SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR SCHOOLS Population growth The facts behind the figures Later in the day, the children’s organisation Plan India welcomed a new-born girl in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh as the seven billionth child. The choice was the result of a decision to highlight the problem of India’s ‘missing girls’. Sex-selective abortions and female infanticide are widespread in a society which places greater value on boys than girls. With 111 boys for every 100 girls, Uttar Pradesh has one of the highest rates of ‘missing girls’ in India. However, where there is no discrimination against girls, 105 boys per 100 girls is regarded as normal. Experts use population milestones to highlight the The United Nations Population Fund designated 31 challenges facing people in many parts of the world. For October 2011 as the day on which the world’s population instance, the lack of adequate food and clean drinking hit seven billion. In fact, no one knows the exact date of water, insecurity and conflict. the next population milestone. Many countries do not conduct regular censuses and figures are incomplete. Most of the population growth is taking place in The United States Census Bureau, in contrast to the UN, countries with high birth-rates, with the majority in estimated that the global population reached seven African countries. The populations of both India and billion in March 2012. China now exceed one billion3. But there is general agreement that the world’s Future estimates suggest that the world’s population population has been growing faster than ever before. will reach eight billion by 2025, exceeding nine billion by It took humanity until around 1800 to reach its first 2050 and ten billion by 21003. billion, and since the second half of the twentieth century, numbers have grown rapidly. In the last fifty But there is also general agreement that global years, the global population has more than doubled, population growth will continue to slow over the next 50 reaching six billion in 2000. It has taken only a dozen years because fertility has declined almost everywhere years to add another billion to reach the recent except sub-Saharan Africa. Having peaked at over 2 per milestone of seven billion1. cent a year in the 1960s, growth is currently around 1 per cent a year. It is projected to decline to below 0.1 per On current rates of population growth around 380,000 cent before 2100. babies are born every day, so there could be as many as 400,000 claimants to the title of the world’s seven The projections vary according to the anticipated rate of billionth person2. fertility, which fluctuates over time. High fertility would result in a global population of nearly 16 billion by 2100, The UN chose a baby in the Philippines to symbolically while low fertility would see a fall in the population of represent the seven billionth arrival. Danica May the same year to just over six billion3. Camacho was born in a Manila hospital just before midnight on 30 October. Government and UN officials The further into the future experts look, the wider the used the publicity to highlight the country’s population- gap between projections based on different fertility related problems. The Philippines has the highest rate of rates, and the less certain the estimates. childbirth in Asia, and teenage pregnancies are common. 1 The ESRC Research Centre for Population Change,cpc.geodata.soton.ac.uk/resources/downloads/PBoyle_7billion_31_Oct_2011.pdf 2 The Population Reference Bureau estimates 382,351,www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2011/world-population-data-sheet/data-sheet.aspx 3 The ESRC Research Centre for Population Change,cpc.geodata.soton.ac.uk/resources/downloads/PBoyle_7billion_31_Oct_2011.pdf 1 SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR SCHOOLS Population growth Population management: The key issues Talk of a global population problem can be misleading. In richer, more industrialised countries, the challenge The components that make up the world’s population lies at the other end of the spectrum: how to increase growth — fertility and mortality — are subject to the fertility rate in the face of an ageing population. fluctuations over time. As there is no fixed limit to the As people have smaller families and live longer due numbers the planet can support, many experts argue to improved health and living standards, the number that it makes more sense to consider the ability of of births is falling below the number of deaths. With societies to provide for their people. the number of people capable of working and taking on caring responsibilities shrinking, governments are Of the seven billion who currently inhabit the planet, worried about how they will provide for an elderly around a billion overeat, a billion go hungry and population. another billion are malnourished. Taking into account the amount of food wasted among more affluent As a result of the greying of Europe, some countries are populations, the world already produces enough to adopting ‘pro-natalist’ policies which encourage people sustain at least nine billion people. to have children. The size of population that can be sustained in any In the first half of the twentieth century, the pro- region varies according to local circumstances such as natalist policies adopted by Germany, Spain and Italy geography and climate. Political and economic factors were associated with politically dubious attempts to also affect the production and distribution of food; as manipulate the population. But modern France has put aid agencies point out, famine is often due to man- in place a wide range of family-friendly measures that made causes such as conflict. appear to have boosted the country’s fertility rate while promoting the position of women. Population issues are also bound up with social and cultural expectations to do with family size, the use of Sweden, meanwhile, has chosen to avoid explicitly- contraception and the role of women. labelled pro-natalist measures while pursuing gender equality policies likely to help maintain the fertility rate. Nonetheless, there is an emerging consensus that But at 1.98 in 2010, the fertility rate remains below stabilising the global population is desirable. This means replacement level1. maintaining the fertility rate at ‘replacement level’: an average of 2.1 births per woman. This would be enough Whichever approach is taken, the complexity of factors to replace each parent, plus a little more to compensate affecting fertility rates makes it difficult to be certain of for early mortality and those who remain childless. the impact of any policy. Many countries use this as a benchmark against which to measure their own fertility. But there is less agreement as to how to go about achieving this stability, particularly among governments. Some states have employed strongly interventionist measures in an attempt to control their populations. These are often controversial because of their human cost, especially to women and girls. One notable example is China’s one child policy, which is thought to be responsible for abortions of female foetuses and the enforced sterilisation of child-bearing women. 1 Eurostat, epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/population/data/main_tables 2 SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR SCHOOLS Population growth Case study: China’s one-child policy In 1979, China introduced the controversial one-child policy as part of range of measures aimed at reducing the growing population. Previously, Chinese governments had encouraged large families to increase the workforce needed to promote the country’s economic growth. But in the early 1970s, with growth rates averaging five births per woman, the government feared that the population would soon become unsustainable. Family planning officials monitored births and large fines were levied on any couples who succeeded in having more than one child. Other punishments included the confiscation of property or loss of jobs. There is evidence that many women of child-bearing age have undergone forced sterilisations, while girl-children are abandoned or put up for adoption. The policy seems to have had some impact on the birth rate, as the fertility rate in China fell from around three births per woman in 1980 to around 1.6 in 20081. The Chinese government claims it has meant 300-400 million fewer births than the country would otherwise have had. This claim is contested by some academics who argue that the fertility rate started to fall in the mid 1970s before the introduction of the one-child policy when the government began to encourage delayed marriages and longer intervals between births. But thirty years after the policy was introduced, the gender balance of the Chinese population has been upset. In a society which places greater value on boys, it is the female foetuses that tend to be aborted and the girls who are neglected or abandoned. By 2000, the sex ratio had risen to 120 males per 100 females at birth, and 130 in some provinces. As a result, many Chinese men have difficulties in finding wives. In the west, many couples are adopting Chinese girls. There is also concern about how China will support an ageing population given the dwindling number of working people and carers. Although officially still in force, the one-child policy has been relaxed in recent years. Couples can now apply to have a second child if their first child is a girl, or if both of them are ‘only children’. 1 Estimates by the World Bank, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN. 3 SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR SCHOOLS Population growth Case study: Singapore’s dual policy Singapore is unusual in that it has introduced The government was particularly concerned by the fact government-led policies aimed at both reducing and that the population’s university-educated women were increasing the population over the course of a few favouring careers over having children, with the result decades.