America's secret weapon against a plummeting world population [View all]
America's secret weapon against a plummeting world population
Opinion by Frida Ghitis at CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/opinions/global-population-decline-study-us-immigration-ghitis/index.html
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The new study shows how far off the mark earlier assumptions about exploding population growth fell. Some among you, my dear readers, may remember when intellectuals were gripped by the fear of a "Malthusian catastrophe," fear that population growth would outpace our ability to feed ourselves. But it turns out that Thomas Robert Malthus, the 18th century economist and demographer, got it all wrong.
Not only did agricultural advances undercut his thesis, it turns out the world's population will start contracting before long, with powerful economic, geopolitical and environmental implications.
According to the study, population will climb from the current 7.8 billion to 9.7 billion by 2064, but that will be the end of the increases. By 2100, it will shrink by almost a billion people, to 8.8 billion. The downward trend, a revolution triggered by the education of women, who choose to have fewer babies, will affect almost every country -- 183 out of 195 -- on Earth.
To keep the population unchanged, women must have an average of 2.1 babies, the replacement fertility rate, the study found. The rate has nosedived from 3.2 in 1990 to 2.5 last year, and, according to a 2019 United Nations projection, is continuing to crash.
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