David Bloom, via Project Syndicate

August 16, 2011

CAMBRIDGE – The world is in the midst of the great­est demo­graphic upheaval in human his­tory. Although the human race took per­haps one mil­lion years to reach one bil­lion peo­ple (around the year 1800), we have been adding suc­ces­sive bil­lions every 10–20 years since 1960. The world’s pop­u­la­tion now stands at seven bil­lion and is pro­jected to reach 9.3 bil­lion by 2050. In other words, between now and 2050, the world is likely to add to its pop­u­la­tion almost as many peo­ple as pop­u­lated the entire planet in 1950. Or think of it as adding another China and another India. Feed­ing, cloth­ing, hous­ing, and oth­er­wise pro­vid­ing for this mas­sive net addi­tion to the global pop­u­la­tion is one of the main chal­lenges fac­ing humankind.

If we use as our guide aver­age mate­r­ial progress over the course of cen­turies, it might seem that neces­sity will again serve as the mother of inven­tion, and that we will meet the pop­u­la­tion chal­lenge, just as we have met pre­vi­ous chal­lenges, through tech­no­log­i­cal and insti­tu­tional inno­va­tion. But long-term aver­ages can mask sig­nif­i­cant volatil­ity over time and vari­a­tion across coun­tries. We know for cer­tain that there is great risk in the pop­u­la­tion growth that lies ahead, as nearly all of it will occur in the world’s most eco­nom­i­cally, polit­i­cally, socially, and envi­ron­men­tally frag­ile countries.

A fail­ure to absorb large num­bers of peo­ple into pro­duc­tive employ­ment could lead to mass suf­fer­ing and myr­iad cat­a­stro­phes. The con­tin­u­a­tion of extreme cross-country income inequal­ity could deter inter­na­tional coöper­a­tion, stalling or even revers­ing glob­al­iza­tion, despite its poten­tial to improve everyone’s stan­dard of liv­ing. Rapid pop­u­la­tion growth also tends to accel­er­ate the deple­tion of envi­ron­men­tal resources both locally and glob­ally, and can per­ma­nently under­mine the prospects for their recov­ery. Some devel­op­ing coun­tries have addressed these pop­u­la­tion chal­lenges well. For exam­ple, the East Asian “Tigers” cut their birth rates pre­cip­i­tously in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and used the result­ing demo­graphic breath­ing room to stun­ning advan­tage through judi­cious edu­ca­tion and health poli­cies, sound macro­eco­nomic man­age­ment, and care­ful regional and global eco­nomic engagement.

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David E. Bloom is Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics and Demog­ra­phy at the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health.

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