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The Myth of Overcrowding, Part 1: Are We Really Overcrowded?

By Jim Peron

Are We Really Overcrowded?

FOOD PRODUCTION CONTINUES TO EXCEED population growth, and non-renewable resources seem to become more plentiful each year. Thus we can't use either of these two factors to prove overpopulation. So we must turn instead to other factors.

The weakest basis for defining overpopulation is that of population density. Instead of arguing that we are running out of food or resources, this argument says we are running out of space. And the doomsayers, predictably, have painted graphic pictures of the disasters that await humanity because of overcrowding. In The Doomsday Book Gordon Rattray Taylor discusses a small herd of deer released on James Island in Chesapeake Bay. The herd built up for a number of years, but then mysteriously, almost two thirds of them died off around 1958. His conclusion is that the deer died from stress. While acknowledging that the winter of 1958 was particularly cold, Taylor says this "would not in itself account for such a massive die-off." Taylor, The Doomsday Book, pp. 222-228.Note Taylor believes that the stress was caused, not by a lack of food or other resources, but by crowding--though not extreme crowding.

Taylor then proclaims that "[m]an is in no way exempted from the laws of population growth." Ibid, p. 229.Note He writes that if all humans were to spread themselves as far away from each other as possible, "each man, woman, or child would find him or herself about 150 yards from his nearest neighbour. By the year 2000, the distance will have shrunk to 120 yards and by 2070 to 60 yards. Imagine the plains of the Middle West with dwellings 120 yards apart in every direction and you have the picture. When the deer on James Island began to die of brain haemorrhages they were about 80 yards apart." Ibid, p. 230.Note The implications are clear: a great human die-off is awaiting us when we become overcrowded as a result of overpopulation. But, if this is so, why hasn't the die-off already begun in places like Hong Kong, London, Mexico City and Tokyo?

Certainly Taylor's theory doesn't require that all human beings on the planet be overcrowded before the die-off materialises. After all, it was only the deer on James Island that were crowded, not all the deer in the world. The fact is, the theory that stress caused the death of the James Island deer has yet to be proved. It is simply a hypothesis. And even if it were proved, Taylor shows no correlation between deer and humans. While many mammals are solitary or live in relatively small groups, humans, throughout evolution, have been social creatures. And ever since technology and medicine have allowed it, human groupings have been extremely large with millions of people living, by choice, within a relatively small area. Perhaps humans, unlike deer, require a certain amount of crowding. Jonathan Freedman, a former associate of Ehrlich, writes in his book Crowding and Behavior: "People who live under crowded conditions do not suffer from being crowded. Other things being equal, they are no worse off than other people." Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 255.Note

And just how overcrowded are we anyway? Certainly the world is filled with empty places. A flight almost anywhere in the world reveals vast expanses of unoccupied land. Cities cover only a very small percentage of the earth. When we look at the world's population relative to the land available, we find out just how "underpopulated" the world is.

Just how many people are there on the earth? To say there are around five billion means very little to most people. Instead, that number can be put in perspective by asking what would happen if the world's people were put into the land area of Texas: each person would have an area equal to the floor space of a typical U.S. home. Indeed, some cities in the United States, such as Jacksonville, Florida, contain enough land area to provide standing room for the entire global population. Ben Bloch and Harold Lyons, Apocalypse Not (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1993), pp. 26-27.Note

It has been argued that land per se is not an important issue. After all, who will farm in Antarctica or in the Sahara? The real question is that of arable land. But this overlooks the economic benefits of land for purposes other than farming. Certainly much of the land in Kuwait is useless for agricultural purposes, but it does contain petroleum. In a market economy land is allocated to its most useful purpose. If farm land became scarce enough to threaten our survival as a species, its price would increase dramatically and farm land that had been paved over with shopping malls would be converted back to farm land. Malls would be torn down and farms built in their stead. Thomas Sowell notes:

Even if one were to use arable land as the standard, it would change no fundamental conclusions. Japan, for example, compares even more unfavourably to India on the basis of arable land than of land in general, but it is India that [had] famines. Similarly, famine-stricken Ethiopia has many times more acres of arable land per capita than Singapore or Great Britain. As a distinguished specialist in under-developed economies has pointed out, `famines and food shortages occur mostly in sparsely populated subsistence economies with abundant land.' Thomas Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race (William Morrow & Company, New York, 1983) pp. 211-212.Note

It has been alleged that the world is rapidly losing access to all farm land, but this simply isn't true. In fact, the amount of land suitable for agricultural purposes has been increasing. It is believed that the world currently uses only one-third of the agricultural land available. And if there is global warming, which is far from proven, higher temperatures will increase the total land available for agricultural purposes while increased C02 levels will help stimulate plant growth. For further research on the non-threat of global warming, I suggest Patrick Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (Washington DC; Cato Institute, 1992); Robert Balling Jr., The Heated Debate (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992); Fred S. Singer, Global Climate Change (New York: Paragon Press, 1989).Note

Crowded by choice

What many doomsayers forget is that the vast majority of people live in densely populated areas by choice. Indeed, the worldwide trend is for people to move from less populated areas to more populated areas. And the reasons for this are relatively sound. The larger the number of individuals, the greater the number of trade transactions that are possible. The greater the number of possible transactions, the wealthier the community. This is why urban areas tend to be wealthier than rural areas.

