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Fewer: How the New Demogrpahy of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future

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Ben Wattenberg's "Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future" is a remarkable book and, in terms of its importance for our country and the world, it should attract a great deal more attention than most of the presidential campaign advertising.

Mr. Wattenberg reports conclusively that the world will have far fewer people than was expected even a decade ago, that in numbers and age and gender patterns this smaller population will be distributed in ways that will be significant, and that the implications for the environment, the economy and national security will be quite profound.

The biggest news is that in sheer numbers the human race is now likely to peak at 8.5 billion people instead of the United Nations projection of 11.5 billion. Even the U.N. demographers now agree that the population explosion will never reach the numbers they had once projected.

The biggest reason for this dramatic decline was captured in an earlier book by Mr. Wattenberg, "The Birth Dearth." Women are simply having fewer children and the result is that in some countries population is already starting to go down.

As Mr. Wattenberg notes, in order to sustain the current population, the average woman would have to have 2.33 children. Falling below that average will result in a population decline. Today some 40 countries are already below the replacement rate and Mr. Wattenberg expects virtually every country to be below the replacement rate by the end of our lifetime.

Fascinatingly, after all the focus on Chinese compulsory population control, it is not China that has had the most rapid change in birthrates among Asian countries. That honor goes to South Korea, where women now average only 1.17 children (even lower than Japan). China has dropped to 1.825 and is still declining.

Mr. Wattenberg makes so many fascinating points in this thin book that it is impossible to cover them all in a review. However, a few deserve to be singled out.

Europe is going to lose population dramatically by mid-century and therefore become significantly older. This will almost certainly entail a significant shift in power and in economic competitiveness away from an aging and shrinking European Union.

Mexico is on the verge of dropping below the replacement rate; over the next generation this will almost certainly slow the rate of migration to the United States. Russia is facing a demographic crisis, with the shortest lifespan for males of any industrial country and a catastrophic decline in women willing to bear children.

Mr. Wattenberg highlights the intellectual dishonesty of the Paul Ehrlich, left-wing environmentalists and their factual mistakes over the last generation. Mr. Ehrlich had predicted famines beginning in the 1970s. They simply haven't happened. The global warming projections all assumed a population of 11.5 billion. If the human race peaks at only 8.5 billion people - 3 billion fewer than predicted - and then starts a long-term decline, how that changes all those gloom-and-doom predictions.

Mr. Wattenberg highlights the unique role of the United States as the one industrial country that will keep growing. American population growth is a combination of the highest birthrate of any industrial country (2.01 children per female) and our willingness to accept immigration. Mr. Wattenberg projects that the United States will continue to grow in economic and other forms of power, while Europe and Japan decline dramatically. Indeed, in the Wattenberg vision of the future, there are only three large nations by 2050: China, India and the United States.

This is a book that should lead to very profound discussions, given its implications for pension programs in Europe and Japan, its implications for economic development throughout the world and its implications for environmental management and an honest assessment of the future.

Finally, this book is a tribute to the continued, persistent willingness of Mr. Wattenberg to take facts as they are presented and follow them without an ideological or political agenda. Hopefully it will lead many policy-makers to think deeply about how much the future will differ from their current expectations and then to ask how those differences should change American and world policies.

World depopulation has become the most important, and alarming, new demographic trend to emerge in the past few decades. While the world has experienced low fertility rates before, they have been due to great social disruptions such as war, famine, depression or plague. But the rates always went up afterwards.

Things are different now. The global downward trend in fertility is both long-term and pronounced. The numbers are alarming. There are now 63 nations with below-replacement fertility. The replacement level is a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 children per women. Yet everywhere TFRs are plummeting. Today all 44 modern nations, with the exception of Albania, are below the 2.1 replacement level. America is just on that level.

And consider this incredible statistic: European TFR has fallen for fifty consecutive years. Many European nations have a TFR of 1.2, such as Italy, Greece, and Austria. Spain's level is down to 1.1. The UN estimates that Europe's population of 728 million people today will shrink to 632 million within 50 years.

The trend in the developing world is even more staggering. In 35 years the TFR there has fallen from 6.01 to around 2.8, and it continues to spiral downwards. South Korea, for example, has a TFR of just over 1.1, while China's rate is 1.8. This is down from 6.06 for China in the late 60s.

Fertility rates are falling rapidly in Arab and Muslim nations as well. For example, forty years ago the TFR in North Africa was 7.1 children per woman. Today it is 3.2 and still falling.

