On 15 November 2022, the world’s population surpassed 8 billion people. Our human family is now larger than ever before. Collectively, we live longer and enjoy healthier lives than at any other point in human history.
At 8 billion strong,the world’s population is the largest it’s ever been.
At this landmark demographic moment, it can be tempting to draw the easy conclusion that population dynamics are the root cause of multiple, intersecting challenges facing our world. Some blame dwindling resources and raging conflicts on there being ‘too many’ of us; others fear falling birth rates will leave the planet devoid of people, with ‘too few’ of us to sustain life as we know it.
Yet ours is also a world of anxiety and uncertainty. Challenges like climate change, economic upheaval, conflict and COVID-19 have brought us to a crossroads, where the threat of a worse future for humanity feels just as possible as the promise of a better one.
POPULATION MATTERS
Either option seems to lead us only one way – towards fear, blame, and control. But the truth is, people were never the problem.
Human population has always undergone transformation. At each moment of demographic change, population alarmists have wrung their hands, warning against population ‘booms’ or ‘busts’. And yet, despite oft-repeated predictions of societal collapse, history has made clear that humanity can not only survive population change – but thrives because of it.
This doesn’t mean that population trends aren’t important. Rather, it is precisely because they are so important that we must move past simplistic narratives of “too many” or ‘too few’. Because these narratives also present fertility rates as a problem to be solved, reducing women’s bodies to political battlegrounds and denying half the population their right to bodily autonomy.
According to population alarmists, our world is overrun and close to bursting at the seams. Politicians, media pundits and even some academics have asserted that global challenges like economic instability, climate change and resource wars can be pinned on overpopulation – on too much demand and not enough supply. They paint a picture of out-of-control, unstoppable birth rates, usually pointing the finger at poor and marginalized communities who have long been portrayed as reproducing recklessly and prolifically despite making the smallest contributions to issues such as environmental destruction. This narrative oversimplifiescomplex issues and causes real harm.
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE
We don’t have to buy into the narrative that women’s bodies and reproductive choices are the problem and solution to ‘overpopulation’. Instead, we can insist that our individual choices are key, and take a sexual and reproductive justice approach to supporting all forms of human progress.
This means focusing on investments in education, health care, clean and affordable energy and working towards gender equality, rather than trying to reduce the number of people on our planet.
It may seem confusing that fears of an ‘underpopulation crisis’ are rising when the world’s population has more than doubled in just 50 years, and the global fertility rate remains above the so-called ‘replacement-level’ of 2.1 births per woman. But with an estimated two thirds of the world population now living in a country or area with sub-replacement fertility, alongside the increasing number of States confronted by lower fertility numbers, anxieties surrounding 'underpopulation' are increasingly common.
FACTS: IMMIGRATION
Despite fears that soon there will be ‘too few’ people to sustain our economies, services and societies, experts say falling birth rates do not spell disaster.
Instead, they are hallmarks of demographic transition and correlate with rising lifespans. Since 1950, global average lifespans have increased by almost 28 years (from 45.51 to 73.16 in 2023), accompanied by a decline in global fertility from an average of 5 births per woman in 1950 to 2.3 births per woman in 2021.
These developments are an indication of the increasing control that individuals, particularly women, are able to exercise over their reproductive lives – and how quality of life improves with access to rights and choices.
It is the basic right of every individual to decide freely the number, spacing and timing of their children. As a global society, we must guarantee the ability to make reproductive and sexual health decisions free from discrimination, coercion and violence. The services to help us reach these reproductive goals must be affordable, accessible and meet international standards of quality.
These rights are essential, especially for women. These rights are essential, especially for women whose bodies have long been used as tools to assert social, political or religious control.
Interventions aimed at influencing fertility rates, whether high or low, are never the answer because these rates are neither inherently good nor bad. With the right approach, resilient societies can thrive, whatever their fertility rate may be.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
The question we should be asking is not whether there are too many or too few people on the planet, but whether all individuals are equipped to thrive and exercise their basic human right to sexual and reproductive autonomy. As it stands, only a proportion of humanity has access to these rights. It’s only when we guarantee them for everyone that we will unlock the potential of all people to thrive and adapt to the changing realities of our world.
This year’s State of the World Population report makes the case for a world in which each individual is free to choose their reproductive future – a world in which countries build demographic resilience by adapting to population change, rather than attempting to control it.
It’s important that countries understand that attempts to restrict reproductive rights do not work. Instead, these interventions universally backfire, harming societies as a whole, and women, girls and marginalized groups in particular.
Population is, essentially, human beings. We must structure our societies to meet the needs of our population as it continues to experience inevitable change. Systems are tools to be usedin the service of humanity, not the other way around. This moment requires us to realize the potential of all people, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, nationality or disability, so that each individual can contribute to our collective future.
