A depopulating world
Alok Tiwari
The big news on population front last week
was that population of China declined for the second successive year. In 2023,
the decline was by nearly 20 lakh people, more than twice the 8.5 lakh decline
seen in 2022, the first year it saw a decline. China is not alone in this. Much
of the developed world is seeing a significant fall in birthrates and
population. Japan and Russia are experiencing declining population for decades.
They have been joined by almost entire Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand,
and several emerging economies in Asia.
Even India has seen significant decline in
the growth rate over the last three decades from over two percent annually to
less than one percent. This too is contributed mostly by a handful of states in
north and northeast with the rest of the country at either replacement rate or
seeing a decline. High population growth is now seen only in African continent
and poorer countries of Asia and South America.
For about half-a-century the conventional
wisdom has been that if only we could control our population things would be
great. It would mean less demand for resources resulting in lower prices, less
supply of labour resulting in better wages, better education and health
services for all. It is even more important in a world faced with human-caused
climate change. Fewer human beings could only be good news, right? Well, yes
and no.
While it does appear that finally the world
has largely come to grips with the population problem, it turns out that
managing a declining population is almost as tough if not more than managing a
rising one. Multiple problems arise. A shrinking population is also an aging
one in which the proportion of older people increases sharply. This casts a
huge burden on fewer and fewer number of working population. Younger couples,
often single children themselves, must take care of two sets of parents.
Contributors to social security systems (working people) go down while
beneficiaries (older people) go up. Entire villages and regions begin to empty
out creating law and order problems and economic disruptions.
Even ecologically, fewer people are not
good news. Population shrinkage typically follows rising prosperity. It means
better living standards and much more demand on resources. Often population
declines very gradually while consumption rises quickly. This is good for
economy in the short term but bad for environment. Hence, hopes that lower
population would mean help in fighting climate change need to be tempered.
Coupled with these are worries about
cultural and ethnic decimation. Japan, Russia, Italy, and others despite seeing
steep population decline have restricted immigration over this fear. There are
anti-immigrant movements in countries like US, UK, and Canada that have tried
to tide over the labour shortage through immigration. While people want cheap
immigrant labour for their farms, factories, and warehouses, they do not want
outsiders to “spoil” their way of life. It also feeds xenophobia and all manner
of irrational fears about demographic change.
Hence, you do not find countries with
declining population celebrating. Instead, they want their people to have more
children. China’s one-child policy has quickly become three-children policy. It
and others give financial and other incentives to couples for having more children.
Thankfully, these measures do not work and birthrates in most places have
remained much lower than replacement levels. The main reason is that in a
modern society, one can do without too many children. At lower levels of
prosperity, more working hands mean more income. Also, children are a form of
social security. As people get more educated and richer, they have other means
to get these. In such society there is greater participation of women in
workforce, better access to contraceptives which also lowers birthrates. Also,
cost of raising children is also much higher. Government incentives, no matter
how generous, do not nearly counter all these factors.
So, what must the world do? There is no
doubt eventually fewer people is what the world needs from sheer sustainability
point of view. Even with rising per capital consumption there will eventually
come a point when lower population will mean lower demand on world resources.
That is the only way humans can survive on this planet. Sooner that point is
reached the better it is. This would inevitably mean facing disruptions and
pain in the short run. In fact, the governments’ effort to push up population
are to avoid this pain.
Richer nations need to shed their
xenophobia and welcome more immigrants, even at the cost of altering their
ethno-cultural-religious landscape. This would not only solve their labour
shortage but also provide opportunity to people still trapped in poverty
elsewhere in the world. But more importantly, we need to work on an economic
model that does not rely on perpetual growth. Of course, companies need to make
profits, but they do not need to go on increasing their profits
quarter-on-quarter. The economy needs to be ready for inevitable shrinkage in
some sectors. This is not new. Technological change has caused entire
industries to be wiped off. We survived that. We can survive de-growth caused
by lower population as well.
Instead of trying to keep villages and
towns alive at all costs, countries need to think about ceding unviable land
areas back to nature by incentivising relocation to more viable population
centres. This would help revive environment and be better earth’s non-human
inhabitants who have been often driven to extinction. Human ingenuity has
helped them come this far, though with disastrous consequences for planet and
its climate. The same can be used to heal the wounds they have caused for
decades.
This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Jan 31, 2024
Comments
Post a Comment