Population momentum defined

Population impacts on future consumption patterns are driven by demographic momentum such that today's fertility generates tomorrow's population in the absence of high mortality. Because fertility drives population momentum this population pyramid of French changes in their population since 1990 shows why generations must pass before demographic momentum subsides.

We are living in momentous times. Quite literally the number of people on earth, as they 
reproduce create an inherent momentum by increasing population and demand for 
resources. Then there are long lived pollutants in the atmosphere called CFC's that are inert 
and will remain aloft for decades heating the air and catalyzing the loss of upper 
atmospheric ozone. This is a sort of chemical momentum and it is directly due to 
technological improvements in refrigeration. Indirectly refrigeration is a response to the 
need of more people for preserving food and a cause of increasing demand for electricity. 
There is also a momentum in the speed at which electricity delivers all sorts of things to us. 

So three types of momentum speed up our living conditions. Population growth, chemical 
pollution and rising demand for electricity. On a finite planet technology and reproduction 
have conspired to create unprecedented changes.


 population pyramid | chemical momentum | population momentum | growth | consequences | France | Florida


Population momentum is a product of the total fertility rate and is best represented by 
a population pyramid where the cohorts of births over deaths every year are grouped in 
decades and portrayed visually as a graphic "pyramid."



Recent history

To understand this consider the situation three decades ago. Thirty two years ago last 
March, Congress under the leadership of Ernest Gruening, Senator from Alaska, began a 
series of hearings on the "population crisis." The irony of the past three decades is that we 
are living through that crisis while denying the real consequences of a growing population. 
While it my be common sense to behave in a critical situation calmly as if no serious 
consequences will occur, the fact that Congress, the nation and social movements around 
the world have not understood the seriousness of growing population has tragic 
consequences for us all. Greuning's committee was alarmed in 1966, about  the potential of 
population growth to adversely impact the world's economic subsistence patterns. The 
Earth, then, had 3 billion people! They acted more responsibly than today's Congress.



Then, U.S. had 192 million people in 1964, while China had 690 million and India and 
Pakistan together 570 million people. Dr. Kermit Krantz, an anatomy and gynecology 
professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center, testified before the Senate 
committee. He warned that "the next thirty years may turn out to be the most critical in all 
of man's existence." (p. 623, US Senate Hearings, Committee on Government Operations, 
89:2d. S. 1676, March 9 & 31, April 6, 1966.) There are three interpretations of Krantz's 
alarm. He was either correct, or he was wrong, or we don't know yet. In 2012 there were more 
than 317 million residents making the US the third largest nation in the world after India
and China.

population pyramid | chemical momentum | population momentum | growth | consequences | France | Florida





First, either we are living through the critical time, or two we are not and he was mistaken. 
Or he was correct and we are about to learn the lesson that since population growth has a 
momentum we are going to feel the consequences of this critical period sometime in the 
next century. If we are living in a great crisis of population explosion -- and there are signs 
of the critical juncture Krantz spoke of -- then we either don't recognize the symptoms or 
we disagree about the causes. There are also those who have denied for three decades that 
population is a problem at all. More people means more money and more prosperity for all. 
Physicians and professors are not infallible. But surely Krantz was not so wrong that we 
can ignore the evidence he and others presented about the costs of population growth.

 

The consequences of population growth can be seen in three broad categories of their 
impact upon us. First is the impact on families, the second is on social institutions and the 
third is on health and safety. Testimony given to the Senate thirty years ago has an eerie 
sound to the topics presented. For example, crowded public housing was in a deplorable 
condition, more women were having children out of marriage and at younger ages, and the 
impact of urban density on social pathology.

