The free market: solving the demographic problem

Abstract

Over the past two decades, population growth has been one of the most important topics of research and discussion, ranking high among global problems. In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich concluded that overpopulation was a "bomb" that would "explode" during the 1970s causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, causing war and violence, and destroying the planet's ability to sustain life. "Population growth is a cancer that... must be removed," he wrote sinisterly.1
Five years later, Robert McNamara, who was then president of the World Bank, expressed this same apocalyptic vision by commenting, "The greatest and most important obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most peoples of the underdeveloped world. is the rampant growth of the population... the threat posed by demographic pressure is similar to that of nuclear war... Both can and will have catastrophic consequences if they are not confronted and resolved quickly."2 In 1984, McNamara updated his opinion in an article published in the influential foreign affairs magazine, where he wrote that population growth is one of the main causes of poverty, hunger, environmental pollution, unemployment and political tensions in developing countries3