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Should Population be Controlled?

Given the impact of population change, is it in societies’ interests to control it? This chapter concentrates on the broader question of demographic ends. Demographic ends, or goals, concern policies that address a population’s growth rate, size and density. Economists, demographers and environmentalists are the principal players in this ‘numbers game’, in which natural resources, economic development/ growth and technological capabilities are especially salient elements. Normative judgements about the quality of life (the wider existential purpose served by managing numbers) are important, too, albeit often dismissed on the grounds that they are difficult to measure or quantify.

Because population control is usually associated with (‘neo-Malthusian’) efforts to limit fertility in order to reduce growth rates, the chapter mainly focuses on consequentialist arguments for anti-natalist initiatives. It is important to bear in mind, however, that even among advocates of population policies there are disagreements about their direction: that is, whether the aim should be fewer or more people, and thus whether national governments should pursue anti- or pro-natalist policies. This partly reflects the context-sensitive nature of changing demographic impacts, which vary as economic and environmental conditions alter. But it also expresses deeper disagreements about sustained versus limited growth, competing models of wealth creation and development, disputes over how best to achieve environmental sustainability and intergenerational justice, and conflicts over anthropocentric versus biocentric ontologies.

Contrary to some popular misconceptions, population control does not mean culling superfluous people. The aim is to reduce current birth rates in order that smaller future generations might live better. This was essentially Malthus’s point in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798): that elective (‘preventive’) checks on fertility are needed to avoid natural (‘positive’) checks later since overpopulation raises mortality rates (especially through famine). The temporal structure of such arguments is important but complicated. If the outcome of unregulated population expansion, and thus the longer-term cost of inaction, looks catastrophic, can the benefits of lower numbers justify even coercive means? Later, I will challenge this either/or formula as too simplistic. But my point here is that this classic political dilemma of means versus ends is exacerbated in the case of population growth by difficulties in establishing the severity, imminence and likelihood of future risks. Should the precautionary principle hold? Modelling data-rich scenarios is helpful but it can only inform, not resolve, such normative issues.

Any presumption that it is only, but always, anti-natalist policies that are coercive is also misplaced. It elides two facts: that on the one hand, many successful fertility-reduction programmes have been voluntary (in Thailand and Iran, for example) while also benefiting women; and that on the other, coercive pro-natalist policies which associate large and growing populations with advantageous economic, military or nationalist outcomes have also been prevalent. Romania, where large families effectively became state policy under Ceausescu’s regime during the 1980s, is one such example; French policy during the 1940s is another. Identifying coercive pro-natalist policies does not of course justify anti-natalist coercion, but it does correct a bias against population stabilization while underlining the importance of proceeding with caution whenever demographic goals are at stake.

Regardless of whether protagonists advocate policies to increase or diminish numbers, both must be distinguished from a position that rejects demographically motivated interventions, whatever their alleged benefits. This last position has three distinct yet mutually supportive strands. On the one hand are ethical arguments, which assume two main forms. First, there are libertarian or liberal approaches that deem it illegitimate for the state to interfere in people’s private lives. Their proponents might acknowledge threats from uncontrolled population growth yet still hold that they are overridden by the dangers of political intervention (including those of extending state power). Second are post-colonial arguments, by which intervention is rejected on the grounds that ‘the population problem’ does not reflect real biophysical conditions but is, rather, a discursive construction grounded in colonial power relations.1 These ethical objections are discussed in the next chapter. On the other hand there is a view that markets are better at generating optimal demographic outcomes than states, and carry fewer political risks. Because this latter strand of the non-interventionist position is still interested in demographic outcomes, it is explained below.

The demographic context

An important characteristic of population growth is that it occurs exponentially, such that apparently small growth rates (say, 2 per cent per annum) produce counter-intuitively large increases (in this case, doubling every 35 years). The larger the population, the more substantial its total becomes with each doubling. Following millennia of extremely slow increase, the growth rate started to increase significantly, first in Europe and then elsewhere, from the mid-eighteenth century. It took until 1804 for the world to acquire a billion, but a second billion had appeared by 1927 and a third by 1960. Calls for population control emerged amidst anxieties about a population explosion. Fortunately, negative feedback loops – that is, countervailing tendencies that suppress potential growth rates – have foreclosed the kind of staggering figures occasionally computed. The growth rate is slowing, having declined from 1.24 per cent p.a. in 2005 to 1.10 per cent in 2017, although this still yields some 83 million additional bodies each year.

The United Nations publishes World Population Prospects biennially. Drawing on country censuses and samples, it updates existing trends and revises future projections. Projections are not predictions but estimates, based on extrapolating from current trends and making plausible assumptions about their likely development. Uncertainty is reflected in the presentation of three principal variants, the medium version being the most widely cited and probable, but with the high and low variants also possible. Although variations in life expectancy and age composition also affect projected totals, the key difference between variants is the fertility rate: merely an average plus or minus half a child per woman over her lifetime. The medium-variant projection is predicated on an assumption that, worldwide, TFRs will converge at around replacement level (having risen slightly in the 83 lowest-fertility countries that currently exhibit sub-replacement rates). In 2010–15, the world TFR stood at 2.5, but this includes a rate of 4.3 in the 48 least developed, mainly African, countries (growing at 2.4 per cent per annum, with projected population doubling by 2050). Africa’s 2017 population of 1.26 billion is projected to reach 4 billion by 2100, with some nations experiencing three- or even fivefold increases, although a list of the nine countries where population growth is likely to be concentrated also includes India, Pakistan and the United States.

The 2017 revision holds with 95 per cent certainty that in 2100, world population will lie between 9.6 and 13.2 billion. Yet this range is substantial and the total has been increased in every revision since 2002. Should expected fertility decline falter, the high variant (16.5 billion by 2100) could transpire. On the other hand, should the world TFR fall more dramatically than anticipated, there is a reasonable chance of world population plateauing or even declining during the current century. This low-variant trajectory (equating to population stabilization) is to all intents and purposes the demographic goal supported by the international community. Its advantage is that the sooner population peaks, the lower the peak will be. Based on 2017 estimates, a peak of 8.8 billion mid-century could fall to 7.3 billion by 2100.

What is needed for this to occur? The main theoretical framework within which such issues are debated is demographic transition theory. This is the closest the discipline of demography comes to having an overarching narrative or model, and it is the basis for the UN’s relatively optimistic projections. In essence, the theory models a process of demographic change that is contemporaneous with and integral to modernization, from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility. Falling mortality (especially infant mortality) is identified as the catalyst of transition because this disrupts a relatively stable (pre-industrial) condition in which births and deaths are in equilibrium. Mortality decline rather than fertility increase is the trigger for unprecedented rates of population growth as living standards rise. Crucially, transition theory predicts that further modernization will result in fertility decline, although this is typically a more protracted process. The time lag between the two phases dictates how rapidly and for how long numbers will continue to rise. This is the most critical period for policy interventions but also the most challenging since efforts to curtail fertility usually begin at a stage of...