In November the global population will grow past 8 billion people, according to the UN.
Back in the day Bill Mollison, when he wrote the Designers Manual talked about the importance of limiting population and consumption. After the following exploration I will return to this near the end of this article.
Coincidences don’t mean that one thing is the cause of another. We can have non-causal correlations, two or more things that we see happening together but where one isn’t the cause of the other.
All over the world women’s reproductive rights (and rights in general) are either being denied, taken away or challenged. Abortion is illegal or highly constrained in an increasing number of countries or states.
At the same time .….
A lot of countries nowadays have lower fertility rates than before, for a stable population the figure widely talked about is 2.3 children per woman. Anything below that rate means that the overall global population is getting smaller and is called sub-replacement fertility. More than half of the world’s countries have reproduction rates of below 2.3. The global fertility rate has been declining since the 1960’s. As a consequence numerous governments are expressing worries that their citizens aren’t producing enough babies.
It seems a curious that at a time when the reproduction rate in half of all the countries is below 2.3 there are also increasing attacks on women’s reproductive rights. Numerous governments are expressing worries that their citizens aren’t producing enough babies. Will it be that the more a countries fertility rate declines the more it’s government will act to force women to reproduce?
His/her story
The population started to boom in the mid 18th century after the ‘second agricultural revolution’ and the ‘industrial revolution’. In England common land was enclosed and turned over to new agricultural techniques and new crops, think potatoes. People moved to cities and took on work in the new factories and the new industries. It’s easier to meet new people in a city than in a rural area where walking or horses were the main means of transport. In a village you had to travel away from your local area to find a partner who wasn’t related to you which is generally seen, and rightly, as a good thing. No Tinder back then either. This tendency generalised around the world as countries industrialised. From that period on the population has been regularly doubling in size, until recently that is.
It seems likely, as I have mentioned, that the move to cities in the 18th raised the fertility rate. We now believe that the same urbanisation, three centuries later has been and is the cause of a decline in the fertility rate. We have known for a long time that educational and career opportunities for women tend to raise the age at which they decide to have children. In modern economies, which are very city based, women have better overall opportunities than before and so have children later. Another factor is the decline in child mortality which is around 10 times less than in the past. This also impacts a woman’s decision on how many children to have over her life, in general to have fewer.
Dubious, stupid and horrible solutions.
The ‘problem’ has changed from ‘too many people’ to ‘too many older people’. And so today’s demographic change is seen, by governments and industries, as a threat to future economic growth and particularly how a dwindling number of working people can maintain an increasing number of retired people? Different countries have been reacting in different ways, letting in more ‘immigrants’, delaying retirement or reversing population control measures such as the one child per family rule in China.
It would seem that the ideal thing for governments would be to stop educating women and only allow them access to low quality jobs. But of course this is a completely stupid idea. It would also bring back a situation that women have endured for far too long. It would also reduce the available workforce. Impasse.
Or we could reduce the percentage of older people in the population? Maybe a pandemic would do the trick? The infection mortality rate for Covid-19 increases sharply from 65 years old.
We can certainly carry on poisoning people as we have done for a while now. 80% of US adults and children have traces of glyphosate in their urine, it increases the chance of getting non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This sort of thing has been going on for a while now, leaded petrol, ultra-transformed foods, pollution in all it’s forms etc etc. And it seems to have had an effect, Gen X and Gen Z display worse health than their Boomer parents.
Or we could, and this is being seriously considered by some governments, raise taxes for childless couples.
As usual we have to think in short, medium and long-term, the latter two seem difficult for what we call political leaders. We also have to thing strategically, holistically and globally, again something that seems complicated for the people we elect. Industries tend to have longer term strategies than governments but these are principally orientated around how a business can survive and grow. They have little regard for environmental, social and equality issues, why should they? A business exists to grow and prosper and pay good dividends to their shareholders, future generations are left to sort out the mess, if they can.
Overall
It’s actually quite unusual for a species to live a long time after their fertility has ceased, which isn’t to say that it is a bad thing but maybe we are doing it wrong. Elderly people are a resource for a group. They have, or should have, a lot of experience to draw on. In non-industrialised societies older people, in their 70’s are using more resources than they are producing so what is their usefulness? The Grandmother hypothesis maintains that they improve the chances of survival of their grandchildren. As these groups of people function more as a unit than a group of individuals each seeking to maximise their survival, the sharing and helping done by the grandparents is for the group as a whole. Not just for their grandchildren that is. These older people share skills, experience and knowledge with the younger people. They help with child minding and with routine tasks that are not too physically demanding. All of these things, plus others, increase the survivability of the group.
So something that is almost uniquely human is a long post fertility life. We evolved this way because older people are a resource that increase the chances of the group surviving.
In Europe a lot of retired people become involved with looking after grandchildren and local activities such as charities, associations. In many cases these prosocial institutions couldn’t continue to function without the contributions made by older people. This would seem to be a continuation of the role historically played by older people in human groups.
There are also many who, on retiring, become the passive consumers so liked by governments and industries. Indeed some local councils in different countries try and encourage these people to come and live in their community. They are seen as being good, quiet, law abiding and tax paying units. Other retired people buy camper vans (RV) and head off for an endless summer, the European RV market is worth around 24.1 billion USD. I had a discussion with a group of RV people who spend virtually the whole year in their vehicles touring all over and then driving down to Morocco for the winter. They were quite clear on the subject and almost to a person their philosophy was “I worked hard all my life to have a retirement and I’m going to blow it all over the last years of my life”. In most of the cases this was only partly true as they had also benefited from an inheritance, which they intended to blow as well. I was surprised by their attitude and how the idea of building on their inheritance to pass it on to their descendants was, for them, a silly idea. They were all convinced that the younger generations had it easy and were already benefiting from the hard work the older people had done to build the modern world. A point of view not necessarily shared by the later generations.
