Moving Toward a Stable World Population

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Forty-three countries now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates — including Japan, Russia, Germany and Italy — populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level, or just below it. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

United Nations projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, which is the one most commonly used, has the world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high projection reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger and illiteracy, and lessen pressures on already strained natural resources, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.

Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present, 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes, “If you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level...they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.” Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.

The good news is that countries that want to help couples reduce family size can do so quickly. In just one decade, Iran dropped its near-record population growth rate to one of the lowest in the developing world.

When Ayatollah Khomeini assumed leadership in Iran in 1979, he immediately dismantled the well-established family planning programs and instead advocated large families. In response to his pleas, fertility levels climbed, pushing Iran’s annual population growth to peak at 4.2 percent in the early 1980s, a level approaching the biological maximum. As this enormous growth began to burden the economy and the environment, the country’s leaders realized that overcrowding, environmental degradation and unemployment were undermining Iran’s future.

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