Beware the prophets of population doom
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Philip Stephens
We have been warned. Britain is full up. The present rate of population growth is unsustainable. The government must be shaken from its complacency. As an important committee of the House of Commons observes, life will become intolerable unless something is done.
The figures speak for themselves. Even assuming what the select committee on science and technology calls a "moderate rate of growth", these crowded islands will be home to 71m people by 2020. Ten years later the number could well be 82m.
That amounts to three more Londons. Where will they all live? How will schools and hospitals cope? Who will provide the water? The environment simply cannot sustain such depredation. What is needed is a population policy. As the parliamentarians note, the Whitehall response to this looming crisis has been one of complacency. Compulsory limits on family size might be going too far. But exhortation could be deployed to persuade parents to be more responsible about procreation.
Those last two sentences give the game away. The warnings detailed above are a little out of date. They were published more than 35 years ago - in 1971. What makes them interesting now is that the alarm about demographic time bombs bears an uncanny resemblance to some recent lurid headlines.
The Office of National Statistics has just produced its latest analysis of fertility and mortality rates, immigration and emigration flows and the rest. Other things being equal, it concludes, the population will jump to 65m by 2015 and to 71m by 2030.
The reaction now is much the same as it was then. Front pages shout about overcrowding; eco-warriors warn the increase is unsustainable; politicians call for tougher immigration controls; something called the Optimum Population Trust declares the country is "sleepwalking to a population nightmare".
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was sure I heard Jonathon Porritt, the prime minister's adviser on the environment, solemnly declare on the radio the other day that we should see each new birth not as a moment for joy, but as another carbon footprint on our overheated planet.
Back in 1971 they got the direction right, albeit for the wrong reasons. The population has indeed increased - from 55.7m to a little over 60m now. But the rise has fallen far short of forecasts (the MPs thought it would be 66m by 2000). And the dynamics of the change were entirely unpredicted. Immigration rather than the birth rate has been the main driver of growth.
Both sets of figures, though, invite us to make the same mistake: to assume that we can project the present into the indefinite future. To be fair to the ONS, it does attach a health warning that projections are not the same as forecasts. Such subtleties, though, are invariably lost in the transmission. In 1971 wisdom had it that the postwar baby boom would continue indefinitely. As it happens, the boom was ending even as the good people of Middle Britain marched on parliament to voice alarm. In 1972 the birthrate fell to one of the lowest levels of the century.
Freer contraception, wider choices for women in the workplace, no-fault divorce and legal abortion undercut the alarmist assumptions of the doomsters. Before long, the worry was that people were having too few rather than too many children.
So the latest figures invite a weary sense of déjà vu. After a period of relative stagnation, a surge in net immigration has driven a significant increase in the population. Birth rates have also risen slightly and we are all living longer. Then, as now, there is nothing to say the most important of these trends is immutable.
About 70 per cent of the increases projected by the ONS for the next 25 years are attributable, directly or indirectly, to net immigration. But there is no evidence that people will continue to arrive in Britain at recent rates. Much of the recent inflow, for example, can be attributed to the one-off shock of enlargement of the European Union. More obviously, this government, the next one or the one after that may well impose tighter border controls. In the other direction, more of the now retiring baby boomers may decide to spend their pensions on a life in the sun.
Unless you count yourself among the Malthusian pessimists who, like the aforementioned OPT, believe that Britain will be able to sustain only half its present population over the long term, there is anyway plenty of space for incomers. The Netherlands, to take a nearby example, has a far higher population density.
The future undoubtedly holds plenty to worry about. Think of climate change. Those of a naturally gloomy disposition will find ample, and serious, cause for the concern in the latest audit of the precarious condition of the global environment, published by the United Nations environment programme.
Closer to home, the one sure prediction in the latest ONS estimates is that Britain is going to become a much greyer country. The children of the baby boomers face a heavy burden in supporting their ageing parents. We would probably all be a lot better off had the killjoys been right in 1971.
