TRANSCRIPT: Dennis Ahlburg

Fred de Sam Lazaro, TPT: Is the U.S. facing a crisis of overpopulation?

Ahlburg: No, not at all, not at all. You know the U.S. population could arguably be double and I don’t there would be particular problems. It may be more crowded than some people would like. But that’s, that’s a taste thing. Europe has a much higher concentration of people per square mile than the U.S.. And they get along quite happily within a much higher density. Bangladesh has a density 32 times the U.S.. And although some people may prefer a less dense population some people enjoy it. So I think it’s largely a matter of taste. In the U.S. the issue may be where the people are going to be. Obviously, we can’t put all of them in the Southwest because there’s just not enough water. So I think it’s not so much the size of the population, it’s the level at which they want to live and where they’re going to be and if the resource is there. And for the U.S. it’s mostly water now we’re talking about. So that’s the issue. I don’t think — it’s not a population size issue per se. And I think even for the world population I don’t think necessarily it’s a size issue. It’s much more complicated than that.

FdSL: If we can just stick to the U.S. for the moment at any rate. To what do you attribute this growing chorus that we keep hearing about, the problem that we have with population? It’s more than that it’s just lopsided. It’s just in total we hear growing too large. It’s the third largest in the world now.

Ahlburg: I think it’s more an expression of preferences that we just don’t want more people because I like the U.S. the way it is in terms of the density and the traffic and the commute and so on. And so I think it’s peoples’ preferences about how they want to live their lives. And I think deeper. It’s also who they want to share that life with. And so I think people can mask their real agenda by talking about the size of the population. I think really they’re saying the kinds of people we’re bringing in that cause my disquiet. And that’s really what they’re talking about. So if I can stop the growth the of the U.S. population, which really means stopping immigration. I think, for some people at least, that’s what they’re talking about. So it’s a matter of the — not the numbers of people but the kinds of people. And I think that’s a much deeper issue and something that people don’t really want to talk openly about. But I think for a debate on the U.S. population being too large I think it’s really — that’s the essence of the debate there. It’s a debate about immigration. It’s a debate of the change in, historical change where the immigrants are coming from.

FdSL: So it’s a race issue basically?

Ahlburg: I think so, yes.

FdSL: Substantially so?

Ahlburg: Substantially so. I think as an economist, I mean the economic argument for limiting immigration doesn’t really have much support at all because no matter where you look in the world you find that by and large immigration for the nation is a good thing. The costs are mostly felt where the immigrant lives. And the benefits may be spread more widely across the nation but the economic argument is fairly strong. And in fact some people are calling for more immigration to help us solve the problem of the aging population. It really won’t help much at all but the economic arguments are not very strong for limiting it. So we turn then and okay well why is it that people feel so strongly about it? Either the economists are wrong, which is impossible of course or else they just — it’s something more fundamental. And I think in politically correct times people are less open to express their true reasons for their opposition to some things. But I think it really is. It’s about race as you said.

FdSL: There are many people who would bristly at the notion that race has been brought up as an issue. And many come from what we would consider the political left who are basically coming at this from a consumption argument. Saying in terms of consumption this is the most populace country because we consume so much in America. The more immigrants, the more we consume. So the entrepreneur, should he have stayed back in Shanghai? Probably have a lesser impact on the world than if he were to immigrate to America. So is there a consumption argument?

Ahlburg: I don’t think so. I think because the consumption argument is just not the number of people it’s their wealth. So another way to achieve the same goal is not really to limit immigration but let’s not grow. Let’s, in fact have a nice recession that’ll drive down people’s income, which will drive down consumption. So I don’t think there are too many people calling for that. So this proxy, this consumption argument is about numbers. And when we look at what’s happening with consumption in the U.S. historically or in the world a lot of it’s driven by rising income. So the argument is a little confused. If you want to target the total amount of consumption there are two ways of doing it. Why is it that you’re just picking on the numbers rather than our wealth? Because in the U.S. it’s our wealth that drives our consumption more than the number of people in the U.S..

FdSL: In other words consumption would have to go way, way down for it to have an impact in the country?

Ahlburg: Right, right. And then you target, well what is it about our consumption that’s causing a problem? Is it automobile pollution? Is it deforestation? Is it moving into kind of sensitive areas in biodiversity? So once again what exactly is the nature of the argument? And then it becomes much fuzzier because a lot of the arguments are then knocked down. So again it’s hard to focus in on exactly what people are concerned about. The world population is maybe an easy one to argue about rather than limiting population in the U.S.. There’s an old notion of an optimal population or carrying capacity. And I think that doesn’t make sense.

