Polls that ask people’s opinion on big, sweeping issues that they haven’t much about – I regard them with great suspicion. Our response to the artificial constraints of a poll don’t always reflect our actual thinking or actions.
With that proviso in mind, here’s a YouGov poll (data collected online only, not in person) about people’s attitudes toward population demographics:
- In the U.S., 47% say overpopulation is a serious issue versus 41% who say low birth rates are. Globally, the gap widens to 62% vs. 37%.
If true, it’s interesting to those of us who spend too much online (ahem) where fears of “birth dearth” and imminent social collapse run riot, rather than fears about too many people. I saw a zillion pieces when Paul Ehrlich died about how the “Population Bomb” was completely wrong. (I think he only got the time span wrong, although it’s very wrong: maybe a century early. Climate change is the sort of disaster he warned about.)
Declining births is a problem because the world’s economies and most social structures are built on the expectation of a constant increase in number of working-age people. Once that slows and the percentage of us old folks gets too high, current systems become unwieldy. On the other hand, providing food and clean water and housing and jobs for 8 billion-plus people (due to increase to at least 9 billion and probably more) is the main reason global ecosystems are failing. So trimming our numbers isn’t necessarily bad.
I wrote about the issue as far back as 2017 with the headline “The ‘baby bust’ is going to be a disaster. It’s also our only hope” and things have gotten more extreme since with, an increasing number of countries facing not just lower birth rates but an actual decline in population.
Demographic change of this magnitude is a real issue that deserves serious thought.
There is one big fear, however: that the “natalist” (i.e., pro-birth, whatever that means) movement is using the fears as a fig leaf for moving toward The Handmaid’s Tale world. Their thinking runs along the lines of: Take away women’s right to have their own bank accounts so they’re dependent on us guys again and you’ll soon see those birth rates rise! Baloney, of course, but dangerous baloney.
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