been preposterous in 1965. So decisions to limit population growth, which were extraordinarily painful in a society that revered children and families, were not unreasonable under the circumstances that existed at the time.
15
@Chuck French the decision to force women to have abortions is reasonable? So much for women’s choice.
I can agree with Ross Douthat that trying to manage demographics is likely to fail, and fail in unforeseen ways. China's one-child policy is an perfect example. However, I don't agree that only an expanding population can deliver dynamism and growth. It would probably provide a few historians with a lifetime project to sort all that out, but maybe urbanization has as much to do with dynamism and growth as population growth does.
Even if that correlation is incontrovertible, there must be a level of population from which more growth diminishes returns. Where that level is, of course, is debatable, and it will be heavily influenced by the life styles and standard of living of the population. But population growth is not an unalloyed benefit nor an end in itself (even if it adds to GDP).
8
I find it interesting the number of comments on how population growth is "destroying planet earth.." The truth is humans will likely destroy planet earth only for other humans & species, the planet itself will go on happily spinning around the sun for billions of years after we've made ourselves extinct through one mechanism or another. Planet Earth could care less about what humans do.
Ultimately only economics drives population growth/decline. The need for large families to help on the farm is now past us and job growth in high-density urban areas dictates that people will have no room or money for large families or any family for that matter in the future.
If a country limits birth rates - they can do so only on a temporary basis - ultimately humans will do what they want - (officially or unofficially - legally or illegally). People are simply rightsizing what they believe they can handle in this world as presented. If economic benefits arise from having larger families in the future, people will adjust upward again. Hopefully, technological innovation will provide some buffer against population declines and the resulting shortfall in coverage for an aging global population. TBD
5
Talk about Western folly, the United States is restricting immigration when we have both an aging population and young people who are waiting to longer to have children, if they have them at all. The pyramid schemes of Medicare and Social Security collapse without many, many people in the workforce.
7
We don't have a population time bomb but a population bulge. Getting through the period where we have the silver tsunami to take care of is going to be tough and expensive. But the period after that - assuming the planet isn't dead by then - will be much better for everybody, as housing and other resources get freed up. A smaller population won't represent stagnation, but opportunity.
31
One of the reasons environmentalism tends to facilitate fraud is that environmental myths are believed all too readily since believing and repeating them is easier than changing our own behavior.
Overpopulation is one such myth. People can live sustainably, we just have to live sustainably. Battery electric cars that run on natural gas are only a modest benefit with respect to climate change and subsidizing them could lead to capital investments in fossil fuels that we could be stuck with for decades. High speed rail has no future in most of the USA; the way to fly less is to fly less - not wait for the Great Pumkin.
And these are largely a consequence of the biggest environmental myth: that our individual actions are insufficient without massive policy changes. Effective policy changes will only happen consistently after people change their behavior, and plenty of scammers will squeeze some subsidies out of the public coffers in the mean time.
Economic data is not perfect, but it is far more compelling that nonsensical surveys. Vote with your wallet and vote with your feet.
2
Check out my town. There IS human overpopulation. The traffic and pollution and overdevelopment are out of control, and so is the baby boom level excessive birthrate. Ask the animals we slaughter if there is human overpopulation. This earth cannot sustain billions of humans. It does so only at the expense of all other species and the environment. Humans DO NOT and WILL NOT live sustainably ever again, if humans ever did. They drive cars and take buses because walking and biking aren't going to take them everywhere they need to go. And they have to eat. Agriculture alone will destroy this planet and all other species.
24
@Alan
Voting for your wallet is what got us into this mess.
Vote for society!
1
Strange writing style. There the writer accuses the audience of terminal misanthropy if they have a certain belief, then underlying is his conviction that growth is good, shrinking is bad and in his last sentence he acknowledges that population control is the task of the century all the while touting our or even India's system as better than what China did.
I dare to say that the misery level among India's poor is far higher than among the Chinese.
17
The statement on misery levels in India v China is curious. Having lived in both countries in rural low income villages I can easily say the people I met and worked with were truly happy and had found balance in life labor and love few seem to have found stateside.
3
I'm sympathetic to the environmentalist argument that human overpopulation is detrimental to the world's ecosystems and natural resources.
But I could never bring myself to "applaud" China's one-child policy. It was cruel and inhumane and misogynistic, voiding a woman's right to choose and the right to control her body. Hundreds of thousands, more likely millions, of women (mostly poor women) were forced to undergo physical and emotional trauma as a result of this policy.
There was never a need for such an extreme population-control policy in the first place. Provide women with access to higher education and employment opportunities, grant them full autonomy over their bodies, instill a respect for women's rights and capabilities, and you will create a healthier, happier society that doesn't suffer from overpopulation.
9
China's one-child policy was horrible, but educating women doesn't stop them from breeding like rabbits. Check out Montclair, where the wealthy and privileged are breeding at baby boom levels, because they have great jobs and can afford to have big families. The overpopulation, traffic, pollution from school buses, SUVs, and overdevelopment here are out of control, but that doesn't really effect the overprivileged whiter neighborhoods as much. They are mostly dumping all their mess on us.
1
Population can't grow forever. That's just math. Eventually the carrying capacity of the Earth will run out. The population pyramid economic systems of the last century must eventually be replaced with something sustainable.
So what if some countries are experiencing a population decline? It just means they will need to find ways to adapt to it. Human ingenuity being nearly limitless, it's a good bet they will.
18
@Jack I agree with the first part of your statement, and am discouraged by the fact that so many people appear to have a poor foundation in science. It would be helpful if HS biology courses started including a well written, intelligent section on population biology. Unfortunately the world is better at solving technical problems than social problems, so I'm not as sanguine about finding good solution.
3
@Jack The carrying capacity of the Earth has run out.
1
Overpopulation is a major problem. It drives use of more resources that depletes nature's ability to replenish. It also directly affects climate change. Reducing overall population is an important goal. The challenge is to reduce it without major disruption. Economic growth is not the right measure for sustainable living on earth.
37
Shrinking populations are a problem only if the current political/economic model is maintained. The human race, and the flora and fauna to which the planet was bequeathed as
well, can be healthy and happy with a stable, much smaller human population, in a world where economic benefits are distributed more evenly.
Inevitably, human population will be reduced. If we don’t do it on our own initiative. Nature will do it for us.
38
Anyone who visits China (I live there) knows that there are not a shortage of people in China, or for that matter Japan or any other country in the region. It is obvious every single day that there are far too many people.The issue is one of age imbalance. The very large, rapidly aging populations and intense pressure on space are a consequence of large family sizes in the 1950s and thereabouts. The pain of ageing society is real but its necessary to return the country to somewhere that people and wildlife have space. Therefore the correct conclusion from what is happening is to redouble the efforts to get birthrates under control in countries where it is still high, especially much of Africa. Because otherwise there will be decades of economic pain, or complete environmental catastrophe, later.
25
In the 60s & 70s, my grandfather can only afford elementary school eduaction for each of his 5 children, and my father left home to work as apprentice at age 12. My only memory of my preschool was that of a collapsed brick wall next to where kids take afternoon naps. The rural population were poor, and the state did not have enough resources. China then was surrounded by enemy states including the powerful Soviet Russia to its North. In my view, the one child policy was for our survival. Together with the privatization of rural economy, my family was able to send me to college. To those in the West who used to demonize China for its one child policy and who now call it a good thing when climate change and sustainability becomes a problem: no thanks, we don't need your advice on how to run our country.
34
@Wang
This will not be published but if it is China's economy, according to the World Bank, is already about four trillion dollars larger than the U.S. economy. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.KD. Population policy did not damage it and with further development should be a model for others.
Poor before Rich hardly a Chinese concern.
Press Freedom seems to be however.
1
Those who write in support of smaller human populations do not implicitly support China's forced abortions or sterilizations as some assert. When women become better educated fertility declines. It has long been known that the most effective population policy is about education, not forced birth control (or lack of access to it).
I dream of a world that slowly and naturally equilibrates the human population in balance with earth's productivity and resource use would match resource recovery. Ecosystems would be healthy and productive, naturally purifying our air and water. With restored open space, biodiversity would recover. We would become carbon neutral and develop technology to reduce carbon dioxide levels to control or reverse warming. Economists would model the dynamics of growth, innovation, replacement, and restoration such that a stable GDP would lead to increased quality of life. Hybrid forms of government--democratic, with some central planning--would assure progress. Accumulation of wealth would not be the measure of success.
