From ‘Population Explosion’ to ‘Population Collapse’

Aloke Mukherjee

Recently the UNFPA has published the State of World Population report for 2025. It has revealed a ‘real fertility crisis’. For a long time the establishments all over the world had been propagating over population increase as the source of all problems of the people. From the inception of the UNFPA in 1969 the principal aim of it was to relate population control and family planning as solution to all problems of developing nations. The argument was that the developing countries are poor because of their uncontrolled population. They argued that every new child means an extra mouth to feed. There was a counter argument from the representatives of the people of the economically backward countries that the new born baby doesn’t come to earth with only a mouth to feed but also with two hands to work.  That was a period when in the third world countries most of the people were engaged in agricultural work.

Worldwide a propaganda went on about population explosion. This was consciously carried out as an easy means of population control by creating fear psychosis instead of scientific measures of controlling population. At the same time such propaganda has a class nature that the development of the society is impeded not because of lopsided policy of the ruling elite and exploitation by the imperialists to bleed the masses of the colonial and semi- colonial countries but because of the higher fertility rate among the toiling people. For some time a section of ruling class in India tried to advance their communal agenda by propagating that population is exploding because of the Muslims, since Islam permits them more than one marriage. That argument fell flat when it was pointed out that population increase does not depend on number of wives but the average fertility rate of women of that community. The recent report has shown futility of that argument, average fertility among women of the Muslims is steadily coming down and is not much different from that among the Hindus. Among Hindus it declined from 3’3 in 1992 to 1’9 in 2019, while for the Muslim it declined from 4’4 to 2’4 during the same period, meaning rate of decline of Total Fertility Rate among Muslims is more than the Hindus.

But with time concepts also changed. UNFPA report of 1991 was part of UNDP report. According to that report, fertility rate (meaning average number of births per woman), was showing a tendency to decline. In the developing world the fertility rate had come down to 3’8 from 6 during 1965-70 period. The target was to bring the rate down to the benchmark used by demographers around 2’1 children per woman to maintain a stable population.  Above this would create undesired levels of population increase, and below this is also unwanted since it may cause imbalance, and if the trend of decline continues below the benchmark level danger of extinction may come.

The report had also highlighted that “the governmental and nongovernmental organisations that make or support population and family planning programmes to reinforce their support to these programmes and reorient their strategies, because population and family planning have arrived at a turning point.

It was the time neoliberalism and globalisation had started creating an imbalance causing economic as well as political crisis. This has taken the old world away from all working people of both developed and developing countries. Situation now forces them to consider a number of factors before giving birth to a child. That has been reflected in the UNFPA Report 2025 on state of the world population. As a result from the old alarm of “population explosion” has now shifted to a new alarm ‘‘population collapse.” The report has given a superficial analysis of the phenomenon.

Now they say, it is not the so-called ‘family planning’ that has brought down the average fertility to a crisis level. It becomes clear that the real crisis lies not in the fertility rate but the reasons that cause decline in fertility rate to a crisis point. Because persons in the child bearing age in all countries in general are not feeling that they can afford giving birth to a child and rear it properly. Answer lies in concrete analysis of the problem.

The fact is that according to UN data world population has tripled from 1950. Again over the same period average rate of fertility per woman has declined from 5 to 2’25. It is expected that by 2050 it will reach 2’1, the bench mark or so-called “replacement rate”.

But these are dry statistics, reality is that in many countries the average fertility rate has already been below 2’1. For example, in South Korea it is as low as 0‘78; though in European Union it is 1’38, in Italy it is only 1’18 in 2025. Here are the fertility rates of few other countries:

United States–1’70 (2024-2025), France–1’66 (2023), Germany–1’39 (2023)
As of 2023-2024 in the subcontinent the rates are: India–2’0; Pakistan–3’6; Bangladesh–2’2 and Nepal–2.
Figures of some other Muslim countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq are as follows:

UAE–1’2 per woman in 2023; Iran–1’7 in 2022; Saudi Arabia–1’92 In 2023; Iraq–3’65 in 2023.

This means decline has occurred not only in the developed countries but also in developing countries as well.

As for the real fertility crisis “Dr Natalia Kanem, the Executive Officer, UNFPA writes,

“Policies should respond directly to these concerns. This includes ensuring full range of reproductive health and rights for all people; providing consistent, long term support to parents and families, and ending gender-based violence and gender discriminatory norms that undermine people’s fertility ambitions.” [State of the World Population 2025, The Real Fertility Crisis, Page 5].

This is a very intelligent way to sidetrack what she said in just the earlier paragraph of her Foreword, like a successful bureaucrat of any UN institution.

She earlier said: “Reproductive agency is more than just freedom from coercion or improved access to services, it is the full range of conditions that enable people to exercise their reproductive rights and ensure true choice, including gender equality, economic stability, decent health and confidence in future”. [ibid, p8]

In her final prescription economic stability and confidence in future has been ignored as also the talk about decent health.

One important question is that many of the countries claim they have developed a lot. But fifty years earlier poor toiling people wanted to have children because they did not feel insecure. They lived in a world they could feed so long they had two hands they can work. But now they cannot feel the same. What are the differences that have brought the change of mindset or taken away their confidence in future? Definitely gender inequality had been there and it still persists. Gender based violence and discriminatory norms had also been present earlier. The point to note is that these same gender based inequalities had earlier been the cause behind higher rate of fertility among women. What is/are new factor/factors that attributed to the change that led to the fertility crisis today?

The common factors behind the crisis are financial limitations, housing limitations (e.g. lack of space, high house prices/rent costs), lack of sufficient/quality childcare options and unemployment/job insecurity particularly after 1991. In truth these factors have influenced whole of the world irrespective of their level of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures. The globalisation has brought everywhere a new crisis and neoliberalism enhanced it to a higher level. In the name of development the twin monsters wreaked havoc. Manufacturing industries have fallen headlong, services have kept the economy running but crisis has engulfed that sectors also. And agriculture is also in deep crisis. At the same time because of sudden growth of services like highways, ports, airports, tourism, private educational institutions, private health services as well as IT and ITES etc. land and housing have become expensive. At the same time to satisfy the big capitalist sharks labour laws have been changed forcing the workers to work more for less pay. Unemployment has increased and there is no job security in the present world. Neoliberalism has stopped government expenditures for people and employment has become rare. Healthcare and education have become costly almost everywhere.

Under such a situation only one option left to the hands of the parents is to have fewer or no children at all.

Like all other fields, neoliberalism is the root cause of this fertility crisis. But the imperialists all over the world are dependent on these policies in the hope of getting out of their crises by transferring the burdens on the shoulders of the working masses and the economically weak countries. Real remedy is to get radical treatment for the evils of imperialism and its cohorts. Without getting to the actual source any other remedial option will not work and crisis will go deeper.

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Frontier Autumn Number
Vol 58, No. 14 - 17, Sep 28 - Oct 25, 2025