Now Wattenberg has written on these issues before. In 1987 he wrote The Birth Dearth. So why another book? What really shook up Wattenberg, and spurred on this newer book, was the fact that the UN made a major readjustment of its population projections in 2002. For decades prior to this date the UN had been predicting upward population trends for the developed world over the next half century.

But in March 2002 it made a major revision of thinking on the trends in the developing world. Before this time it assumed that the TFR in the poor countries would fall to just 2.1 children per woman. It now changed that figure to 1.85, a full quarter of a child per woman. That meant that world population in the future would go down, not up. It is this new demographic that has really set off the alarm bells.

Wattenberg gives us plenty of statistical information. And he points out that the US is one nation that seems to be bucking the trend. American TFR has actually risen lately, mainly due to immigration. But around the rest of the world the picture is bleak indeed.

The causes are all the usual suspects: urbanisation, education, women in the workplace, contraception, abortion, etc. But the real question is, what will be the effect of this world-wide population implosion? We just do not know because it has never happened before, at least on such a large scale. How will economies fare? How will societies change?

We do know that we are experiencing aging populations. But with a shrinking supply of babies, and therefore taxpayers, real crises are and will develop in simply meeting the needs of the growing elderly population. Who will pay for their pensions and medical care? These problems will be pronounced in all of the West, but especially in Europe and parts of Southeast Asia.

Wattenberg looks at a number of implications of the New Demographics, including the geopolitical situation. Concerning the issue of freedom and democracy, the trends up until recently had looked grim. The free Western world (with the exception of America) was experiencing population decline. In the meantime, the non-democratic Muslim world was growing. Now most populations are in decline, include the Muslim world. With shrinking populations go declining defence budgets. America is the last remaining Western democracy that still has the numbers to sustain a viable defensive structure. In a world threatened by international terrorism, that defence capability is welcome indeed.

But how things will progress in the future is an open question. For America to maintain its role as leader of the free world, it will have to keep its population levels up. Can immigration do this? As to immigration in general, he thinks this is mainly a healthy thing, and disagrees with those like Patrick Buchanan (The Death of the West), who describe it in worst-case scenario terms. In the short term America and the world should continue to benefit from immigration. The long term gets a bit unclear however.

Wattenberg also looks at the issue of illegal immigration. In total, illegal immigrants make up only about 3 per cent of the US population. He thinks that overall their presence is not an overwhelming problem, with potential positives often out-weighing the negatives.

He concludes by noting that the Less Developed Countries could in fact experience a "demographic dividend". He notes that poor countries with falling fertility rates are growing wealthier quicker than are the rich modern nations. In the meantime the New Demography is bad for most Western nations. Thus the need to spread the vision of freedom and democracy around the world, lest non- (or anti-) democratic nations win by default, by simply taking over due to sheer force of numbers.

No one really knows where these trends will take us. Much of Wattenberg's book could be called speculative. But it is important that good minds pay close attention to these changes. This book is a very helpful contribution to that effort.

In this fascinating book, author Ben J. Wattenberg looks at a global phenomenon that is certain the change our view of the future. As early as the 1970s certain Western countries reached a point where their total fertility rate (TFR or children per woman) passed below 2.1, which is the replacement rate. At this point, the high TFR in Third World counties led to the idea that shrinking Western nations would find themselves overrun by the exploding population of these poorer nations. And now, much to everyone surprise, the United Nations Population Division finds that a number of Third World countries have passed below the replacement rate and nearly all of the rest will do so shortly. Truly the world of Paul Ehrlich is being turned upside down!

But, what does all of this mean? In this fascinating book, the author looks at this phenomenon, examining it in some depth, and the questioning why it is happening and what it means for the future. But, don't misunderstand, as the author is careful to point out, this is a little understood phenomenon, and what its results will be are impossible to predict (there has never been a time before when the world passed into a population decline in the absence of famine or plague).

I must say that I found this to be a fascinating book, and well reasoned book. I have heard a little about the drop in total fertility rate, but until I read this book I did not understand the scope of it, or its ramifications. Overall, I think that this is an extremely important book, which should be read by anyone who wants to know what the future of the Earth is certain to hold. I highly recommend this book to all thinking people!