It is a world very different than the one we live in. Already, 7 billion people cannot be supported with quality of life assured for all. Achieving a smaller, stable population won't be painless, but if we don't begin to envision the possibilities, we are doomed to eventually outgrow our resources surrounded by filth, decay and despair for all save the wealthy. I don't want that world for my grandchildren and neither do you.
34
@Christine Flanagan - - - Similarly, I dream of an America where politically-connected businesses like Planned Parenthood don't hide their founding as a white racist reaction to the arrival of freed black people to the large cities.
My parallel fantasy is that the taxpayers are no longer forced to fund this politically-connected business to the tune of half a billion dollars a year.
no, no I certainly don't want that world but I fear your dream is just that...
@L osservatore Citations? Evidence? I'm afraid you've been snookered, my friend. There are plenty of racist people and policies in the USA but Planned Parenthood was created to provide choice to all women, regardless of race. Let's not whitewash either Margaret Sanger's eugenicism OR the fact that WEB DuBois worked with her.
Rejecting PP because its founder was problematic is like rejecting the Bill of Rights because the Founders owned slaves. Try to separate the wheat from the chaff. Great ideas can arise from imperfect people.
For more facts rebutting the "PP is racist" trope, see https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population.
2
Population control is still important, China's was just far too extreme, they panicked when their population hit 1 billion people back in the 1970s when they were still a very poor country.
Mr. Douthat misses the point - population control is about limiting population growth, not rendering the human race extinct.
27
Douthat completely fails to understand the Chinese economy.
China is huge. It has more than four times the US population.
The coastal region got rich. That is more than the entire US population, and it is very rich, and very developed.
The interior of the country is very nearly what it was before. It is poverty stricken, subsistence living. That is several times the size of the US. That is a large part of the point of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is meant to open up the interior of the country to development, putting it in communication with the neighbors to the West of China, all the -stans and India and more, all the way to Europe without going across all of China to the East and then around Asia by sea.
An important part of China's population crash is among the developed people of the coast.
China's interior was limited by the "one-child" policy, once viciously enforced, but now lifted. It is not clear how rural China will react to lifting of that pressure.
It is clear that China is not either poorly developed nor fully developed. It is some of each, on such a vast scale the its parts are each bigger than the US, bigger than the EU, and many times bigger than Russia.
15
@Mark Thomason
We should refrain from describing the nation’s interior as though it could be countryside in north Korea, although to an extent it might be true? I do not know. I have traveled through a swathe of China and have seen, among other things, panels on house roofs for harnessing radiation or the sun’s energy. Some coastal cities are perhaps wealthier but the cost of living there I believe unable to be supported as fair; this I think right. Some might suggest its inhabitants, and it could be right, earn more on average than the people living elsewhere in the People’s Republic: China.
5
@Mark Thomason One might do better if one refrains from describing the interior of the PC’s nation as though the countryside areas in the north of the peninsula that is of Korea
1
@Mark Thomason
Wrong on Russia and its eleven time zones, but a wiz population wise.
With estimated National Income to pass the USA in 2025 and urban population to reach a staggering one billion people -- filling the “ghost cities” of China. This would make China’s cities more populous than the entire North and South American continents combined.
The World Bank already ranks PRC about 4 trillion ahead of the USA in GDP.
1
Happy to note that Mr.Douthat mentions that India more-or-less would achieve a stable population without resorting to the forced sterilizations (except during the disastrous Emergency in 1970s) or abortions. Even within India, the Southern portion has almost achieved stability while the poorer states in the northern heartland have yet to see similar achievements.
Teh problems of ageing populations is a ticking timebomb for India and China in the mid-21st century.
2
Reducing population levels is not the disaster some are claiming. This will reduce environmental stress, make housing more affordable, and increase the standard of living .
28
People have a better standard of living now than they did a hundred years ago, even though we have had exponential population growth. More people doesn’t have to mean more problems. Technology also grows exponentially with population giving us new and better ways to support ourselves.
4
@Ben Humanity is racing towards a cliff. infinite growth is not possible in a finite system. Reducing our population instead of 'extending and pretending' is the only way to avoid catastrophe.
4
@Ben Have you counted the number of species lost since 100 years ago?
3
Mr. Douthat,
"an empty planet wouldn’t have a climate change problem at all, but if that’s your goal your misanthropy is terminal."
Some perspective here is helpful. In 1950 population was 2.6 billion vs. 7.7 billion today.
So, we produced FIVE (5) BILLION more people in 70 years! Wow. And you want to start name calling those of us who think it would be good to have a few billion less people in the world, Misanthropes?
Is there any population number possible where you would think, "Whoa, we'd better slow down now!"
I disagree with most of the points in your column, including the glancing blow on "environmentalists".
As far as the concerns for China's capacity to handle the elderly situation, I suspect there are some creative answers to that rather than endless growth. One of them might be that they could change the rules on internal migration and plenty of jobs would be created to help those without family support.
How would they pay for it, you ask, if individual wealth would not cover the care? Well, maybe, if its this HUGE problem, the Chinese could figure out that maybe they should save that money they've been spending on Belts and Roads Initiative to anticipate this economic tsunami, if such it is.
I don't see the problem. Maybe, instead, it'll give us time to think and figure out better ways to live.
36
Actually, the world does not need more people, we have plenty already.
38
Necessity is the mother of invention. The standard of care demanded by Chinese elderly is not the standard of care demanded by American elderly (which, for the plurality poor, is worse than the standard of care provided in Canada). Living in China, working with highly educated upper middle class people, the elderly are not cared for - they are caring for their grandchildren (and still have dinner ready when their child and spouse return from work). Also, many elderly still “work” - retired Drs working in private clinics a few hours each morning, retired teachers working for private tutoring companies. These jobs may not even be captured by data as smaller companies seem to exist under the radar (at least in the Chaoshen area I live in)... in New Brunswick (where I have my house) people over 60 feel they are “owed” by everyone, in China, from my observation, people over 60 still feel they owe their families and society. I feel the crisis looming in NB, I don’t “feel” the crisis written about in the NYT.
18
People over 60 and over 70 in the USA are also still working because they can't afford to retire and are also raising their grandchildren.
7
@Stephanie Wood yes, my point was that these Chinese elderly were not sitting there waiting to be taken care of by the State and they were providing much needed service to society still (childcare, etc). An aging population is not a guaranteed ticking time bomb...
4
I have for decades held a strong belief that human population growth must be controlled if we are to prevent civilisation-scale environmental disasters.
I am therefore grateful to Douthat for introducing me to Charles Jones' new working paper, which forms the intellectual core of Douthat's article.
The Jones paper disturbs me: I'd like to be able to reject it, but don't yet understand it well enough to see how. I had hoped that other readers' comments would provide insight into its flaws, but have not seen that any do.
4
When families go from having 5 children on average to 1,6. The playing field for boys and girls start to level out. Father’s and mother’s raise their children regardless of gender to go after their dreams. Beyond that when women aren’t brood mares they have the time to contribute to the creative and innovative solutions that will shape the world of the future to look more like its citizens. A world with fewer people and more equity sounds like a beautiful ambition.
3
I don't buy the argument about the self-reinforcing cycle, where low birthrates and low dynamism and growth just keep going forever. Does that mean as soon as a country's population or the world's population starts to shrink it will shrink forever? Until there's zero people?
The economic analogue is deflation: when prices drop, people don't spend, so prices drop even more, so people spend less, etc. That happened once in the US, and we did get out of it. That and common sense should indicate that a declining population can stabilize at some point.
8
Birth is not the problem...Greed is the problem...
One person does not need to own 1000 acres of land.
One person does not need to own 10 houses.
One person does not need to own _________.
There are sufficient resources to give all a very good quality of life.
However, if we continue on the current trajectory, then we should expect the few to rule over the many in all indicators that matter.
China will figure it out just like other nations will figure it out.
Let’s hope America figures it out given our fractured democracy.
As Americans, I would suggest we stop predicting doom for others while we ourselves are on a downward spiral and trajectory to Third World Status.