Older people can be seen, by younger people, as barriers to their own progress. This is problematic and in some ways true, the average age of a ‘world leader’ is around 62 which is the current retirement age in France. At 62 years old there are younger generations coming along who are different and for the most part see the world in a different way. This partly explains why many amongst the younger generations are detaching themselves from politics.
This generational fragmentation in our societies means we are wasting opportunities and resources. The life experiences of older people are increasingly ignored by younger generations. This means that we are tending to repeat things and spend too much time reinventing the wheel. Take as an example the environmental action groups that have developed since the 1980’s. Earth first! started in 1980 and Extinction rebellion in 2018. Both are environmental advocacy groups and both use the same techniques, direct action and protesting, they are, frankly, twins. This would seem strange as the laudable actions of Earth first! haven’t really had any impact, Extinction Rebellion, almost 30 years later decided to do the same thing. There are, today, any number of environmental action groups and for the most part they use similar strategies, direct action and protests. Yet all the evidence points to these being inefficient. At best they make people aware of the different global crises, at worst they just piss people off. If the experiences of the older environmentalists were better shared and listened to by the younger activists we would have developed newer and more efficient strategies.
It would seem important then that older people are encouraged to be active and useful elements in our societies.
It is the younger generations who are carrying on the progress of our species, and older people should let them get on with it. It is essential to understand that someone who was born this century sees the world in a different way to someone born in the middle of the 20th century. For a start their reference base is profoundly different. Being born in the 21st century means, for most people, being born in a smartphone/internet world. They were born into a world where the global population had reached 12 billion, as compared to 3 billion for someone born in 1960. It also means, for example, that they have been hearing about climate change and environmental problems all their lives.
So younger people must get active in sorting out what is now their world and benefit from the experiences and help of the older people.
Money
And then of course there is the money question, a major preoccupation of the political elites. They believe that there won’t be enough money to pay pensions and this increasing ‘burden’ will have, is having, negative consequences for the economies.
The political leaders of some countries, like Germany, have enacted relatively liberal immigration policies. New people coming in to a country were the fertility rate has declined being seen as a positive if not essential way to keep the economy going. A problem of course is that people who could be a resource to their homeland move away. Yes they often send money back home but it is difficult to estimate how much this compensates for the loss of the energy and expertise of an emigrant. A person makes a net contribution to a society after a certain age, 16+ or even more if a person stays in education. Their home country has therefore financed said persons education and the host country benefits from it. According to UN statistics around one third of migrants return home, which means the two thirds stay in their host country and continue to contribute to its society.
Raising the taxes for people who decide to not have children is simply trying to dam a river that should not and probably cannot be stopped. As noted educated and economically active women have children later and have fewer children, this is how it should be. It is obviously better for everyone that women have control over when and with whom they wish to have children, and how many children they will have.
Raising the retirement age does what? It keeps older people in work for longer and delays the moment when they retire. This sort of idea comes from the people who don’t and probably never have had a job which is physically grueling. So not really very fair. It also mean that a generational glass ceiling is reinforced, younger people can’t advance because the places are still occupied by older people.
It seems strange that so few people see it this so called crisis as an opportunity, which is what it is. The 20th century population explosion and its preceding exponential growth since the 18th century was problematic. The agricultural and industrial systems we have put into place since then are also beset with problems, as we know too well. The question is how can we act to let the Boomer bulge work it’s way through the system and how can we adjust to benefit from a future declining population?
Permaculture
Back to Bill and his concerns about population growth. His advice was to ‘limit the population’, he didn’t really explain how. I have already explained how a decline in the fertility rate comes about, by women regaining their rightful place. This despite horrendous disadvantages and continuing misogyny.
One of the guiding principles in Permaculture is “the problem is the solution”. Whilst this sounds like a catchy thing to write on a T shirt it has a deeper meaning. I am blocked because I am confronted by a problem. The principle encourages us to look at the problem from as many different points of view as possible. Sometimes we have to turn the problem on it’s head and start anew. We are told that a declining fertility rate and an aging population is a problem. Yet when we look at the state of the world and our societies it would seem that an over large population is a problem, too many people competing for increasingly limited resources.
The solution to an over expanding population is to remove, today, all forms of negative gender discrimination.
As for the economic problem of an aging population …. the World bank estimates that just over 50% of women are economically active. As compared to 80% of men. So where is the difficulty?**
The solution for an aging population is to remove, today, all forms of negative gender discrimination.
Is there a problem? I can hear the cry go up! Who is going to look after the children? Well personally I am looking forward to being an active and helping grandperson. I sometimes wish my kids would hurry up and get on with it, but if they don’t then that is very fine by me. I can always go and work at the local food bank who are very overstretched at the moment.
**An exploration of how to deal with the the problems caused by our current economic and industrial systems will be the subject of a following article. This is because it will be quite long as it involves some major social and economic changes.
Ps. I have used ‘woman’ and ‘women’ as terms throughout this article as it concerns those members of the population who can bear children. I know there are an estimated 48 million women globally who are infertile and of course you are included in the ‘removing all forms of gender discrimination’ bit. How could it be otherwise? I also don’t know how I could have writen this article in a non-binary way.
Images, in order, by Keith Johnston, OpenClipart-Vectors, Michael Hourigan de Pixabay