The reputation of Thomas Robert
Malthus, author of An Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798), had a rough couple of centuries after his
assertion that efforts to alleviate poverty never could be more than temporary
in their effects since population always consequently would rise to absorb all
the new resources (food in particular) dedicated to the purpose. The poor
thereby would become more numerous but no better off. Then, in concert with the
industrial revolution, for the next two centuries after Malthus’ essay population
soared while per capita income and food production rose along with it. The
world grew wealthier and better fed while the percentage of poor diminished.
The predictions of latter day Malthusians fared no better. Paul Ehlrich’s
influential 1968 book The Population Bomb
predicted global famine by the end of the 1970s. Instead the “green revolution”
boosted agricultural production faster than population growth and again the
global percentage of poor dropped for the next 50 years.
Yet, though they underestimated the
rate of increase in agricultural and industrial productivity, the Malthusians
were not and are not simply foolish. There are negative consequences to
population growth. All of our most serious environmental problems are at bottom
a population problem. Were the population of the earth today (7.8 billion) what
it was the year I was born (2.5 billion) little need be done to address them
beyond what has been done already. In fact, we could all go back to burning
coal and driving gas guzzlers and still be ahead of the game.
At the beginning of this century,
global population was expected to rise to 14 billion before 2100, which
portended a frightening increase of demands on natural resources. It seems, however,
that those initial expectations were wrong. Current mainstream guesses (and
they are no more than educated guesses) are for a rise to 9.7 billion, and even
this might be high. Historically, population soars in a region when
industrialization takes hold and incomes rise, just as Malthus predicted. Industrialization
happened first in Europe and then sequentially in other regions with the same demographic
result. Then it appears something happens as industrial economies mature. The
fertility rate is the lifetime number of offspring expected per woman on average,
and a rate of 2.1 or higher is required to keep the population steady or
growing. In recent decades in the West and in the advanced economies of Asia
the rate has dropped well below the 2.1 replacement figure. The USA is
currently 1.8. In several countries (Italy, Russia, Cuba, Japan, et al.) there
are absolute declines in population. In Japan, where immigration is minimal,
more people turn 80 every year than enter the work force thereby constraining
economic growth and impacting the affordability of social welfare programs. Only
high immigration levels keep numbers in the US, Canada, UK, and several other
immigration magnets growing. Enough poorer countries are still expanding
rapidly to keep global population rising strongly, but even among them
fertility rates, while high, are trending steadily downward. If the trend
continues so that world population at some point reverses course and goes into
decline (by choice, not by catastrophe) the benefits would outweigh the
inevitable attendant economic stresses. Malthusians
still have grounds to worry, but at least they now also have grounds to hope.
Why people are choosing to have
fewer (or no) kids is a matter of much debate, and the proposed answers tend to
vary along with the politics of the proposers. No one really knows. Apparently at
a certain stage of economic and social development, at least so far, most women
(the ultimate arbiters) make this choice, while ever larger numbers both of men
and women grow disenchanted with the notion of even being couples, much less
parents. (See Half
of Singles Don’t Want a Relationship or Even a Date by Bella
DePaulo Ph.D.) The change in my lifetime has been dramatic. Adult singles were
very much the exception when I was a kid; today they outnumber coupled adults.
Further, the median age for first marriage in the USA in 1960 was 22 for men
and 20 for women, meaning half of brides were teenagers. Today it's 28 for
women and nudging 30 (29.6) for men, and that is for those who marry at all. (While
single parenthood is an ever more popular option, those who deliberately choose
it have fewer kids on average than couples.) Young people just have a different
set of priorities and (perhaps unrealistic) expectations nowadays.
In the way that one thought sometimes
leads to another with only a tenuous connection, Dr. DePaulo’s article brought
to mind a novel by Gore Vidal I first read as long ago as 1968. The eponymous
protagonist Myra Breckinridge, deeply
concerned about global overpopulation, takes a teaching position at an actors’
school in Los Angeles. Myra is a classic film aficionado who argues
that no insignificant film was made between 1935 and 1945. She asserts that
every culture has a mythology and the movies of 1935-45 form the American
mythology. The characters in them are the gods and goddesses of our myths. They
define our sense of ethics, our world view, and our ideals of masculinity and
femininity. She believes the sex roles embodied in these films were all very
well for building a nation and fighting Nazis, but are inappropriate to a 1968 overpopulated
world with nuclear weaponry. She wants to remold our mythology through movies
in order to create an America and (to the
extent Hollywood movies have global reach) a world that is more sexually
fluid. The birthrate thus will fall and pressure will be eased on the nuclear
trigger. A school for actors is as good a place to start as any.
The traditional gender
types reflective of 1935-45 are embodied by two students at the film school who
plan to marry. Rusty is handsome, swaggering, and an ass. His wholesome, pretty,
and somewhat air-headed girlfriend Mary-Ann wants nothing more than a white
picket fence and four children with Rusty. Myra reprograms them by
sexually humiliating Rusty and seducing Mary-Ann. She considers it a great
success when the shattered Rusty shouts he is “sick of women.” He then acts so
hostile to Mary-Ann that she announces, “I’ll never marry! I hate men!” Both
are now better able to bring Myra’s vision to their future screen roles.
In 1970 this book was
made into a movie (trailer)
starring Raquel Welch and Rex Reed. Also in the movie are a 77-year-old Mae
West, a young Tom Selleck, and an even younger Farah Fawcett. The film would be
“so bad it’s good” had the filmmakers not altered the ironic ending of the book
and thus tilted the result heavily toward the plain bad. The film bombed at the
box office so badly that sales of the novel (previously a best-seller) nearly
stopped. Nonetheless, it seems that Myra, whether on page or on screen, was
ahead of her time.
Too Many People - Paul McCartney
No comments:
Post a Comment