The new US ambassador for global women's issues has assured the UN of the Obama administration's "deep commitment" to a its blueprint for slowing the population explosion and empowering women. However, Melanne Verveer highlighted the importance of educating girls rather than "reproductive rights". The theory is that educated women choose to have fewer children.

Ms Verveer said President Barack Obama's decision to contribute US$50 million to the UN Population Fund for family planning, an increase of more than 100% over the last US contribution, in 2001, "will send an unambiguous signal to the world that the US supports the Cairo Platform for Action."

Verveer, who was chief of staff to Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was first lady, was speaking at a birthday luncheon for 80-year-old Dr Nafis Sadik, the former head of the UN Population Fund. Dr Sadik was secretary-general of the Cairo conference back in 1994.

The new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, recently told a Planned Parenthood "that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women's rights and empowerment is going to be a key to the foreign policy of this administration." She stressed the link between women's rights and democracy.

Taking up this theme, Dr Sadik said: "I hope that the US diplomatic policy, defense policy and development policy are all going to focus on the rights of women and make that the underpinning for anything else that they may do in a developing country," she said.

She also decried "the distortions of religion" that deny women their human rights and "bigots" who fall back on cultural values to deny rights to girls and women, especially on matters of reproductive and sexual health. (Hmmm. I wonder whom she was talking about?)

In Sadik's honor, the United Nations Foundation, which sponsored the lunch, announced that it was establishing a fund to help some of the more than 600 million adolescent girls in the developing world.

One of the self-appointed goals of Demography Is Destiny is highlighting loopy anti-human predictions for posterity. Most of them come from the UK, God bless the Brits, but lately I’ve found a few in the US as well. This one comes an Earth Day message from the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse, New York. Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, they say, followed closely by climate change and sustainable energy.

"Overpopulation is the only problem," said Dr Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist who studies the Adirondacks. "If we had 100 million people on Earth or better, 10 million, -- no others would be a problem." (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.) He has made his own commitment and has decided not to have any children.

The ESF scientists aver that they love people to death, but there ought to be a lot fewer of them. "Individuals are the ones that are associated with producing various pollutants and the more individuals there are, the more pollutants there are," says Dr Myron Mitchell.

Dr Hall insists, "I’d wouldn’t go out and kill anybody. That’s not the point. Let’s look at what the problem is." And the problem needs a drastic solution: population control, a bit shop-soiled maybe after scandals in the 70s and 80s, but still the only sharp knife in the drawer.

"It has to be a central issue regarding any type of environmental aspects of controlling pollution and climate change. Population control has to be part of the solution," Dr Mitchell told North Country Public Radio.

Who is going to care for Canadian senior citizens in 20 years’ time? The changing ratio of elderly to children projected by Statistics Canada is sobering reading. Derek Miedema, of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, warns in a recent newsletter that the government has to begin preparing for a demographic winter now.

... by 2015, seniors will outnumber children in Canada. To put a finer point on it: in 2005 Statistics Canada estimated that there were 135 children per 100 seniors in Canada. In 2031, they estimate that there will be between 54 and 71 children per 100 seniors depending on how the population grows or declines between now and then.

The traditional structure of Canada’s population isn’t quite turned on it’s head, but it’s shoulders are getting sore.

The aging of Canada’s society hasn’t happened suddenly, or for one simple reason. Canadians are living longer; this will mean more people live longer past the age of 65. Families are choosing to have fewer children, and later in life. This means both fewer caregivers for our seniors and the eventual need for today’s children to juggle the needs of their own kids and their parents simultaneously.

The last time that Canadians reproduced themselves – a birthrate of 2.1 – was in 1971. Currently the birthrate is about 1.6. "An average of approximately 100,000 abortions per year since 2000 hasn’t helped matters," notes Miedma.

Nor will immigration help to rejuvenate the Canada’s demographic profile. According to James Bissett, former head of the Immigration Foreign Service, "No credible demographer believes the aging issue can be solved through immigration."

The great unanswered question is: how are we going to cope with massive numbers of elderly? "We know from current healthcare costs that the government alone cannot sustain the current level of care on the wages of fewer working citizens," says Miedma. So families and communities will have to share more of the burden.

