The False Malthusians

By John Seager, President and CEO

The recent report, World's 65 and older population to triple by 2050, is sure to rouse the “birth dearthers.” Malthusians of a sort, they’ll make their usual ominous predictions about a future without young people. They are wrong on so many counts that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, 65 isn’t what it used to be. Many older people are vigorous, productive members of society these days.

Second, it’s not the ratio of old to young that is key. It’s the ratio of workers to dependents. Most people earn wages during the “middle” 40 years of their life and rely on other sources of support - be it family, the government or their own accrued savings - during the time between birth and the early 20s and from age 65 or so. And that ratio isn't changing all that much as family size declines.

Third, the overall economic strength of a society depends largely on having a well-educated, healthy workforce. Smaller families make this task much easier. So, as family size declines in healthy nations, they can become more productive, ensuring the possibly of a better life for young and old alike.

Finally, we may need more life care communities, but we might need fewer nursery schools, more gerontologists, but fewer pediatricians. It will take a bit of adjustment, but what’s the alternative? An ever more crowded future? No, thanks.

Population Connection website

Environmental Refugees Spur Global Migration

By Pam Wasserman, Vice President for Education

A recent article in The Economist, "A New (Under) Class of Travellers" shines a light on one of the most dire consequences of global climate change -- the rise in the number of "environmental refugees." Tens of millions of desperate people are already fleeing their homelands in Africa as they become uninhabitable from chronic drought. Climate scientists expect these numbers to grow as sea levels rise, displacing the vast populations that live along fragile river deltas in Asia. And, of course, population growth will only worsen the situation.

While we should do everything we can as a global community to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we won't be able to reverse the climactic trends that will continue to displace the most vulnerable populations from their homes in the near term. As once-fertile lands dry up or flood, the carrying capacity of the planet may very well shrink, making an expected population of 9-10 million by 2050 completely unsustainable. Reducing fertility rates could, over time, relieve the pressures of global migration and boost the capabilities of all nations to meet the basic needs of their people.

Population Education website

Educating Kids about Population

By Pam Wasserman, Vice President for Education

As part of Population Connection's mission, we work with teachers nationwide to incorporate population education into their classroom instruction. In 2008, we held 524 workshops for over 11,000 teachers and future teachers in 36 states and 2 Canadian provinces. At these workshops, educators learn about the impacts of human population pressures and the best ways to address these issues with different age groups. Each workshop features a variety of hands-on activities. Based on past evaluation surveys, we estimate that educators trained in our 2008 workshops will allow us to reach an additional 800,000 students each year.

Our staff of trainers is small, but we have a wonderful corps of volunteer trainers around the country who present these workshops in their local areas. This group includes university educators, K-12 teachers and nonformal educators who feel passionate about Population Connection curricula and want to share it with others. Last year, their in-kind contribution of time was over $240,000!

We greatly expanded our outreach in California last year after conducting a "train-the-trainers" Institute for 30 new workshop facilitators in San Francisco, and hope to replicate this in other areas of the country as funding allows.

One of our great achievements of the year was completing a new edition of our high school curriculum, Earth Matters: Studies for Our Global Future on CD-ROM. Read more about it at populationeducation.org.

Needless Pain in an Overcrowded World

By John Seager

The New York Times story, Death in Birth - Fragile Tanzanian Orphans Get Help After Mothers Die, about a handful of Africa’s 50 million orphans provides one ray of hope in a vast chasm of despair.

So much needless pain and suffering could be avoided if the poorest women in the world had access to family planning and other basic health care. It’s great that so much attention is now being paid to the need for action on climate change. But the failure to focus with equal intensity on the impacts of overpopulation has immediate, irreversible consequences. So far in 2009, the White House and Congress have taken vital steps in the right direction when it comes to family planning. But so much more needs to be done and done quickly.

Population Connection website

"A Family Planning Page-Turner"

By Stacie Murphy

In the most recent issue of The Reporter, our communications manager, Marian Starkey, reviewed Michelle Goldberg’s new book The Means of Reproduction. Today, the Wilson Center held a release event for the book, and Ms. Goldberg was there to share her thoughts and answer questions about the work that one presenter called “a family planning page-turner.”

While the entire discussion was interesting, there was one moment that really stood out for me. Ms. Goldberg noted that the idea of family planning as politically “controversial” is a relatively recent phenomenon, pointing out that at one time both Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman were board members of Planned Parenthood. Hard to imagine that today, but it’s true. There was a time when population growth was broadly understood as an issue of importance to the mainstream, not just to the left.

Happily, she believes we may be experiencing a resurgence of interest in population. Goldberg mentioned a recent spate of stories about resource scarcity and population and environment issues, and also pointed former CIA director Michael Hayden’s reference to population growth as a security concern as evidence of a new trend.

The full video of the event will be available here in about a week. I’d recommend watching.

Population Connection website

Population growth and time perspective

By Marian Starkey

Philip Zimbardo's recent TED Talk reinforced from a psychological perspective a theory those of us concerned with population growth have long believed.

People who can anticipate the long-term problems that population growth will cause (and have already caused) have a future-oriented time perspective. People who are past-oriented or present-oriented focus more intently on the short-term economic challenges that will accompany a stabilizing or decreasing population.

Zimbardo uses the example of teens pledging to abstain from premarital sex (60% of whom lose their virginity within the year) to demonstrate different people's ability to delay gratification. Those who give in to premarital sexual urges are less able to overcome their present-oriented minds in order to live out the future-oriented vision they have for themselves as virgin brides/grooms.

He shares that time perspective theory is now being applied to a variety of global issues, including promoting sustainability and conservation. Perhaps population activists like us should incorporate his theory into our advocacy work in order to reach those with other than future-oriented time perspectives.

Health Care Reform Off to a Slow Start

By Brian Dixon

After months of talk, Health Care Reform is finally getting its first official congressional debate. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) has begun what promises to be weeks of work toward crafting legislation. If you want to watch, you can find it here.

HELP is only one of five congressional committees that will have some say over the final product, and if it’s an example of how the process is going to play out in each of them, it could be a while before anything comes up on the floor of either house.

Republicans have filed some 300 amendments in the HELP committee. Among them are nearly a dozen that will have some impact on access to reproductive health care. These efforts include several by Tom Coburn. His proposals include one to establish an office on Unborn Children’s Health, another to allow health care providers to refuse to provide any service to which they have a “moral objection,” and yet another to use federal funds to help recruit and train staff for crisis pregnancy centers (“clinics” which exist to intimidate women into carrying pregnancies to term.)
Other amendments include several to restrict services at School Based Health Clinics. All of these will undermine reproductive health care.

But there are a host of other amendments which are clearly designed for the sole purpose of slowing down the process. Some are kind of funny, like this Coburn amendment to prohibit the use of health care funds from being used to build football stadiums. Others propose changing the names of sections of the bill to “Slush Fund for Special Interests” or “Federal Takeover of Local Communities.” They’re not serious. They’re not designed to further the discussion or to contribute to a better bill. They’re written to try to stall.