The geopolitics of world population change.

• Author: Abrahamson, James
• Position: Http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070710_jackson_commentary - Website overview - Brief article

Site reviewed: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070710_jackson_commentary.pdf

By Richard Jackson and Rebecca Strauss (CSIS)

To mark the United Nations' annual World Population Day on July 11th, Richard Jackson and Rebecca Strauss of the well regarded Center for Strategic & International Studies reported a "stunning collapse in fertility rates." Jackson directs the Center's Global Aging Initiative, in which Strauss is a research assistant. According to their report, the Population Bomb of the Sixties, which predicted a future of runaway growth, unrelenting poverty, and environmental degradation, has fizzled, fertility rates are falling, and by 2050 the world's population should plateau and then begin to decline.

That welcome development also brings with it some very worrisome news: Though at much slower rates, the most impoverished populations of the world-Sub-Saharan Africa and most of the Islamic world-still increase at high rates, which heavily burden already weak state institutions, inadequate infrastructure, and stumbling...