By Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim
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But in 1990 it drastically dropped to 2.1 at which children replace their parents and make up for those who die young. In 2010 it went further down to 1.94. So the government is now trying to remedy this declining childbirth problem.
On the other hand, there was and still is a world-wide concern about overpopulation on Earth. The world population has now exceeded 7.6 billion, and according to projections by the U.N. Population Division, we are en route to 9 billion by 2050, and 10 billion by 2100.
However, somewhere on the road between these milestones, scientists think we will make a U-turn. The U.N. estimates of global population trends using the data from 230 countries show that the great majority have birthrate declines. In addition, globally the birthrate is falling to the replacement level, 2.1.
In 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that population expansion was bound to stop because life-sustaining resources would be insufficient to support such growth.
According to his projection, the human population was increasing at a geometric rate. But due to diminishing returns on fixed farmland, food supply was increasing at an arithmetic rate. Based on the argument by Malthus, the U.N.'s projection of a U-turn in population growth is plausible.
There seems to be a mystical force of restitution working to keep the earth clean and productive so that human inhabitants may survive on earth indefinitely.
For example, after massive deaths due to pandemic diseases and wars, there have been comparable increases in population growth. To restore the previous population level, sometimes it took a few hundred years or sometimes a couple of decades.
For example, during 1346-1353, Europe and the Near East were almost half destroyed by the spread of the Black Death. This was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. It resulted in the death of 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia, which was equivalent to 30 percent to 60 percent of Europe's population. Later on, their birthrate went up, but it still took about 200 years for the world population to recover to its previous level.
During World War I (1914-1918), more than 20 million people were killed. During World War II (1937-1945) more than 83 million were killed. Historically, whenever a war has ended, birthrates begin to rise. According to the U.N. announcement, the global average birthrate maintained five children per woman until the end of the 1960s.
However, the baby boom period did not last that long. Since the early 1970s, the global population growth began to fall sharply except for some countries in Africa. This population decrease has a lot to do with economic factors. As young people foresee the dire and dismal future of their economy, they postpone their marriage and decide to have fewer children or even think of no children these days.
For Korea the record-low birthrate of 0.9 is a bad sign. It should be raised to 2.1 to keep the economy stable. The government should seek both long-term and short-term childbirth encouragement policies.
Currently, South Koreans are stressed out as they face high unemployment, political instability, financial uncertainty and an incompetent government. They feel miserable about their gloomy economic future. Moreover, women's desires for jobs and a career are ever increasing and this too can cause newly wedded couples not to have children.
To ease the population decline problem, the following needs to be done:
(1) The government should grant permanent visas to scientists, engineers, technicians and other specialists to facilitate immigration.
(2) The government should design a policy of helping pregnant women keep their job while raising their children.
(3) The government's childbirth policy should place quality before quantity because in the global competition, quality counts more than quantity.
(4) To raise the quality and quantity of children, the husband's role is imperative. So the government should provide incentives to boost their role.
Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim (ickim@skku.ac.kr), former foreign investment ombudsman, is a professor emeritus at Sungkyunkwan University. He earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the American University, Washington, D.C.
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