At least China has an efficient public transportation system to transport its population. Something we can’t say for America.
And the modern, robust, and smart cities in the world are everywhere but in the USA. Our cities are traffic nightmares with income inequality rampant, public transportation noticeable absent or no adequate, and our buildings very old and outdated.
So, while we focus on China’s population challenges, we better change our focus to America’s challenges. It appears China’s form of government may be a better model for the 21st Century while America’s form of government may have been adequate for the 18th and 19th centuries but now posing serious challenges for the 21st century. And if refuse to acknowledge this due to pride, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
24
@Truth Today
Excellent post.
1
Shrinking the human population on planet Earth is a solution, not a problem. Obviously the human population cannot continue to grow forever in a finite Earth. Better to manage the population in a planned, sensible way than through wars or environmental catastrophes.
79
The world and its resources are finite, full stop. Sooner or later, preferably sooner, we'll have to adjust our economic ideas, including the quasi-theological fetishization of 'growth', to comport with that reality. A maturing organism doesn't grow endlessly, or shouldn't if it's to retain health, so why is it that we expect against all reason that the human population and its economy should?
Of course, we've been bingeing on growth for the last three hundred years or more so that tapering off our addiction to 'more, more, more' will be hard. All the more reason to start that process now.
40
Humans are laying waste to the world: we have fished out the oceans, deforested continents, driven many species to extinction and are on a possibly disastrous course of warming up the planet. One of the driving factors behind this destruction, whether the mainstream media or religious believers care to admit it or not, is the massive increase in human numbers. It took humans 150,000 years to reach a billion, and then just 200 to reach eight times that. With consequences that no one can forsee, but which may be severe.
Humanity and the natural world alike would be much better off if we reduced our numbers to a billion or less. Instead we have commentators whose world view is based on the Bible instead of facts opining that we need to go faster on our already questionable and risky trajectory. Delusional.
72
This is not the end. The global population bust, if it comes to pass, is not the end of progress. When Europe's population rapidly decreased, during the plague, what followed was not the end of the world, but the Renaissance. We can hope that this particular part of history will repeat itself. Absent the increasing pressures of population growth, those who are already here have more resources to draw from. As with the Renaissance, we can hope that our remaining prodigy will benefit from this abundance of resources rather than wasting it as seems so likely now.
40
The earth population levels stabilizing is almost miraculous, it gives us time to achieve the scientific progress necessary to abate and hopefully solve existential climate/ security threats. The idea of governments encouraging or discouraging people to have children is obscene, a decent society with reasonable expectation for the future does not need government advice on this issue.
18
@A Nootka Nerd
In lieu of a decent society, I do want the government to discourage having children in the form of limiting child tax credits to 2 children. Any family having more than that would have to apply for welfare which would be made available on application.
I do take your point, however, that a "decent" society would not need any suggestions from government.
7
I hope to live long enough to see China implode as its population ages. It won't be pretty for that country or the rest of the world, but it will be gripping to watch. Japan's and Iran's population declines also will be fascinating to see.
10
@BP
The United States also has an aging population and declining birthrate. We are not replacing ourselves either. The same thing is happening here as in China. We will not be able to pay for the medical and living costs of our aging population on the backs of declining younger generations. Do you hope you will live long enough to see the US "implode" as well?
And by the way, it was immigration of younger families that was helping the US with this situation. So all our efforts to solve the "immigration problem" have made it worse from the aging population point of view.
9
A further aggravation of China's population problem which might have been mentioned is the gender skew towards males. Selective breeding has produced many more males than females (as it has also done in India for different reasons), so there is now a significant shortage of women among the generations who should be reproducing.
16
Thanks goodness for that. We have loads of overprivileged women moving in to our town who are breeding out of control, and it's complete chaos. I'm no fan of "too many men," but at least they don't have kids.
5
@Stephanie Wood . Some of these men might have created kids that they don't know about.
2
That’s not what selective breeding is. Selective breeding is what racehorse breeders do, breeding the fastest to the fastest to hopefully get a speedier horse.
1
Certainly a shrinking population will temporarily bring higher rates of old-age dependency. But with continual gains in labor productivity, a smaller workforce can produce just as much and support just as many people. People like Mr. Douthat and those who write for rags like National Review have not yet discovered that we live on a planet. Here's hoping that they will figure this out soon.
37
@Steve
Haven't you heard. Our nation's elites have places reserved for them on our Moon and Mars colonies guarded by Trump's Space Force.
The rest of us will be stuck on Earth to deal with the consequences of their failed policies.
1
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The population bomb has not fizzled, it has merely been delayed. The population bust in countries that are wealthy (e.g. OECD countries) or have grown wealthier quickly (China) is a problem, but a -good- problem to have. The -bad- problem to have is poor, 3rd world countries whose populations continue to increase, outstripping needed services like medical care and needed resources like food, water, and energy.
The challenge for the richer countries is to reduce their disproportionately resource-intensive consumption, e.g. the US, with less than 5% of the world's population, consumes 20 to 25% of the world's natural resources.
The challenge for the poorer countries is to better utilize the limited resources they have, and for the rest of the world to help them with more. Good governance, a rarity, would go a long way.
We run capitalist economies which require unending economic growth. Nothing, not even disease or cancer, grow unendingly. We need to figure out how to modify capitalism to create more equitable distributions of income and wealth, so that we can modify it to work better with economic shrinkage.
It's bad enough that the world consumes 30 billion barrels of oil and 7 billion tons of coal annually. It's worse that even with such profligate consumption, many have too much and many don't have enough. For the sake of a continued healthy planet and for a continued healthy human race, we need to get those numbers way, way down.
33
Our town is not poor. The wealthy and privileged in the USA are breeding at baby boom rates.
1
Shouldn't climate worriers be jumping for joy? One of the best ways to reduce climate pressures is to reduce economic activity, and the best way to do that is to cut population growth.
12
I don't think the one-child policy made a big impact in birth rates. China's fertility rate was about 6 in 1950, and was already under 2.5 by 1979 when the one-child policy was enacted. Thus, most of the decrease in Chinese fertility happened before the one-child policy was passed as a result of rising life expectancy and decreased mortality between 1950 and 1979. Other countries in Asia like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have even lower fertility than China even though they never put in a one-child policy.
I also don't think lower population growth is going to be that big of a problem for China. Unlike most developed countries, China still has hundreds of millions of rural peasants who produce little economic value; by bringing them into the modern economy, China can effectively achieve the same thing as population growth. Moreover, while there will be more old people to take care of, they will also lower expectations of what constitutes a decent standard of living compared to old people in the West, and thus be cheaper to take care of. China can also raise its retirement age (right now only 60 for men and 50 for women) to 67 like it is in the US. Ultimately, lower population is probably going to be beneficial for Chinese living standards.
That doesn't mean lower population is good everywhere; many third-world countries are poor because they are too sparsely populated, making it hard to connect people to infrastructure and achieve economies of scale in industry.
8
Which third world country is sparsely populated?
1
Why wouldn't a healthy, well educated but smaller world population generate the same level of innovation as a larger population?
It isn't quantity but quality, and we only need a percentage of our population engaged as change-makers for the common good to make life better for all. A smaller population would have more resources to share, a better educated population, and ensure a higher quality life for individual humans while generating fewer crises out of which we'd need to rescue ourselves.
Douthat's idea that we need millions more human beings, likely less well off in the aggregate, residing on a crowed planet to ensure some dynamic in innovation seems specious. I'd rather have a smaller pool of better fed, better educated, and healthy humans upon which to rely.
74
In transitioning to lower population you have older population. Older people live and vote differently, and that is the source of breaks on innovation.
'ok Boomer' doesn't come from nothing. For example Old people reactions to the need to change habits for environmental reasons is not the same as younger ones with a longer-term prospect on the small spaceship 'earth'.
2
@Plou In transitioning to lower population you have older population.
Just for a while, then demographics even out.
And why do you imagine boomers all think the same way? Some boomers went back to the land, pioneered environmental-friendly ways of life, cleaned up air and rivers. Older people often use less resources, and know the true value of acquiring consumer goods. Many older people decided not to have children yet contribute to the tax system that supports education and other common goods that help young people become innovators, and many work tirelessly even in retirement for the betterment of their communities. Local environmental committees are full of hard working gray haired volunteers. Innovation can come from any demographic.
