Letter: A gently declining population is no reason to panic

The letter from Ira Sohn (“We can beat the baby bust — with the right policies”, April 5) needs challenging. Yes, Alto Adige does have the highest fertility rate in Italy, at 1.51 for 2022, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics. This is not so much higher than the national rate for 2022, which was 1.24 according to Istat. Professor Sohn does not mention this figure. If this is the highest fertility rate in Italy it will certainly not “beat their baby bust”. It might slow it down a little.

But why all the panic about a “baby bust” anyway? We even have Elon Musk suggesting humans may die out, while also suggesting we should be preparing to move to Mars. All very contradictory and strange.

The human population is approximately 8bn now, and most projections say it will peak at around 10bn. Not exactly a crisis. Just let women — and men — make their own choices about their lives and bodies.

Yes, there will be the challenges of an ageing and eventually declining population. But this will be a transition, as we saw with the huge increase in younger people and population we have recently been through. But with planning we can cope and come through to a better world. Older people may have to work longer, pay a larger share of tax and take more responsibility for their health as they age. Younger people will need to shoulder the precious burden of more older people. And governments, especially, need to reduce their indebtedness rather than leaving it for future generations to sort out, just at a time when they will have more old people to care for.

A gently declining population can be managed and will alleviate the demands we make of the natural world while leaving more room and resources for humans in the future.

An afterthought. Following the admittedly rather catastrophic population decline in England after the Black Death, the balance of economic power tilted dramatically in favour of labour over capital. Probably a good thing then for the majority and a possible explanation for Musk’s worries about population.

Tim Hill
Monks Horton, Kent, UK

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