Readings on Population

IV Readings on Population

There is one thing that people agree on when they talk about population: it has grown remarkably in the past half-century; in 1950 the global population stood at just over 2,530,000,000. You can find out what it is right now by clicking here or here. However, the questions of why it has grown and what affects it has had on the world are subject to bitter debate.

On the one hand there are the Malthusians or neo-Malthusians who feel that population growth is the most severe problem facing the world; for them population growth is the root cause of hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, disease and social unrest. Furthermore, it is population growth in the poor nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that is the greatest threat.

On the other hand, there are those (revisionists is one term used to describe them, Marxists another) who claim that the Malthusians, by blaming or scapegoating the victims of global problems, are masking their real causes, among which is the global expansion of the culture of capitalism.

The position one takes is critical for virtually everything else one thinks about global problems. If by reducing population growth we can solve the world's problems, then, obviously we must work at it. However, if population growth is not the major problem, then we must put our energies to finding out their real sources.

In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism we argue that warnings about the consequences of population growth often mask the more pertinent causes of global problems. Consequently, while we include articles that reflect different viewpoints, our biases are reflected in the selections.

A. What are the facts about population growth?

While there is vehement disagreement about the relationship between population growth and global problems, we can at least establish some basic facts. The following selections contain information and data about the rate of population growth globally and in different countries of the world.

Reading 1. Human Population Through History
http://www.igc.org/desip/populationmaps.html

This series of maps from the Demographic, Environmental, and Security Project details the growth of global population from 1 AD to the year 2020. To get a present-day graphic of global population density, click here.

Reading 2. Population Timeline
http://www.pbs.org/kqed/population_bomb/time.html

This population timeline is part of a special broadcast by KQED on Paul Erlich's book, The Population Bomb. Good visual of population growth over the past 10,000 years.

Reading 3. The U.S. Population Scorecard
http://www.nrdc.org/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/bkgrd/poscore.html

This brief article provides some facts about population growth in the United States. Focus, however, on the last part of the article where it describes the impact of American consumption patterns on the world, pointing out that a child born in the United States will, in his or her lifetime, have 30 times more impact on the Earth's environment than a child born in India.

Exercise 1. U.S. Census World Data
www.census.gov/ftp/pub/ipc/www/

Excellent source of information for up-to-date world population information. You can find information on historical trends, present population figures, as well as population projections. Particularly useful is the International Data Base, a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for all countries of the world. Find out, for example, the population rank of all countries for any year from 1950 to 2050.

Exercise 2: 6 Billion Human Beings: An Interactive Game about Population
http://www.popexpo.net/home.htm

This interactive exhibit from the Musee de l’Homme in Paris is the place to learn about some basic principles of population growth. You provide some personal information, and you can find out what the world was like when you were born and what it may be like as you age. And it explains why. You will find out how such cultural factors as age at marriage, breastfeeding, and birth control influence fertility rates. Excellent presentation, but be aware of some biases; for example, the exhibit attributes the rapid population growth of the past century almost entirely to declining death rates. However, as we discuss in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, there is evidence that population began to climb rapidly well before modern health practices intervened and that the increase was due to changing economic and social patterns associated with industrialization and colonialism. Thus population began rapidly increasing in Europe in the eighteenth century and in other areas of the world in the nineteenth century.

B. Malthusian Theory and Its Critics

There is little doubt that the Malthusian position dominates the debate about global population growth. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population Reverend Thomas Malthus outlined his now famous argument that while population "increases in a geometrical ratio," the resources for survival, primarily food, "increases only in an arithmetical ratio." Consequently, unless "population checks" (war, famine, etc.) kept population growth down, he argued, the world would soon run out of food. Malthus, of course, was wrong; new agricultural techniques have continued to allow us to produce more food. But, some claim that we are rapidly running out of time and space, and that the "population explosion," as Paul and Ann Erlich called it, has already resulted in hunger, poverty, environmental devastation, and violent conflict. Others, however, claim that Malthusians have still got it wrong; that the causes of these problems have little to do with population growth and everything to do with the global expansion of capitalism. The following readings have been selected to give you some idea about the arguments on both sides.

Reading 4. Principals of Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian Theory
http://www.igc.org/desip/malthus/principles.html

The International Society of Malthus provides an excellent summary of the the major principles and assumptions of Malthusian thought. Just follow the arrows. They also provide some links to articles that are responses to critics of Malthusian arguments. You might want to check out Ronald Bleier's defense of Robert D. Kaplan's essay in the Feb 1994 Atlantic, "The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet."

Reading 5. 1998 World Population Overview and Outlook 1999
http://www.populationinstitute.org/overview98.html

This report from the Population Institute provides a good summary of a Malthusian position on population growth. The paper details the present trends in population growth, and concludes that they are alarming, and that they are particularly serious in the poor regions of the world. It then details the many social, political, and health problems existing in poor areas, clearly implying that these are the results of unbridled population growth. The Population Institute's position on population growth is that:
"Overpopulation is a problem that impacts on virtually all human activities worldwide.... Hunger, disease, poverty, deforestation, soil erosion, ozone depletion, climatic change -- the most devastating problems we face today -- are directly attributable to or exacerbated by infinite numbers of people living in a finite world."

Reading 6. How to Slow Population Growth
http://www.nrdc.org/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/nrdc/bkgrd/poslow.html

This short article outlines the steps that have to be taken to solve the "population problem." Most of these steps are based on recommendations made at a major UN Conference in Cairo in 1994, that concluded that the key to controlling population is improving the status and education of women.