Moreover, certain technologies that improve the standard of living are prohibitively expensive in rural areas but relatively cheap in densely populated cities. This is one reason why you never see subway systems in farming communities: the economies of scale don't allow for them. The same is true for highways, hospitals, electricity, sewerage systems, and other services. The rural areas have more than enough land for everyone and we could shut down the densely populated cities. But we don't. To do so would be folly and would make all of us poorer. Professor Nathan Keyfitz says that the concentration of capital in cities allows for healthier lifestyles, in spite of the problems usually associated with crowding: "the concentration of people in cities has much to be said for it. To be sure the air above Mexico City is scarcely breathable--but this is a local effect. In spite of the bad air, city dwellers live longer than their country cousins. Certainly health care, education, and other amenities are more easily provided to urban populations than to rural ones." Nathan Keyfitz, "The Growing Human Population" in Managing the Planet (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1990), p. 63.Note

Environmentalists should actually applaud cities and dense population concentrations since these are more environmentally friendly than if the population were spread out. Individuals in densely populated regions don't need to use as many resources to travel to work: they often walk, or use buses or trains instead of cars. City dwellers use less land per person for living. Not only that, but the amount of natural resources used to build the typical city dwelling is considerably less than the amount used for rural or suburban dwellings. City dwellers tend to live in smaller homes than their rural counterparts. High population densities in the cities leave large tracts of land open for recreational, agricultural, or conservation purposes. Keyfitz puts it this way: "When people are concentrated in cities, they would seem to have less direct effect on the forests, the wildlife, the oceans--on the biosphere in general." Ibid.Note

And, generally speaking, the denser the population, the wealthier the citizens. For instance, Hong Kong has a population density of 247,501 per square mile, Japan 850, Singapore 12,200, Taiwan 1,478 and South Korea 1,134. By contrast, India's population density is 683 per square mile, China's 409 and Pakistan's 378. As we pointed out earlier, many of the wealthier parts of the world have much higher population densities than so-called "overpopulated" poor areas. Jacqueline Kasun writes, "There is no evidence that more densely settled populations tend to have lower levels of per capita income and output. . . . Some of the most densely settled countries in the world . . . have very high levels of per capita income and output." Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 50.Note She also notes:

Within all countries, however, the most densely settled areas--the cities--have the highest levels of per capita output and income. Economists have long explained these relationships on the grounds mentioned above--the more densely settled populations make better use of their transportation and communications systems as well as other parts of their economic infrastructure. They also have more opportunities for face-to-face contacts that encourage innovation and productivity.

Larger populations not only inspire more ideas but more exchanges, or improvements, of ideas among people, in a ratio that is necessarily more than proportional to the number of additional people. (For example, if one person joins an existing couple, the possible number of exchanges does not increase by one-third, but triples.) One of the advantages of cities, as well as of large universities, is that they are mentally stimulating, that they foster creativity. Ibid. pp. 52, 56.Note

The point about increased trade is important, since the greater the number of choices, the greater the likelihood that an individual will find an exchange that will increase his personal well-being.

Ester Boserup, in Population and Technological Change, reflects on the historical relationship between population density and technological advancement. She concludes:

before the industrial revolution one densely populated area after another became the technological leader. During the whole of this part of human history, the main advantage of a dense population, i.e., the better possibilities to create infrastructure, seems to have outbalanced the disadvantages of a less favourable ratio between population and natural resources. Europe succeeded Asia as the technological leader, but only after it arrived at relatively high population densities... [T]he inhabitants of large sparsely populated continents were doomed to be illiterate subsistence producers. Ester Boserup, Population and Technological Change (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), p. 129.Note

Of course there are disadvantages to living in densely populated regions, but clearly the benefits must outweigh the costs. Economically speaking, we can determine the values of people, not by their assertions, but by their actions. The fact that so many of us choose to live in cities is sufficient proof that we find them beneficial.

And things are only getting better

We all know that the world's population is increasing each day. And for the forseeable future it will continue to increase, but a trend is clearly emerging. This trend seems to indicate that the world population will begin to level off and then fall.