FdSL: Do you think there is a carrying capacity for North America or the United States?

Ahlburg: I don’t think so. I think for smaller areas there may be, for example the Colorado River area. What water supply do we have? How many people would that support? But that’s a very, very rough calculation because that depends on whether we’re talking about how many in agriculture, how many in cities, whether they have lawns or not or whether they go with something that makes more sense for whatever the local vegetation is? So there are so many parameter that affect that carrying capacity. That’s why a lot of people have moved away from it because it really doesn’t make much sense. It’s how many people but at what standard of living and what kinds of things do they want to do. Do they want to play lawn bowls? Or are they going to play sandlot baseball? It has very different implication for the resources that they use.

FdSL: Do you think there is an argument, however, a legitimate argument that says well is it mal-distribution of this population growth? We can’t really coax people into North Dakota and rural Minnesota against their will and preserve this idea of America as we have it? So should we not limit immigration simply because the immigrants are going to places where the problem then gets aggravated?

Ahlburg: Well, I think the immigrants are going to those places because what we’re seeing is a lot of the immigrants are going to non-metropolitan areas. And so the difference between the 80’s and 90’s is there’s really a turn around in non-metropolitan America. And a lot of that’s from migration partly from people born elsewhere, partly from American born people saying, "Do I really want to live in a metro area?" So I don’t think that the migrants are necessarily exacerbating what’s seen as a mal-distribution. In fact some people are going to North Dakota. Iowa is an interesting case where there’s been a dramatic turn around. And it’s all about taste. I mean why was it that people were leaving those areas in the first place? Can we change those factors? So rather than have a kind of broad brush approach and just say let’s limit the number of people. That may slow things down a bit. But whatever it is that’s generating the move in the first place is going to continue to redistribute the total population that we have. So let’s talk about the real root causes of this so-called mal-distribution — and mal-distribution from whose point of view? Obviously, not from the migrants themselves because otherwise they wouldn’t move there. So it’s somebody else’s preferences that we’re talking about not the migrants ‘cause they’re quite happy to go to Santa Fe or Texas or California or whatever. And if they go there and they find that they don’t like what they see; then we know that they move back. ‘Cause in California there’s been growth and then there’s been people moving out and so on. And so people in the U.S. will sort themselves along the preferences that they like. If policymakers don’t like that then you change the incentives. So if you think there are too many people then you kind of up the price.

FdSL: How much is Minnesota a microcosm of the nation as a whole in dealing with this issue? We’re far removed from Mexico, which is sort of the ground zero for this immigration issue but has seen its share of immigration especially to rural area. Are we a microcosm of some of the issues?

Ahlburg: I think we are. What we’re seeing in Minnesota the last decade or even two decades is fairly dramatic growth in minority population. And fairly recently and surprisingly perhaps is a large growth in Hispanic population, some of whom are coming to the Twin Cities, the metro area but a lot are going to so-called outstate Minnesota. Really changing the face of rural Minnesota. And if fact in the Upper Midwest area we still have a relatively small share of the overall Hispanic/Latino population but our growth rate has been much greater than the growth rate for the nation. So I think in some ways in Minnesota we are seeing some of the same kinds of patterns and the picture that we’re seeing in the nation. And I think it’s happening fairly dramatically from a very low base rate. I think 1980 we had about 3% of the population minority. Now it’s 12-13%. So it’s been fairly dramatic change.

FdSL: Has it been a good thing for Minnesota in your opinion?

Ahlburg: Well, again it’s in my opinion. I mean I think it has in terms of the diversity of the population. I think in terms of the culture it’s much more interesting. In terms of the ideas that are raised it’s a much more interesting place. But that’s because I prefer to have diversity anywhere I live. And some people don’t share that. And they have equal rights to express the way they would like their state or the nation to be. I might not agree with them but it’s a matter of my preferences.

FdSL: Talking about preferences and you mentioned lifestyle earlier. In connecting the whole issue of congestion and traffic and the quality of life issues how connected are issues such as sprawl and traffic congestion, commute time, all of these issues to population?