4
@Scott Exactly!
1
An innovative society like ours fosters creative ways to avoid or get around the rules it makes for itself. We continue to creatively promote diets that lead to diabetes. When we emphasized the dangers of smoking, especially for children, the tobacco industry answered with Joe Camel. Big oil answered the threat of lost sales and influence with a campaign of global warming denial.
A society that thought it could tell this sort of innovation from other, more useful sorts, and discouraged this sort of innovation would seem stagnant to many. It would be a society that would shut down the Sacklers before more than a few thousand overdoses were connected even indirectly to their products.
Since our planet is finite, we need a type of growth that does not involve outgrowing our planet. Our present notion of economic growth does not belong on a finite planet.
How many people is too many depends on our available technologies. Assuming that technological advances will always be able to keep up with population enables the question of how many is too many to be sidestepped. If technology fails to develop quickly enough, we find out how many is too many and discover what we do about it, but without thinking it through beforehand. This is how our religious leaders deal with the situation.
11
This one is sort of all over the place. His argument is worthy but the stats he cites and the conjecture he uses is not enough to justify his hypothesis.
As RD indicates its happening in Western countries too. How this conversation can be shielded from the effect of educating women and allowing them to compete and work in areas of the economy where they were falsely thought not competitive or useful.
Bottom point, educating women and letting them have careers will drop the fertility rate.
Seems like he desires a society where women stay in the house and have 4-5 kids because "conservatism" seems to indicates that's what good to do.
24
Educated women are having MORE children, not less, because they can afford them.
@Cool Dude
And interestingly, Ross apparently only has three kids, and, based on a comment in a recent column about how his kids thrived in a good day care program, I am assuming his wife works. So, good ol' conservative do as I say, not as I do.
2
Lots of talk about over population and climate change, but no one has mentioned one of the main culprits. We currently have 70 billion animals being used as livestock. Even if China’s population begins to reduce in numbers, their adoption of the grotesque western diet will negate any of the positive climate effects. For all those out there that care about this issue, the answer is simple. Adopt a plant based diet. May all beings everywhere be happy and free.
26
The explosion in the human population over the last 70 years, coupled with climate change from fossil fuels, has resulted in a mass extinction, the likes of which the planet has not had in many millennia. Whatever technology solutions may help the planet in the future, a decrease in human population is a salient remedy for the planet. I know Mr. Douthat supports the Catholic position that contraception is wrong, but it is irresponsible to favor continued population growth. It is a path toward suffering, not just for humans, but for all species. Slowing population growth will cause some problems, but it is by far the lesser of evils.
63
The author celebrates "growth" as if it is the end-all to human accomplishment. The remarkable transition of China's socialist population may have only been obtained through its prescribed limits on growth. The West would do well to consider ways to produce healthy economies without rampant unsustainable expansion.
41
I think the Chinese feared a famine if they didn’t do something about their growth rate. I really don’t blame them for taking drastic measures, starving to death is a horrible way to die.
2
A lot of comments here seem to be strongly in favor of China's policy of forced abortion.
So much for pro-choice. Those women had no choice. If there is one thing worse than forcing a woman to keep her child, it is forcing her to abort her child.
11
As do most here, I do not see a "bomb" here and I always stand to protest any such incendiary language. What's happening is that China's young are getting smarter. Have you been to China ? The environment is very poor for child rearing. Adults have a hard enough time keeping healthy. With population density at 4x the U.S. level for the same land mass, most are delaying parenthood if they have plans for it at all. Why must we inch our way to an increasingly unsustainable level of humans in order to be "rich" ? Take a tour of the country side say 30-60 minutes from say Shanghai, then come back.
48
Re:
(An aside to answer a predictable objection: Yes, in an age of stagnation, CO2 levels won’t grow as fast, delaying some of climate change’s effects — but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently. And yes, an empty planet wouldn’t have a climate change problem at all, but if that’s your goal your misanthropy is terminal.)
In this aside Douthat falls prey to the extrapolation error he accuses the population bomb prognosticators of. Then he over-reaches with an unfounded label: stagnant society.
Look at Japan with its “stagnant society” and compare its ability to cope with shocks to any country that is over-populated and facing food shortages and disease.
20
Japan also has an insurance plan like social security to take care of their elderly. It's like long term care insurance in the USA, but I'm sure it's much cheaper.
1
The real demographic crisis is way too many years of fertility rates far above the replacement rate. Part of that is because that replacement rate fell as people stopped dying so young.
If the crisis is that a less youthful society will lose its dynamism, the cure would be to kill all the older people such as myself, thereby making a more youthful society.
11
We don't have many elderly people left in our town, but lots of young people breeding like rabbits. The overdevelopment, traffic, pollution and chaos are out of control. I don't see the old people destroying this town, but the young breeders are doing a good job of making it completely unsustainable.
2
While the fertility rate in China is way below replacement, its population is still increasing by 6-7 million a year. India is still undergoing a population explosion, adding 15-16 million people a year to an area only 1/3 the size of the lower 48. With the ecological stressors hitting India all at once, is it any wonder that its economy is slowing down? Ecological problems (incl. food contamination, and rapidly increasing numbers of highly polluting power plants) are also multiplying in China, except that the latter has the luxury of a much larger area and a more temperate climate. But a time of reckoning is coming for both countries. A nation can’t increase its population by 800 million in a matter of decades without paying a horrible price
36
@cj
You have seen massive famines in China and India in the past - on a scale the west cannot imagine. Major epidemics have also taken a toll on their populations.
Don't for a second think that it isn't possible again.
10
@cj
Personally I think China should get carbon credits for reducing population growth. It is pleasing to read more Chinese women are determining when and if they will bear children.
As a species we are victims of our own success. Our sheer numbers endanger our future and that of the planet and all its species.
"Populate or perish" was once the adage of religious folk and their mountebank politicians. As a species unless growth rates are slowed, particularly in India, it will be a case of 'populate and perish'.
11
Solution underway. A SARS like virus is spreading in China and has made it to Japan.
One good pandemic will substantially reduce the number of elderly and infirm. Wouldn't be the first time it's happened and China regularly has viruses crossing over from livestock to humans. It's only a matter of time.
To think that the human population will keep growing without some kind of major event is naive. Look at what the Spanish Influenza did in 1919.
13
@cynicalskeptic Spanish Influenza killed about 50 million people, but the long-term impact on the total human population was minimal, you can barely see the effect on the graph.
1
I’d rather we reduced the population by using birth control rather than waiting for Mother Nature to do it with disease or starvation. Seems a lot less painful that way.
3
Mr. Douthat misdiagnoses the problem as too few people, leading to economic stagnation. The issue we should be fearing is that each person consumes in developed nations so much more than the planet can support. We can't possibly stem the tide of climate change without total economic restructuring. As long as the "fairytale of infinite economic growth" as Greta Thunberg put it, is still being told, humanity is in danger of a far more violent end than the simple petering out Douthat envisions.
50
@Judy -- China and the world at large do not have "too few people." There are more people than ever, and will continue to be more to a troubling total.
Only then might projection of existing trends produce something never seen before -- and such straight line projection denies the power of people in the future to run their own lives.
Who predicted the "Baby Boom?" Which one? It has happened often.
What could cause another one? A lot of things.
7
We're having a baby boom in Montclair, thanks to everyone fleeing Brooklyn and coming here to breed. It's complete chaos and absolutely unsustainable, and much worse than the boom of the 40s-60s, because they use school buses and SUVs, the pollution and traffic are much worse.
2
It is not the number of humans on the planet alone that creates problems. It is how much pollution they create per person. Ironically the best way to reduce population growth is to increase per person consumption and pollution.
5
Mr. Douhat, you didn't really address the "predictable objection", i.e. that a shrinking population would mitigate rising CO2 levels (you didn't mention plastic, phosphate, PCB, etc, pollution) by stating that one who suggests reducing human population is equivalent to championing the demise of our species. The two are entirely different things. Ten billion humans in 2050 is still a huge burden on our biosphere.
27
TypIcal Times blindness about population, no matter how many times they’ve been told in comments on a number of articles about it. And not just articles by conservatives.
