The population bomb

The UN has estimated world population in 1950 as being 2.5 billion people. In 2022, it had risen to 8 billion. Population growth is concentrated in low-income countries. High-income economies in Asia, such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and in Europe now have fertility rates well below the level that would maintain their existing populations.

Looking forward from 1950, would this greater than three-fold population growth have been the subject of utopian or dystopian novels and films? Would an effective United Nations after the Second World War have argued that the greatest need of the planet was for dramatic growth in the world population?

William Morris is now primarily known as a Victorian-era wallpaper designer, employing the classic forms of arts and crafts in flowing leaves and designs of natural foliage. He was also a socialist. His 1892 book, News from Nowhere, represents a particular agrarian view of socialist life. Fundamental to this lifestyle was an emphasis upon crafts, but also upon a severe diminution of London's population to return to a city of villages. If that was the case in 1891, surely it held with greater impetus in 1950 and in 2000.

In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb on the dangers of over-populating the Earth, and the Zero Population Growth movement grew over the 1970s. Yet the world population has doubled from roughly 4 billion in 1970 to roughly 8 billion today. GDP per capita is measured as over $60,000 in the US, $5,000 in South Africa and $500 in Afghanistan. It does not seem unduly naive to suggest that international development efforts and policies in countries concerned about the well-being of their future populations might have been better directed at increases in output per capita than dividing output and the natural environment across an expanding population.

China of course did exactly that with the one-child policy introduced in 1980. GDP per capita was $194.80 in 1980 (according to the World Bank) and achieved $12,556.30 in 2021. India did not follow that policy and is now projected to have overtaken China in population. India GDP per capita was $267.40 in 1980 and $2,256.60 in 2021. For those of us who believe in democracy, something has gone seriously wrong. India (China) population in 1980 was 696.8 million (981.2 million) and in 2021 was 1.41 billion (1.41 billion).