Population Growth Headed for Turn-Around

The Earth's capacity to sustain human population growth depends largely upon the natural ecosystem's ability to simply sustain human life. It is not the number of human beings that threatens the Earth's balance, so much as the destructive habits and practices of human beings. The popular conception that populations are growing exponentially all over the world is a fallacy. Though the United States has reached the 300 million milepost, many countries are actually experiencing population shrinkage. In fact, as more nations are comprised of increasingly aged societies, it is population shortage that now worries demographic experts.

Though the overall global population has not completed its cycle of increase, an unforeseen demographic phenomena is taking place all over the world. Many country's native born are not reproducing at a rate fast enough to replace themselves. These countries include Russia, Japan, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe, clusters of Latin America, parts of India, and even the United States. China is not reproducing at a rate high enough to replace current populations, and because of the long term consequence of population controls and female infanticide, as well as the high rate of suicide among Chinese women, Chinese men of a marrying age will outnumber women by up to 50 million in the next decade. Populations in China are forecasted to undergo a staggering decline in the immediate years to come.

Additionally, though South Africa looks to be expanding, demographic information regarding Sub-Saharan countries may be misleading. Like the light from a star that has already gone out, current statistics which represent a 1.8 % increase in populations of Sub-Saharan Africa rely heavily upon regular reproduction rates. The HIV and AIDS epidemic killed 2.1 million adults and children in 2006. 24.7 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are infected with the virus and many will die during their reproductive years. Additionally, nearly one in four babies born to mothers with HIV have the virus transmitted to them at birth. Most of these children do not live to the age of five. Current demographic projections for Africa do not account for the scope of the AIDS epidemic and its effect on the population.

Though AIDS and cultural influences in China are causing population shrinkage in those countries, in westernized civilizations such as Canada, European nations and the United States, population decrease is spurred by sociological factors. There are two main drives behind lower birthrates in these countries: The first and most obvious factor is that women are having fewer children. Why is this a factor in westernized culture? There is a direct link between education and lower birth rates. Educated societies implement birth-control more widely than less developed countries do. Educated women also tend to have children later in life than their counterparts. This is the second sociological factor. There are also economic reasons behind the shift from large to small families. In an agricultural society, children are invaluable to the labor intensive occupation of farming. More children equal more family members to work the land. In contrast, children in a technological society represent great expense. It takes a good deal of energy and money to raise and educate children who will be competitive in a technologically driven work-force. A majority of women in urbanized societies join the work force also, so many women are choosing to balance their careers with child raising. It is not surprising that working women opt to have fewer children, since their energies are divided between career and home.

With these factors in mind, how is it possible that the population in the United States continues to grow? Population growth in the United States is due largely to immigration. "Not only does the United States accept more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined, but these recent arrivals tend to have more children than established residents- until, as their descendants attain affluence and education, the birthrates of these Americans also drop below replacement levels." (Joel Garreau, The Smithsonian, October 06)

Population shrinkage may spell widespread economic difficulty as care and support of the elderly become the primary problems in increasingly aged populations. Since human populations are shifting toward decrease as opposed to increase, the actual number of human beings will not overwhelm the Earth's environment. Our treatment of the Earth's atmosphere has done damage to the ecosystem, and this damage will not threaten the Earth so much as it will directly impact human beings. Green house gas emissions, destruction of algae and tropical rainforest, along with consumer tendencies that deplete the Earth's rich pool of biodiversity, these factors all have the effect of altering the environment which human's require to exist. It is not only possible but probable that human beings will damage their environment to such a degree that they ensure their own extinction.

Life will most likely continue beyond the rise and fall of man, just as it has throughout the millions of years preceding him. Life on Earth has an uncanny way of working around wide-spread catastrophic change, as evidenced by the continuation of species through Ice Ages, volcanic upheaval, flood and climate change. What human beings primarily threaten when we damage the environment is the Earth's current variety of species; which is to say that our current environmental practices greatly endanger ourselves.

Sources:
Presence of Mind; 300 Million and Counting, Smithsonian Magazine, Joel Garreau (October 2006)
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/34 31156.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A262 52-2004Jun8.