Herman Kahn believes there are three stages of population growth. The first was the early period of man's existence when both birth rates and death rates were high. This led to a long period of population stability. Then, "as the process of economic and technological development gathered momentum, following the onset of industrialisation, productivity increased and food distribution was regularized--reducing famines and famine-induced disease--and more resources were devoted to improvements in public health and safety. The consequent decline in death rates--with birth rates remaining high--caused a rapidly increasing population." Kahn, The Next 200 Years, p. 33.Note Eventually a third stage was reached where "parents began to have fewer and fewer children, prompted by the reduced value of children as economic assets combined with the increased cost of rearing them and the erosion of traditional religious and social pressures for large families." Ibid.Note

This, he believes, will continue until the birth rate slows sufficiently to bring about a static population, and eventually a decline. Thus, while there is a massive blip on the chart showing the rapid increase of the world's population over the last 200 years, Kahn believes that population will decline just as rapidly over the next 200 years.

Certain demographic trends seem to support this theory, for in much of the world we have already reached the stage of stable or diminishing populations. Certainly the peak in population growth appears to have occurred around 1970 when the world's population was growing at a rate of 2.09 percent per year. By 1980, that growth rate was down to 1.73 percent, and by 1990 to 1.7 percent. Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 106.Note In the last five years, the drop in population growth has been even more dramatic. According to the Institute for Demographic Studies, the growth in world population has now declined to 1.5 percent. "World Population Growth Slows Down," The Citizen, Johannesburg, August 7, 1995, p. 17.Note

Thomas Merrick, president of the Population Reference Bureau, believes that within the next hundred years the world will reach the zero population growth rate. He says, "World population is on the path toward stabilization." Ibid, pp. 108-109.Note

If we look at the Total Fertility Rate for the various regions of the world, we see a massive decline everywhere except in Africa. The world rate during 1950-55 was five children per woman, but for the period of 1980-85 this had declined to 3.6. With 2.1 being needed for zero population growth, the world has moved almost halfway toward this goal in just 30 years. Ben Wattenberg notes, "As recently as 1970, women in the less-developed world were bearing a lifetime average of 6.1 children. Today it is 4.1." Ben Wattenberg and Karl Zinsmeister, eds., Are Population Trends a Problem? (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1986), pp. 1-2.Note The more developed countries have already achieved a TFR of 2.0, below the replacement level. East Asia has declined from 5.5 to 2.3, Asia, as a whole, has dropped from 6.0 to 3.9, and Central America has fallen from 6.8 to 4.8. Ibid, p. 109.Note The more developed countries have already achieved a TFR of 2.0, below the replacement level. East Asia has declined from 5.5 to 2.3, Asia, as a whole, has dropped from 6.0 to 3.9, and Central America has fallen from 6.8 to 4.8. "World Population Growth Slows Down," The Citizen, Johannesburg, August 7, 1995, p. 17.Note

People have grown used to referring to the impoverished nations of the world as the "Third World," but the Third World is now almost exclusively Africa. Poverty is diminishing at a rapid pace in Asia, and South and Central America are also experiencing general levels of increased prosperity. With few exceptions, almost all the nations reporting negative or stagnant growth are in Africa. And it is in Africa where the TFR has remained almost stagnant as well. But this is not unusual. Economists have long understood the relationship between economics and birth rates.

So not only is world food production growing faster than the world's population, but it is continuing to increase while world population rates are declining. Contrary to what people assume, the world isn't becoming more overpopulated. In fact, it is becoming less overpopulated every year. Unless there is a wholesale adoption of socialist economics, there is no reason to believe that this situation will change any time in the near future. Each day that goes by, there is more food per person than the day before. The "good old days" are still ahead of us. D. Gale Johnson, an agricultural expert with the University of Chicago, sums up the current state of affairs: "Except where civil wars exist or despotic governments prevail, there has never been a time during the last two centuries when the people in the developing world were better fed or when their food supply was more secure. . . . The scourge of famine due to natural causes has been almost conquered and could be entirely eliminated by the end of the century." D. Gale Johnson, "Population, Food and Wellbeing," Paper No. 90:12, University of Chicago Office of Agriculture Economics Research (July 9, 1990), p. 24.Note

It pays to have babies - lots of them

In poor countries, children are often seen as a retirement plan. Parents need someone to provide for them in their old age and children are the means to this end. However, with relatively high death rates plaguing the society, the only way to ensure that your retirement plan will still exist when you grow old is to have as many children as possible. Osterfeld notes:

