Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism

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Chapter Five: The Problem
of Population Growth

America and other rich nations have a clear choice today. They can continue to ignore the population problem and their own massive contributions to it. Then they will be trapped in a downward spiral that may well lead to the end of civilization in a few decades. More frequent droughts, more damaged crops and famines, more dying forests, more smog, more international conflicts, more epidemics, more gridlock, more drugs, more crime, more sewage swimming, and other extreme unpleasantness will mark our course. It is a route
already traveled by too many of our less fortunate fellow human beings.

—Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Explosion

So why did the policies concerning population and family planning programs change so drastically in the last [few] decade[s]? As in late eighteenth century Britain, population has been growing rapidly. The expanding numbers of third world people, who are no longer dutiful subjects toiling in their mines and fields are not consumers either for an ever-expanding flow of manufactured products, have become a burden for the industrial powers. They are not only a burden, but also a threat, for, as in the time of Malthus, a great revolution is taking place.

—Steven Polgar, Birth Planning

Some modern research on the genetic structure of human populations suggests that we are all descended from a relatively small number of individuals, and no more than a few families, who lived in Central Africa as recently as 100,000–200,000 years ago. By 15,000 years ago their progeny numbered 15 million (the present population of Mexico City). The world population at the time of Christ had increased to about 250 million (a little less than the present population of the United States) and on the eve of the Industrial Revolution had tripled to about 700 million (a little less than the current population of Indonesia). In the following two centuries the population increased at an annual growth rate of 6 per 1,000, reaching 2.5 billion by 1950. In the following five decades it has more than doubled, at a growth rate of 18 per 1,000, today approaching 6 billion. In spite of signs that the growth rate is slowing, barring some demographic catastrophe, the world population will reach 8 to 10 billion by the year 2030 (Livi-Bacci 1992:31–32). Growth in world population is summarized in Table 5.1.

 

Table 5.1: Population, Annual Growth, and Doubling Time (10,000 BC to-1990)

Demographic index	10,000 BC	0	1750	1950	1990	2000 (projected)
Population (Millions)	16	252	771	2530	5292	6200
Annual growth (%)	0.008	0.037	0.064	0.596	1.845	1.3000
Doubling time (years)	8369	1854	1083	116	38	25

Adapted from Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of Population

Here are some interesting facts and projections about world population growth:

• The rate of population increase, now approximately 1.7 percent per year, is expected to decline to a little less than 1 percent sometime during 2020–2025.

• Since the rate of population increase applies to an increasing population, the actual increase will be 88–97 million people per year in 1995–2000 before falling to 81 million per year in 2025.

• Developing countries will account for 95 percent of the world’s population increase during 2000–2025.

• Between 1950 and 2025 the core countries’ share of world population will have decreased from 33.1 percent to 15.9 percent; Europe’s share will decrease from 15.6 percent to 6.1 percent.

• Also during 1950–2025, Latin America’s share of the world’s population will increase from 6.6 percent to 8.9 percent, Asia from 54.7 percent to 57.8 percent, and Africa’s share from 8.9 percent to 18.8 percent.

The rapid rise in the rate of population growth has prompted concern that the world is poised on the brink of disaster, that we are running out of enough food to sustain the growing population and that population growth is responsible for poverty, environmental destruction, and social unrest. Moreover, so the argument goes, economic development in poor countries is impossible as long as populations continue to rise, because any increase in economic output must be used to sustain the increased population instead of being invested to create new jobs and wealth. These concerns have led to concerted efforts by international agencies and governments to control population growth, especially in peripheral countries where it is highest.

However, a number of people seriously question whether population growth is a problem. Some economists argue that population growth is a positive factor in economic development; some environmentalists claim that environmental destruction is a result of rapid industrialization and capitalist consumption patterns, not population growth; and some religious authorities are opposed to any form of birth control.

In 1994 the United Nations sponsored a conference in Cairo to examine the problem of population growth and propose measures to control it. The Cairo conference debated several approaches to controlling fertility; these included promoting modern contraception, promoting economic development, improving survival rate of infants and children, improving women’s status, educating men, and various combinations of these. Except for the religious objections to promoting decreased fertility, few people questioned that there was a population problem, that it was a problem primarily of the poor nations, and that the solution required women to limit their fertility. Yet few if any of the assumptions underlying the issue of population growth and control were seriously questioned or examined. Some of these assumptions are as follows.

• Population growth contributes to economic decline and stagnation in the periphery and thus is responsible for global poverty, hunger, environmental devastation, and political unrest.

• Population increase in the periphery historically resulted from decreased mortality (death) rates, especially of infants, attributable to medical advancements, better nutrition, and improved sanitation.

• Population stability before the rapid population growth beginning in the eighteenth century was solely the result of a high mortality rate balanced by a high fertility rate.

• Efforts to control population growth in the periphery are hampered by religious beliefs that promote large families and lack of education for women.

• The only way to slow the birth rate is through birth control techniques and educational programs developed in Western countries.

These assumptions comprise part of the ideology of the culture of capitalism, which assumes that the problem of population growth is a problem of the periphery. This ideology drives not only public perception of the issue of population growth but also the policies of governments and international agencies such as the United Nations. Population growth, so the ideology goes, is a problem in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and if the problem is to be solved these countries are the ones that must do it. These assumptions are given legitimacy by “scientific” theories that purport to explain population growth. Furthermore, this ideology leads us to “blame the victim,” to assume the people who suffer from the supposed evils of population growth—hunger, poverty, environmental devastation, and political unrest—are the ones who have caused the problem.

However, as we shall see, the situation is more complex than that. To understand better the demographic and ideological issues involved in the population debate, we need first to examine the major frameworks used to explain population growth, the Malthusian or neo-Malthusian position, and the framework provided by demographic transition theory. We will try to show how they are seriously flawed, ethnocentric, and self-serving for core nations. Then we examine some of the factors known to determine how many children are born and specifically examine what anthropology can contribute to the debate over population growth.

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