OUTGROWING THE EARTH
THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE IN AN AGE OF FALLING WATER TABLES AND RISING TEMPERATURES
LESTER BROWN
EARTHSCAN 2005
PART IV
Chapter 2: Stopping at Seven Billion (Cont.)
The demographic bonus
In contrast to these countries whose future is fading, countries that have quickly reduced birth rates are benefiting from what economic demographers have labeled a “demographic bonus.” When a country shifts quickly to smaller families, the number of young dependents – those who need nurturing and educating – declines sharply relative to the number of working adults. In this situation, household savings climb, investment rises, worker productivity increases, and economic growth accelerates. Since European countries did not experience the rapid population growth of today’s developing countries, and therefore no rapid fall in fertility, they never experienced a demographic bonus.
- When Japan cut its population growth rate in half between 1951 and 1958 it became the first country to benefit from this bonus.
- South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore followed shortly thereafter. These four so-called tiger economies, which enjoyed such spectacular economic growth during the late 20th century, each benefited from a rapid fall in birth rates and the demographic bonus that followed.
- China’s sharp reduction in its birth rate created a large demographic bonus and a population that saves more than 30% of its income for investment.
- The Population Action International study indicates that other countries with age structures now favorable to high savings and rapid economic growth include Sri Lanka, Mexico, Iran, Tunisia, and Viet Nam.
Two success stories
- Families that want to reduce family size quickly can do so. Two of the best examples of this are Thailand and Iran.
- Thailand’s success can largely be traced to one individual, Mechai Viravaidya, who eventually became known nationwide simply as Mechai. During the 1970s Mechai saw that if Thailand did not rein in its population growth, it would eventually be in serious trouble.
- He recognized early on that family planning, reproductive health, and contraception were topics that people needed to feel comfortable talking about.
- Today women in Thailand have access to a full range of family planning services and the population growth rate has fallen from 3% per year to 0.8%
- In scarcely a decade, Iran reduced its population growth from the world’s highest of nearly 4% a year to just over 1%.
- Between 1980 and 1988, Iran was continuously at war with Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini wanted large families to produce more soldiers.
- The population growth rate hit 4.4% in the early 1980s, close to the biological maximum and one of the highest ever recorded.
Overnight they launched a new program that quickly became one of the most comprehensive efforts to slow population growth ever adopted in any country. This program was not left to family planners alone. The government also mobilized the ministries of education and culture to help convince the public of the need to shift to smaller families and to slow population growth.
- The national female literacy rate climbed from roughly 25% in 1970 to over 70% today.
- Contraceptives, such as the pill, were free of charge. Iran became the first Muslim country to offer male sterilization.
- In Iran couples must take a two-day course in family planning and contraception in order to get a marriage license.
- Average family size has dropped from seven children to fewer than three. The population growth rate was cut in half from 1987 to 1994.
- Over the long term a sustainable population means two children per couple.
Eradicating poverty, stabilizing population
Stabilizing population is the key to maintaining political stability and sustaining economic progress. And the keys to stabilizing population are universal elementary-school education, basic health care, access to family planning, and, for the poorest of the poor countries, school lunch programs.
The United Nations has established universal primary school education by 2015 as one of its Millennium Development Goals. This means educating all children, but with a special focus on girls, whose schooling has lagged behind that of boys in almost all developing countries. The more education girls get, the fewer children they have. There is a relationship that cuts across all cultures and societies. As educational levels go up, fertility levels come down.
Closely related to universal primary education is basic health care, village level care of the most rudimentary kind. It includes rural clinics that provide childhood immunization for infectious disease, oral rehydration therapy to cope with dysentery, reproductive health care, and family planning services along the lines of Iran’s rural “health houses.” In the poorest of the poor countries, where infant mortality rates are still high, parents remain reluctant to have fewer children because there is so much uncertainty about how many will survive to adulthood to look after them.
School lunch programs are needed in poor countries for two reasons. One, they provide an incentive for poor children, often weakened by hunger, to make it to school. Two, once children are in school, having food helps them learn. If children are chronically hungry, their attention spans are short.
We have a stake in ensuring that countries everywhere move into stage three of the demographic transition. Countries that fall back into stage one are likely to be politically unstable – ridden with ethnic, racial, and religious conflict. These failed states are more likely to be breeding grounds for terrorists than participants in building a stable world order.
If world population continues to grow at 70 million or more per year, the number of people trapped in hydrological poverty and hunger will almost certainly grow, threatening food security, political stability, and economic progress. The only humane option is to move quickly to a two-child family and try to stabilize world population at closer to 7 billion than the 9 billion currently projected. Against this backdrop, the time has come for world leaders, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the President of the World Bank, and the President of the United States, to recognize publicly that the earth cannot support more than two children per family over the long term.
Data for figures and additional information can be found at www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/index.htm.
Chapter 3: Moving Up the Food Chain Efficiently