High fertility rates were necessary to offset the high mortality rates. In both preindustrial societies of historical times and nonindustrial societies of today, nearly all the incentives are to have large families. First, the cost of rearing children is minimal, and by the time they are 5 or 6 years old they are working in the fields or doing other odd jobs and more than `paying their way.' The man with many children controls much wealth. In terms of economic production, more children mean an increased supply of food and perhaps the production of surpluses for trade. In such societies children also provide the only support for parents in their old age. . . . Many children, especially where mortality rates are high, provide an important hedge against the uncertainties of the future; it is a rational way both to minimize risks and to maximize the possibility of wealth. `The very poor even in industrial societies,' wrote Benedict, `can often see no advantage in limiting their children. At the lowest levels, 10 children are no more of a handicap than 9. The child as yet unborn may be the very one who will help his parents.' Ibid, pp. 113-114.Note

An example of this logic comes from India, where a Punjabi water carrier told an anthropologist whom he mistook for a family planner that had visited him many years earlier: "You were trying to convince me . . . that I shouldn't have any more sons. Now, you see, I have six sons and two daughters and I sit at home in leisure. They are grown up and they bring me money. One even works outside the village as a labourer. You told me I was a poor man and couldn't support a large family. Now you see, because of my large family, I am a rich man." Quoted in Peter Bauer, The Development Frontier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 23.Note

In an industrialized economy, raising a child is expensive, and the higher the income of the family, the greater the costs. If the woman works, she will have to forego her usual income during the later stages of pregnancy and often during the first few years of the child's life. At the same time, with retirement plans, pensions, and so on, few people in developed countries look to their children for support in their old age. But in poor, undeveloped countries, the opposite is true. With minimal employment available, the woman doesn't sacrifice much to have a child, and each child soon becomes a net benefactor to the parents. Kasun notes:

In societies where children begin to work at a young age, where their mothers do not work, and where they do not receive long, expensive educations, big families cost relatively little. Large families even add to the welfare of the whole. Economies of scale, familiar enough in industry, apply equally to families. . . . But in developed, urbanized, industrial society all this changes. . . . The costs of children rise disproportionately to the increases in income that development brings; and the average family size falls. Unsurprisingly, in the industrialized countries population growth rates are now below replacement levels and population is declining in several of them. Kasun, The War Against Population, pp. 63-64.Note

Barbara Klugman, a social anthropologist at the Centre for Health Policy Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, makes the same point:

In an extended family situation, children usually contribute to the family income. Thus in the present situation of widespread unemployment, the more children one has, the greater the chance that at least some will gain employment.

Both as a cultural pattern and because of the lack of adequate social security benefits, poor people rely on children to support and look after them in their old age...

Having only one or two children is no guarantee that a rural African person will see any children live into their adulthood, as a result of the higher infant mortality rate. And until such time as those factors which cause high infant mortality change, people will continue to have many children. To date no country has achieved a low birthrate as long as it has had a high infant mortality rate. Barbara Klugman, "Victims or Villains?" in Going Green (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 76.Note

What is clear is that as a country develops economically, birth rates decline. Thus, if we want to reduce population growth we must promote economic growth, and that means that we must promote a free economy. State central economic planning doesn't work. More importantly, as Mises and Hayek have proved, it cannot work. For a more thorough look at the reasons why socialism was not able to function economically see: F.A. Hayek, (ed), Collectivist Economic Planning (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1935); Ludwig von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1990); F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); David Ramsey Steele, From Marx to Mises (La Salle: Open Court, 1993); Elisabeth Tamedly, Socialism and International Economic Order (Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1969) and Trygve Hoff, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society (London: William Hodge and Company, 1949).Note The only economic system that has successfully raised the standard of living of a vast number of people for an extended period of time is market capitalism. This isn't even a debatable point any more--even well-known socialist Robert Heilbroner has admitted: "Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. The Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism: that however inequitably or irresponsibly the marketplace may distribute goods, it does so better than the queues of a planned economy." Robert Heilbroner, "The Triumph of Capitalism," The New Yorker (January 23, 1989), p. 98.Note

Economic development, more than family planning programs, free birth control, or anything else, will bring about a population decline in the less developed countries. Ironically, the pressure groups concerned about population growth are promoting policies that discourage growth. Bolch and Lyons note:

Paradoxically, one way to cause the growth rate of a population to slow in the long run (but not in the short) may be to follow economic policies that are associated with a reduction in the mortality rate: the creation of institutions that will allow sustained economic growth, something that is almost always accompanied by improvements in both private health care and public health facilities. Two principal reasons why population rates have slowed toward zero or even negative levels in much of the industrialized world are first, the relative security that higher levels of income and wealth provide, and second, the increased freedom for women that generally accompanies economic growth. By promoting ecologically-driven policies that seek to limit economic growth, the environmental movement may be ensuring the defeat of one of its basic aspirations. Bolch and Lyons, Apocalypse Not, p. 28.Note

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Continue to Part Two: Population Politics

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Jim Peron is the Executive Director of the Institute for Liberal Values, the editor of the book The Liberal Tide, and the author of the forthcoming book 'The Road Not Taken: Resolving the Crisis on the Roads.'