Whether the damages from growing numbers of people can be avoided for a while (and even then I wonder about certain environmental consequences that may be missed—until they’re not, like loss of pollinating insects), or if they’re not the single biggest factor that could be pointed to, the logic still holds. More people, more use of resources, including the earth’s ability to assimilate waste, more garbage in the ocean, more crowds. Probably more conflicts, too.
Yes, fewer people can create its own challenges. But as some other commenters have said, sounds like they should let in some refugees (including climate refugees) and treat them well.
There’s Only one earth, Ross. As they say, “It bats last.” It’s looking more and more like it’s batting now. Maybe we should pay more attention to the score it’s racking up (fires in Australia, California, Brazil; projected loss of 1 million species; cities like São Paulo) coming close to no water) and re-think the ideologies, mindsets, and population and other causes leading to it.
If the previous Chinese way of dealing with birth rate was cruel, give them a better way. And denial isn’t it.
51
Agreed. The Chinese were between a rock and a hard place. At least they did something to try and help, as opposed to keep having lots of babies and hoping God will provide.
3
These stories on Western, Chinese, and essentially global fertility make me smile. We are just twenty years removed from the historical apocalypse of the 20th Century and people are worrying about having less people? It’s incredible to dismiss the catastrophes that come irregardless of healthy female fertility rates. We just might survive if China and the US can’t or will not field enormous armies.
12
Although a decreasing population will have a negative impact on the whole economy (less labor and market), it doesn't necessarily mean that the individual income will decrease and it is still possible that individual's living standard continues to improve. And innovation has more to do with education and culture than the number of people (the scientific and technological innovation in the 19th century were mostly in Europe, not in Africa or Asia which had the most population), so innovation in a society with a decreasing population but better education can still gain its steam as well.
24
The population certainly hasn't decreased here, it's increased, and the economy is much worse for anyone who isn't rich. The privileged are breeding and breeding. The rest of us are paying and paying.
1
Conservatives, like Douthat, are the only politicians in the population shortage trumpet section.
Conservatives are the most fervent believers in the advantage of overpopulation to preserve the industrial reserve army of surplus labor. What could be more fearsome than the prospect of various minorities rising in income and status in a labor force hungry for talent?
44
Not true - sadly, it's not just conservatives. All the liberals in Montclair are having lots of babies. Then they preach "sustainability" at the rest of us, while driving their 3 kids to soccer practice in their SUV.
1
China is doing just fine. I think the underpopulation is due to the migration of the youth from China to the west especially the US and to Australia and New Zealand and not so much due to the one child policy. China is still the most populated country in the world. Yes China has a big population of seniors but not all seniors are sitting around as shown in the picture. A lot of the seniors still work and still move around and live longer because of healthy life styles.
China has over taken India economically because India as the second most populated country in the world is over populated and has a much larger population density. The youth unemployment in India is slowing down the Indian economy and although India's middle class has lifted itself out of poverty and India has made great strides in its economy. The lack of population control in India similar to that of China, will never allow it to be where China is today. Although like China many Indians migrating to the middle east and the west keeps the population somewhat manageable but still burdensome especially the farmers who would not plan on compact families but keep families large to have as many farm hands as possible.
18
There is no "fertility crisis." China already has more than a billion people, and the earth has many billions more.
We are all struggling with shortages of water, clean air, arable land and other natural resources. As it is, there will still be several billion more people on earth by 2050 than there are now.
The decline in fertility in China and much of the Western world is an opportunity to rebalance the relationships among humans and our God-given earth. We must become better stewards of the earth we have been given, or our progeny will suffer. That unnecessary suffering is not part of any divine plan.
72
The idea that depopulation is a problem is simply mind boggling to anyone with the least awareness and concern for the millions of other species that inhabit this planet. Is Mr. Douthat aware that we are in the midst of what is called the Holocene or 6th Mass Extinction event? Is he aware that a reduced human population is absolutely necessary to preserving some semblance of global biodiversity? As a Christian, does he value the Creation for its power to reveal God or is it merely a material resource, without a spark of divine creativity?
101
@Paris Spleen Exactly!!!
3
“Yes, in an age of stagnation, CO2 levels won’t grow as fast, delaying some of climate change’s effects — but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently. And yes, an empty planet wouldn’t have a climate change problem at all, but if that’s your goal your misanthropy is terminal.”
Reply: The author of this piece appears to present the reader with a false dichotomy (eg, population growth versus an “empty planet”). Stagnation simply means little or no growth, but does not denote extinction.
44
Too simplistic a view. It is accepted that in poor countries when women acquire status through education and jobs the fertility rates plumet from 4 or more children to 2 or less per mother/household. Standards of living increase and life expectancy also rises, sometimes dramatically like in Latin America by more than 20 years. How is that a negative development? Only Rick Santorum and Douthat believe that having more children is the solution to rebalance the costs of the Social Welfare programs both here and in poor countries. The reality is that such imbalance is due to political reasons.
73
They don’t want the obvious solution, which is to accept more immigrants.
2
One of the biggest problem China faces is underemployment. Every apartment block has a listless security guard who doesn't even look up when people enter. Shops are overstaffed and do very little business. It is a problem faced by all countries with low wages as only high wage countries have the incentive to use staff efficiently.
So there is massive potential to increase productivity which makes the fears of not enough workers overblown.
11
We still have plenty of people, Ross.
The world population, as Alan Haigh has pointed out, still increases by a couple of hundred thousand each day.
Of course, for the most part, they are not "the right kind" of people, are they? They are mostly poor, mostly brown and black.
I don't see most commentators who worry about population decline in developed countries talking about allowing some of those people into said developed countries to take up the slack. They'll put too much strain on our limited resources, it is said.
And if that's true when poorer, darker people enter richer nations, it doesn't seem to be any less true when they don't.
We really need to reduce the number of people trying to use the resources of this planet, through raising standards of living and educational attainment so that people will willingly use the technologies of family planning.
If we don't reduce the total population that way, it'll be reduced in a lot crueler and haphazard ways.
74
@Glenn Ribotsky
Exactly. I’m glad that someone is allowed to say it.
Cheers.
4
An explanation, not an excuse. The 100 hand-picked scientists from the Ministry of Agriculture (2 from each province) I taught in Nanjing for a year in 1989 were mostly new parents. As government employees, they understood the consequences. At the time China was feeding 25% of the world with 6% of energy expenditures. The US at the time was inverse (6% population, 25% energy use). They were well aware they had to make sacrifices for the common good. It worked. Or at least is has until now. They are ready to retire, and their children will take over, much like what we are seeing in Japan. China's was intended, Japan's is cultural (low status of women). Why criticize one and not the other?
20
Do some basic arithmetic, please.
A slower growth rate is not zero growth.
Zero growth of population is not zero population.
Yes, the slowing of China's population growth presents some challenges, for the country, but it is certainly far from the sky falling.
China is a very crowded country. Every day the population of China increases by 20 thousand people. That rate is by no means too low.
48
"...but at the same time a stagnant society will struggle to innovate enough to escape the climate crisis permanently."
Stagnet society? People in China will still have kids. Those kids will still grow up to innovate. A decline in population, in birth rate, does not dictate stagnation in ideas or creativity.
35
Our economic systems are not very sophisticated.
If we have the need, desire, willpower, resources, skills, and organization to do something and the only reason it doesn't get done is money, then there's something wrong with that system.
Also, every country with significant national debt is subject to manipulation by those holding their paper. It is a source of weakness.
If we must operate within the confines of an economic paradigm, it needs to be modified and improved.
6
The last 125 years or so have been characterized by human multiplication and metastasis across planet Earth, leaving damage, death, and destruction in our wake.
The best news of the past several years, to my mind, has been the beginning of a human population decline. Time for the best economic minds to get together and figure out how our economic models need to be tweaked to accommodate a declining, rather than ever-increasing, population.
While difficult, this seems like an easier problem to solve than - for example - the problem of how to provide food, clean water, and living space for 12, 15, 20 billion people while concurrently counteracting climate change.
112
First of all like so many comments pointed out the earth is overpopulated and it's getting worse by the day. As for aged population in China (or anywhere really) one solution would be to allow for specially young people to immigrate into the country.