Today we are still hearing an echo of the complaints heard by these Senators in 1966. 
While there are exceptions to these general rules, families of the affluent have shrunk to a 
smaller size more quickly than the rate of decrease in the size of poorer families. The critical 
inability of the nation's economy in prosperous times to house the working poor is a 
national scandal. Over thirty million have no health coverage. The amount of violence in 
urban areas is a serious national issue that remains difficult to alleviate. The world has more
than doubled in population since 1966, Florida has increased even faster with two and one-half 
times more people. California and Texas have replaced New York and Pennsylvania as the 
most populated states. More high wage manufacturing jobs have been lost from the US to 
rapidly growing Asian and Latin nations than have been replaced by service employment.


population pyramid | chemical momentum | population momentum | growth | consequences | France | Florida


Florida, as an example of a place that has doubled in population every twenty years for the 
past 80 years, is an example of the cost of denying population momentum. Usually people 
think of population as a matter of controlling births. Clearly fertility control, the rights of 
women to economic security and confidential medical advice are key components in 
stabilizing population. 



But migration, very difficult to curtail, is just as much a problem with respect to population stress. 
Studies in Florida reveal, growth of urban neighborhoods in distant reaches of large and 
small counties does not pay for itself. New residents can not pay for police, fire, schools 
and urban services. Older residents subsidize the extension of these services to newcomers and sales 
taxes end up distributing these costs to the transient tourist population. Growth -- long touted as 
a good economic activity -- can not pay for itself under the existing fiscal relations among states, 
counties and municipalities.

In Texas school districts are so unequal with respect to the amount of money spent on a per 
pupil basis that the State Supreme Court argued to have equity in school district funding on 
a statewide basis. Because schools are the first line of defense to cave when population 
growth occurs, we frequently don't see the costs of rising population. When the price of 
affordable housing rises faster than the average wages affordable housing declines. This is 
really an indicator of the cost of population growth. So much so that theorists from the 18th 
century until now have suggested that misery and vice act to limit population size.

Census Bureau findings a decade ago, (1994)  suggested that "Population growth is 
concentrated among adults in their thirties and forties, and the elderly." This 
means that one cause to increasing health costs is the rise in the elderly demanding service. 
The other lesson is that the fertility behavior of our women who were mothers between 
1945 and 1965 still impacts the population profiles today and will continue to for the next 
thirty to forty years. This is strong evidence for improving the health care, educational 
opportunities, and economic security of women who are entering their child bearing years. 
Instead of social security for the aged, a worthy goal, there needs to be a similar system for 
children. International research reveals that when the life expectancy of children is brief, 
families compensate for this expected loss by having more children. It is very clear that the 
status of women, their access to literacy and security is a key element –a predictive factor–
in the size of population. Unless we act on that belief now the consequences will be with 
us for decades!

population pyramid | chemical momentum | population momentum | growth | consequences | France | Florida



There were many voices thirty years ago warning us about the future. One was William 
Vogt, executive secretary of the Conservation Foundation. He said "If I were a Californian 
or Floridian I should work for a heavy "new resident's tax" or a "settlement tax" covering, 
let us say the first five years," and sufficiently large to cover per capita costs of schooling, 
water, sewerage, roads, et cetera." (Ibid. p. 724.) As we choose to act on or ignore the 
opportunities that rising population brings with it the assumption that there is no problem is 
dangerous to the very institutions we wish to protect. Overcrowding produces air and water 
pollution, may lead to epidemics of violence and reduces the effectiveness of education. 
Crowded classrooms are breeding grounds for delinquent behavior, yet it is easier to blame 
parents than it is to tax ourselves for better, smaller schools. 


If educational institutions need money to work well, imagine the cost of hospitals, clinics and 
diagnostic treatment centers for therapy.  Health care is not affordable by over 40 million people
in the country. Without access to treatment, or preventive therapies, people become unhealthy.
Schools to educate the mind and public health to educate the body in preventing debilitating or 
contagious disease are necessary investments of a responsible society. We are judged by how 
well we care for those who have neither the access to adequate schools or the capacity to afford
preventive health care.

Population momentum technically speaking is the capacity of any
group to continue to grow based on fertility increases, the timing
of fertility (a boom or "boomlet"), the decline in mortality or the
migration of people to a place.

Population and the capacity of places to sustain people.

population pyramid | chemical momentum | population momentum | growth | consequences | France | Florida