In industrialized countries, the number of people reaching retirement age is growing, while the number of working age people is declining.
- The number of people aged 80 and older is growing at a faster rate than any other age group worldwide.
- By the year 2050, there will be almost twice as many older non-working people than there are now, in contrast to the total number of workers.
- In 1950, there were 12 people of working age for every person age 65 or older. In 2010, there are only 9 contributing to old age support in their countries. That means that here in the U.S., fewer people are contributing to Social Security and Medicare in proportion to the number of people needing and using those programs.
EarthSky spoke with Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington D.C.- based think-tank, about why the population is getting older. He said it’s because couples are having fewer children, on average. He said:
If a couple has two children themselves, then they basically replace themselves. But if they only have 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4, every succeeding generation gets smaller and smaller.
Haub said that governments in some countries such as Spain and Russia have offered couples incentives to have more children. “It’s quite a phenomenon in world history,” he said. “We’ve never seen this before.”
Haub said that this aging population trend may be irreversible.
If you look in Europe or Japan, the situation is in fact pretty extreme. We already have about 23 percent of the population of Japan that are 65 and over. And in many European countries, the youngest population, under 5, is about half the size of their parents’ age group.
He said the shrinking population of young people presents the government with a big challenge: how to keep paying for expensive social services. He said:
In addition to virtually free health care, virtually free long-term health care, free education, all of these things are paid for by the people during their working lives. They expect them. They expect free university for their children. They expect their pensions to be there.
The trend in developed countries is in direct contrast to the trend in developing countries, Haub said.
If we look at Africa, more than half of most countries’ populations are below the age of 20. This huge number of young people moving up the age ladder will be having children. The rate of population growth we see globally will depend on how many children they have.
Global population is expected to reach over 9 billion by 2050.
Is the population growth in developing countries enough (too much) to supplement the decrease in developed countries?
Emily, population growth in developing countries is more than enough to cancel out the shrinking younger generations in developed countries. Something like half the world’s population is expected to be under 25 in 2050, and that’s all thanks to population growth in the developing world. But Haub also said that as those countries become more developed and industrialized, you could expect to see the same trends of a larger aging population and slower growth of the younger populations. That’s only if development sticks strictly to previous trends, and who knows what might happen in the future?
No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science.
The abject failure of every major legitimate scientific group to respond to the exceptionally strong evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel is simply inexcusable. All have been effectively ignoring research from outstanding scientists who have devoted their lives to actually observing data and trying to interpret it in an intellectually honest manner.
The willful avoidance of the open discussion of science, especially the scientific research of human population dynamics, is as unconscionable as it is destructive. Experts who have remained silent need to be stood up to and directed to assume their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity. Is there a reasonable justification for elective mutism in response to carefully collected and honestly analyzed data?
The tasks at hand for scientists are to freely acknowledge, critique and interpret evidence, I suppose, and to encourage that evidence to be examined from different viewpoints. It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe.
for china ,such a big country,it’s a good phenomenon that more young couples decide to live a life without children.it’s good for the planet,coz human beings have made quite a lot of catastrophic things.But it’s also a big challenge to gov~
Regardless of what we believe because it is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially correct, religiously tolerated and culturally syntonic to do so, whatsoever is is, is it not? Please assist me by examining research of the population dynamics of the human species. The implications of this research appear to be potentially profound. If human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species, then the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time could be the proverbial “mother” of the human-induced global challenges looming before the family of humanity. If this global challenge continues to be ignored, the human family could end up winning some Pyrrhic victories over subordinate global challenges but losing the larger struggle for survival itself.
Please note the following perspective from Sir Fred Hoyle that dates back to 1964, a time prior to the publication of Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and the Club of Rome’s seminal work, “Limits to Growth.”
begin—-
“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance… and one chance only.”
end—-
It appears to me that Sir Fred Hoyle was asking people years ago, when I was still a teenager, to carefully consider and rigorously examine a superordinate situation that was too dangerous to ignore… that dwarfed other already identified global challenges. Rather than seriously scrutinize population dynamics leading to the human overpopulation of the Earth, which would require experts to rivet their attention on the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things, the topic was avoided, just as it is being ignored now. At the beginning of my lifecycle in 1945 there were about 2.8+/- billion human beings on Earth. Only 65 years later 6.8+/- billion people are members of the human community.