Humanity now numbers over six billion people. Most demographers expect that number will increase to between eight and nine billion in the year 2050 and then begin to decline. Already forty- four percent of the world's population lives in countries with negative population growth. Europe which numbers 72 million people today will decline by one hundred million by 2050. The United States thanks to immigration primarily is the only major industrial power that will continue to increase in population, despite its already having a close to zero population growth. China will peak at 1.5 billion people by 2030 and then begin to decline. Japan is already along with Italy, Spain and Germany a county with great negative growth.
But what Ben Wattenberg presciently a couple of decades ago labeled ' the birth dearth' is not simply a question of numbers. Those numbers translate into social and economic consequences.A world in which people live longer , and in which there are fewer births is a world in which younger generations will be required to bear a larger and larger burden to pay for the social benefits of the elderly. A world in which there are smaller new generations is one in which there will likely be economic stagnation and even decline , as the number of new customers and consumers declines. A world in which there are increasing numbers of one- child only families is one in which there is less likely to be risk- taking entreprenurial activity.
Wattenberg presents and analyzes the numbers while at the same time making a social critique . He sees that our modern world has pushed toward less and less value given to family and home. It has worked to provide more and more incentives for women to be in the workplace and at the university, without balancing this by giving proper economic reward for the raising of children.
Wattenberg sees the birth dearth and the greying of mankind as connected with social pathologies which threaten the valuing of life, and the providing of hope in the human future.
The facts he gives and the arguments he makes should be studied by all our political leaders, and should be part of the education of every individual who cares about the human future.

The argument that the world is overpopulated is a common one now, especially with the increasing fears of global warming. Some have predicted that population growth would outstrip the food supply, causing famine. Authors such as Thomas Malthus in 1798 noted that the food supply grew arithmetically, while population grew geometrically, leading to devastation. The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich in 1968 predicted that hundreds of millions would perish in the 1970's from famine. These disasters never occurred, and it seems now that quite the opposite might take place.

Ben Wattenberg sheds new light on the issue about how we will have to deal with fewer people, and declining populations in the future. Currently, all European nations have below replacement-level fertility, and even Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The Europeans, even with heavy immigration are still experiencing negative population growth. Russia for example, is losing circa 700,000 people per year due to mortality and emigration. Interesting issues are examined such as integration into Western societies, for example, and whether or not democratic countries can remain so with an influx of people who reject its ideals. And can Europe remain economically competitive with a shrinking workforce that has to support an increasing percentage of those on pension?

The author also discusses possible reasons why demographic decline in many countries is occurring, such as education levels, contraceptives, urbanization, and religious beliefs toward the issue, to name a few.

I found the book not excessively political so I think anyone would enjoy reading it. Well researched, well referenced and above all captivating, Fewer is a great book regarding demographic decline.

Wattenberg's central thesis is that fertility rates are rapidly declining everywhere, not just in rich, western countries, but also in poor, less-developed countries. The primary conclusion he wants us to draw is that we need more people, period, and that the United States does best to welcome them all, not to fear immigration. These recent fertility rate declines are surprising but, as he notes, they can at best produce predictions, not actual population numbers years out. Demographer Paul Demeny (p. 161) predicts that for each 1,000 Europeans in 2000, there will be 232 in 2100. And he seems unwilling to accept that rapidly declining birth rates can be reversed and he certainly seems unwilling to accept that we might soon produce rapid increases. But what came down unexpectedly and fast can go back up just as unexpectedly fast. Or, what goes down can go up.

While the vast majority of the book makes sense and makes good use of numbers, Wattenberg appears to get lost in his numbers. The best indicator of this might be the inconsistent use of `data,' all too often as a singular noun and only sometimes as a plural noun. Data matter. Wattenberg belittles Pat Buchanan's argument that ("illegal") immigrants are "swamping" America, but Wattenberg's response shows bad editing, bad writing, bad mathematics, or bad analysis. Wattenberg writes, on page 73, "In the 1901-1910 decade those nine million immigrants made up about 1% per year (1.04 percent) of the total American population. In the 1990s the nine million immigrants represented only .036 percent of the American population." But in ten years, those nine million 1901-1910 immigrants were 10% of the American population, adding a percentage point each and every year. For the 1991-2000 period, he is off by a factor of one hundred. Nine million people in an American population of 300 million represent 3%, not 0.03 percent. Then, to dismiss Buchanan's swamping argument, Wattenberg likens our current experience to "hundreds of people" at a cocktail party in a hotel ballroom who, upon seeing an "immigrant couple from Mexico" enter, say, "See, we're being swamped." Again, it is not two people among hundreds and hundreds but rather nine people sneaking illegally into a room of three hundred people, and then being surprised when these uninvited guests are shunned or singled out by the people already at the cocktail party. And, to be fair, the cocktail party metaphor is ill advised. America is not one big cocktail party keeping an eye on uninvited interlopers.

