Will older mean wiser when it comes to war?
By John Rowley
LONDON: While the 20th century has been marked by a huge and unprecedented explosion in the human population -- from 1.5 billion in 1900 to six billion today -- the 21st century will be one in which population stabilizes and grows older. Will that help create a more peaceful world?
In Europe, population has already peaked and is set to decline from over 700 million to just over 600 million, by 2050. As it does so, it will also grow older. Already the proportion of the population over 60 has grown from 13 percent in 1960 to 20 percent. It is projected that the over 60s could form over a third of Europe's population by 2050.
In Japan, the situation is even more extreme. With average family size down to 1.4 children, and life expectancy a record 83 for women and 76 for men, some projections put the proportion of over-sixties by 2050 at nearly 40 percent. By 1996 the number of Japanese aged 65 or older was almost 19 million, a number which the government expects to rise to nearly 28 million by 2010.
What is happening in Europe and Japan now is already beginning to happen elsewhere in the world. The UN projections for every region, including Africa, show an increase in the proportion of older population in the first half of the coming century, as the numbers of children stabilize or fall and more people survive into old age.
Worldwide, in 1998, 66 million persons were aged 80 or over, or about one in every 100. This number is expected to increase almost six-fold by 2050 to reach 370 million. In the same time the number living to over 100 is expected to jump from 135,000 to 2.2 million.
So will a stabilizing and aging world be a safer place in which to live? Twenty years ago, the eminent scientist and discoverer of the polio vaccine which takes his name, Dr Jonas Salk, speculated that as the human population reached the top of the biologists' "S Curve" as seen in the multiplication of fruit flies and other species, the instinct to grow and compete would be replaced by a readiness to conserve and co-operate.
Few other academics have pursued this theme, but Dr Nazli Choucri of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has examined the idea that populations with older age distributions are less prone to violence. He has also considered whether countries with young populations, many of whom are unemployed, are more prone to violence.
He concludes that in neither case is age distribution "a necessary or a sufficient determinant of potential outcomes," although the long-term alienation of a youthful population "could be transformed into active opposition to the political system."
In another study on "The future of low birth-rate populations," the Australian demographer, Lincoln Day, points out that some of the world's most conservative societies have been those with the youngest, not the oldest, populations. It was, he points out, older women who were most in favor of abortion law reform in the United States, not the younger ones.
He also speculates that an older population might result in less support for "an economic growth ethic." But such demographic influences are, he argues, likely to be less important than social policies determined by other factors. In any case, he concludes, an aging population is on its way, and we had better prepare for it.
More problematic than the effects of aging are the impacts of growing numbers of ever-richer consumers on the earth's natural resources and life-support system. The Consumption Bomb could turn out to be even more deadly than the closely associated Population Bomb.
Whether we are looking at communal waste sinks like rivers, lakes and oceans and the global atmosphere, or at the pressure on fresh water supplies or endangered species, it looks likely that things will get a lot worse before -- hopefully -- they get better. Water wars may be difficult to avoid, even between societies with an aging population.
-- Observer News Service