Archbishop of Sydney

Babybust II

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
13 March 2005

It is harder to believe world population is set to fall if you live in a big city. In Sydney the problem is growth and the pressure this puts on services like the water supply.

Sydney’s problems are nothing compared to cities overseas. Lagos in Nigeria had 6.5 million people ten years ago. In 2015 it will have 16 million, many living in slums where one-fifth of children die before they turn 5.

The world’s population will peak at 9 billion in 2050 and then begin a steep decline. By then, the world’s 50 poorest countries will have also tripled in size. How can we talk about falling population?

The explanation lies in the difference between fertility rates and aging. In Australia we won’t begin to feel the effects of our own low birth rates until the baby-boom generation leaves the workforce and starts to enter nursing homes. A similar dynamic is now in play in the developing world.

China’s population will age as quickly in one generation as Europe’s did in a century. The dramatic fall in birth rates there has created the “4-2-1 problem”. One child will potentially have to care for two parents and four grandparents.

Fewer people of working age and more people in retirement means  slower economic growth and higher taxes to pay for aged care. This is a problem for Western countries, which grew rich before they started to grow old.

But in the developing world fertility rates are falling much faster than they did in the West. This means many of these countries—including China, which have fuelled their growth with an abundance of cheap labour—will  grow old before they grow rich.

While some cities grow uncontrollably others are becoming ghost towns. In 2000, 93 major Russian cities shrank. In Japan, hundreds of small and medium cities are winding down. Shanghai has become a mega-city in China, but dozens of other metropolises there are shrinking.

In Leipzig and Magdeburg in eastern Germany, suburbs abandoned after a 50 per cent drop in the birth rate are being demolished and returned to parkland. Outside these cities wolves are returning to the abandoned countryside.

This last point might appeal to die-hard greenies, but only if they have plenty of money salted away to pay for their old age. An aging population also means that house prices will fall over time, and with them the value of investments tied up in people’s homes.

Increased immigration is not a long-term solution. By mid-century the sources of immigrants in the developing world will also begin to dry up. The political costs may also become higher.

The resurgence of racism in Europe is linked to the increasing dependence on immigrant labour and the growing sense of dying national identity. The feeling of decline becomes a vicious circle. Only a renewal of hope can break it.