13
"The Western effort died away as the population bomb fizzled, and while its Malthusianism endures around the edges of environmentalism and in European anxieties about African migration, mostly the population control crusade is recalled as a mistaken extrapolation, a well-meaning mistake."
I wish that were so. Just read these comments and you'll find plenty of misanthropy masquerading as sober social science.
10
Whether or not a lower and lower birth rate will lead to a stagnating economy and culture, the main thrust of this essay is that China chose cruel and invasive methods to limit population growth, and that Western intellectuals also advocated and pushed methods like forced sterilization that are based on using any means to lower population growth. These are very different from advocating birth control or making it available, from educating women, from improving infant survival, and other methods that have been shown to reduce birth rates without the government forcing people to use abortion, infanticide or sterilization.
The point of this essay is not that population must grow like a tumor. It is that the ends do not justify the means, and that when you policies that do so end up with unintended but entirely predictable consequences, including distrust of government and experts.
Every comment missed this, apparently because saying stagnant population growth may have bad results is deemed far more unforgivable than government controlling people and their lives.
7
I'm sure there are plenty of people in poorer areas of the world and in areas that will be hard hit by climate change that would be willing to migrate to China and help them with this issue
27
Douthat equates "stagnation" with depopulation. In doing so, he sidesteps a critical question for the future of humanity. Namely, what is the minimum number of people needed in the world to maintain the best aspects of advanced society as we know it? In such a minimally-populated world every child and family would be needed, cared for, and properly fed, housed, and educated. And enough parts of the earth would be left untouched for the other animals on the planet to sustain their own healthy societies.
What is the population of this world that would be so much better than ours?
74
China has almost 1.4 BILLION citizens, which represents close to a quarter of the planet's total human population. So, I don't think the Chinese are collectively concerned about an "underpopulation bomb". But, I do think that their real concerns are universal: they want plentiful food, plentiful clean water, housing to shelter themselves and their families, and a belief that there's a future worth living for.
Charles Bukowski once said, "We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't." So, let's not worry about the world's headcount, but rather worry that we might find ourselves, sometime in the future, in a world without love.
26
@Stone
This is my favorite quote. I have it framed above my desk. We are eaten up by nothing.
3
A lot of nonsense has been written about the economic consequences of declining population.
Chiefly by Paul Krugman, who looked at the GDP without adjusting for demographics. And declared "stagnant economy"
In fact, if you plot the GDP per capita, the slice of the economic pie that each person gets from the National economy, of Japan 2001 to 2008, and the US, for the same period, you find that the GDP per capita increased FASTER in Japan than in the US. And that when the US was in the throw of the housing bubble!
Eventually, Krugman apologized - sort of - for his mistake but the damage was done
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/paul-krugman-apologizing-to-japan.html
15
I think there is a consensus with most intelligent people that our population explosion cannot be sustained with the fixed resources that the earth can provide. Reducing the global population through low a birth rate is much more civil and palpable to the alternative to war, disease or famine.
121
@Ted Siebert As a professor of environmental studies who's looked at this issue over several decades, I can assure you that there most definitely is not a consensus on the significance of population for resource depletion. There is no consensus on population alone, and when we add in the perpetual economic growth required by capitalist economies, the consensus among intelligent people who actually look at the data swings, if anything, in the other direction, towards economic growth as the bigger problem. Considering the looming climate catastrophe, if we were to stop population growth tomorrow capitalist growth would still take us down. Fewer people is probably good in the long run, but to put population at the head of our list of problems is, whether intentionally or not, flat out racist. (Wow, I agreed with Ross Douthat, amazing!)
17
Sadly, all the "intelligent" people in my town are breeding like rabbits, driving SUVs, and using too many school buses to send their kids to school. "Stupid" people like me, who have lower incomes, no kids, no central air, no car, are in the minority here.
5
What Mr. Douthat can't acknowledge (because of his conservative blinders) is that the countries that are most successful in avoiding demographic decline are those that do the best in granting women true equality in society. That includes the Scandinavian countries that conservatives loathe.
Countries with the lowest fertility rates tend to be ones where conservative values still reign, where women are expected to do all of the housework and raising of children, such as Italy, South Korea, and Japan. And guess what? Women in these countries have collectively said a big fat NO to this expectation. It looks like China is falling into this category as well.
I know Mr. Douthat is keen on promoting "traditional religious values" as the cure-all for every modern ill. Too bad he doesn't realize that with "traditional religious values," women get the short end of the stick. And unless you go the Gilead way, women are not going to have children in a conservative culture where they get stuck with all of the work and men aren't expected to do any of it.
92
Norway’s birth rate is 1.65, Sweden’s is 1.85. Replacement is 2.0. Both have been consistently dropping for more than a decade. Guess again.
6
@Scott I'm not sure the facts support your premise. The HIGHEST fertility rates in the world are actually in even more conservative areas like the Arab countries, Africa and parts of Central and South America.
1
@Michael Blazin
Firstly the replacement rate in the long term must be above 2.0.
Secondly the op-ed is beyond meaningless just as the belief in the 70s gave us a doomsday scenario of population growth going on forever.South Korea has abou the lowest fertility rate in the world 1.17 yet its population continues to increase. North Korea has a much higher fertility rate still well below replacement 1.91. Both Koreas have the same population growth rate. The world is at about zero population growth because of fertility. I trust scientists not Abracadabrans.
I live in a humanist society where experts study human populations and all the factors that determine population growth and decline.
I understand the USA is God centered and the holy books say be fruitful and multiply.
It is hard enough to tell humans enough is a feast but your gods sure are gluttons.
4
Some of the greatest advances in human thinking came from tiny populations. The idea China needs more than 1.4 billion people to avoid economic and cultural stagnation is absurd.
154
@Herne
I think absurd is a bit too gentle. The op-ed is completely insane. If I was in a very conciliatory mood I might say the arguments are illogical and the premise fallacious.
9
Underpopulation is a non-problem.
If GDP per capita is steady or rising, who cares if GDP falls? All else equal, that is better for the environment.
Regarding ratio of workers to retirees? Another non problem. This ratio has been declining for decades, but increasing productivity (efficiency) has more than compensated - leaving humans on average, better off. Worker shortage? Until we start seeing rising wages, disappearance of low productivity jobs on a massive scale, or supply shortages, this is a totally imaginary problem.
Dean Baker explains this really well in his most recent blog post.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/
41
Anyone who visits China can see that China is still overpopulated, albeit with an imbalance in age groups. Wouldn't it be better to get through a period of imbalance, and then have a sustainable population with a better quality of life, rather than maintain overpopulation with balance among age groups? Americans thinking about this issue from homes with yards and gardens need to think about it from the 20th floor of a housing block, where a typical Chinese family might live. (Having spent a decade in China myself.) And I don't mean to target the Chinese only with these comments. I think the same reasoning holds true around the world.
56
As a parent of young kids in the U.S., it is rather infuriating to read ever more hand-wringing about falling birthdates in the West and around the globe, bereft of any constructive ideas on how to stimulate population growth. In some places in the U.S., it can cost $30,000 + per year to have two children in daycare. Not college, not private school; just a safe, licensed daycare facility. And there are practically no governmental supports (except for paltry child tax credits and a meager child-care deduction) available to families with two breadwinners with children. If any conservative (commentator or politician) truly wanted to support bigger families, they would advocate policies that financially supported such larger families.
In reality, economists of a certain political bent are not concerned about population decline because of a feared productivity decline, but rather because a smaller population results in a tighter labor force which can command higher wages (see the effectiveness of freestone mason guilds of post-plague Europe).
72
@Nathan
You are spot on. The conservatives raise no policies to encourage people to have children, nor do they offer up policies to truly help the children that are not in the upper middle or higher classes.
The population reduction and resultant labor shortage after the Euro plague of the 14th century led to more power transferring from the wealthy of the day to the workers. Noblemen has to till their own fields. Yes, modern economists definitely have that fear in mind as it relates to population reduction.
28
I pay $10,000 a year in school taxes to support your children. I have no children. The PreK across the street is subsidized by my taxes. People with kids get tax credits. My mother paid school taxes until she died in her 80s, but there were no services to help her when she developed Alzheimer's. The cost of her at home care was more than my income (we could not afford a nursing home). People here are breeding like rabbits. My taxes aren't helping the homeless get off the streets, but they are subsidizing rich yuppies who are having too many children.
