By nature, human beings can be pessimistic. But, depending on their political persuasion, people tend to focus on different things. Among the Progressive shibboleths in recent decades were concerns over overpopulation, exhaustion of natural resources and coming widespread famine. Data, however, tells a different story. The population growth is leveling off and food is more plentiful than before. The New York Times and the National Public Radio were forced to admit as much in two articles over the last couple of days.
On May 31, 2015, the New York Times published a story entitled “The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion.” The article admits that the planet is not facing a problem of overpopulation. In fact, due to increased prosperity around the world, women have access to more information, education, and career choices. Female empowerment combined with the massive improvements in healthcare and dramatically falling infant mortality rates, have led to total fertility rate plummeting from 5 babies per woman in the 1950s to 2.5 in 2010s.
To put it in the dry language of economics, as women’s earning potential increases, the opportunity cost of having babies increases as well. As such, more women chose to enter the labor force rather than stay at home and raise the children. The TFR of 2.5 babies per woman is still above the replacement rate of 2.1, but United Nations’ demographers predict that the world’s population will level off at 9 billion people and then start falling. That is already happening in a number of European countries. German population, for example, is predicted to decline from 80 million today to 71 million in 2060.