When I visited Japan earlier this year, my boy-friend and I made an interesting experiment. We went to
Shibuya Station in Tokyo, one of the most insane street crossings in the country. I took out my camera, and my boy-friend crossed the street. I remained on the sidewalk, and tried to follow him with my objective. I lost him, over and over again, he would just dissolve in the enormous crowd. The Japanese, however, walked as if they were alone on the street. Listening to their MP3 players, talking on their cell phones, or simply staring at a distant object, they would not look at each other once. Perhaps, I wondered, this is a natural reaction to high population density, to reduce tension created by too many people inhabiting the same small spot on earth.
Would Japan therefore be better off with fewer people? Probably. Would our planet be a nicer place with less inhabitants? Definitely. More people consume more food, require more natural
resources, produce more waste and pollution. High population density can cause tensions between different ethnic groups, and can
cause famine, as we have, sadly, seen in sub-saharan Africa.
Therefore, the less people inhabit our planet, the less problems we
will experience.
The question, I believe, is how and where the decline in population should take
place. Japan, for instance, will face an enormous decrease in the upcoming decades, having the
world´s lowest fertility rate (1.3 children per woman). The Population
Reference Bureau estimates the population to drop from 128 million at present to 95 million in
2050.
Consequently, the working force will be reduced tremendously, possibly threatening the prosperity of the country. "With fewer people to produce and consume goods and services, the economy may begin to shrink", Mary
M. Kent and Carl Haub point out in their article "Global Demographic Divide". The number of elementary and junior high students, for instance, fell from 13.4 million fifteen years ago to 10.9. million in 2004, and more than 2,000 elementary and secondary schools were forced to close in the past ten years. A trend that will, eventually, cause an enormous imbalance on the labor market. With a life expectancy of more than 80 years, millions of retirees will have to be supported by a comparatively small working force. Therefore, looking at Japan´s current situation, the country will probably not be better off with fewer people.
Other countries' situation, on the contrary, would improve dramatically with fewer people living there. As Kent and Haub point out, the
per capita income in high-fertility countries is less than one-twelfth
the level in low-fertility countries.
Nigeria, for instance, has experienced an explosion in population
growth in the past 55 years (it has more than quadrupled its number of
people). It will most certainly continue to do so, looking at a total
fertility rate oft 5.7 children per woman in 2009. Sadly, the life expectancy is only 44 years. With less people, economic growth would reflect much more on the per capita income of the country.
Therefore, countries coexist at both extremes of the demographic divide, completely isolated from each other. Migration, however, could be the wild card for these countries, as Kent and Haub mention. Facing dramatic population declines in most industrialized countries, maybe more workers from developing countries could move to the wealthiest nations. They could help sustain the rich countries' economies, and, at the same time, improve their own countries' situation by sending large parts of their salaries back home to their families. The life quality could substantially improve worldwide by bringing developed and developing countries closer together. Eventually, the fertility rates in developing countries would drop also, and the earth´s entire population would stabilize at a lower number.
Well, this will probably never happen. But it's very nice to imagine.
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