The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Demographers declared a few months ago that world population passed eight billion people. In less than a century, the number of people inhabiting our planet has more than doubled. Because of the negative influences of climate change, it is estimated that many millions of people shall starve to death in third-world countries.
Nevertheless, strange numerical anomalies have accompanied this growth. In many advanced nations, it is old people who are increasing at the fastest rates, not babies or young people. People are living much longer than they did fifty or seventy-five years ago, but the birth rate is dropping quickly, especially in East Asia. Government officials in China, Japan, and South Korea are gravely concerned that soon there will not be enough workers to sustain the elderly in their time of increasing medical and physical needs.
It has taken less time for the world to acquire each new billion as time has gone on. Demographers postulate there were a billion people on earth in 1800. It took 127 years to get to two billion (1927), 33 years to get to 3 billon (1960), 14 years to 4b (’74), 13 to 5b (’87), 12 to 6b (’99), 12 to 7b (2011), and 11 to 8b (2022). Since 2019, Covid has thrown a curveball into all this.
In the USA, the ratio of the young to the old is “healthier” than in East Asia, but that is largely because immigrants are having more babies than native-born Americans.. At its height, the Soviet Union had 280 million people; soon Russia will shrink to 100 million, but the former Soviet republics has doubled in population since the breakup of the USSR in 1991.
India has likely surpassed China right now as the most populous nation on earth, with more than 1.4 billion people. Last year, China’s population fell by 850,000. That is the first time since Mao’s reign that China actually lost population.
Every two years the UN estimates world population. In the future, they say the eight fastest-growing states will be (in order) India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Philippines, and Egypt. Nigeria will soon surpass the USA as the world’s third most-populous nation.
The irony is that the wealthy countries most capable of sustaining growing populations are shrinking relative to the rest, while the countries least capable of sustaining rapidly rising numbers are rising the most rapidly.
Obviously climate conditions, disease, political unrest, and warfare greatly affect population trends everywhere. Thus projections are only that: projections.
No doubt there is a limit to the number of inhabitants the earth can safely maintain, but no one knows exactly what that number is. The fact is that birth rates are dropping in virtually all developed states, and also in many under-developed states, which is a great relief. Demographers forecast a slowing of population growth from now on.
Individuals do what individuals do, and population does what population does. In general, couples all over the world are having fewer children than in previous decades, but, as the song says, love makes the world go round. Those of us who are old will not live long enough to see what the world will look like in the next fifty years, and there will be a smaller percentage of younger people compared to older people for the next thirty to fifty years.
God alone knows what will happen in the 22nd century, and perhaps even He will be amazed. To the degree you can, stay tuned. – February 11, 2023
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.