What goes up: are predictions of a population crisis wrong?

She is a well-educated and professional woman who works in an office tower in downtown Nairobi, Kenya. Due to their status and education, the price required to marry her is destined to be high. Although dowries are often now paid in cash, she expects her dowry to be paid with the traditional method of cows and goats, and that the wedding takes place in the town from which it comes.

"I'm a traditional girl," she explains.

It can take a long time for a lender to accumulate the capital needed to pay, or at least, the down payment, your dowry. She is fine with that.

"Women are going to get married later," explains one of her colleagues. "We want an education, job security and a good place to live ... This also means that we can not have as many children, even if we want them."

These observations offer a window to one of the most compelling questions of our time: how many people will fill the Earth? The Population Division of the United Nations projects that the numbers will increase to more than 11 billion by the end of this century, almost 4 billion more than they exist today. Where will they live? How will we feed them? How many more of us can support our fragile planet?

But a growing body of opinion believes that the UN is wrong. We will not reach 11 billion by 2100. In contrast, the human population will reach a peak between 8 and 9 billion by the middle of the century and then begin to decline.

The Niamey market in Niger, where the fertility rate of 7.24 is the highest in the world. The population will double in 17 years.

Jørgen Randers, a Norwegian scholar who decades ago warned of a possible global catastrophe caused by overpopulation, has changed his mind. "The world population will never reach nine billion people," he believes now. "It will reach a maximum of 8 billion in 2040, and then it will decrease."

Likewise, Professor Wolfgang Lutz and his fellow demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna predict that the human population will stabilize by mid-century and then begin to decline.

According to a Deutsche Bank report, the planetary population reached 8.7 billion in 2055 and then dropped to 8 billion by the end of the century.

The UN discounted the claims of these experts, trusting in the authority of the experience. "We imagine that countries that currently have higher levels of fertility and lower levels of life expectancy will progress in the future in a similar way, at a speed similar to that experienced by countries in the past," John Wilmoth, director of La Population Division of the UN, he says. "Everything is based on past experience."

But dissident demographers think that this is wrong, mainly because the UN is not realizing an accelerated decline in fertility as a result of urbanization. In 2007, for the first time in the history of mankind, most people in the world lived in cities. Today is 55%. In three decades, it will be two thirds.

Many things happen when people move from the countryside to the city. First, a child goes from being an asset, another pair of shoulders to work in the fields, to a load, another mouth to feed.

Even more important, a woman who moves to a city has greater access to the media, to schools, to other women. She demands greater autonomy. And many women who can exercise control over their own bodies decide to have fewer children.

 Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's fertility rate has dropped from 6.21 in 1960 to 1.73.

"The brain is the most important reproductive organ," says Lutz. "Once a woman is socialized to have an education and a career, she socializes to have a smaller family. There is no way back."

The religious and family pressures to establish themselves and cause the babies to also regress in the city; Friends and co-workers, who are largely indifferent to the reproductive choices of others, become more important.

Already, almost two dozen countries are shrinking each year, from Poland to Cuba and Japan, which lost nearly 450,000 people in 2018. In these countries, women have less than 2.1 babies who must produce, on average, for a population can remain stable. The decline of the population would be even more pronounced if it were not for the increasing life expectancy.

The fertility rate in the United Kingdom is 1.7. Most of the population growth in the United Kingdom today is the result of international immigration, according to the Office of National Statistics. Without immigrants, Britain would eventually enter an era of declining population.

Older and younger people put more pressure on society's ability to generate the wealth and taxes needed to finance, among other things, medical care for the elderly.

However, the really important news is found in the large countries of the developing world, where the vast majority of people live. There, the declines in birth rates have been simply staggering. China, the largest country in the world, has a fertility rate of 1.5, lower than that of Great Britain. India, which will soon overtake China as the most populous nation in the world, is at the replacement rate of 2.1 and declining. Brazil, the fifth most populous country, has a fertility rate of 1.8.

Africa is still the cradle of overpopulation, with fertility rates well above replacement. If the human population really targets 11 billion people, as predicted by the UN, then African history in this century will be discouraging; The continent will remain largely poor and rural. Women will be forced to have one child after another, increasing the number of people in a place on Earth that can hold them less easily.

But this is too pessimistic a forecast. Parts of Africa are taking big steps to empower women and reduce the number of children they have. Kenya is an example, although not the only one.

The horrific attack by the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab in a hotel and commercial complex earlier this month brought home once again the challenges facing this sub-Saharan nation of 50 million people.

Only about a quarter of its people earn a salary from a private or public employer, which is the very definition of a modern workforce. Half of the population does not believe that they eat enough and about a third report that they sometimes go to bed hungry.


On the other hand, more than 75% of the population has subscriptions to mobile devices. In the last three decades, the country's urban population has more than doubled to 32%. And as it urbanizes, Kenya's fertility rate plummets: from 8 in 1960, according to World Bank figures, to 3.4 today, according to a new study on global fertility rates published last November in Lancet.

Women working in a textile factory in Guangdong province, China. Last year there were 15.2 million births in China, compared to 17.2 million in 2017.

Last year, almost as many girls as boys showed up for exams that allow students to graduate from elementary school (at the age of 14, after eight years of formal education). On average, the girls scored better.

Many Kenyan women live two lives at the same time. The first is immemorial, agricultural, subsistent and patriarchal. However, in her back pocket, she has a mobile phone. And although he has not told his parents yet, he is planning to move to the city.

Elsewhere, the figures for the fertility rate are less encouraging: Niger, 7; Mali, 6; Nigeria, 5. But even there, changes are taking place: Nigeria's fertility rate was almost seven in 1980.

Women represent 61% of Rwanda's members of parliament, the highest proportion of any government. The fertility rate in that country has plummeted from 8 to 4 in the last 30 years. Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest part of the world in urbanization, with an annual increase of the urban population of 4%, double the world average.

With a little luck, Africa in this century will have urbanization, girls, and women better educated and the fall of fertility. Not everywhere, and not all at once, but in more places than not, and sooner rather than later.

Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, Japan. The country's population was reduced by 448,000 in 2018

From Malthusian predictions at global conferences to the latest Hollywood dystopian offer, pessimists predict a future of overcrowding, scarcity, conflict and possible collapse. But the premise is probably false. We need to prepare, not for the consequences of a population boom, but for the bankruptcy of the population. A child born in this decade will probably reach middle age in a world where population growth has stagnated and may have already begun to decline. There could be a lot of this world to admire. It can be cleaner, safer, quieter. Urbanization produces a marked decrease in carbon emissions per person (people using public transport, for example, instead of traveling by car) and, as people move into the city, marginal farmland they turn into shrubs, a natural carbon sink and a blessing for wildlife.

However, economically, things could be more difficult, as societies struggle to grow with fewer young workers and taxpayers. Automation will help, but robots do not buy refrigerators or an elegant dress for the office party. Consumption remains the cornerstone of any economy.

The decline of the population is not a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a great thing. It's time to look him in the eye.