I’ve been seeing more and more alarmism about the idea that, on current demographic trends, the world’s population might shrink to a billion in a century or two. That distant prospect is producing lots of advocacy for policies to increase birth rates right now.
One of the big claims is that a smaller population will reduce the rate of scientific progress I’ve criticised this in the past, pointing out that billions of young people today, particularly girls, don’t get the education they need to have any serious chance of realising their potential. But it seems as if I need to repeat myself, so I will do so, trying a slightly different tack
It’s surprisingly difficult to get an estimate of the number of researchers in the world, but Google scholar gives us a rough idea. Google Scholar indexes research across all academic disciplines, including social sciences and humanities. No exact count is available, but I’ve seen an estimate that 1.5 million people have Google scholar profiles. I’d guess that this would account for at least half of all active researchers, for a total of 3 million.
Another way of getting an estimate is to look at the total number of documents indexed, which is said to be about 150 million. Assuming a mean value of 50 per active researcher (a highly skewed distribution where the really active people are producing a lot more) that’s consistent with the earlier estimate.
That is, to maintain the existing number of researchers, around 0.3 per cent of a population of 1 billion would need to be in this active class. Taking account of lab and research assistants, technicians and so on, the proportion might rise to 1 per cent. If all countries in the world achieved the 40 per cent rate of attendance common in rich countries, that would require 2.5 per cent of undergraduates to do science degrees with a third of those going on to graduate study.
It would actually be easier than this if, as seems reasonable, a sustainable world with a gradually declining population could manage without an overgrown finance sector, buying up many of the best and brightest. The “rocket scientists” now working on ways to make stock trading nanoseconds faster could go back to rocket science, or whatever kind of science is most needed in the future.
In summary is no reason to think a billion people would be too few to sustain a technological economy.
But would a world of a billion people look like? I’ve addressed this before, but I will reprint what I wrote then.
It’s foolish to try to say much in detail about life many generations from now. What could a contemporary of Shakespeare have to say about the London of today? But London and other cities existed long before Shakespeare and seem likely to continue far into the future (if we can get there). And many of the services cities have always provided will be needed as long as people are people. So, it might be worth imagining how a world population of one billion might be distributed across cities, towns and rural areas.
A billion person world could not support mega-cities with the current populations of Tokyo and Delhi. But it could easily include a city the size of London, New York, Rio, or Osaka (around 10 million each [1]) on every continent, and dozens the size of Sydney, Barcelona, Montreal, Nairobi, Santiago or Singapore (around 5 million each). Such a collection of cities would meet the needs of even the most avid lovers of urban life in its various forms.Meanwhile, there would be plenty of space for those who prefer the county
With only a billion people we wouldn’t need all the space in the world. The project of rewilding half the world, now a utopian dream, could be fulfilled, while leaving more than enough room for farming and forestry, as well as whatever rural arcadias followers of the simple life could imagine and implement.
- Betteridge’s Law of Headlines Applies
fn1. It’s not always clear where to draw boundaries here. I’ve gone for examples where the estimated urban area is similar to the officially defined city, with the exception of NYC, where there is (to me at least) a sharp distinction between the five boroughs of the city, and the larger conurbation.
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