Sixteen Myths About Population
By William N. Ryerson
President, Population Media Center
(Originally published by Carrying Capacity Network)

Part 2 - The Belief That Population Growth Poses No Threat;

3. Myth: Population is not a problem, or our leaders would tell us.

Generally, political leaders have not talked much about population issues, both because of their own misunderstandings of the problems population growth is causing and because of the sensitive nature of population issues. Furthermore, the time frame in which population growth occurs is much greater than the election cycles of most democracies. Political leaders are most likely to talk about immediate crises and not address long range problems.

4. Myth: Population growth stimulates economic growth.

The assertion that rapid rates of population growth somehow stimulate economic growth has been made by economists for a long time but achieved prominence during the Reagan Administration. As advocated by Julian Simon, Malcolm Forbes Jr. (in an editorial in Forbes magazine) and others, the contention is that rapid rates of population growth stimulate consumerism and that the added demand fuels economic growth.

The opposite may well be true. As explained by Ansley Coale (1963) of Princeton University, there is a direct relationship between rapid rates of population growth and declining economic conditions in underdeveloped countries. The economies of many developing countries, such as those in Africa and Latin America, are being retarded by the fact that a high percentage of personal and national income is spent on the immediate consumption needs of food, housing and clothing--because there are too many children dependent on each working adult--leaving little income at the personal or national level available to form investment capital. Lack of investment capital depresses growth of productivity of industry and leads to high unemployment (which is exacerbated by rapid growth in the numbers seeking employment). Lack of capital also contributes to a country's inability to invest in education, government, infrastructure, environmental needs and other areas that can contribute to the long-term productivity of the economy and living standards of the people.

In the 20th century, no nation has made much progress in the transition from "developing" to "developed" until it first brought its population growth under control. For example, in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, The Bahamas and Barbados, rapid economic development, as measured in gross national product per capita, occurred only after the country had achieved a rate of natural increase of its population below 1.5 percent per year and an average number of children per woman of 2.3 or less. Herman Daly, Senior Economist at the World Bank, believes that similar criteria probably hold for other countries (personal communication). Simply put, if the assertions by Simon and Forbes were true, the slow growing countries of Europe and North America would have weak economies, while the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and the high-growth countries of Asia and Latin America would be robust.

The real measure of economic welfare is not gross national product or national income, but the median income on a per capita basis. Stimulating gross national product by having more and more people buying fewer and fewer necessities does not enhance economic welfare. It may be true that a few people profit from population growth, but the mass of the people do not.

5. Myth: Technology will solve all problems.

The logical extension of the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" is that deprivation is good because it stimulates innovation. Ben Wattenberg and similar authors point to the fact that various innovations have averted disaster and that technological progress has enabled many people to lead lives of relative comfort compared to a few decades ago.

On the other hand, population professionals point out that the greatest causes of problems are solutions. Indeed, the population problem is the result of technological innovation in the field of medicine, as well as the humanitarian distribution of medical services throughout the world, thus lowering the death rates and increasing average life expectancy.

Whether necessity is the driving force behind technological development is questionable. People living in the 14th century were in desperate need of the medicines that have been invented since World War II. But human knowledge had not progressed to the point where that was possible.

People living in Bangladesh are in great need of technology to control typhoons, but to say that their suffering is good because it might stimulate such development would be both cruel and ludicrous.

Technological innovations are mostly driven by an economic system that allows for investment in basic and applied research and consumer-funded demand for products and services. Regions with severe overpopulation and related poverty and starvation may not have the luxury of time and energy for invention.

Indeed, technological growth may ease us through some of the potential crises of the future, but there is little about the current magnitude or nature of world population growth that will accelerate technological progress, and in the meantime, many people are bound to suffer needlessly.

The technology cure argument is in part a reflection of a certain fatalism--that we can't do anything about population growth so we might as well put a positive spin on it. It also reflects a mind set that favors the "greatest good for the greatest number of people," which for some means "large numbers are good." It is a very different mind set to favor planning for the number of people that are sustainable for the long-term future under reasonable expectations regarding technology. Even if changing technologies allow for some expansion of population numbers in the future, the limits of social institutions and the needs of other species for habitat make it imperative that we question the desirability of adding more and more people to the population.

It often seems as if opposition to population planning is motivated by a fear that curbing population growth will involve some great evil rather than a humanitarian process of planning the number of the human species that can be sustained within the current environment. In a sense, population growth in the face of inadequate current technology to sustain the people is akin to borrowing money with no prospect of being able to pay it back. It is a risky gamble which puts the burden on future generations who will suffer the consequences.

In recent decades, arguments that population growth is not really a problem, including those from the "boundless technology and resources" school, have been put forward by certain opponents of legal and accessible abortion. Some anti-choice advocates have recognized that concern with world population growth might lead to greater support for freedom of choice on abortion and have therefore set out to remove this pressure by attempting to prove that population growth is not a problem. The abortion issue may well have been a motivating factor for many of those making such arguments who were connected with the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

Some of the more outlandish claims of the "technology fix" advocates--for example, that we could ship our excess people to other planets--have almost been forgotten (imagine sending aloft 90 million people per year). Yet, while extraterrestrial migration is no longer taken seriously by most people, many of the unsubstantiated claims of new technologies that will "save the day" are still seen by many as a reason not to worry about population growth.

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