Demographic Bonus
Access to reproductive health care brings far-reaching benefits to individuals, families, and whole societies. When a woman can choose the timing of her pregnancies, her education is less likely to be cut short by early motherhood. Female education and family planning reduce risks to child and maternal health and boost women's chances of economic advancement. Smaller family sizes can help raise families out of poverty.
When fertility declines quickly, reducing the number of young dependents relative to working-age adults, countries can experience what is known as the demographic bonus. Governments can spend more per person on public services, families can spend more on each child, and more money is available to invest in economic development. This "bonus" can kick-start a nation's economy -- it contributed, for instance, to the rapid economic development of several Asian countries, including South Korea and Taiwan, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some industrial countries are becoming concerned about aging populations. Japan, for example, has nearly doubled its share of the population aged 65 and over in the past 20 years. In industrial countries as a group, the share of the population aged 65 and over is expected to increase from 16-26% between now and 2050.
In contrast, the youthfulness of populations remains a challenge for many developing countries. In developing countries as a group, almost 40% of the population is under the age of 20. Countries with large populations of young people and poor employment prospects are more prone to violence.
Environmental Impact
As the world's population grows, less land and water are available for each person. Poor people, who often depend more immediately on natural resources and are less able to compete for dwindling supplies, bear the heaviest burden.
Meanwhile, rapidly growing populations stress their own local environments. In fast-growing Yemen, the population has increased four-fold over the last 40 years while the overpumping of aquifers has helped shrink the country's grain harvest by one third. In Pakistan, the pressures of a large and fast-growing population have contributed to widespread deforestation and soil degradation, making the historic flooding events of the last two years even more destructive.
U.N. population projections don't consider how the environmental problems we create, such as water scarcity and climate change, may limit our ability to grow. Whether we are able to sustain human civilization depends on not only our numbers, but also the rate at which we consume the earth's resources and create waste. At the global level, we are already far overshooting the earth's capacity to support us, even as some 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty.
Another 2 billion people may be added to the world population by mid-century, many of them in places where hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation are already taking a high toll. Supporting the world's human population will mean eliminating poverty, transitioning to an economy that is in sync with the earth, and securing every person's health, education, and reproductive choice.
If we do not voluntarily stabilize population, we risk a much less humane end to growth as the ongoing destruction of the earth's natural systems catches up with us.
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by Brigid Fitzgerald Reading, Earth Policy Institute.