So much time has been wasted recently by the brighest and best of my generation. The implications of such an unfortunate failure of nerve appear to be far-reaching. We cannot address problems, the root cause of which we refuse to acknowledge.
Representative democracies led by human beings with feet of clay could readily become a force too formidable to ignore with remarkable speed, I believe, but first humankind needs to be helped to see why a force too formidable to ignore is necessary as well as to understand more adequately the nature of the primary human-induced global challenge that presents itself to the family of humanity in our time; that takes its shape in the form of a colossal looming threat to future human wellbeing, environmental health and the integrity of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.
Research by Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel appears to indicate with remarkable simplicity that human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species.
Since many too many population experts remain silent about this research and blogmeisters associated with the mass media refuse to discuss the peer-reviewed evidence, perhaps you could take a look at it, make your comments, and encourage by your example others to do the same. You can find the article, Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply, by Hopfenberg and Pimentel on the worldwide web or at the following link, http://www.panearth.org/ . Other articles and a slideshow presentation on human population dynamics and human overpopulation can also be found at this link.
Irreversible? That sounds absurd. All that needs to happen is for a generation to start averaging > 2 children per household.
Sometimes I wonder about people. Just because they get a few extra letters behind their names everyone thinks they’re word is the gospel. What about common sense?
The problem with this story is that people can take away a message that humanity is in trouble because we’re not making enough new ones! How absurd. I think the piece is totally irresponsible. Really?! Nothing about the technology of medicine and the changing length of an average lifespan?? Nothing about diminishing diversity? Nothing about carrying capacity? What’s the point of this story?
There is an urgent need to examine the science of human population dynamics. The topic of human population dynamics has not been and is not now being openly discussed.
Let us imagine for a moment that the growth of the human population today is the “mother” of human-driven global challenges looming before humankind and knowledgeable people willfully refuse to speak about it. How can that behavior be construed as correct? On what authority is silence in response to science condoned? Who has the right to deny the existence of knowledge of something that threatens all of us? Is there no one who has determined that experts have a “duty to warn” humanity in such dire circumstances as exist when the very future of children everywhere could be put at risk soon?
Before I started the AWAREness Campaign, I fully anticipated that the publication of peer-reviewed scientific evidence regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth would be rigorously scrutinized, carefully examined and objectively reported by appropriately trained and educated experts. To my astonishment that did not occur. The experts remained mute. The evidence was neither sensibly refuted nor affirmed. There was only a deafening silence. After some months passed, I concluded that experts must not believe the evidence regarding the human population but could not rebutt it either. So the AWAREness Campaign began. Even now, years later, I believe the silence of so many indicates that the research is virtually irrefutable on the one hand and unbelievable on the other. It appears that we are in need of a transformed scientific imagination by means of which scientists with appropriate expertise are freed from inadequate thought and time-honored theory…freed to carefully examine and skillfully report new, unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific research regarding the human population.
So here we are in 2010. With the rare exception of a pre-eminent scientist like Professor Emeritus Gary Peters who is willing to speak truth-as-he-sees-it to the powerful, elective mutism is effectively vanquishing science with regard to extant evidence of human population numbers.
If the research to which I have unsuccessfully tried to draw attention for so long is fatally flawed and completely wrong, then the Earth &Sky community is invited to expose me for the fool that I surely am. On the other hand, if the scientific evidence is somehow on the correct track, then there is plenty of work for everyone in the human community to begin doing in earnest. It appears to me that there is just enough space-time for us to transform human consciousness, adopt sustainable lifestyles and right-size business enterprises, but we need to get started now.
