1 New Visions for Population Explosion

The "population explosion" that has been forgotten or neglected by the mass media and politicians for some time is regaining strength because of its resultant phenomena of lower fertility and population aging. But for parent generations today, the most important challenge for humans is left unsolved. Low fertility and population aging have inevitably brought about major changes that humans have never experienced, such as the collapse of family systems and the restructuring of economic structures and labor organizations. These changes are causing problems to many countries regardless of social systems or ideologies. The change in age structure is drawing wide attention among experts and policy makers as a major global demographic transition.

One point missing is a global perspective beyond the borders of respective countries. Needless to say, it is the problem of the balance between the huge population and the limit of global resources to support humans. The fact is that the scale of the rapidly increasing world population is unprecedentedly large in the history of the world.

The world population in 2005 is a little less than 6.5 billion (State of World Population, 2005). In 1950, about half a century ago, the population was only 2.5 billion. While annual increase rates have been lowered to around 1.2 percent recently, the world population itself increases by 87 million every year. It is estimated that there will be nearly 3 billion more people living on the earth in 2050, about half a century from now.

The greatest challenges for human survival today are to develop strategies for lower fertility and population aging. At the same time, the process of population explosion must be clarified.

A population explosion occurs as a result of an imbalance between fertility and mortality, which are the basic elements of demographic change. In a long history, humans have come through the upsets and redresses of a vital statistical balance. Population declined due to large numbers of deaths caused by war, natural disasters, epidemics, and famine, and rose due to fertility recovery after the settlement of conflict and the restoration of peace. In this way, low population increase rates had been maintained.

The balance in vital statistics had always been maintained with a little increase under homeostatic natural and social conditions. However, the population explosion after World War II resulted in a major demographic transition. The population explosion was caused by two trends that balance vital statistics that occurred among industrialized countries involved in the war, and among developing countries that became independent after the war. In the former, birth rates rose to supplement a large number of lives lost in the war, while in the latter, mortality was greatly lowered thanks to improved health and medical infrastructure.

Figures 1 and 2 show four patterns of fertility and mortality that contributed to the population explosion for developed and developing countries.

Click here to show Figure 1

Click here to show Figure 2