Population Growth: Fact or Myth?

The world today is filled with many ideas and philosophies; some fact, while others are mere opinion. Countless individuals believe most notions presented by people throughout the world are true, no matter what. For example, the statements “eating too much junk food will make you fat” and “Diet Coke is better for you than regular Coke” both seem to be a common truth. However, if one were to search it out they would find that Diet Coke is just as bad, or even worse for you than regular Coke.

 A more serious misconception across the globe is the idea that world population will always be growing. This is partly due to the “baby boom” of  1946-1964, a period where the United States experienced a drastic increase in birth rate. During this time 77 million babies were born in the U.S., and 450 million were born worldwide. In 1968, shortly after the baby boom, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote a book titled The Population Bomb. The novel declared that population growth was a negative thing and would eventually lead to limited resources and mass starvation. This book became widely popular and ignited a great fear of population growth in the citizens of many nations.

Dr. Ehrlich’s predictions did not and will not come true. This is due to a decrease in fertility rates. After the baby boom, people did not have nearly as many babies. In fact, in the U.S. fertility rates have not reached the Replacement Fertility Rate of 2.13 in quite some time. Many other nations are suffering the same fate. Why did the fertility rates fall? Four trends seem to have the answer:

•          The Industrial Revolution- Before the Industrial Revolution children were needed to help the family with chores and work. During the Industrial Revolution machines were being made that could do those chores for you. Thus, children weren’t as great of a need anymore. In fact, they became more of a burden that needed to be paid for.
•       The Women’s Revolution- During the Women’s Revolution women began to have the opportunity for a better education and a successful career. Thus, multiple women chose to follow a career rather than bear children. If they did decide to have children, it was later in life, so they had fewer children then they may have had at a younger age.
•        Sexual Revolution- The key element of the Sexual Revolution was the invention of birth control pills. These pills created a way for sex and marriage to become separate rather than a compound idea. Women could now control if they got pregnant so would have children less often. Also, cohabiting became more common, and a cohabiting couple generally has fewer children than a married couple.
•        Divorce Revolution- In the 1960's, divorce laws started to change and become much looser. For that reason, divorce rates started to spike. It became more of a risk to have multiple children because of the fear that marriage would end in divorce.

The decrease in fertility rate is hurting the world rather than helping the world. The baby boomers make up a large portion of our population and work force, and they are starting to retire. This is creating a problem. We don’t have enough people to replace them, causing a decrease in human capital, or the knowledge, skill, and information people have. This means that future people in the workforce will have to work harder for a pay that is no better than it is now. Also, as Baby Boomers are retiring, they are selling their mansions to younger buyers. The problem with this is that there are 60% more baby boomers selling houses than there are younger people buying them. Therefore, there will be an overflow of houses for sale with no one to buy them. The housing market will crash.

We need a solution. One possibility is increasing human capital. To do so, we need a higher population. Nations have gone to drastic measures trying to encourage parents to bear more children. A good sum of money has been offered to citizens in an effort to influence them to have more children. These bounties aren’t working. Europe has taken a different approach to solving the problem. They have started integrating family policies throughout their countries. Doing so has caused a slight increase in European fertility rates.

The family is essential in fixing this problem, yet the idea of family throughout the world is no longer what it needs to be. Stats have shown that children raised by a mother and a father bonded by marriage are much more likely to be confident and successful in life. Strong marriage is an almost rare occurrence in the world today. Therefore, to increase human capital and the quality of the world, we must first fix and strengthen families.

The information I discussed in this post was found on https://www.byutv.org/show/5e819b00-5e99-4bf4-931e-c154d3c2dc8d/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter .

Thanks for reading, and have a serendipitous day!