(The Nationalist, 14 July 2000)
The population of the world, starting from human beginnings, reached 1 billion by about the year 1804. It reached two billion by 1927, 3 billion by 1960, 4 billion by 1974, 5 billion by 1987 and 6 billion by 1999. This means that to grow from 1 to 2 billion took 123 years; to grow from 2 to 3 billion took 33 years; to grow from 3 to 4 took 14 years, from 4 to 5 took 13 years, and from 5 to 6 billion took only 12 years.
Another way of looking at it is that the world’s population has doubled since 1960. It grows each year by 80 million people, which is the population of Germany. That means it is growing by close to a quarter of a million every day, or 160 every minute.
Where is this growth taking place? Today, 98% of population growth is in the developing world.
About 1968 a demographic shift began so that, by 1998, fertility was below replacement levels in 51 countries. Total fertility in them is less than 2.1 children per woman, which is the replacement rate. Those 51 countries embrace 44% of the world’s population and include Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia. In 13 of those countries the number of deaths exceeds the number of births.
In percentage terms, world-wide growth rate hit a high of 2.2% in 1963 and has since declined to 1.4%. The average number of children per woman world-wide dropped from 4.2 in 1985 to 2.9 in 1996. Such a fall was brought about largely by the use of methods such as contraception, sterilization or abortion. World-wide use of contraception has gone from 10% in 1968 to 57% at present.
Another point is geographical distribution. In the developed world, more than 70% of people live in cities, and soon about half of world population will live in them.
Age profile counts also. The number of people in the world aged 60 years and over is increasing at a rate of 200,000 a week, due to higher life expectancy. One consequence is a reversal of the age pyramid: for example, the age pyramids of France, Spain and Italy on the one hand and Algeria, Morocco and Turkey on the other are each the opposite of the other. A smaller proportion of young adults in First World societies must provide the productive energy of society, e.g. in its economy, and there is increased demand for health care and pensions.
A side-effect of this population trend will be to accelerate immigration from countries of high population growth. Italy, for example, must admit three million immigrants in the next ten years to keep its economy going.
Such migration is not new: in the Bible, Abraham sent his sons to Egypt for food and the invasions of the Roman Empire by the barbarians from the north-east were similarly driven. It’s not just numbers: it’s also distribution, both of people and resources.