Birth dearth?
The local Singapore paper ran an article about the rapid drop in fertility rates over the last decade being “bad news” for the world. The article argued that since many countries have dropped below the magic 2.1 fertility rate (under which the population will not sustain itself), then we would become extinct.
They also rubbished the “small is beautiful humbug of the 1960s and 1970s”. But things were critical in the 1960s with a huge post-war baby boom which peaked in 1960.
I wouldn’t worry about the world population dropping anytime soon. We are still increasing at about 4 people per second and the top contributors to population growth (except China) do not seem to be making plans to do anything about it. Following are the growth figures in millions of people per year:
| India | 13.4 |
| China | 7.7 |
| Pakistan | 3.5 |
| Nigeria | 2.7 |
| United States | 2.9 |
| Indonesia | 2.4 |
(Source: Based on UN data)
See also animation showing current population at Interactive Mathematics.
Singapore, Japan, Australia are all worried about their low fertility rates and greying population. Well, the world is not short of people - immigration (or adoption of unwanted children) has to be considered. [Japan hates the thought of immigration of course - it is a very homogeneous population...]
But I say - let the population drop and remove the unsustainable pressures on air, water and land resources. Now, there’s a pleasant thought.
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Tang Kim Seng said,
December 22, 2004 at 6:28 pm
I think from the world’s perspective, any decline in world population would be deemed as positive ‘cos with less demand (i.e. people), resources (e.g. air, water, land) abound. Theoretically speaking, there’s a bigger piece of pie to share (assuming all things being equal). However, that same viewpoint may not be agreed by many countries which need to safe-guard their own existenace and serve their own self-interests.
Any underdeveloped country would not favour the idea of a population boom for obvious reasons. Everyone is struggling for survival, why make it worse with more mouths to feed ? For the more developed countries, their own existence may strive on people with good moral values for governance, people with creativity and imagination to prosper in businesses and enterprises, people with good education to serve the public at large, etc. Immigration may be the solution short of its own people (but not the total solution). Then, countries like Japan or Germany with a more homogeneous society may not like the idea of immigration to solve their manpower shortage problem. Singapore may be more accomodating in this aspect.
So in effective, there’s no one solution to address all the countries’ woes!