It’s quite sensible. But who is working out the details of this huge social change. Will the single child of aged parents be able to cope? Willing to cope? Will ambitious young workers cheerfully pay more tax to care for other people’s parents? Canada is hardly the only country to face this problem. But the response of governmetns is beginning to look like the post-invasion planning for the Iraq War. ~ Institute of Marriage and Family Canada; hat tip to Jennifer Roback Morse

In the immortal words of George H.W. Bush, the American economy is "in deep doo-doo". But why? There’s no simple answer, of course, but remarkably few people have taken a long-term view and examined the demographic background to the recession. That’s why "Demographics & Depression", by First Thing’s associate editor David P. Goldman is essential reading.

Here’s his argument in a nutshell.

"The declining demographics of the traditional American family raise a dismal possibility: Perhaps the world is poorer now because the present generation did not bother to rear a new generation. All else is bookkeeping and ultimately trivial. This unwelcome and unprecedented change underlies the present global economic crisis. We are grayer, and less fecund, and as a result we are poorer, and will get poorer still—no matter what economic policies we put in place."

Housing is one of the main pillars of the economy. In the early 70s most of American housing was occupied by traditional families of two parents and their children. The younger demographic profile of the US also supported a robust economy. However, in the 80s, despite the apparent triumph of Reagan-led conservatism, family size kept shrinking and families kept disintegrating. Nowadays, the two-parent family with children is becoming a niche demographic. This has had immense financial implications.

Why? Because housing has doubled since the 70s, even though the number of traditional families stayed about the same. The new homes are occupied by single parents or singles. So for a generation, the US has built up a huge surplus of large-lot single family homes.

"Demand for large-lot single family homes... will slump from 56 million today to 34 million in 2025—a reduction of 40 percent. There never will be a housing price recovery in many parts of the country. Huge tracts will become uninhabited except by vandals and rodents."

In any other country, this situation would have been unsustainable, but the immense productivity of the US because of its stable and skilled workforce made it a magnet for the world’s capital. Thus Americans were awash with cheap money from ageing Europeans and Japanese, and lately from China.

Now, however, overseas investors may start investing elsewhere – in countries with a younger and more dynamic workforce, like India or China. Americans should prepare for a poorer future in which they have to work harder, for longer, for lower wages.

"It was always morally wrong for conservatives to attempt to segregate the emotionally charged issues of public morals from the conservative growth agenda. We know now that it was also incompetent from a purely economic point of view. Without life, there is no wealth; without families, there is no economic future. The value of future income streams traded in capital markets will fall in accordance with our impoverished demography. We cannot pursue the acquisition of wealth and the provision of upward mobility except through the reconquest of the American polity on behalf of the American family."

What should be the weapons of the Reconquista? Goldman offers several financial strategies to bolster American families, on the assumption that they are the bedrock of the US economy: cut taxes on families, Shift part of the burden of social insurance to the childless, make child-related expenses tax deductible and change immigration laws to welcome skilled migrants. There’s nothing dramatically new here, but he hopes that the financial crisis will help people to focus more clearly on the problem.

"American voters may be more disposed to consider fundamental problems than they have been for several generations. The message that our children are our wealth, and that families are its custodian, might resonate all the more strongly for the manifest failure of the alternatives."

Goldman’s article is stronger on economic analysis than on healing the culture. But it is a start. His ideas need to be spread far and wide. ~ hat tip to Eamonn Keane

I have been reading Peter Singer’s latest book, The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty. Yes, that Peter Singer, the animal rights philosopher whose ethical system encompasses infanticide and euthanasia. While I have some grave reservations about his reasoning, his conclusions seem unobjectionable. His main point is that the wealthy West can end world poverty if it really wants to by giving effective aid to the developing world. To drive his point home, he describes a number of wonderful projects which cost little and change lives forever, like drilling wells for waterless villages in Ethiopia (cost US$10 per user) or curing the horror of obstetric fistulas in Africa (cost $450 per woman).

Ending poverty has become a crusade for Singer and this book could make him into a Mother Teresa figure in some circles. I’m not sure what the connection is with his radically utilitarian philosophy – perhaps he uses donations to Oxfam to offset his dark vision of human dignity. He has often lectured on the topic and is used to batting back hard balls from cynical listeners. Often, he says, people sneer, “Saving the lives of poor people now will only mean that more will die when the population eventually crashes because our planet has long passed its carrying capacity.”

Much to my surprise, Singer demolishes that objection.

But the problem is not that we are producing too little food; rather we’re not eating the food we grow. Nearly 100 million tonnes of grain per year is turning into biofuel that goes into American gas tanks... The world is not running out of food. The problem is that we – the relatively affluent – have found a way to consume four or five times as much food as would be possible if we were to eat the crops we grow directly. (pages 131, 132)

He winds up with the catchy slogan: “while [Malthus] envisaged the growth of populations leading to mass famines, so far the only looming danger is mass vegetarianism” (page 132). I am no fan of Professor Singer, but at least he has not been swept away by doomsday scenarios.

Before we turn to more optimistic topics, let's take a look at the website of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), whose creed is "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health." Are they serious? Not serious, exactly, but "vehement": "Returning Earth to its natural splendor and ending needless suffering of humanity are happy thoughts -- no sense moping around in gloom and doom."

Serious or not, someone has put a lot of work into the site. While not pretty, there are versions in 17 languages, including Catalan and Slovenian, both languages which are in danger of dying out with their population -- evidence, perhaps, that VHEMT is on the job.

Naturally, so dramatic a solution to environmental problems raises a few troublesome questions -- and all are answered comprehensively on the website. For example, "Won't another species come along and do the same thing after we're gone?"

It isn't impossible that another species will come along and do as we are, just highly unlikely... E.O. Wilson wrote, "Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign form of animal made the breakthrough." We have an opportunity to prove we can behave benignly despite our biological heritage. We may never be able to stop fighting with each other, exploiting the natural world, or giving in to other primal urges, but we can stop breeding and eventually our nature will be history.

  The most frequently asked question is "Why don't you just kill yourself?" VHEMT has a very measured response to this provocative query:

It’s hard enough just to get people to consider not breeding. Advocating suicide, by any method besides old age, would be a particularly hard sell... Shortening an existing person’s life by a few decades doesn’t avoid as many years of human impact as not creating a whole new life -- one with the potential for producing more of us. We have a responsibility to help the world as much as we’re able before we die. Leaving the work for others would be irresponsible. VHEMT is a cause to live for not to die for.

There's lots more, including links to a Facebook page and designs for tatoos for those who are truly committed. Definitely a site which deserves to be much better known. ~ Thanks to Richard Umbers.

Sir David Attenborough, the well-known natural history documentary film-maker, has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust. The 82-year-old finds the growth in human population "frightening".

"I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology -- behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers. I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. That’s why I support the OPT, and I wish the environmental NGOs would follow their lead, and spell out this central problem loud and clear.”

The Optimum Population Trust describes itself as the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. Its chair, Roger Martin, said in an accompanying press release that " a bizarre coalition of the religious right and the liberal left" is pressuring governments and environmental NGOs to ignore the need to limit population growth humanely through contraception rather than inhumanely through famine, disease and war. ~ Optimum Population Trust press release, Apr 13

The decline in fertility in Middle Eastern Islamic countries -- including Iran -- is "amazing", says the head of the UN's population division, Hania Zlotnik. Eight of the 15 countries that experienced the biggest drop in population growth since 1980 are in the Middle East.

“In most of the Islamic world it’s amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened,’’ Ms. Zlotnik told reporters at a population conference this week. High birth rates in the Middle East are now an exception. “Even in cultures that are Muslim, advances of a very big quantity can be made, if the government has enough commitment to provide the services and the social infrastructure that validates those changes.”

The UN appears to believe that nearly all of the drop in fertility is due to the implementation of its policy of government-sponsored drives for contraception. As it says in a recent policy brief, "Expansion of access to family planning requires government commitment and effective action to disseminate information about contraceptive methods and the benefits of smaller families. "

This seems unlikely, since fertility is declining everywhere, even without government programs. But the decline in the Middle East certainly does defy stereotypes about Muslim fertility. From 1975 to 1980, the fertility rate in Iran was about 7. But by 2010, it will probably drop to less than 2, that is, less than replacement, according to recent UN statistics. The other Arab countries in the top 15 include Tunisia, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Kuwait, Qatar and Morocco. Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the region, has resisted the trend, with a fertility rate of about 5.

Fertility is a political issue in the Palestinian territories and Israel. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it has fallen from about 7 in 1980 to about 5. The corresponding rates for Israel are about 3.4 to 2.8 -- although that includes Arab Israelis.

Readers of a New York Times blog entry on this topic were jubilant: "good news... this report makes my day..." and so on. However, Philip Longman points out in a recent article in USA Today that a rapid decline in fertility leads to rapid ageing a generation later:

"Under the grip of militant Islamic clerisy, Iran has seen its population of children implode. Accordingly, Iran's population is now aging at a rate nearly three times that of Western Europe. Maybe the middle aging of the Middle East will bring a mellower tone to the region, but middle age will pass swiftly to old age." ~ New York Times Dot Earth, Apr 3

This is just a bit of fun for lovers of doggerel. Normally we don’t publish doggerel, or even poetry for that matter, in MercatorNet, but the editor does not feel bound to follow the rules.

Ballade of Certain Demographers

Chapter 2 of Paul Ehrlich’s 1995 book about the coming crisis of widespread starvation, The Stork and the Plow, is entitled “The Only Animal That Practices Birth Control”.

The curve leaps up the coloured graph
In septicaemic veins of red
As forecasted by all the math
And what Professor Ehrlich said –
Of all the fauna from A to Z,
Raven, tiger, chimp or mole,
We stand alone: we’re specially bred –
Man’s unique trait is birth control.

Whilst inspecting the unknown species,
Blind demographers probe and jab it,
Ruffling ears and smelling faeces,
Disputing where it might inhabit.
At length the judgement: just a rabbit
With a philoprogenitive soul.
It lacks our contraceptive habit:
Man’s unique trait is birth control.

Prof. Ehrlich stands behind the dais,
Exhorting readers in accents shrill:
“The world is quaking on the abyss
Without the condom and the pill.”
Their frenzied cheering spreads a chill –
I’d rather have an immortal soul.
This latest wisdom makes me ill:
Man’s unique trait is birth control.

Dear Reader, In ages past, the truth was veiled
About the secrets of the soul
But now it’s everywhere retailed:
Man’s unique trait is birth control.

Even as it clings to its one-child policy, China’s one-party government is having to face seriously negative outcomes from at least three decades of enforced low fertility. Research results just published in the British Medical Journal by two Chinese academics and another from University College, London, sound a dire warning about sex ratio imbalances that will affect China’s social and economic life for decades to come.

Looking at a 1 per cent sample of the national population under the age of 20 (4.765 million people), the researchers found that in 2005, males exceeded females by more than 32 million, and more than 1.1 million excess births of boys occurred in that year. “China will see very high and steadily worsening sex ratios in the reproductive age group over the next two decades,” they predict. “Enforcing the ban on sex selective abortion could lead to normalisation of the ratios.”

Of course, Beijing has no problem with abortion as a means of controlling the population; it is now widely recognised -- even among China’s western cheerleaders -- that party officials often force women to undergo abortions when they are caught in violation of the population policy. But when couples use ultrasound followed by abortion to ensure that they have a son, it’s a different story; now it’s a crime against a harmonious society. The researchers say that “sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males”.

It does not take much imagination to foresee the disharmony likely to be created by tens of millions of men unable to find spouses in their own communities. Will the government encourage them to “import” brides from other countries? But which other countries, when most of China’s neighbours are either in the same boat or have such low fertility that governments will resist any poaching of their women. Already there are reports of trafficking to provide women for rural bachelors.

An accompanying editorial in BMJ by another Chinese academic admits that the study confirms that the one-child policy is “partially responsible” for sex ratio imbalances that rise as high as 160:100 (males to females) for second order births in nine provinces. Ironically, this is largely the result of a variation on the policy that allows rural couples a second child if the first is a girl. (The sex ratio at birth was close to normal for first order births.) But the editorial also blames traditional son preference, and it tries to mitigate the effects of the one-child policy by suggesting that the Chinese were voluntarily reducing their fertility before it was instituted. It ends on an upbeat note:

  China’s high ratio of males to females would have persisted if attitudes towards female offspring had not changed.7 Encouragingly, it seems that the tradition of preferring sons is shifting with the socioeconomic changes that come with urbanisation and industrialisation. For example, more and more young women in the cities claim to prefer a small family, and—more importantly—they have no preference for one sex over the other. Indeed, Zhu and colleagues report a decrease in the male to female ratio for the 2005 cohort, which may indicate the beginning of a reduction in the male to female sex ratio for the future.

  South Korea has managed to reduce a sex ratio imbalance in combination with very low fertility, so why not China?