3
@Stephanie Wood: Did you attend public school? Did your mother have Medicare?
1
The only misconception is that the "dynamism" of a country must diminish with its population growth. Having young support the old is a hoary concept that needs to change. Capable older people should contribute to their own upkeep and not expect the young to subsidize some outmoded image of retirement. I could retire right now, but I haven't and I won't. It is no coincidence that my uncle who still works at 84 is outliving his relatives who are basket cases of illness in their myopic retirement.
17
Dynamism depends who is in the mix at a given time. Most people, while likely working hard, don’t add a lot of dynamism. They just tread water in a current that carries them along. Instead of having 250 million in a generation, you have 175 million. That still seems like a lot of people to be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mike Dell, etc.
5
@Victor Lacca
I think you underestimate the extent to which retirement opens up opportunities for young workers entering the job market, the incipient upward pressure on their wages, and potentially positive increases in productivity which result. In any event, there are many of us who will choose to enjoy a productive (neither outmoded or myopic) retirement funded by the efforts of our working years.
13
My parents' savings supported them, luckily we could not afford a nursing home for my mother, so it was at home care, then I cared for her nights and weekends. What was left of their savings paid hefty inheritance/estate taxes. They paid school taxes and subsidized the local PreK until they died. So it's not just the young paying for the old, the old also pay for the young. After paying school taxes, I don't have much left to live on. Most of my income subsidizes your children.
3
In addition to the other benefits of population decline noted by other commenters, I wonder whether population decline at a lower per capita GDP in China (compared to other wealthy countries) will encourage China to democratize. Western countries with low birth rates can attract young immigrants to compensate (and maintain economic vigor). An authoritarian and repressive China can't do so -- who would want to move there? Indeed, many Chinese move here to Canada if they can, and thousands of them every year come to Canada to give birth so that the newborn child will have a Canadian passport (and access to life in Canada). I guess that there is little immigration in the other direction into China. Only a more democratic and open China seems likely to attract young immigrants to support the aging Chinese population.
13
@Mike
China has the ability to deal with a large elderly population and has shown a willingness to deal with problem in a way that the west would never openly tolerate.
China had 20 million opium addicts when the Communists took power in 1949. In short order they had none. While 'communities rallied and addicts willingly complied with government orders' the truth is that dealers were simply killed along with addicts that could not overcome their habits.
The Great Leap Forward caused the deaths of 30-45 million. Past non 'man-made' famines had also killed millions in China. In comparison it is estimated that 12-20 million died in WWII (military and civilian).
It would not be beyond belief for a pandemic to strike China killing many elderly and weak in the population. Viruses are crossing over from livestock to humans on a regular basis in China causing health alerts.
Think of what happened in 1919. It could happen again.
7
It is impossible to not be aware of the results of population increase today. In the next few decades, this will result in an extinction event for most of the higher life species on the earth. The authoritative approach of the Chinese leadership was a one child family as a brutally enforced law. [see the film: one child nation] Overpopulation will have to be addressed by each nation but the policy should be educational rather than brutal laws.
14
We need to look for alternatives to the continual growth that every governmental official and economist call for.
Even the most uneducated person knows that you cannot have unlimited growth on a planet with limited resources. We waste materials, energy, and labor producing throwaway goods and limited use goods. That needs to end.
These calls for growth come because we have Ponzi schemes like Social Security where benefits are paid for by people coming into the system. In other countries lacking such plans old people depend on children to support them in old age.
We need a different approach to dealing with our old.
But more than that we need to rethink how our world works.
The systems we have don't work.
A DECLINE in population is needed world wide. People are naturally following this path. The problem is getting through the demographic bulge where old people outnumber young.
88
@cynicalskeptic Stop with the tired old epithet "ponzi scheme" for social security. It is the most popular and successful government program.
1
The claim that a lower population is “necessary”—whatever that means—is a staple of the use-your-intuition, anti-capitalist, environmentalist Left. It also happens to be mistaken. The question is, Has anyone ever encountered someone who demands a decrease in population suddenly changing his or her mind? These people are the fanatics of all fanatics, the dogmatists of all dogmatists. Every single time they have an opportunity to run their record on these pages, they take it. It’s like there’s a secret society ever ready to recite the mantra.
https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/09/dematerialization-and-what-it-means-for-the-economy-and-climate-change
https://www.aei.org/multimedia/the-myth-of-the-population-bomb/
Increased growth is necessary because? Oh yeah, because Capitalism requires ever increasing production so that the money/profits keeps flowing. Why then, is the population supposed to adapt to Capitalism instead of giving consideration to an economic structure that does not require ever increasing production of profit? Maybe unfettered, unregulated Capitalism is more of a problem than an underpopulated Earth.
143
@Vanessa Hall
Worse yet, is that increased growth is required to help mitigate the impact of the enormous debt we have accumulated by our government budget deficits and our own personal borrowing. Traditionally, we have foolishly assumed that debt will be easier to repay in the future given a larger population with a larger economy. Greed aside, sadly, this is one of the reasons Wall Street is always looking for growth. For China's part, their debt is far less and they are not hemorrhaging their wealth via trade imbalances.
21
You rock! I hope Douthat reads this.
2
If the choice is more people living less well or less people living better, I think the later is the best choice.
You also need to factor in that Chinese life expectancy was around 43 years in 1960 and 74 years now.
Basing economic growth on population growth seems to have a limited time frame in a finite world.
35
Douthat sometimes writes excellent articles. This is not one of them. The mistakes are so abundant, 1500 words does not suffice to record the corrections.
Let me say first that low birthrates are NOT a cultural trap. Chairman Mao urged large families, and that was partially responsible for the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 which killed 10-40 million people.
The one child policy was initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. To see its effects, one should compare China with India which had no such policy.
Both countries are overpopulated, but China has been growing less rapidly. Both countries are congested. India will soon overtake China in total population.
But China's economic growth has been phenomenal. in many areas, China's production rivals the US. China has built an electrified high speed rail system that stretched to 18,000 miles. The US can't build rail from LA to SF.
Douthat mentions global warming. Barring some miracle, average world temperatures will increase by 3.7 to 4.8 degrees C by 2100 over preindustrial levels.
How will this affect the tropics? The people in Bangladesh may have higher GDP because they all have i-phones but it will be scant comfort as their land becomes submerged in the rising ocean.
Global warming will DECREASE carrying capacity of planet earth.
It is journalistic incompetence to suggest that underpopulation is a problem.
The doubling of population since the Population Bomb was published makes global warming worse.
238
@Blaise Descartes Ross always starts with the answer and works his way back to the question. Once aware of this, his word salad is easier to understand as well as digest.
21
@Blaise Descartes.
"China has built an electrified high speed rail system that stretched to 18,000 miles. The US can't build rail from LA to SF."
Of course we CAN. We just don't have the political will to commit the resources and overcome the social obstacles that would be required to do so.
In addition, when a nation already has an extensive infrastructure, the incremental benefits of upgrading it are less than for a country which doesn't have the infrastructure at all.
9
I highly recommend that India follow suit and institute a one child policy.
10
Ross, I really don't understand your position on declining population whether in China or elsewhere. From my perspective a lower population is a great opportunity for humanity. It will reduce the strain on Earths resources and help reduce the scope of climate change. Please take a deep breath and chill.
197
@Paul
While not sharing Douthat's political orientation in general, I have long perceived that he is a very intelligent man who has admirable skills at putting his thoughts into words.
But so much of what he writes is colored by his vigorously held Catholicism, and whether he sees it or not, I suspect that is the explanation here, at some deep level.
Interestingly, he was not raised Christian, but his family first converted to Pentecostalism, then Catholicism. I was raised Catholic (though I no longer believe), and to my eye, converts have always been more rigid and vociferous, on average, than those of us born to the faith.
6
@Paul
It’s mostly about breeding of the Livestock. Women.
10
I'm pleased to see the large number of well-written responses from NYT readers and can hardly improve on them. Our economic systems are based on population growth but that doesn't mean it's right. Population growth is ultimately unsustainable and we need to find a better way.