Oddly, Wattenberg looks too long and hard at recent, rapid decline in birth rates in less developed countries, then undercounts their relative impact in migrating to the United States. Our population has doubled in the last fifty years, and it is due more to (illegal) immigration than to foreign or domestic birth rates. Now apparently claiming that numbers matter most, Wattenberg seems to have discounted his earlier book, "Values matter most," which says that what people believe and how this leads them to act that is really important. He also reasserts the canard that we need cheap, uneducated immigrants working at poverty-level wages to do the work that Americans won't do themselves, but this only compounds the problem of immigrants who come here and then provoke `living wage' arguments across the board. If the work only merits poverty-level wages, we should redesign the work, make it entry-level, part-time work, or raise the wages we pay for cutting grass, cleaning pools and washing dishes. If Americans don't accept higher costs for higher wages for better jobs, they'll get higher costs through taxes to subsidize impoverished immigrant workers. Better that California grapes cost another ten cents a pound than we bring in cheap, illegal workers to cut picking costs. And many of those uneducated immigrants are now taking construction work and other better-paying jobs, jobs that Americans would take. I am not arguing that immigration is wrong. Absolute, discriminatory barriers would be immoral and unworkable. But let's be realistic with the numbers. And I am not advocating price controls. But if some mobster shows up at my farm and says he can supply illegal workers to pick my crops cheap, I can't argue that I am simply being pro-immigration. Worse, while immigrants do contribute to the economy, better-educated immigrants contribute more and we tend to keep them out, while less educated immigrants can be a drain on the economy and we, in effect, encourage them to migrate to the United States.

Wattenberg has a calming, grandfatherly tone. His long experience, starting with the Johnson administration more than thirty years ago, gives him credibility. He is a popular host and guest on public television shows. He has some other great, counterintuitive books, e.g., "The good news is that the bad news is wrong". He is willing to take on liberal dingbats as well as conservative curmudgeons when their data are wrong. He just needs to re-visit and re-examine the data.

As an older individual who was born into a world with less than 3 billion souls, I was deeply relieved to learn that projected population growth will slow and actually decline. Younger people have no idea what's been lost in this country- most are inured to big box stores, crowds, traffic, herd mentality, impersonal interactions, and suburban sprawl. How many have seen a lynx, a deserted beach, heard a loon call across a lake, or drank water from a clean stream? Humans have been walking this Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, in numbers totaling no more than a few million for most of our history. Of course, the mortality rate was extremely high, and life expectancy quite short. Thankfully, we have dramatically reduced the death rate, but this is a futile accomplishment if we don't also control the birth rate. Unlike the author, I do hope our numbers normalize to lower levels.

Ever since the days when Thomas Malthus predicted that an economy's population would starve once population growth exceeded food growth, demographics has played an important role in economics. So it makes sense for anyone interested in economics and investment to also try and understand demographics.

Most population projections predict that populations will rise to huge numbers, and that some 12 billion people will inhabit the earth. These projections are based on the fact that for the past 650 years the population has gone up. But according to Ben Wattenberg it is actually highly likely that the world population will grow to a much smaller number, after which the population will actually begin to decline. These projections are based on the total fertility rates of countries around the globe, most of which are far below the replacement level needed to sustain a population.

1. The Story of This Book

It takes 2.1 children per couple to sustain a population. Birthrates in developed economies have fallen below replacement rates, and even less developed countries have falling birthrates. Within the next few decades, populations in the developed countries will begin to fall, particularly the European countries. And thanks to the accuracy levels of population projections, you can be fairly certain that these trends will hold for a least another 20 years if things don't change.

2. And Then There Were Many Fewer

Child or car. Cars are expensive, and babies are expensive. Thanks to modern materialism (good or bad), couples are now deciding between having more babies, or having more stuff. Out of 44 developed countries, 43 are below the replacement level. I think you know what many of them are choosing.

3. Less Developed, Less Fertility

Along with the developed countries, less developed countries have seen slowing fertility rates as well. The most drastic example is China, which saw a change from over 6 children per woman to 1.8 due to the one child policy implemented in 1979. You can chalk the slowdown in other countries up to the usual suspects of urbanization, increased education, better use of contraception, and an increasing number of women entering the work force.

