The Global Baby Bust

Phillip Longman

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004

Summary:  Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late.

Phillip Longman is Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the forthcoming The Empty Cradle (Basic Books, 2004), from which this article is adapted.

To cope with the diseases of affluence that make older workers less productive, rich societies must make greater efforts to promote public health. For example, why not offer reduced health care premiums to those who quit smoking, lose weight, or can demonstrate regular attendance in exercise programs? Why not do more to discourage sprawling, automobile-dependent patterns of development, which have adverse health effects including pollution, high rates of auto injuries and death, sedentary lifestyles, and social isolation? Modern, high-tech medicine, even for those who can afford it, does little to promote productive aging because by the time most people come to need it, their bodies have already been damaged by stress, indulgent habits, environmental dangers, and injuries. For all they spend on health care, Americans enjoy no greater life expectancy than the citizens of Costa Rica, where per capita health expenditure is less than $300.

In his 1968 bestseller "The Population Bomb," Paul Ehrlich warned, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Fortunately, Ehrlich's prediction proved wrong. But having averted the danger of overpopulation, the world now faces the opposite problem: an aging and declining population. We are, in one sense, lucky to have this problem and not its opposite. But that doesn't make the problem any less serious, or the solutions any less necessary.