From Pyramids to Pillars:  The New Demographic Reality

Martha Farnsworth Riche, Ph.D.

Prepared for the United Nations Population Fund

Technical Meeting on Population Aging

Brussels, Belgium, October 6-9, 1998

 

Introduction

The nations that in 1994 hammered out a Program of Action to stem world population growth have reason now to both celebrate and continue their good work. The world’s fertility rate has plummeted to nearly half the 1950 average. Lifetimes are lengthening and infant mortality is dropping in most of the world, while opportunities and education for women and men are generally on the rise. The planet seems to have averted the risk of a population explosion that would have bequeathed environmental and economic upheaval to subsequent generations.

 However, the task is far from finished. We have come perhaps halfway, converting the population explosion into a world population that is still growing rapidly from the momentum of earlier years. The danger now is that we will declare victory and go home. Some are recommending just that, arguing that the trends that led to our current progress are irreversible. They are wrong.  These trends reflect investments agreed to by a consensus of nations at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The need instead is for renewed commitment to see the 20-year program of action to completion.

 This paper is a discussion of current demographic trends and generational issues. It looks at what is happening now and assesses it with assumptions based on today’s new demographic realities.

 

The Current Reality: From Pyramids to Pillars

The ICPD addressed a world in which the traditional graphic portrait of the human population—the shape of a pyramid—was becoming obsolete. For centuries, it had a wide base representing large numbers of babies born, a narrowing midsection in which many died in early childhood and less rapidly with age, rising to a pinnacle depicting few survivors past age 65. In this world, the majority of people were children, most of whom died before reproducing. The elderly were generally also dependent and unproductive members of society, so both the top and bottom of the pyramid relied for support on people in the middle: the population of working age.

 

The sudden spurt in world population after World War II transformed the demographic picture. Widespread improvements in public health meant that fewer children died and older people lived longer, so the bulge of the unusually large post-war generation did not diminish at the traditional rate as it moved up the age scale. The pyramid’s peak also rose, to age 85 and even higher.

 When the large post-war generation began to bear its children, world population skyrocketed—from 2.5 billion to 4.1 billion in just the 25 years between 1950 and 1975. Despite unprecedented fertility declines in developing countries, the sheer numbers of new parents are now startlingly large, and that continues to widen their population pyramid at its base. But in industrialized nations, once the surge of post-war births subsided, the base stabilized and grew older. More people were reaching older ages, and the pinnacle was reaching higher. In both sets of countries, developed and less-developed, the elderly are the fastest growing part of the population. But with a stable population of new parents, in industrialized countries the traditional population pyramid is looking more like a pillar.

 The ICPD correctly attributed the decline in fertility rates in both sets of countries to increasing education and a broader set of life choices for women in particular, wider distribution of reliable and inexpensive contraception, and the ongoing shift from country to urban living. The ICPD also took note of the obvious: one in three of the planet’s 6 billion people (as of June 1999) are under 15. Close to a billion are teenagers just entering their reproductive years, and 85 percent of them live in the developing world. These facts guarantee a tremendous momentum of population increase well into the next century, even if average fertility continues to decline.

 Nearly all this population growth will be in the developing world, where governments are already struggling to supply their people with water, land, food, and work. Meanwhile, in the developed world, where fertility rates are receding toward (and in many cases below) the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman, the future holds an aging populace and—barring immigration—actual declines in population counts.

 In response to these broad trends, the ICPD urged continued global investment in education, especially for teenagers and women; in health care and in development and distribution of family planning methods; and in political and legal steps to broaden women’s options, improve developing world economies, and protect the environment.

 The goal, in short, is to ensure that the base of the pyramid stabilizes as the top widens, so that the graphic eventually becomes a pillar in which the number of infants worldwide will not be much different from the number of 85-year-olds. At that point world population growth will have stabilized, and each individual born will have a good chance of a full and potentially productive life.

 

 

The Implications: Twenty New Years of Active Life, and Counting

1. The human life span

Progress since 1950, and especially since 1970, in reducing fertility rates has been matched by equally remarkable improvements in mortality at older ages, even at the oldest ages. This trend has been so remarkable that the most exciting debates in demography are now centered around what the natural limits to the human life span might be. Take as an example the long life of Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, whose survival was a media event until her death at age 122 in 1997. According to mortality expert James W. Vaupel, the declines in French death rates since 1950 are so pronounced that if they continue at the same pace into the future, “half of all [today’s] French babies may survive to celebrate their 95^th birthdays and half of French girl babies may become centenarians.” Even if death rates stop in their tracks, more than half the babies will celebrate their 80th birthdays, half the girls their 85th.

