2 - THE NEW DEMOGRAPHY OF DEPOPULATION

World depopulation has become the most important demographic trend of our time, writes Ben Wattenberg in Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future (2004). The global downward trend in fertility is both long-term and pronounced. The United States is now the only industrialized country in the world with a fertility rate at or above replacement level (the 2.1 births per woman per lifetime required for population stability). Fertility rates in less · developed countries, including those in Africa, Asia, Mexico, South America and the Middle East, have dropped dramatically over the last 35 years and now average just 2.8.

Wattenberg has been writing on this issue for years, but in March 2002 the United Nations finally caught up, making a major revision in its population projections (by assuming the developing world's Total Fertility Rate could eventually drop to 1.85). Writes the author:

For at least 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, the world's population has headed in only one direction: up. But within a few decades, the number of people on earth will level off and then likely go down over an extended period of time. Never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly.

In countries - both modern and less developed -throughout the world, birthrates and fertility rates have fallen at an astonishing rate. Because of extremely low fertility, Europe has already begun losing population and is projected to fall from 725 million today by approximately 100 million people or more by mid-century, and continuing thereafter. Japan will fall from over 125 million to just 110 million. In less developed countries the fertility rate is about 2.7 and falling fast; about 25 such countries are already at or below replacement level.

Among the modern nations, only the United States is an exception to the trend, as it is likely to grow from about 285 million to about 410 million people by mid-century because of higher fertility and continued robust immigration.

What is driving this trend is the "demographic transition" - the shift from high birth and death rates to low ones - extending to developing as well as developed countries. The demographic transition accompanies (or follows) other transitions of modernization: the economic (to freer markets) ; the social (to greater female autonomy) ; the political (to more pluralism) ; and the technological (to greater information availability). But no one really knows the outcome of this trend because it has never happened before.

What happens to businesses when markets stop growing? What happens to pension plans when there are fewer workers than retirees? What happens to politics when there are fewer taxpayers to pay for public spending? And how does a nation with a falling population defend itself against larger enemies (can you say, "nuclear proliferation"?).

The potential implications of depopulation have also been considered by demographer Nicolas Eberstadt. For example, what will be the effect on families in a world where the only biological relatives for many people will be their ancestors?

Author Charles Mann takes the scenario one step further by assuming advanced human longevity (via various technologies being developed now). In "The Coming Death Shortage" (The Atlantic Monthly, May 2005), Mann postulates that the result of expensive longevity treatments will be a tripartite society: the very old and very rich on top; a mass of the ordinary old; and the diminishingly influential young.

Contemplating these issues may seem premature, Mann concedes, but the consequences will undoubtedly be profound. All this represents merely a sketch of a future, writes Eberstadt, whose social, political and economic outlines promise to break sharply with anything in recorded experience.

Copyright FutureScan May 2005
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