Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
The Setting Sun?
According to official 1992 population projections by the Japanese government,1 the population of Japan, which is growing at an extremely slow rate of just one-third of one percent annually, will begin to decline in less than 20 years time. Except for a brief period during World War H when military casualties were heavy, Japan has never experienced a population decline.
Government estimates indicate that Japan’s 1991 population of 124 million will slowly increase by over 6 million during the next 18 years, reaching 130 million in 2011. From that level the population will begin to fall, reaching 126 million by 2025, the end of the projected period. These projections, however, assume a slight increase in the average number of births in a Japanese woman’s lifetime. If the current record low levels of Japanese fertility continue to decline, Japan’s shrinkage will be even greater: to 118 million by 2025, a figure lower than the country’s current population.
The Japanese government also released a longer-range projection to the year 2090, which gave a startling picture of the country’s possible future population decline. Extending the same assumptions as projected to 2025, the middle series of population estimates shows Japan’s population shrinking to 96 million by 2090, while the low series produces a population of only 62 million in that year. The latter figure would be just one-half of Japan’s current population size!
Japan’s current total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of births per woman over a reproductive lifetime, dropped to 1.57 in 1990 and 1.53 in 1991, well below the theoretical “zero population” rate of approximately 2.1. In the low series of population estimates, the rate is projected to decline further to 1.37 by the year 2000.
For many years the number of deaths in Japan has held steady at some 700,000-800,000 annually. That level will sharply increase, particularly as the large birth cohorts born between 1930 and 1950 reach their older years. By the year 2006, the number of deaths is projected to exceed the number of births, beginning a period of natural population decrease. Unless offset by an increase in births, a scenario not currently on the horizon, or an even more unlikely massive increase in immigration, current projections indicate Japan’s population will decline by about 800,000 people per year beginning in 2020.
A nationwide Public Opinion Survey on Population reported that the Japanese people believed the recent decline in fertility and its consequences of societal aging and labor shortages was “undesirable.” Yet, respondents also believed that Japan is “overpopulated” and they did not find the prospect of a declining population undesirable. Japan, which currently has the seventh-largest population in the world, is expected to fall to about 13th largest in 2025.
World Food Production
A remarkable report, The World Food Output,2 has recently been published by the World Bank. Chock full of charts, diagrams, and statistical tables demonstrating that the world food supply situation has not only steadily improved throughout the years but gives every indication of continuing to do so, the report takes issue with various demographic doomsayers, including our old friend Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute.
Answering Brown’s claims that feeding the world in the nineties will be a difficult if not impossible job, the authors find that the issue between them and Brown “is not just one of interpretation in which Brown sees a glass half-empty [while] others see a glass half-full,” but rather that “Brown sees a glass which is nearly full as empty.”3
Addressing Brown’s favorite argument that growth in world grain production has practically stopped since 1984, the report’s authors note that “the reason grain production slowed is because stocks became so large, particularly in the United States, that additional production could not be stored.” According to the authors, a more relevant point is what did grain production do in the developing countries since l985? “The answer — it grew at its historical trend rate of 2.45 % per annum,” a rate greater than the population growth rate of the developing world.