 Assuming that today’s mortality rates will continue to evolve at the same pace and in the same direction, however, is just as uncertain as that assumption is for fertility rates. Changes in the environment, new diseases like AIDS, or events like war can reverse progress in life expectancy. On the other hand, continuing medical and nutritional research is likely to extend life spans even further, even as the “green revolution,” cloning, and biotechnology contribute more to an environment that favors human survivability.

 

Whatever the future brings, at the moment many people in countries around the world can expect to live roughly 20 years longer than their parents or grandparents. The implications of these 20 new years are enormous and are just beginning to be explored.

 2. Healthy life expectancy

The continuing rise in life expectancy has been accompanied by a parallel rise in healthy life expectancy. Whereas aging was once assumed to involve steadily increasing illness and dependency from early adulthood on, and those who survived to 65 were likely to be fragile, people in developed nations like the United States can now expect to be relatively healthy and active until within a year or so of death.

 In these countries, incentives in place to get older people out of the workforce reflect a traditional view that jobs need to be freed up for younger people who can perform the tasks more reliably. But healthy older people do not necessarily need or want to retire from the working world. As a rule of thumb, everyone has been given 20 extra years of fully functional living. This greatly affects the potential for national economic production, even as it reshapes the demand for jobs.

 

 

3. Dependency ratios

The U.S. and similar Social Security systems were established when young workers could expect to live only a few years beyond age 65, and to be physically and economically dependent on their children. Similarly, the education system was constructed around the demands of family-based agriculture: to give children the summer off so they could work in the fields, and to end after basic subjects were taught. Whether in city or country, children contributed to the family’s support from an early age, as they still do in developing nations.

 The new demographic reality has shifted both kinds of dependency ratios dramatically. In much of the world, people over 65 are much less “old and sick” than they used to be, often not reaching dependency status until their 80s, if then. Meanwhile, in developed countries children now rarely contribute significantly to the adult economy before their 20s, while adults invest ever more heavily in their education.

 In the West, pressure is growing to schedule schooling year-round to reflect urbanized life. At the same time, Social Security and other retirement systems are undergoing political scrutiny and policy tinkering to remain financially viable as their target population rises and their supporting population dwindles. In neither case, however, has the debate yet focused on the fundamental demographic changes that are transforming dependency at every stage of life.

 4. Women’s roles

Women of the post-war generations in industrialized nations were the first to be routinely educated past grammar school. They were also the first to have broad access to reliable contraception. These factors contributed not only to a decline in their fertility rates but also to a steady rise in the number of women in the workforce: in the United States in 1997, three out of four women aged 25 to 54 were in the workforce, as were fully 72 percent of women who were also raising children.

 These changes have challenged traditional family and social arrangements, with predictable friction. In many places, women are still expected or required to take sole responsibility for child rearing, family nutrition and health, and household maintenance, no matter what their education or work status. They have also traditionally been the primary caregivers for elderly family members. Social norms of banking and credit, pay rates, training, inheritance law, legal and political status, and other property arrangements have not always kept pace with women’s new responsibilities and expectations. Nor have laws governing rape, beatings, and other assaults on women’s health been developed and/or enforced uniformly.

 Add 20 new years to women’s lives, however, and the result is a major shift in women’s options, even without much change in family and social conditions. For the first time, women can raise their children to maturity and have 20-year careers as well, before confronting care for the elderly. This makes investment in women’s education and training more important than ever, along with changes in law and custom that will allow women to reach their full potential. The nations where progress in these areas has been greatest are, not surprisingly, those where economic production is the highest in history.

 5. Global variations

Contrary to its image, the United States appears to be doing nearly everything right in addressing its population issues. Teen births fell from 39 to 34 (per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 17) between 1991 and 1996, and the national fertility rate is hovering just below the 2.1 children per woman replacement level. With a steady influx of largely ambitious, hard-working immigrants, however, the population is still growing slowly, able to provide jobs and services to nearly everyone in a dynamic and creative economy. Contraceptive and reproductive health services are widely available. Women’s education levels, employment options, and social and legal status are at or approaching those of men, who are shouldering an increasing share of responsibility at home, during the child-rearing years and beyond.

 In contrast, some developed nations have a fertility rate that is well below replacement level: 1.2 children per woman in Italy, Russia, and Spain; 1.3 children per woman in Germany, Greece, and Poland; and 1.4 children per woman in Hungary and Japan, for example. According to noted French demographer Jean-Claude Chenais, low rates in Eastern Europe correspond to the rigors of adjustment to post-Soviet economics; low rates in Southern Europe and Japan to absence of the conditions that lead modern young women to bear and raise children: affordable housing, help with childcare, and flexible labor markets for both women and men.

