Testing Demographic Forecasts

Apart from environmental concerns, the one other area that has a lot of unworthy theories is the argument for population control. Well-meaning people argue often that the population growth rates in the world are far too high and have become a real threat to future human survival. Adrian Stott Brendan of Optimum Population Trust placed this response in rebuttal to an earlier article by Brendan O'Neill of Spiked Online that covered the OPT conference arguing for population reduction or control. Both articles are well argued as polemical pieces and worthy of reading on their own.

Martin Walker of the Wilson Quarterly takes a very empirical approach to exposing the assumptions that demographic forecasters frequently make. As a result, it is found that the forecasting record for demographers since 1970s has been very poor. One of those silly assumptions is the tendency to assume that high or very low population growth rates will maintain indefinitely and therefore claim that population growth rates in developing countries generally and sub-Saharan Africa in particular are a source of future threats.

As the evidence of population tracking shows, demographers are often flummoxed when they have made forecasts based on present circumstances. The major effects have been that the suggestions of European population shrinkage has not materialized everywhere as the forecasters assumed. Instead, there has been a sustained rise in births in the UK, France and Sweden. The second is that the concern that the racial profile of the European countries is not changing as first as was feared by cultural purists.

Needless to state, I remain a skeptic of population growth as a danger and have virtually no respect for Neo-Malthusian ideas. To my mind, these alarmist simply exploit the fear of nationalist domination. I am prepared to wager the bet that the population of sub-Saharan African nations populations will not match those forecasts because increased education, urbanization and improved health care. That African populations are still desperately poor is indubitable and in my view, population control is not the way out of that squalor.