A less crowded future

The 20th century was consumed by fears of overpopulation, and for good reason. It took roughly 200,000 years for our species to hit one billion in 1804. Then the curve accelerated: 123 years to reach two billion (1927), 33 years for three billion (1960), and 14 more to reach four billion (1974).

There were a number of reasons for this. The germ theory of disease, first proposed in 1835 but not widely accepted until the 1860s, transformed our ability to prevent and cure disease and revolutionized obstetrics. Norman Borlaug fostered a "green revolution" in the mid-20th century with nitrogen fertilizers and other techniques promoting high-yield agriculture, saving an estimated one billion people from starvation.

In the span of a century between Louis Pasteur's microbial experiments and Norman Borlaug's transformation of agriculture, the rate of people dying from disease and starvation dropped like a rock strapped to an anvil.

From too many people dying, the problem quickly became too many people living.

Our most recent jump from seven to eight billion took only 11 years—the same span as the Harry Potter film franchise. Bestselling books made dire predictions of overcrowding, ecological collapse, famine, and mass starvation.

A global contraction

But history made an unexpected swerve. All over the world, the birth rate is falling. People in every society are marrying later and having fewer children, or none at all.

To keep the population at a steady level, each woman has to have 2.1 children on average. Some countries—especially in sub-Saharan Africa—are still above this replacement rate. But most others, especially wealthy nations like Japan, China, South Korea, and most of Europe, are well below.

As a consequence, the global birth rate is falling. It's barely above replacement now, and if present trends continue, it will drop below that tipping point soon. Previous forecasts predicted we'd hit this mark in the next several decades. But as new data comes in, it appears it could happen as soon as 2030.

The US isn't immune to this trend. Like most industrialized nations, America's birth rate is falling. Currently it's 1.6 children per woman, an all-time low.

Immigration would help, but America's new government is defined by egregious hatred and cruelty toward immigrants. It's deporting as many people as it can, and scaring others out of coming in the first place.

This means America's population is on course to shrink as older generations die off and are replaced by smaller cohorts. In some states, it's already happening:

Demographers say that nationally, deaths will overtake births in the US by the year 2040.

But Alabama is already there.

...The turning point was 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Alabama had 57,643 births, but 64,779 deaths. The following year saw the trend continue, when the state saw almost 11,000 more people die than were born. The trend has continued every year since.

What's causing the decline in birth rate? A trend as widespread as this won't have only one cause, but the largest force is economic.

When most people were farmers, there was a natural incentive to have big families so kids could help out. The same was true in the early stages of industrialization, where assembly lines, garment shops, mines, railroads and other industries needed lots and lots of workers. In those economies, having more children was an economic bonus.

There was also the tragic reality of infant mortality, which as recently as the 19th century was 20-25% of live births in the US and Europe and 30% in developing countries. If you wanted to end up with three children, you'd best have four or five.

The world is shifting to a knowledge-based economy, where science and tech industries dominate and highly educated workers command the most earning power. This increases the time that people spend in education, which, in a domino effect, causes them to start careers later, settle down later, get married and have kids later. It also incentivizes parents to invest more effort and resources into each child to prepare for success. For both reasons, and with infant mortality around 2.7% globally, the incentives flip to delaying childbirth and having fewer kids.

Women's autonomy is another factor. Let's not mince words: pregnancy and childbirth are a massive, risky ordeal. As women have better education about their bodies and more access to contraception, it's natural that they'd choose to have fewer children.

Respect for women's choices, and unconditional support for their decisions, would go a long way to compensate for this burden. Instead, religious theocrats and white nationalists are cutting back on women's healthcare, even as they want to impose forced childbirth to control women. To that end, they're trying to ban abortion, restrict contraception, and even eliminate no-fault divorce. But this will backfire, spurring more women to opt out of marriage and childbirth altogether. America can expect to have a homegrown version of South Korea's 4B movement soon.

To be sure, a declining population poses challenges. Pensions will feel the strain, as more people are retiring and fewer workers are paying into the system. Health care, and caregiving in general, will be scarcer and more expensive.

The bright side

In other ways, a less crowded future might not be such a bad thing.

Most importantly, it will give the Earth a chance to recover. In the name of progress, we've wreaked devastation on our planetary home. We've spewed pollution into the air and water, choked the oceans with plastic, clearcut forests, bulldozed mountains, and scoured the oceans of fish. But nature is resilient, despite all the damage we've done. It can regenerate if the ceaseless pressure of humanity is lifted. A shrinking global population will give it a chance.

I can imagine a world where most people live in sustainable, green megacities and the countryside has returned to wilderness. In this world, unsustainable sprawl would be demolished, and cities in deserts and other ill-suited places would empty out. Vast areas of land could be turned into national parks, wilderness reserves and migration corridors. Forests would grow back, wildlife would return, and species on the brink of extinction would recover.

A less crowded future also means war is even more unthinkable as a tool of policy. Rational politicians will realize it's national suicide to use an already-dwindling population as cannon fodder. Dictators who squander their people in meat wave assaults will only weaken and impoverish themselves, while nations that conserve their scarce resource of human beings will prosper.

Lastly, a depopulating world means that workers will have more power. When labor is a scarce commodity, workers will have leverage to demand higher wages, better working conditions, and more generous benefits. Unions will have more bargaining power when there aren't huge numbers of desperate people waiting in the wings to replace them. It will help shrink the enormous gulf between capital-owning oligarchs and the working class.

The doomsayers have it wrong: declining population isn't a catastrophe. A less crowded world will also be a fairer, more peaceful world. It will be a world that values every child and treats them with the love and care they deserve.