Response to the Latest Pronouncement by the U. N. Population Division

In early December 2003, the United Nations Population Division held a press conference to announce that their projections to the years 2050 and 2200 indicate a lower total population size than previous projections. If true, this is good news for a planet already struggling to support 6.3 billion people, but it does not eliminate the nearly 50% increase in numbers projected in the next half century.

Joseph Chamie, director of the UN's Population Division, is the originator of the UN's population projections. For some years now, Mr. Chamie has been alerting the world to the possibility that in the latter part of the 21st century, world population growth may stop and numbers may go into decline. This is based on projections (different than predictions) that assume that major developing nations will see their fertility rates fall to replacement levels in the next few decades.

While projections are just a mathematical process based on assumptions about future trends, predictions are a much more complex matter that depend on a deeper understanding of what is going on in the real world. The farther into the future projections are made, the more they are subject to error. Most journalists do not understand the difference, and now a large group of journalists are reporting Chamie's projections as predictions--with possible dire consequences.

As Yale University Professor Robert Wyman points out in a well-researched article in Population and Environment (March 2003), "Any projection beyond a few decades is just too fanciful to foist upon the public." Projections made by leading demographers a half century ago were way off the mark. In 1945, Frank Notestein, Director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, "realistically" projected that the population of North America would reach 176 million in 2000 and that the world's population (at 2.2 billion in 1945) would end the century at 3.3 billion. Both estimates were extremely low. The actual figure for North America in 2000 was about 306 million (exceeding the projection by 74%), while the global actual was 6.1 billion (exceeding by 177% Notestein's projection). The problem? Notestein's underlying assumptions about future trends in birth rates and death rates.

If, indeed, Chamie's 100-year projections come true, it will be good news for a planet already struggling to support 6.3 billion people.

What is far more likely (and more disturbing) than Chamie's projection for 2200 is that the world will experience a nearly 50% increase in its population over the next 50 years, taking the global total to about 9 billion. Even this projection by Chamie assumes continued declines in fertility rates from current levels. Given the problems of poverty, water and resource shortages, loss of wilderness, species extinction and global warming (to mention only a few), this magnitude of growth could well be disastrous for the world environment and its people. This is especially true if consumption rates by developing countries continue to climb with their expanding economies. The poorest countries may experience 100% population growth or more in the next three to five decades, adding to the poverty, unemployment, and environmental degradation that currently are driving people into desperate fundamentalism in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The reduction in fertility rates that has occurred in many countries in the last several decades did not just happen. It was the result of dedicated efforts to make family planning services available, to popularize small family norms through the mass media, to elevate the status of women and girls and to promote economic development.

Projecting that birth rates will continue to decline in developing countries at the rate they have over the last 30 years ignores the possibility that desired family size will not decline further in the developing countries if nothing more is done to further change cultural attitudes with regard to family size or family planning use.

In 1960, only 10% of married couples used contraception, while about 55% use contraception today. Yet the 45% non-users outnumber the 90% non-users in 1960, as a result of the enormous increase in world population over the past 43 years.

What has changed in that time period is that those who want to use family planning now are able to access it, and therefore it stands to reason that the non-users are more committed in their non-use of contraception than the non-users of 1960. This means that to convert non-users into users of contraception and to get them to adopt small family norms is a much bigger challenge. Numerous surveys demonstrate that most non-users of contraception are aware of family planning methods and know where they can be obtained, but choose not to use them. Hence, Chamie's assumptions about continued declines in fertility rates may be wildly optimistic.

Unless the global community starts to take communications more seriously as a means of addressing the population issue, it is possible we will see birth rates plateau at above-replacement levels, as already appears to be happening in many countries. For example, two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives in countries with an average of five children or more per woman. Countries like India, Bangladesh, Egypt and Argentina have also plateaued at fertility rates above replacement levels, some for decades. The reality is that making projections or predictions so far into the future is fraught with a high probability of error.

Chamie is not doing the world a service by issuing press releases speculating on the possibility that once we reach 9 billion people, the world will see a decline in numbers in future decades. His concerns about support for the elderly and other issues that might arise in times of declining population ignore the question of whether the world's ecosystem can support 9 billion people. While Mr. Chamie is right that several developed countries face natural declines, they do have the option of increasing immigration from many developing countries that will probably have a surplus of births over deaths for much of the next 50 years.

Chamie's viewpoints should not turn the world community away from active concern and support for population stabilization activities just when they are needed most. The world has no long-term option other than to stop population growth and to begin the process of population decrease toward a sustainable level.

William Ryerson, Population Media Center's founder and President, has a 33-year history in the field of population, including 12 years as Executive Vice President of Population Communications International and five years as head of PMC.