We have been warned. Britain is full up. The present rate of population growth is unsustainable. The government must be shaken from its complacency. As an important committee of the House of Commons observes, life will become intolerable unless something is done.
The figures speak for themselves. Even assuming what the select committee on science and technology calls a "moderate rate of growth", these crowded islands will be home to 71m people by 2020. Ten years later the number could well be 82m.
That amounts to three more Londons. Where will they all live? How will schools and hospitals cope? Who will provide the water? The environment simply cannot sustain such depredation. What is needed is a population policy. As the parliamentarians note, the Whitehall response to this looming crisis has been one of complacency. Compulsory limits on family size might be going too far. But exhortation could be deployed to persuade parents to be more responsible about procreation.
Those last two sentences give the game away. The warnings detailed above are a little out of date. They were published more than 35 years ago - in 1971. What makes them interesting now is that the alarm about demographic time bombs bears an uncanny resemblance to some recent lurid headlines.
The Office of National Statistics has just produced its latest analysis of fertility and mortality rates, immigration and emigration flows and the rest. Other things being equal, it concludes, the population will jump to 65m by 2015 and to 71m by 2030.
The reaction now is much the same as it was then. Front pages shout about overcrowding; eco-warriors warn the increase is unsustainable; politicians call for tougher immigration controls; something called the Optimum Population Trust declares the country is "sleepwalking to a population nightmare".
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was sure I heard Jonathon Porritt, the prime minister's adviser on the environment, solemnly declare on the radio the other day that we should see each new birth not as a moment for joy, but as another carbon footprint on our overheated planet.
Back in 1971 they got the direction right, albeit for the wrong reasons. The population has indeed increased - from 55.7m to a little over 60m now. But the rise has fallen far short of forecasts (the MPs thought it would be 66m by 2000). And the dynamics of the change were entirely unpredicted. Immigration rather than the birth rate has been the main driver of growth.
Both sets of figures, though, invite us to make the same mistake: to assume that we can project the present into the indefinite future. To be fair to the ONS, it does attach a health warning that projections are not the same as forecasts. Such subtleties, though, are invariably lost in the transmission. In 1971 wisdom had it that the postwar baby boom would continue indefinitely. As it happens, the boom was ending even as the good people of Middle Britain marched on parliament to voice alarm. In 1972 the birthrate fell to one of the lowest levels of the century.
Freer contraception, wider choices for women in the workplace, no-fault divorce and legal abortion undercut the alarmist assumptions of the doomsters. Before long, the worry was that people were having too few rather than too many children.
So the latest figures invite a weary sense of déjà vu. After a period of relative stagnation, a surge in net immigration has driven a significant increase in the population. Birth rates have also risen slightly and we are all living longer. Then, as now, there is nothing to say the most important of these trends is immutable.
About 70 per cent of the increases projected by the ONS for the next 25 years are attributable, directly or indirectly, to net immigration. But there is no evidence that people will continue to arrive in Britain at recent rates. Much of the recent inflow, for example, can be attributed to the one-off shock of enlargement of the European Union. More obviously, this government, the next one or the one after that may well impose tighter border controls. In the other direction, more of the now retiring baby boomers may decide to spend their pensions on a life in the sun.
Unless you count yourself among the Malthusian pessimists who, like the aforementioned OPT, believe that Britain will be able to sustain only half its present population over the long term, there is anyway plenty of space for incomers. The Netherlands, to take a nearby example, has a far higher population density.
The future undoubtedly holds plenty to worry about. Think of climate change. Those of a naturally gloomy disposition will find ample, and serious, cause for the concern in the latest audit of the precarious condition of the global environment, published by the United Nations environment programme.
Closer to home, the one sure prediction in the latest ONS estimates is that Britain is going to become a much greyer country. The children of the baby boomers face a heavy burden in supporting their ageing parents. We would probably all be a lot better off had the killjoys been right in 1971.