Nearly six decades ago the world was allegedly in the midst of an apocalyptic "population explosion." Today the fear among some economists is the opposite: that the world in this century is on track to experience a steep global population implosion.
When the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, world population stood at just over 3.5 billion and the global total fertility rate was just under 5 children per woman. As a dire consequence of these trends, he declared, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over." He further predicted that in "the 1970's the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." His solution was "population control," to be imposed "by compulsion if voluntary methods fail." Ultimately, Ehrlich asserted, "The birth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate or mankind will breed itself into oblivion."