Ahlburg: Well, I don’t think the connection is very close. Again let’s look at Minnesota, the Twin Cities metro area. A lot of the problems that we see in terms of our commute time and congestion are really not that much driven the population size because the population is about 4.4 million. It’s still relatively small. Although it grew 12% I mean that’s not an extraordinary high rate of growth. But again in the 20 years that I’ve been here and I’ve seen what’s happening to the traffic. And that’s more about preferences again where people want to live. They have expressed an opinion that they don’t necessarily want to live downtown because I think downtown reached its population peak in 1950. So that people are now saying well there’s something about downtown that is not as appealing to me and so I’ll move out. And I think it’s they now have the income to do so. They don’t have to live close to the job. They don’t have to take the bus or whatever. They can now drive. And we can now have every member of the household having their own car. So it’s a matter of income. It’s a matter of preferences not really related to the population size so much.

FdSL: At the same time we hear a lot of complaining from a variety of people about the cause or one of the causes of sprawl being overpopulation. People are somehow being driven to these distant places that they’re commuting. You are saying that’s there’s no basis for pinning the blame on sprawl on immigration or population?

Ahlburg: Yes again this argument of choice — there’s no reason people have to go far away. I mean we can go higher so that we can impact more like London or Paris, European capital where people live in apartments. And they live in not necessarily very high high-rises but say six, seven story buildings, which is just the way that they live. But in the U.S., Australia, or Canada and so on we don’t choose so much to live that way. We like to go horizontally. And that’s why we have sprawl because with money instead of buying vertical space we buy horizontal space. So again your population has nothing to do with that. That’s a matter of the fact that I now can choose now not to hear my neighbors by putting a big distance between us.

FdSL: It’s projected that in the next century this country could grow to as high as a half a billion people. Take us to someplace down the road, whatever you’re comfortable with, and give us a sense of what America will look like? How will it be perceptibly different 25, 50 years from now?

Ahlburg: Impossible question! And I’m a forecaster so I’ll have a shot at it.

FdSL: If I can’t ask you I don’t know who we can ask.

Ahlburg: Exactly. Exactly. I don’t think the population will double because that would be a trade off with, I think lifestyle. People would like to get richer. And they’re comfortable with 2, 3 kids, whatever. So I don’t think that we’ll ever get to that size. In terms of where we will be I think that we will put pressure on areas of the Southwest. So that I would imagine that the rate of population growth in Texas, California, the new growth areas of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona in particular I think we there are going to run up against problems of the amount of water that we have. We can continue to add population as long as people give up playing golf on grass and go with sand courses or whatever. So I think in some ways we’re going to see a reining back because we are pushing up against areas that are not as hospitable to population as others. And so I think we may see more density along the eastern seaboard. But I think we are going to start to push the limits in some of the areas of the Southwest. California is very hard to say. Maybe more growth up along Oregon, Washington, and so on. Some people have moved away from the coast to find more space and so on. As that becomes harder to find they may move back again. In terms of our lifestyle, I guess we’ll be healthier so I think there will be more emphasis on the outdoors. And so I think that we will then preserve the environment even more so than we are now. I think people are a bit restive about the current administration’s ideas on the environment. And seeing what’s happening with the environment while the administration is saying let’s look at what’s happening with terrorism. So I think there are going to be increasing quality of life issues. I think one of the interesting things will be in terms of how long we’re going to last and in terms of the quality of life, the health. One of the things you can’t discuss in the U.S. is euthanasia. It’s being faced in Europe. I think there’s going to be an increasing debate about the quality of our later stages of life because we’ll have a much larger older population. So I think that there’ll be an increase in interest in an active older life and then perhaps a limit at which we start looking at the quality of life. Do I want more years if I’m not going to healthy? So far it’s a good deal. We get both a longer life and a healthier life. That hasn’t always been the case. So I think a lot of the interesting population issues will be at that later stage of life.

FdSL: There are a lot of people who would say that’s exactly what’s at stake in this population trend that we stand to lose a lot of the outdoors, the things that we will treasure more and more as we age as a population. And hence the need to do something about population growth in America. You almost seem to be saying that we’ll see a diminution in that kind of quality of life.

Ahlburg: I think we will as along as we continue to expand horizontally. And there’s an interesting debate in Britain where they’re calculating they need another 4 million houses over the next 20 years or so. And the debate is whether they will be so-called green field or brown field; i.e. do we build them in virgin countryside or do we build them in areas that already have buildings? So do we reclaim some of the urban areas that are no longer used for industrial purposes? So in the U.S. we continue to push into kind of green field areas. And that, of course, is going to chip away at the amount of open outdoor space. So I think that there will be now a kind of close look at the so-called brown field sites. We’re already seeing that in the Twin Cities. We’re seeing people building in downtown Minneapolis towards the river, an area that was really just mills and so on that one was much interested in. I think again in Minnesota we have that area along the river where we can combine - both reclaim outdoor space and really desirable living areas. And so we can then start to get back to a culture of walking when we shop or walking when we go out to entertainment and not driving. So again, I think the debate in the U.S. will be again between whether we’re going to increase the density and then not emphasize the sprawl, which we’re doing now. So I think there’ll be this debate about what exactly do we want the open space to look like? And how much do we want of it?

