Every 10 years since 1790, the U.S. government has attempted to count its people. EarthSky spoke with Dr. Mark Mather, a demographer at the Washington, D.C.- based Population Reference Bureau, about the 2010 U.S. Census.
Mark Mather: This is a great resource to look at population change, not only at the national level, but the regional level, state level, and to see what’s happening in local communities all the way down to the city block level.
He said regional population trends matter, because they’re closely linked to labor supply and demand – and economic growth.
Mark Mather: There are parts of the country that are rapidly growing. Then, there are some areas – especially the Midwest – that have been losing population for decades. That’s a real concern to policy makers.
Mather talked about other trends he expects the 2010 U.S. Census to reveal.
Mark Mather: There’s an age difference, so that we have all these baby boomers starting to reach retirement age. The baby boomers are mostly white. But that stands in stark contrast to the U.S. population under age 18, who are increasingly Latino, Asian, and multiracial. The fastest growing groups – mostly Latinos – are facing the biggest challenges. There are big gaps in education, gaps in income and health status. So, the fact that those groups are a growing share of the population really, really matters.
He added that, when the official results come in for the 2010 Census, the newest tallies of age, diversity and regional population will impact services like health care and education all over the U.S. Mather explained that the main purpose of the Census is to distribute government power and funds. But the ten questions on the Census also provide a standardized and accurate-as-possible picture of the nation’s population, down to a very local level.
Mark Mather: The great thing about the Census is that it’s providing information about every community in the country. That’s what people are going to be most interested in. They can get a snapshot of every town, every county, every neighborhood in the country. They can compare it with what’s happened since 2000, or compare it with neighborhood next to them.
He said that while there are sure to be surprising results in the Census data, demographers track long term trends to make their predictions.
Mark Mather: You can usually trace these demographic trends back to what was happening [in the past]. Obviously, baby boom cohort reflects birth rates during the baby boom of 1946 – 1964. And trends in race/ethnic diversity, you can trace back to the changing immigration laws in the 1960s. So you can kind of predict what’s going to happen based on changes in birth and mortality and US policy.
Mather expanded on why these trends matter.
Mark Mather: Aging has a big impact on health care, our social security. Diversity matters because the fastest growing group – Latinos – is facing the biggest challenges.
Mather said demographers don’t just rely on the Census for data about the U.S. population. They have started using a survey with more specific questions about social and economic status called the American Communities Survey, which replaces the longer Census form this year. Mather’s study of Census trends is related to his work for the Population Reference Bureau, or PRB. The PRB describes itself as an organization that, “informs people around the world about population, health, and the environment, and empowers them to use that information to advance the well-being of current and future generations.” It also aims to provide objective, accurate and up-to-date population information in an easily understood format.
Looking out beyond Earth Day 40, perhaps we can reflect upon words from the speech that Norman Bourlaug delivered, coincidentally in 1970, on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize.
Near the end of the very first year of Earth Day celebrations Dr. Bourlaug reported,
” Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.”
Plainly, he states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}.
Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food. According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and no food, no people.
Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life as we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years. Recall Dr. Bourlaug’s prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the “Green Revolution” and to the extraordinary increases in the world’s supply of food. Please consider that the seemingly miraculous increases in humanity’s food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug’s great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers.
We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing, large-scale food production capabiliities (as opposed to sustainable farming practices) on the population numbers of the human species between now and 2050. If we keep doing the business-as-usual things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world’s food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the future.
It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the corporate production of food; for providing broad support of sustainable farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present superabundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for following Dr. Bourlaug’s recommendation to “reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely.”
Thanks, Mark Mather, for speaking out loudly and clearly to the family of humanity about what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding synergistically at a breakneck pace toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s gigantic, ever expanding global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘WALL’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Many scientists have remarked eloquently on the collapse of civilizations. The global challenge we appear to face today, one that singular and unimaginable, is that the collapse of human civilization in Century XXI is not simply the end of another human civilization. What is occurring now is likely not only the collapse of a human civilization but also the human-driven destruction of the natural resource base, the ecology, and biodiversity of Earth.
Concern for the future of life as we know it and for the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the children leads me to point to the great value I attach to the open discussion of the global predicament looming before the human family. We simply must make good use of the best available science to adequately explain the population dynamics leading to the collapse of our civilization. Without such knowledge, I cannot see how necessary changes in the behavioral repertoire of humankind can be made.
Is there doubt in the mind of anyone in the EarthSky community that the future will ultimately be brighter for children everywhere if people choose now to consume and hoard less; to protect, preserve and share more; and to effectively check the unbridled increase of unsustainable large-scale production capabilities as well as to humanely regulate the propagation of the human species?
One day soon, I hope, population biologists in particular and other knowledgeable people with appropriate expertise in population dynamics will carefully examine as well as openly report extant science of what could be giving rise to the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers. Experts are blindly ignoring, consciously avoiding and willfully hiding science in their silence. Experts with power to make a difference that makes a difference will not continue much longer, I trust, to deny their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity by refusing to speak out about what they believe to be true regarding the unsustainable consumption, hoarding, production and overpopulation activities of humankind in our time, and by choosing instead to give credence to all manner of preternatural thinking, contrived logic, ideological idiocy, stupidity and madness. By remaining electively mute, they also silently consent to whatsoever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially attractive, culturally syntonic and favorable to selfish interests of the wealthy and powerful.
Are a tiny minority of influential people going to get away with their forfeiture of future human wellbeing, life as we know it, environmental health and the integrity of Earth’s body?
Speaking out loudly, clearly and often regarding whatsoever could somehow be true will not sink humanity or the Earth as a fit place for human habitation. On the other hand, if the brightest and best among us conspicuously deny what could somehow be real about the human overpopulation of Earth in favor of support for patently unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation acitivities by the human species, such as we see overspreading the surface of the Earth in our time, then what chance of a good enough future can the children realistically be expected to behold?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
Chapel Hill, NC