4. America the Exceptional: The Baby Makers

The United States is unique because it has had huge population growth, yet it has still become the richest country in the world. Fuel is relatively cheap in the U.S., which makes suburban living a possibility. America has more single family detached housing than anywhere else in the world, which has no doubt had some impact on the number of children families can raise.

5. America the Exceptional: Immigrant Takers

Immigration is actually one of America's competitive advantages; despite Total Fertility Rates being below the replacement level immigration has allowed the U.S. to grow larger. Unfortunately discrimination against foreigners goes back to the beginning of the country, but Wattenburg argues that immigrants are necessary for the U.S. to remain strong.

6. The Culture of Alarmism

The United Nations typically makes three population projections, including a high, medium, and low variants. There is a huge gap between the numbers, and groups with an agenda tend to use projections that suit there needs. Environmentalists, for example, tend to use the high numbers to stress the impact of population growth. Real estate agents often touted land as a good investment because a growing population will always need somewhere to live. Over time these numbers become ingrained in our heads, whether they are likely or not.

7. Why?

There are numerous reasons laid out in the book for why populations are growing. Education, contraception, urbanization, and money are the big ones. I'll leave the rest for you to read about in the book.

8. The Graybe Boom

Better health care and new medicines are increasing life spans further and further. Coupled with falling fertility rates, this increase in ages is causing an overall increase in the population, which spells trouble for pension plans, social security, and medicare/medicaid. The author presents ideas for possible solutions, such as changing social security cost of living adjustments from a wage based index to a CPI based index. In the end it's up to the politicians who run the programs who need to make the difficult choices, and so far no one is stepping up to the plate.

9. Business

As populations age some businesses will win and others will lose. For instance it's probably not a good idea to invest in Baby Gap. The truth is that we don't really know what happens when populations decline because it hasn't happened before.

10. The Environment

Population growth has a huge impact on the environment, both through consumption of resources and pollution. Pollution levels have also been historically linked to affluence, a relationship which is explored by the book.

11. Geopolitics

Nations with larger populations are typically viewed as being stronger. Large populations lead to large militaries, and on top of that having a large military is expensive. If the population of the United States declines and another country becomes the world's dominant force, how will that shape the global landscape?

12. Is There an Immigration Solution?

The less developed countries have too many people, while the developed countries have too many. Doesn't it make sense to bring workers from poorer areas to countries where they have better opportunities? Ben Wattenberg argues that developed countries need to be more aggressive with immigration laws to bring in more people, both skilled and unskilled.

Increasing immigration also has secondary benefit. Migrant workers tend to send money home to their families, bypassing any corrupt government officials or organizations. So by allowing immigration we can not only better allocate skills but also wealth.

13. Numbers Matter

The final chapter reiterates the premise that past population projections are being adjusted down by the United Nations based on new fertility rates, and that less developed countries have more of a chance than ever to move ahead economically.

Recommendation:

If you are interested in macro economics, politics, or investing then this book is a must read. A country's population and demographics have a huge impact on its dynamics. Even if the projections in this book turn out to not be right, it's worth understanding the implications of a decrease in the population.

I found the numerical research and discussion very interesting and thought-provoking, but then I'm a statistician / analyst by trade. Where the book earned fewer good marks from my standpoint was Wattenberg's almost giddy praise of immigration. He poo-poos the problems massive illegal immigration is causing in America in favor of the value of getting a bunch of young workers to support us old folk.
I found his treatments on why the TFRs have declined and what could happen to be very well developed and written. It was interesting to see some of his perspectives in the light of the economic hindsight we now enjoy.

Ultimately, this book turned out to be a disappointment. And that is unfortunate because the subject matter is one of the great, largely unnoticed, stories of the next fifty to one hundred years of world history: plunging fertility rates (the number of babies born to each woman of child-bearing age) all over the world will result in a world population that will stabilize at around 8 billion in 2050, followed by a declining world population that may sink to as low as 2.3 billion by 2300. Unfortunately, this book is too disjointed and clunky to adequately explore this fascinating phenomenon. In the first 1/3 of the book, the author does a decent job describing the phenomenon and only a mediocre and cursory job in describing why the phenomenon is occurring. It is in the final 2/3 of the book that the author fails miserably to explore how plunging population levels will impact the world. Instead, the author spends multiple chapters merely rambling on about his views of the recent history of the world and offers no real connection between his views and the putative subject matter of the book: declining world populations.