Editor's introduction; women: population's once and future key.

• Author: Prugh, Thomas
• Position: POPULATION FORUM - Editorial

Four years ago this August, World Watch published its "Population and Its Discontents" theme issue (September/October 2004). Although much has changed since then, it appears that the most important conclusion of that issue--that the best strategy for constraining population growth is empowering women to make their own family-size choices through access to education, economic opportunity, medical care, and family planning services--has only become clearer.

So a goal--fairness toward women--that is valid on its moral merits also turns out to be pragmatic. The planet faces a range of grave and interlinked challenges, and the study of population issues rapidly leads to issues of poverty, development, equity, and the environment as well. None of these problems becomes more tractable if population is ignored.

So it is unfortunate that population issues have generally enjoyed no more than passing public notice in recent years. Not only that--in light of a projected global population of over 9 billion by 2050-one of the exceptions is the many stories about efforts to raise fertility rates and populations. Certain developed nations with falling birth rates are mounting increasingly desperate attempts to reverse the trend. Worried about declining rations of workers to retirees, government officials in Italy, South Korea, and elsewhere are offering tax incentives, subsidized child care, and outright bribes to women of childbearing age to have more babies.

These efforts are understandable only in the context of the short views so often taken by government officials. At the global level they are perverse. Any plan that tries to address the challenges of an aging population by forever expanding the ranks of the young is counterproductive; the Earth simply cannot tolerate the load. Moreover, many countries with large cohorts of young people, such as Saudi Arabia, have...