421
@Tim W
Maybe Douthat should read "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" by E. F. Schumacher; a book Jerry Brown seemed to pay a lot of attention to when he was Governor of California.
27
A country like China, whose population growth hasn't peaked yet, will grow to be 1.5 Billion which will be 3.5 times larger than ours in the same period. That is too big a population to have considering both countries are of similar size.
China and the Planet will benefit much with decreasing population. I don't think China and the world will worry about having too small a population.
32
@Subhash Reddy The Economist Intelligence unit projects China's population to peak in 2026 at 1.4billions. It should then start declining rapidly to reach 750 millions by 2100.
4
Unacknowledged by the horde of dissenting voices in these comments who decry overpopulation and “inevitable” despoliation and starvation as a consequence: even as populations have skyrocketed worldwide, starvation and poverty have plummeted due to economic and political liberalization. That which is sadly falling out of favor has saved literally hundreds of millions of lives. If people are allowed to be free - to move and think and act and buy and sell and live freely - they tend to develop solutions to their problems. Institutional coercion will not save us. Only innovation born of freedom can.
11
@Half Sour
Yes, these comments seem quite ignorant of history. China has 1.4 billion people today and plentiful food (in fact, there is a growing obesity problem). Past famines in China were man-made, not the result of overpopulation.
The Chinese famine of 1960 was caused by poor Communist policies. China only had 600 million people then, less than half of what it has today.
The Chinese famines of the 1940s were caused by World War II. China only had 500 million people then, a third of what it has today.
The Chinese famines in the late 1800s and early 1900s were caused by foreign imperialism and civil war impoverishing the country. China only had 400 million people and no population growth during this period, a quarter of what it has today, yet zero population growth didn't prevent famines then.
Overpopulation does not cause famine. In fact, the countries today that are most at-risk of famine are places like South Sudan that are extremely sparsely populated. The Central African Republic, the world's poorest country, has a lower population density than Russia. Famine risk in those countries comes from the fact that people are so spread out that it's too hard to keep the country in order, distribute food, and build up manufacturing industries that rely on mass labor!
1
If the human population declines, if 'economic growth' slows, then we might just get through as a species to the next century, and so might some of our fellow species on this beautiful planet. If we follow Ross Douthat's advice, we are done for.
236
@Malcolm
He always certain, nearly always wrong.
Seriously.
5
This article reflects the severe anthropocentrism of the writer. First: China's population was 670 million in 1960. Now it is 1.4 billion--more than doubling in 60 years. It is very over-populated.
Second: we don't need population growth--we need to stabilize our population or even allow it to decline in order to begin to let other species have room to live their lives. Must every scrap of the planet be consumed by humans?
Third: the Earth is a finite place and cannot sustain infinite population growth.
The handwringing over women refusing to be bred over and over is everywhere. Men: get over it. We will transition to a smaller, more sustainable population or our planet will be completely destroyed.
964
@No Planet B We Asian neighbors are counting on China's dropping birthrate to work in our favor.
China will soon lack the younger workforce needed to run its factories, its services sector (including health care for the rapidly growing population of elderly) -- and its military. This is in fact a major impetus for their development of artificial intelligence; but AI can only go so far.
Maybe this population shrinkage will help to curb their territorial aggression in the region, particularly its ongoing takeover of adjoining seas. And maybe even curb the xenophobia carefully cultivated by Beijing to offset internal dissent, as they will need somehow to work with other nationalities, e.g. by importing foreign labor, or collaborating on climate change initiatives.
Of course, it could also work the other way, and China's worry over its weakening population may make it even more aggressive in the coming years, in terms of grabbing territory or establishing what control it can over resources in the rest of the world, even as its Asian neighbors grow increasingly resistant. So the next few years will be tense.
In the 1930s, it was Japan's perception that it was a victim being hemmed in by foreign powers that fueled/justified among citizens its invasion of its neighbors, including China. Beijing has been playing the same victim card for decades now, and this sense of victimhood is deeply implanted in the national psyche; let's hope it doesn't lead to another major war.
52
The planet will not be destroyed. Whatever the effects of H. sapien to the biogeosphere the effects will quickly diminish proportional to the reduction of the size of the population of H. sapien. Following the extinction of H. sapien the vacated niche spaces will be populated with new species and the expansion of existing species. As to remnants of the human endeavor, anomoulous artifacts will be found in relatively thin horizons of a future stratigraphic record. Earth abides.
33
@Just So
Agreed. Also, it may be that planet Earth is in the process of rejecting the human species as a foreign organism. It's just doing it at a pace that human perspective is not able to be aware of it.
33
The alternative to China (or any other country) limiting its population is for China (or any other country) NOT to limit its population.
How’s that working so far? Not so well, including in the United States. It’s as though all the articles about environmental disaster in the here and now have absolutely no impact on the economic health requires population growth equation.
The only answer is to move to a nation and a world where each population cohort will ultimately be smaller than the older cohorts that we have today that we’ll be able to imagine solutions.
And those solutions aren’t hard; it’s a matter of wealth / tax revenue diatribution.
The hardest part will be supporting the largest, older generations. Ultimately, each generation will be of equivalent size and it will be a privilege (especially for wealthier countries) to be able to have a sustainable place to live. Supporting one’s countrymen and women across the generations is totally doable.
Imagine, for example, if the population of China were only 1 billion. That country would not be an economic powerhouse?
Try the same exercise with the US at 259 million.
19
If you’re going to discuss population in China, you need to compare it to India. China has left India in the dust in terms of economic and social development. Three of China’s top ten billionaires are self-made women. Women’s safety isn’t the issue in China that it is in India. GDP per capital in China is far higher and they have a middle class approaching western standards of living.
None of this might have been possible if China didn’t make the tough decision to limit its population.
94
@You Know It
I don't know how and why this comparison even matters in this discussion. IMO, the population of China ought to stabilize at 600 million and India's population should stabilize at 350 million and both countries will benefit immensely not to speak of the benefits for the Planet as a whole.
14
@Subhash Reddy India's population is going to exceed that of China's in about 2024.
3
Its incredible to be ringing the alarm bell and blame the West, for China's demographic "problem". The fact that China's population might start shrinking is something to celebrate. The same as Japan. Why are we so worried about these nations that are so populous, when we worry about our environment and the damage continuous growth does to it? There are nations in Europe, that have seen declining populations for a lot longer and they're hardly mentioned. Bulgaria has lost over 2 million people and is down to less than 7 million. Greece's population has been declining for years. These nations are small and there's very little hope that population decline will be reversed. Cultures and languages are disappearing daily and Russ Duthat worries about a nation that has over a billion souls. Give me a break.. Worry about something else
129
There were 4 billion humans on the planet in 1974. Now there are over 7.5 billion. Reducing our population through fewer births is kinder than the alternatives: malnutrition, heat stroke, lack of clean water, wars over increasingly scarce resources.
Mass extinctions are underway. The oceans are warming and acidifying. Plastic pollutants are found everywhere. Exhortations to increase the human population are tragically misguided.
592
What seems to me obvious is that we need to devise an international program of global refugee resettlement. The agency that should probably spearhead this is The United Nations refugee agency. Climate change, war, and crop failures are seriously affecting the entire Southern Hemisphere. Coincidentally, their populations skew young. We need to have a plan in place to resettle these future workers in countries in the northern hemisphere whose populations are aging so quickly. No one is talking about this!
9
14 million babies were born in China last year, more than the entire Western Hemisphere combined. With well over a billion people, China is more than sufficiently populated. Japan is pioneering a society that is prosperous without continuous growth. Maybe China (and the rest of the world) can learn from Japan before overpopulation destroys the world.
383
@Rick you're articulate, but not truthful. A simple Google search would reveal that Japan's elderly population are still coasting on the fruit of decades of economic growth -- but that prosperity is steadily declining. And Japan is worried.
6
@TC
By what metric is their prosperity declining?
Are they seeing declining infant mortality? Declining life expectancy? Declining HDI? Increasing political polarization and populism? Declining trust in institutions?
What prosperity, I wonder, is "steadily declining" in Japan?
Because going by a lot of actual numbers, the Japanese approach seems to be a lot more attractive than the US or EU ones when it comes to prosperity and stability.
20