Population: The Multiplier of Everything Else by William N. Ryerson

Population: The Multiplier of Everything Else

by William N. Ryerson

When it comes to controversial issues, population is in a class by itself.

Advocates and activists working to reduce global population growth and size are attacked by the Left for supposedly ignoring human-rights issues, glossing over Western overconsumption, or even seeking to reduce the number of people of color. They are attacked by the Right for supposedly favoring widespread abortion, promoting promiscuity via sex education, or wanting to harm economic growth. Others think the problem has been solved, or believe that the real problem is that we have a shortage of people (the so-called “birth dearth”). Still others think the population problem will solve itself, or that technological innovations will make our numbers irrelevant.

One thing is certain: The planet and its resources are finite, and it cannot support an infinite population of humans or any other species. A second thing is also certain: The issue of population is too important to avoid just because it is controversial.

The Magnitude of the Problem

The world’s population is growing by about 80 million people annually—the equivalent of adding a new Egypt every year. The total population is approaching 7 billion, seven times what it was in 1800. Every day approximately 156,000 people die, but 381,000 are born—a net daily growth of 225,000 human beings.

The cost in human suffering that results from unplanned and excessive childbearing is staggering: 500,000 women and girls die worldwide every year from pregnancy and childbirth—a figure equal to all of the U.S. deaths in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. Most of the women who die are in their teens and early twenties, forced by their societies into bearing children too young and far too frequently.

But the developing world is so capital-starved owing to its high population growth rate that allocating some portion of government budgets to reproductive health care is often extremely difficult. For its part, the developed world as a whole has failed to come close to meeting the commitments for population assistance made at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. To achieve the commitments made in Cairo, both developed and developing countries would need to triple their current contributions. The lives of billions of people are being rendered increasingly desperate by being denied access to family-planning information and services they want and need.

The Big Picture of Growth Globally and in the United States

The top three countries for population growth are India, China, and the United States. India grows by about 17 million per year, China by about 7 million per year, and the United States by about 3 million per year. These three countries, plus Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Indonesia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Brazil, and the Philippines, are poised to grow by 1.6 billion by 2050, representing 63 percent of the world’s projected growth of 2.6 billion in the coming four decades. These projections are based on assumptions about reduced fertility rates in all twelve of these countries. If the expected fertility reductions do not occur, the world’s population could double to 13.6 billion by 2067.

What Is Causing Population Growth?

Population growth of the magnitude we are experiencing now is a phenomenon that started in the twentieth century. As recently as 1925, India and many other developing countries were at zero population growth. While birth rates and death rates were both high in these countries, they were at the same level, so population growth rates were zero or close to zero.

The surge in population growth rates over the last half century is not the result of rising birth rates. Birth rates have dropped significantly on a worldwide basis since 1970. Instead, the very high rates of growth result primarily from declining death rates—the result of widespread vaccination programs and other public health measures. Declining mortality has been the trend of the last two centuries, with especially rapid decline during the last six decades particularly among infants and children. Declines in mortality have been so much faster than declines in fertility that the result has been unprecedented net rates of population increase.

The only way population growth can stop is if the birth rate and death rate reach the same level. At some point, they will reach the same level, either because of rising death rates or reduced birth rates—or both.

Myths and Reality

There is much misinformation about population, some of it intentionally planted by those who think continued population growth holds some benefit for them. Confusion also exists among journalists, who, in turn, misinform the public. The mathematics of exponential growth can be confusing to those who have not studied math. Even the term “population” is emotionally laden for many people because of the associations it has had with various controversies over the years.

The predominant myths about population include misconceptions about the nature of the problem, the belief that population growth poses no threat, the belief that we cannot do anything about population growth, and beliefs about interventions that are mistakenly thought to hold the promise of a quick fix to the population problem.

What Can Be Done

We can begin solving the global population problem by providing family-planning information and services, role-modeling a small family as the norm, and elevating the status of women and girls. Because of the controversies surrounding population issues, it will take strong public support to give political leaders the courage to act. How can we best move forward with achieving these goals?

The governments of the world need to make policy and financial commitments to tackle overpopulation. It is critical that every country include reproductive-health services in national budgets. Moreover, it is important to eliminate laws that require a woman to have her husband's permission to use contraceptive methods and laws requiring parental consent for adolescents to obtain family planning.

As Individuals

There are many things individual citizens can do:

Support domestic and international family-planning initiatives, both those providing services and those providing information and education to help bring about lower fertility rates and elevation of women’s status.
Support population organizations to educate people about population issues and to push for sound population-related policies.
Contact elected representatives urging them to support comprehensive family-planning and reproductive-health services, both internationally and domestically, and to support women’s rights and an end to abusive practices such as child marriages.
Talk to family, friends, and co-workers about the pressing need for achieving gender equity—and a sustainable population size.

As Governments

It is also important that the United States take a leadership role; there are a number of actions the United States can take immediately:

Issue a statement on the importance of addressing population growth and its relevance to all of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.
Contribute a higher percentage of GDP to population assistance programs in developing countries.
Establish a new Population Commission to set the agenda for population stabilization, using the recommendations of previous commissions as a starting point.
Establish an Office of Special Assistant to the President for Population and Sustainability Issues, and similar offices elsewhere in the federal government, to elevate the discussion of the population issue and coordinate with relevant offices in other agencies.

Get Involved in the Solution

The goal of humanity should be to have a sustainable number of people living a comfortable lifestyle. Instead, we are recklessly pursuing an experiment to find out how many people can be supported in the short term without regard for the impact on future generations or the consequences for other species.

Finding a solution to the population problem will involve multiple strategies—and it will not be either simple or inexpensive. Much of the effort over the last forty years has focused on the development of governmental policies and the provision of family-planning medical services. We must add to this the development of social environments that motivate and empower people to use family planning and limit family size.

Governments and the international donor community must get serious about providing ample funding to these and other highly effective strategies.

The world needs to focus major attention on stopping population growth. The planet is finite, and exponential growth is not sustainable. We can solve the population problem voluntarily if we apply what we know and mobilize the funds needed to provide all people with family-planning information and services.

William Ryerson is founder and president of Population Media Center and president of the Population Institute. He has worked for nearly forty years in the field of reproductive health, including two decades of experience adapting the Sabido methodology for behavior change communications to various cultural settings worldwide. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development. Ryerson is a Fellow of Post Carbon Institute.