Popcorn: 1996 harvests continue higher, PRB down, birth and recession?

1996 harvest keeps increasing

The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture reports on world grain production, just released in mid-April,1 boosted the 1996- 97 harvest figures above those reported previously in this column.2

The new statistics indicate that the 1996-97 world’s grain harvests totaled to more than 1.85 billion metric tons, an increase of 10 million metric tons (MMT) over the earlier figure. While world rice production held constant at 376 MMT (milled basis), world wheat production was boosted to 581 MMT, and the coarse grain harvest was set at 896 MMT, a one month jump of 8.5 MMT and 11 MMT higher than reported earlier in Popcorn. Altogether, the 1996-97 harvest has smashed the old 1992 grain production record of 1,786 MMT by nearly 70 MMT.

PRB’s population figures plunge

In the new 1997 issue of the World Population Data Sheet,3 the yearly publication of the Population Reference Bureau [PRB], estimates of future world population totals were again cut sharply.

In the latest Data Sheet, world population estimates for the year 2010 were cut by 80 million from the figure released just one year earlier in 1996. Similarly, population estimates for the year 2025 were reduced by 157 million from the 1996 estimates. Altogether, over the six-year period 1991-97, population estimates have been slashed by 295 million for the year 2010, and by 609 million for 2025.

70s Birth Dearth to Clobber market?

If you’re an investor in the soaring US stock market, be prepared to batten down the hatches. Perilous times are ahead for the market according to Richard Hokenson, the chief economist at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a prestigious New York Stock Exchange brokerage firm.

According to Hokenson, the United States economy is on the verge of plunging into a deep “recession with disastrous implications for stocks.” Mr. Hokenson bases his pessimism on the fact that the number of 25-year-olds, the economy’s most enthusiastic spenders will decline 8 per-cent this year. This downturn, and its resultant effects, “could clip 40 percent off the corporate profits of the Standard & Poor 500 and send stocks into a tailspin.”4

The current decline in the number of those age 25 is, of course, the result of the birth dearth experienced by the U.S. in the early 1970s, as a direct result of the introduction of the contraceptive pill, the abortifacient IUD, and the legalization of abortion at that time.

US population growth fueled by death

What if the prevailing US mortality rates at the turn of the century had not plummeted (as they have done), but rather remained unchanged throughout the 20th century? That was the question investigated by University of Pennsylvania demographers Dr. Samuel Preston and Kevin White, one of Dr. Preston’s graduate students.5

The answer surprised them. They concluded that there would currently be only about half as many Americans in today’s population, 139 million instead of 276 million.6

Half of the missing population would be absent because at least one of their parents would not have survived to reproductive age. The other half would have been born but would have died young.

At the turn of the century, US life expectancy at birth was 47.3 years. In 1994, it was 75.7 years. Moreover, Dr. Preston noted, people are not only living longer but they are more likely to survive long enough to have children of their own. In 1900, fewer than 60 percent of women lived to the age of 50, while today 95 percent of women can expect to live to be at least 50.

Never before in history, Dr. Preston explained, have life spans increased so much. “The expansion in longevity ranks among the great social achievements of our time,” he said.

Endnotes