Reading 7. Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb: Forward
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/literary/96/population.html

There are many articles challenging the Malthusian position, but this one provides a good introduction. Steve Weissman begins by chastising both the Malthusian and the Marxist positions on population growth, but ends up offering a concise critique of the Malthusian or neo-Malthusian argument. He also does an excellent job of revealing the dilemma of Malthusians such as Paul Erlich who, while abandoning their earlier demonizing of the poor and recognizing the role of the wealthy in destroying the environment, still seem to cling to Malthusian rhetoric.

Reading 8. Consumption: the other side of population for development http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/about/contrib/populat/consump.htm

An excellent piece by Francisco J. Mata and Larry J. Onisto on the effects of consumption on environmental pressures. Their premise is that to appreciate the impact of people on the environment, population figures must be adjusted according to the consumption rate of the population. Thus a country with a relatively low population, but with high consumption rates, may have a greater negative impact on the environment than a country with high population, but low consumption rates. They find, for example, that Canada, with only four percent of the actual population of India, has the same consumption-adjusted population. And the consumption-adjusted population of the United States is more than twice that of China.

C. The Ideology of Malthusian Concerns

A question that anthropologists and sociologists often ask about beliefs is what social interest or purpose do they serve? In the case of population arguments, we can ask whether Malthusian arguments mask other concerns or social interests? After all, population growth was not for Thomas Malthus the primary issue; he was concerned with the rising number of poor and destitute in England, assuming that if people were poor, it was because there were too many of them. It was the poor who were at fault for their condition, and if the poor stopped reproducing, there would be fewer of them. Malthus's logic remains at the heart of Malthusian concerns. But how real are their concerns? Are people really hungry because there is not enough food, or is it because they simply lack the money to pay for it? Is it the poor who are destroying the environment, or is it the consumption patterns of the wealthy? Do people in poor countries lack resources because there are too many of them, or because the wealth of these countries is so unevenly distributed? Are women poorly educated because they have too many children, or because of the social and economic policies that international financial agencies impose on poor countries? Those are some of the questions asked in the following articles that address the ideology of Malthusianism.

Reading 9. Too Many People?
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM71/LM71_Futures.html

One of the points made by Malthusians is that we will soon run out of food. We will take this issue up in more detail in the next section of readings, but in this article John Gillott argues food production is controlled by market forces, and has little to do with the number of people who need food. He points out that only about one-third of the Earth's productive land is now being used, and not even to its maximum efficiency.

Reading 10. Who's Afraid of Population Growth?
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM71/LM71_Growth.html

In this article Amanda Macintosh asks why Western politicians, public policy makers, and academics are fixated on population reduction as a means to solve global problems. Racism and imperialism, she argues, are part of the reason.

Reading 11. WHAT IS N.S.S.M. 200...? And why do Western Leaders care so much about population control?
http://www.africa2000.com/INDX/nssm200.htm

Here we get to one of the primary documents of the population debate, a summary of the infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum - NSSM 200 - the Nixon-Kissinger, NSC, CIA, Pentagon, USAID guidance document on population control and the U.S. political interests. This reading provides excepts from the memo; it shows, in brief, that the purpose of pursing a policy of population control was to serve the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest at the expense of the developing countries.

D. Population Trends

The following readings represent some of latest thinking about population growth. The debate seems, to some extent, to be moving away from the Malthusian perspective, with more attention being given to specific issues, such as how population growth relates to different segments of the population, and how the global AIDS epidemic is affecting population. There is even some discussion that there is no longer any "population explosion," and that fertility rates are rapidly declining worldwide; there is even some thought that we may be facing another population problem--too few children.

Reading 12. State of the World Population-1998
http://www.unfpa.org/SWP/swp98/pressumary1.htm

See instead: State of the World Population-1999
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm

This is the press summary of the United Nations Population Fund's 1999 report on the state of the world's population. The report focuses on the ramifications of the rapid increases in two segments of global population: youth less than fifteen years-old and elderly more than 65 years-old.

Reading 13. 1998 Revision of the World Population Estimates and Projections—UN http://www.popin.org/pop1998/

This is the latest research on population growth. Released in 1998, it presents revised estimates and projections for the world population. Perhaps their most striking finding concerns the effect of AIDS/HIV on African population rates, especially in some sub-Saharan countries where one in four and one in five adults respectively are infected. Read the entire report; it's not as long as it looks, and it has some excellent tables and graphs.

Exercise 3: Demographics of an Aging Population
http://library.advanced.org/10120/cyber/extended/...

If fertility rates are truly declining, one consequence will be an aging population; that is as fewer young enter the population, the average age will increase. This has numerous implications. For example, as the population ages, health care costs are likely to increase, an issue you can examine at the Web site on The Looming Crisis: Meeting the Needs of an Aging Nation. But at the Demographics of an Aging Population site you can browse and discover the global implications of an aging population.

Reading 14. The Population Explosion is Over
http://www.merriam.uiuc.edu/question/rev3_B13.html

Finally, there is the question of whether or not the so-called population explosion is over. In this 1997 article from the New York Times Magazine, Ben J. Wattenberg argues that all the evidence points to the fact that there is no longer a population explosion and that the real concern is low and tumbling fertility rates. That discussion, he says, "is a step toward a near-Copernican shift in the way our species looks at itself. Never before have birthrates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long all around the world. The potential implications -- environmental, economic, geopolitical and personal -- are both unclear and clearly monumental, for good and for ill."