Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) gave population pessimists the theory they would use to justify everything they did to limit the quantity and quality of human life. Britannica.com has an excellent article describing the theory and how his beliefs determined his views on social legislation.
Briefly, crudely, yet strikingly, Malthus argued that infinite human hopes for social happiness must be vain, for population will always tend to outrun the growth of production. The increase of population will take place, if unchecked, in a geometric progression, while the means of subsistence will increase in only an arithmetic progression. Population will always expand to the limit of subsistence.
Malthus published his theory in 1798. Malthusianism soon influenced decisions on laws regarding poorhouses and other public issues. In Dickens’ Christmas Carol (1843), the mean version of Scrooge talks about poorhouses and “surplus population.” As the twentieth century approached, overpopulation was obviously going to have to be managed.
Society’s leaders believed that population growth would have to be constrained and began exploring a subfield of genetics known as Eugenics. What kind of people are more worthy of living than others? I.E., If there aren’t enough resources for everyone, who is unworthy of life?
Theories were put forward about the desirability of letting the sick and weak die. It was also essential to prevent the entry and mixing of inferior stock. One U.S. Supreme Court ruling was emphatic in its approval of the sterilization of a woman when it said, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
Various groups were targeted as “unworthy” at various times by different governments. Black people, Jews, Southern Europeans, and Non-Aryans were all targets. Things changed briefly right after World War II. The revelation of the Nazi concentration camps created a revulsion against anything remotely related to eugenics and choosing fit and unfit groups of people.
A significant breakthrough in food production occurred in the early twentieth century. Fixated nitrogen fertilizer dramatically increased the world’s food supply and reduced concerns about food supply.
In the late 1940s, there was a surge in births, especially in the United States. During the Great Depression in the 1930s and the early 1940s, family growth was delayed. Couples made up for that vigorously. America’s “Baby Boom” exploded!
The pessimists returned. Britannica describes The Limits to Growth, a 1972 report commissioned by the Club of Rome:
This report focused on hypotheses derived from a computer model …it projected a Malthusian vision in which the collapse of world order would result if population growth, industrial expansion, and increased pollution, combined with insufficient food production and the depletion of natural resources, were to continue at current rates. To offset these trends, the report called …[for evaluating] the belief in endless growth and the tacit acceptance of wastefulness.
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Besides zero population growth and a leveling-off of industrial production, the report also recommended increased pollution control, the recycling of materials, the manufacture of more durable and repairable goods, and a shift from consumer goods to a more service-oriented economy.
We can see that our leaders have implemented many of these policies. There is a problem. Once a policy is in place, its need is never reviewed. Organizations and people are committed to it. They need to keep doing their work even if their task needs to be stopped or, worse, reversed. In one area — population control — it is time to check the results.
Nicholas Eberstadt is a political economist and demographer. He has been studying population trends and their impacts on governments and government programs. In the November/December 2024 issue of Foreign Affairs, he has an article titled “The Age of Depopulation: Surviving a World Gone Gray.”
Leaders didn’t realize the public’s incentives for having children were changing. An Issues and Insights editorial explained:
… in the past, children were considered a form of wealth, not a burden. Living on a farm, for instance, required workers – often children. And for much of the 20th century, parents were cared for in old age by their children, a kind family-based Social Security.
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Indeed, attitudes in developed nations toward children have altered. No longer needed for economic support, they are now seen as a burden, not a blessing.
Peter Zeihan also has a YouTube video discussing this demographic issue.
Almost every society in the world is not producing enough children to replace itself at the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age. Some societies are 30 percent or more below that level.
Social welfare systems were designed, assuming more young people than old, more healthy people than sick. An aging society with more pensioners than workers is not workable. You can’t have a system in which most of the workforce provides goods and services to meet the needs of the elderly or infirm. Most of the workforce must be engaged in making everyday goods and services for domestic use and export.
France is drowning in pension-related chaos. Their government pension starts at age sixty‑two. To make it fiscally responsible, government leaders keep trying to raise it to sixty‑four. Every attempt to do so is met with massive strikes, riots, street chaos, and no-confidence votes to oust the government. Sixty‑two is the lowest age anywhere in the world, but it is what they have, and they won’t budge.
Now imagine a society where the elderly are the majority, but an ever-shrinking younger generation produces services and products. How does that work, and how long?
Eberstadt notes:
A depopulating world will be an aging one. Across the globe, the march to low fertility, and now to super-low birthrates, is creating top-heavy population pyramids, in which the old begin to outnumber the young. Over the coming generation, aged societies will become the norm.
Policymakers are not ready for the coming demographic order.