Why is Everybody Freaked-Out That The Population Bomb Went Bust

Written by Chriss W. Street

The media seems freaked-out over the bust in advanced country fertility
rate is causing rapid declining populations may mean lower economic growth,
empty schools, crowded retirement homes, and lack of youthful vitality.

A demographic bust is a decline in a country's population growth due to a drop in the total fertility rate (TFR).  The TFR is the average number of children a woman gives birth to in her lifetime.  To maintain its current population over time, a country needs a minimum TFR of 2.1 children per woman of childbearing age.  

Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich 1968 book ‘The Population Bomb’ claimed: 

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate .. 

Professor Ehrlich demanded a carrot and a stick solutions to world overpopulation: initial “incentive” solution for Western population control was offering the easiest access to birth control and abortion, to be followed by “penalties” in the form of state-sponsored sterilization.  He stated in 1967, he stated that Eastern countries, like India, be allowed to starve, because their cultures and ethics made them just “hopeless” anyway. 

Erlich’s “Population Bomb” did not foresee that global population growth in the 1960s was already beginning slow.  But his bogus scientific predictions did seem to impact the 1973 US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized 63,459,781 abortions.

New food production technologies since the 1960s accelerated the non-Western countries’ food supply faster than population growth.  Hopeless India became the world's largest rice exporter in 2012, and now accounts for 40% of global rice exports.

Non-Western South Korea is now estimated to have the lowest total fertility rate in the world at 0.72.  In Western Europe, Roman Catholic Italy’s current TFR (1.21) is now lower than the Protestant United Kingdom.  The United States religious melting pot TFR  is now 1.62. The figure for the Islamic Republic of Iran is 1.54.

For the 237 nations and territories listed by the United Nations, 126 currently have TFRs below replacement level fertility.  Furtehrmore, it is estimated that two-thirds of the world population now live in a country or area with sub-replacement fertility.  Europe is  expected to be the first continent experience an overall population decrease by 2050, soon followed by South-Eastern Asia and most of the world by 2070. 

It must have been terrifying to Professor Erlich that life expectancy increased – especially in advanced industrial countries.  In the United States, the population above 65 is now the fastest-growing demographic cohort, and the number of 65-year-olds currently outnumbers the number of 5-year-olds.  Looking out 16 years to 2040, those older than 65 will outnumber those aged 15-24.