Despite passing the seven billion mark, the global population birthrate is slowing. That will be great for the environment
As the world's population reaches 7 billion this month, there is renewed soul-searching about overpopulation. But in much of the rich world, we have slammed on the demographic brakes so hard that it may be helping drive our current economic tailspin.
It is an intriguing thought. Some believe young populations could be driving everything from the Arab spring to China's economic miracle – and maybe the west's decline too.
Exhibit A is Japan. Economists say the developed world is entering now what Japan first experienced back in the 1990s, when it suffered a "lost decade" of economic stagnation from which it has never recovered. And that, some argue, is because Japan is running out of young adults.
Japan has the world's oldest people – average female life expectancy is 86 years – and it has among the world's lowest fertility rates. At just 1.2 children per woman, it has not much more than half what it needs to maintain population numbers. Meanwhile, the average age is well over 40, and one in four people are over 65.
This is an extraordinary turn-round. Japan used to be young. When it was the poster child of Asia's economies, it profited from a huge population of young adults, and not many old dependents. Those young adults became so busy working that they almost gave up on having babies. Then they grew old. Result: the land of the rising sun has become the land of the setting sun.
And where Japan went, so goes the rest of the world. Europe's emerging economic basketcase is Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. Population changes have undoubtedly played a role in this. Thanks to a generation of ultra-low fertility, the last western European country with a prime minister born before the second world war now has the world's second oldest population.
The economic whirlwind of growth in other Asian tiger economies is blowing out as fertility falls and populations age. China is today young and vibrant, but the one-child policy is shutting down population growth. Within a decade, its numbers may be falling and China will have the largest ageing population the world has ever seen. Boom may soon turn to bust.
The Middle East is at an earlier stage on this demographic road. But with falling birth rates, many countries there have a bulge of young adults in their population pyramid. Governments have failed to harness this demographic potential for economic growth, but arguably those young adults drove Muslim radicalism, and now the Arab spring.
The people on the streets in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria demanding democratic reform – and manning the ragtag army in Libya – would a generation ago have been at home minding the children. Whether driving economic growth or demanding democracy, young adults are dynamic forces for change in any society. But as societies age, that dynamism dies.
And ageing is the new way of the world. You wouldn't guess it from the public debate so far about the seven billion landmark, but the average woman in the world today has half as many children as her mother or grandmother did 40 years ago: 2.5 children, compared to five. And the number keeps on going down. Dozens of countries are already below two, including Iran, Burma, Vietnam, China of course – and much of southern India, too.
In the long run, that's not enough to keep up numbers. Many expect world peak population by mid-century, and decline thereafter. Whether it happens then or later, mass global ageing is now a certainty.
I suspect that the global economic binge of the 20th century was a product of a booming, youthful population. It will die as we age. Japan's lost decade, and its likely repetition now across the western world, is perhaps the first sign. About time too. We all know that we cannot go on as we have. The planet cannot stand it. The party is over.
• Fred Pearce is author of Peoplequake: Mass migration, ageing nations and the coming population crash
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