The government in britain allows wages to be so poor that young working people cant afford more than 1 child. yet the system allows unmarrieds to breed like rats producing un productive/criminal off spring is it any wonder the population is unbalanced.
That silence regarding the science of human population dynamics has been willfully perpetrated by the mass media is to be expected. But for blogmeisters with environmental credentials and top rank scientists to collude in silence with the same people they openly object to when it is politically convenient and economically expedient to do so, that is sad…and sad to say. Small groups of people who are providing a reality-oriented basis for necessary change need a bit of support from people in public positions of power…..from thoughtful leaders and opinion makers capable of speaking truth as they see it and not effectively killing what could somehow be true with their duplicitous and pernicious silence.
Dear Friends,
If you happen to believe, as I do, that the science related to human population dynamics is vital and also that this ignored research is the most unreported evidence to be presented for rigorous examination since the beginning of the new millennium, please speak out loudly and clearly.
If you disagree, what would you say is the most vital, unreported scientific evidence to be peer-reviewed and published in the past decade?
Thank you,
Steve
Dear Friends,
What would think of acknowledging the science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation as a way of beginning to take a new path toward sustainability? If we keep repeating the mistakes made in the past by denying extant and unchallenged science, nothing can happen. Without an acknowledgement of the root cause(s) of what is ailing the human family, how are we to move forward to raise awareness of the global predicament? Once awareness is raised among a critical mass of people, it becomes possible to organize for the purpose of formulating policies and programs of action.
The willful denial of science has kept us and continues to keep us from gaining momentum needed to address and overcome the human-driven challenges that currently threaten human wellbeing and environmental health.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven, who do you wish to kill? To whom will you deny the abiility to have children. OUr aging population is due to economic pressures. The expanding population in the third world is the same. There is no scientific or technological limit to feeding many more folks on this earth. And as populations pressures increase, we will move out into the cosmos.
We have problems. One of which is the folks that are in power that presume to know how many people we need, where and what kind. This is called eugenics. Another term that might fit is murderer. Leave folks alone and the natural pressures will limit himanity as sure as the population of white tailed deer are regulated.
In the long term, none of this matters. there will be a massive volcano, an asteroid strike or a huge magnetic/atomic disturbance in our atmosphere that will wipe humanity out in all or in part.
Dear Benjamin Napier,
The ideas you present are anathema to me.
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear Benjamin Napier, Carl Haub, Deborah Byrd, Beverly Spicer, Joel Cohen, Jesse Ausubel, Friends and Colleagues:
As humanity’s most luminous beacon of truth, science provides us with a last best hope for the survival of life as we know it on Earth. We must make certain that scientific evidence is never downplayed, distorted and denied by religious dogma, politics or ideological idiocy.
Let us not fail for another year to acknowledge extant research of human population dynamics. The willful refusal of many too many experts to assume their responsibilities to science and perform their duties to humanity could be one of the most colossal mistakes in human history. Such woefully inadequate behavior, as is evident in an incredible conspiracy of silence among experts, will soon enough be replaced with truthful expressions by those in possession of clear vision, adequate foresight, intellectual honesty and moral courage.
Hopefully leading thinkers and researchers will not continue supressing scientific evidence of human population dynamics and instead heed the words of Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston regarding the emerging and converging, human-driven global challenges that loom ominously before humankind in our time, “we’ve got to make sure that population is recognized…. as a multiplier of many others. We’ve got to make sure that population really does peak out when we hope it will.”
Sir John goes on, “what we want to do is to see the issue of population in the open, dispassionately discussed…. and then we’ll see where it goes.”
In what is admittedly a feeble effort to help John Sulston fulfill his charge to examine all available scientific evidence regarding human population dynamics, please give careful consideration to the following presentation and then take time to rigorously scrutinize the not yet overthrown science from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation.
http://www.panearth.org/GPSO.htm
Please accept this invitation to discern the best available science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation; discover the facts; deliberate; draw logical conclusions; and disseminate the knowledge widely.
Thank you.
Steve Salmony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpVQiZQPbms