November Archive

How many people have ever lived?

Michael Cook | 25 November 2009

How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently.

Africa passes billion mark

Michael Cook | 23 November 2009

A few interesting figures from the United Nations Population Fund report stand out.

No people, no climate change, says UN Population Fund

Michael Cook | 23 November 2009

From year to year, population grows at a glacial pace, so it’s tough job to bang the drum about over-population in a glossy annual report year after year. From a public relations point of view, the solution is to pick a trendy angle. The theme of the 2009 State of the World Population Report is women and climate change.

Is climate change killing children?

Michael Cook | 18 November 2009

What is the biggest killer of children in the developing world?

Japan slowly cruising into financial shipwreck

Michael Cook | 16 November 2009

Is Japan headed for financial meltdown because of decades of below replacement-level birth rates? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that doom is nigh in a recent column in the London Sunday Telegraph. He quotes a number of economists

The myth of Nigeria’s over-population

Adebowale Oriku | 13 November 2009

I have heard it parroted for as long as I can’t remember that Nigeria’s hyperpopulation is one of the reasons the country is failing. And from the first time I heard this flawed reasoning I have always countered it, even when my views had not even been mellowed with data, statistics and considerable knowledge of political economy. The problem with the notion of high population is not so much that it is erroneous as that it might give Nigeria’s misrulers something to blame for their slimy utter badness

A breathless moment in the history of reproductive rights

Michael Cook | 12 November 2009

The population control lobby is far from dead. There still are highly influential academics who fervently believe that increasing aid for population control (aka reproductive rights, women’s health, safe and legal abortion) is absolutely necessary. Without it, the world will turn into an over-heated, war-torn slum heaped with festering mountains of garbage. This is the message that comes through loud and clear in a special issue of an influential British journal...

Is youth a danger to democracy?

Michael Cook | 11 November 2009

Democracy is a romantic notion; youth are romantic; QED, youth must be democratic. Not so, say some demographers. Richard Cincotta, a consultant in US intelligence and defence, will be explaining his theory about the "youth bulge" in developing countries on PRB Discuss Online tomorrow evening. Could be something to check out.

Europeans too selfish to have children, says Chief Rabbi

Michael Cook | 11 November 2009

It’s not very often that you find an eminent public figure who combines shrewd political observation with philosophical depth. But the other evening Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, who entered the House of Lords last week as Lord Sacks of Aldgate, proved that he is such a person. In a speech at Demos, a theological thinktank in London, he examined the deep cultural reasons behind the decline in the British birthrate. The last paragraph is the best.

The Economist swings ‘round on population

Michael Cook | 10 November 2009

The message is finally getting through: the population bomb has fizzled out and fertility is falling everywhere in the world. This is the cheerful message delivered in the October 29 issue of The Economist. If the world’s leading news magazine has finally swung around, the day is not far behind when population controllers will be unemployed.