 Moreover, in these low-fertility countries young men still have traditional expectations of women’s and men’s behavior in the home, while the young women have developed very different expectations and life plans. In Italy, for example, young women now have, on average, more schooling than young men. Surveys find that Italians want more children than other Europeans do, but as young women postpone marriage and childbearing (perhaps in hopes of a husband on the role-sharing model), they are ending up with fewer. In contrast, Chenais points out, Sweden, “the country with the highest fertility in Western Europe is also the country in which empowerment of women is most fully realized.”

 Some gloomy theoreticians have focused on these low-fertility nations as heralding a global era of declining populations where lonely only-children struggle to support vast numbers of old people. The trends they cite, however, are not only little in evidence in most of the world but also subject to reversal. In addition, given the reality of population momentum in developing nations, no country open to immigration from crowded places need ever fear a loss of numbers.

 Developing nations have achieved near-miracles in stemming population growth, cutting their fertility rates nearly in half since 1950. Where the world rate was six children per woman then, today it is just three.  This feat was achieved when developing-world governments grasped the implications of their explosive birthrates and took action. Few in the West realize that these countries assumed two-thirds of the cost of distributing family planning information and materials, only calling on the industrialized world for help with the rest.

 Now the great majority of young people live in the developing world—fully 90 percent. Worldwide, an unprecedented 1 billion are in the prime childbearing ages 15 to 24, with nearly 2 billion more future parents behind them. Western family planning assistance is still needed to help developing countries meet demand. Right now 120 to 150 million couples who want family planning say they can’t get it. Still others are unaware that family planning can help them have fewer and healthier children. Impoverished medical care systems are struggling to cope with resurgent disease. And in many places, women’s options are being circumscribed, rather than expanded.

 In other words, despite major progress in much of the world, the trends that contribute to lower fertility are not in evidence in the most populous parts of the planet. In 40 African nations, for example, fertility rates still average six children per woman, well above the numbers women there say they want to have. This sober reality means that relaxing efforts to slow population growth would have major and possibly disastrous consequences.

 

Conclusion

The United Nations projects a world population of between 7.7 billion and 11.2 billion people by 2050, with 9.4 billion the most likely given current trends. To achieve the low figure, world fertility rates would have to average 1.6 children per woman by then, a rate now reached or exceeded in only 34 nations. The high figure assumes that the current global fertility rate of 2.9 children per woman falls more slowly than at present, reaching 2.6 worldwide by 2050. (If it were to stop falling, continuing at the current 2.9, population in that year would total 14.9 billion.) The most likely scenario assumes a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman, just replacement level worldwide.

 The ICPD Program of Action aimed at the middle, replacement-level scenario. Participants at the Cairo conference agreed that a world investment of $17 billion per year by 2000 would secure universal reproductive health care by 2015 and a 75 percent cut in maternal, infant, and child mortality. The least-developed nations pledged to invest heavily in education and health, economic development, and the creation of local industry, and to stress the advancement of women’s rights and opportunities. Developing countries agreed as well to strengthen market-based economic systems and democratic institutions.

 Industrialized nations, with basic development goals accomplished and fertility rates already at or approaching the desired levels, planned to facilitate work elsewhere as well as examine policy and other changes that their aging populations will require.

 

Yearly world investment toward these goals is now at $10 billion, and 80 percent of it is coming from developing countries. Industrialized nations have failed so far to meet their commitments. But if world population is to stabilize, and if all people are to have the chance of reaching their full potential of productive life, the commitments of the ICPD must become reality in both sets of countries.

 The objective is neither impossible to achieve nor automatically in hand.  Enormous progress has been made in stemming population growth. There is ample evidence that countries are taking the ICPD program seriously, and the benchmarks will be catalogued and celebrated at the ICPD+5 conference in February 1999 at The Hague. But enormous work still remains, and the conference will outline the demands of that task as well.

 The keys to further progress are obvious: the roles of women, whose options and opportunities in every sphere of life must continue to expand; and the education and participation of young people, women and men alike, in the changes necessary to construct a workable future. Their demand for reliable and inexpensive family planning services, currently unmet in many crucial places, must be satisfied on a continuing basis well into the next century.

 When girls are educated and couples have options for planning their families, they exercise these options responsibly everywhere in the world, regardless of culture. Only then will the old pyramid of aging become the pillar that supports a sustainable world population.

 

 

 

Martha Farnsworth Riche is currently a private consultant and former director of the U.S. Census Bureau.  For more information about this report, contact the Communications Consortium Media Center at (202) 326-8700.