A child is born: World population reaches 6 billion

Posted: Sunday, October 10, 1999

NEW YORK (AP) - A majority of the 370,000 children born this Tuesday will be poor. Half will be Asian. And in theory, one will be the planet's 6 billionth person.

Most experts greet this milestone with anxiety. In just 12 years, they note, humans have increased their number by 1 billion. During the 20th century, the world's population has tripled. And by 2100, ecologist David Pimentel of Cornell University warned in a recent paper, "12 billion miserable humans will suffer a difficult life on Earth."

Advocates for population control call it "Y6B." They warn that if humanity can't clamp a lid on the population explosion it will spell serious trouble - war, famine, economic collapse.

But not everybody agrees that Oct. 12 is a day for doom and gloom. Economist Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., considers it an occasion for celebration.

"This is an incredible thing that we have 6 billion people," he says. "It's a real tribute to human ingenuity and our ability to innovate."

Moore was a student of economist Julian Simon, who died last year at the age of 65. Simon criticized warnings about population growth, arguing that technological innovation would progress fast enough to support the human race. To an extent, that is what has happened this century.

"A lot of these prophecies of doom have really proven to be false," Moore says.

Even the United Nations, a leading advocate for population control, has found reason for encouragement in recent population growth, because the boom is proof of increased agricultural production, decreased infant mortality and prolonged life expectancy.

But the "Green Revolution" that increased food production so dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s appears to have reached its limit. Total agricultural yields have leveled off and per capita food production has actually been falling since 1983, Pimentel notes in the current issue of "Environment, Development, and Sustainability." And there is little chance that genetically modified crops and other biotechnology will reinvigorate agricultural production.

"We can hope, but actually if you look, biotechnology's been with us for the last 20 years," Pimentel says. "To state it will turn the food situation around, the evidence is not there."

Pimentel argues that the optimal world population in the year 2100 is 2 billion. To reach that population level, people would have to reduce their fertility from the current level of 2.7 births per woman to 1.5, a highly unrealistic prospect. But if they did, he says, those 2 billion people could enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of the average European today.

An international agreement reached five years ago in Cairo pledges all nations to cooperate in trying to limit population growth by providing family planning services throughout the developing world. The United Nations credits similar efforts with decreasing the fertility rate in those countries from six births per woman in 1950 down to about three today.

"We can say with some pride that fertility rates have fallen sharply," says William Ryan, editor of the annual United Nations State of World Population Report. "Of course a lot depends on choices and actions that governments make, particularly over the next couple of decades."

Developed countries, especially the United States, have been accused of failing to meet the commitments they made in Cairo. Developed countries contribute about $2 billion a year to population control, less than half the amount they signed up for in Cairo.

"Not providing these resources will guarantee that we can't make the progress we would otherwise make," Ryan says.

It is his agency, the United Nations Population Fund, that declared Tuesday the "day of 6 billion," the official date that the world population surpasses that figure. But population statistics being what they are, nobody knows for certain which day the clock will turn over. U.S. Census Bureau figures put the date nearly three months ago, on July 19.

No matter. Whether the globe's population has already passed 6 billion or not, at the close of the 20th century there are really two demographic worlds. One is poor, young and growing. In countries like Uganda and Niger, the median age is 15 and the growth rate is fast enough to double the population in 23 years.

The other demographic world is wealthy, old and shrinking. The median age in Italy and Japan is 40. And the population growth in those countries has fallen to zero or below.

"Europe is a demographic catastrophe," says Moore, of the Cato Institute. "If you take that trend out 500 years you're going to have eight Italians and three Irish on the face of the Earth."

Closer to the present, the United Nations projects that in 2050 a quarter of the developed world will be older than 65. That is a higher proportion of retirement-age people than Florida has today.

"Politics will change. Environment will change," says Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division. "Automobiles, consumption, clothing, living arrangements."

As one world grows old, the other will grow up - and have more children. There are about 1 billion teenagers living today, mostly in the Third World. Even though fertility rates are expected to keep falling, the simple fact that so many people will reach adulthood in the coming decades will boost population by another several billion.

"Even if all those couples had only two children, population would continue to grow for another 40 years or so," Ryan says.

At the same time, that growing population faces enormous obstacles. In some parts of Africa, one adult in four is HIV positive. Worldwide, 8 percent of the population lives in a place without enough water. By 2050, a quarter of the world will have less water than it needs.

"Some experts believe the wars in the Middle East in the 21st century will be over access to drinking water," says Brian Dixon, director of government relations for Zero Population Growth, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.

Global warming and other environmental factors may also cause problems. If current estimates are correct, sea level will rise as much as 3 feet over the next century, displacing 72 million people in China and 71 million in Bangladesh.

It would seem almost too much to handle - the disease, the limited resources, the environmental threats - but even the man who would like to see a world population one-third its present size is hopeful.

"Obviously we can't make land and we can't make water, but I think we can turn things around," says Pimentel. "I have great faith in human nature."