Reaching 8 billion people is a success story, but it raises big concerns

Last November 15 was chosen as a symbolic date to mark the day the planet reached 8,000 million inhabitants. While reaching that number illustrates a success story for humanity, it also raises concerns about the links between population growth, poverty, climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Unless we overcome the huge gap between the rich and the poor, we are preparing for a world of eight billion people full of tensions and mistrust, crises and conflicts,” warned António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations.

The figure of eight billion people testifies to scientific advances and improvements in nutrition, public health and sanitation. However, as the human family grows, it also becomes more divided and complex.

Faced with this need to reflect beyond the number, Manuel Ordorica-Mellado, demography teacher from El Colegio de México, PhD in engineering from UNAM and former president of the Mexican Society of Demography, shares with El Economista that it is very important to observe the speed and rate of growth of the world’s population. He said that demography has to be seen as one of the most accurate and important social sciences, because it allows us to glimpse what the future is. “Not only is it a curious fact, it is the tool that allows us to generate projections and create solutions, not wait for population problems to come up.”

Population growth in two centuries

He is also the former director of Population Studies of the National Population Council (conapo) explains that the first billion inhabitants in the world were reached in the first quarter of the 19th century, “for this to happen it took several centuries to pass”. The next billion people arrived in 1930; here medical advances made it possible to deal with diseases and this translated into higher life expectancies. “A stellar moment of the human being for a longer life was in 1928 when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, which allowed a decrease in deaths from infectious diseases, thus, the levels of mortality combined with a high birth rate resulted in population growth”.

The next billion people were registered in 1960, only three decades later, and from then on, a stage begins where fertility declines, thanks to the appearance of the contraceptive pill. It is worth mentioning that this invention is attributed to Carl Djerassi but the patent for the compound belongs to the Mexican engineer Luis Ernesto Miramontes, “the discovery was made in Mexico in 1951 and one of the main compounds was stolen from barbasco, a Mexican plant” .

The next billion were reached in 1974 to reach four billion and 13 years later the population reached five billion people; in 1999 we were six billion, in 2012 seven billion and finally this November 15 eight billion people were announced on Earth. “This is the speed at which the population grows, but knowing how many inhabitants there are is not enough, the information poses great challenges.”

uneven distribution

Ordorica explains that in 2022 the distribution of the population is very unequal on the planet, China is still the most populous country on Earth with 1,426 million inhabitants, followed by India with 1,417 million. For next year, the forecast indicates that this country will be the most populous on the globe. It is also projected that the world will stabilize by the middle of the 21st century at 10 billion inhabitants, so policies must be adapted according to the country.

In Mexico, the population is around 130 million inhabitants, far from the previous countries, but the phenomenon for our country is also interesting. By 1950 we had 25 million inhabitants; in 1970, 50 million inhabitants. “If we had continued to grow at that speed in 2000 we would have reached 150 million inhabitants, but according to the census, we reached 100 million, 50 million stopped being born. The population policy in this sense was very successful, going from the phrase ‘to govern is to populate’, in the 70s, to ‘the small family lives better’”.

Another relevant aspect in our country is that we have had a very concentrated distribution of the population in the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara; people migrate to where they have a better chance of living, but it is important to have a policy that promotes important areas. For example, at the borders, which in the past made us lose territory because we did not have a population concentrated there.

After the covid the problem became clear. We had a large number of infections and deaths due to the strong population concentrations. “Human beings are invading the habitat of animals, viruses and bacteria that live among them. Here we are touching on something very important for population growth. Undoubtedly the environment is totally linked to population growth”.

The population aging process

Another fundamental aspect is the analysis of age. Life expectancy is 72 years for men and 78 for women. From a demographic point of view, the “weaker sex” are men and with this come fundamental issues to analyze in the long term, for example, as well as The newborn population grew rapidly, as will the growth of the elderly population.

“What is going to happen is that a lot of the female population does not have social security, they do not have the resources and they will be alone in their advanced ages, perhaps living with various diseases. Adding the discussion of pensions and retirements will be important. This is a problem that needs to be addressed now.”

On the other hand, it is being observed how there are many young women under 18 years of age who are having children who will have great limitations. This has to do with a push for education issues, “as they say, the best birth control pill is education.”

Future projections

Dr. Ordorica-Mellado stresses that it is possible to regulate ourselves with the projection data offered by the study of demography through public policies. For example, in Mexico a goal of 1% was established by the year 2000 and then intermediate goals between 1977 and 2000, then it was stated what kind of efforts and programs had to be carried out, such as education, communication and family planning.

Now the demography has changed, we no longer have a problem with demographic growth, but we do have a problem with the replacement rate, that is, with less than 2 children, now we will have to analyze what is happening at the level of each federal entity to find solutions to aging and what is linked to it, the food, economic, salary, care issues, among others, “and this problem will have to be faced by the State,” he concludes.

nelly.toche@eleconomista.mx