FdSL: Consumption becomes a key issue here obviously. I’m just wondering also whether at some point down the road this region’s abundance of fresh water make it a compellingly attractive place that can overcome some of the climate advantages that some of the other regions of the country have? Are we likely to see people coming back here following industry possibly simply because there’s so much more fresh water here?

Ahlburg: Yeah, I mean it depends on how critical the shortage gets. I don’t think people really — for the majority water isn’t really an issue unless they go to say Colorado or New Mexico, Arizona. So it’s for a relatively small number of states it’s an issue. But I don’t think anyone makes their locational choice on the basis of fresh water. So I don’t think that’s going to work to our advantage. Where it is critical is relatively small population areas in the kind of western regions where at the margin it is important. If you can get a property where you have access to a stream, for example, the price is much higher. But that’s still a relatively small percentage of the U.S. population. For most people in the U.S., water is not really an issue, although that partly may be because of ignorance because we really don’t understand much about where our water comes from. We don’t question the quality too much. If we think there’s a hint of something wrong with the quality then we just buy bottled water because we can afford to. So it doesn’t really cost that much money. So I don’t think it will become for most of us an important issue. It will become a very important issue for a small number of us though.

FdSL: In a post-industrial state that we’re in, it’s unlikely that industry or employment is an issue here. I mean the availability of this resource.

Ahlburg: Yes, yes.

FdSL: Let’s broaden it out to the globe totally and talk about carrying capacity. Here’s where we hear a lot of very daunting, very dire predictions. Malthus is alive and well. Overblown in your opinion?

Ahlburg: Yes, yes. Malthus is alive and well among maybe the general public, some policymakers, but is not really much in vogue among demographers or development economists perhaps among some ecologists. But by and large Malthus’ shadow is very long one and still does affect the debates on world population. But there have been a number of scientific studies of kind of Malthusian projections. And there is relatively little evidence to support them. There is now some indications of maybe of some effect, link between population growth and economic growth. But there again that’s at very rapid, what we call rapid rates of population growth. At more moderate rates by and large there is not a lot of evidence to suggest that if we could slow the population growth we would grow a lot faster. And in fact if there’s a carrying capacity problem let’s look at the last 40 years of world history where the population has doubled and yet calorie consumption per capita has gone up by 30% in the developing world. Now that one fact would seem to — it would be hard to explain if you believe in a Malthusian argument or carrying capacity argument. What is going on there? I mean the population has doubled and yet we’ve been able to increase the average consumption of everybody including those extra people. So that’s why I don’t believe much in this Malthusian argument.

FdSL: Do you believe in it a bit because we’ve been to places like Bangladesh and India? Nobody looking at life in these places would argue that the quality is very good of that life. And a lot of people will look at a snapshot of Dacca and say, "This is a population problem." You don’t see it as such?

Ahlburg: Well, I was on a bus in India. And I was sitting next to a very distinguished ecologist. And he looked out the window and he said, "Dennis, how can you possibly say that there isn’t a population problem? Look at all these people." And I said, " I can see them but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing." I could be riding a bus down Oxford Street and he’d make the same comments. And say, "Look at all these people." You know it’s the situation that they’re in not so much the numbers because that’s again my preference. I might think that that is evidence of a problem ‘cause I don’t want to live like that. But that doesn’t mean to say that the people who are there would say this is a bad life. And when you look at measures of human happiness they don’t correlate very well with income. And so we’re saying somehow this is not a good situation. But again it’s because that’s from our point of view.

FdSL: Within some reason. When you look at countries of the developing world frequently the poverty line is measured in calories not in dollars.

Ahlburg: Right.

FdSL: I think there are some basic amenities that are lacking and basic human needs that millions of people go without.

Ahlburg: Right.

FdSL: Clearly that must be a number problem?

Ahlburg: No, it’s not a numbers problem because the argument would be that somehow if we wind the clock back and take away say half of that population or 20% of it or whatever that the position of the people would be so much better. And I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that necessarily that would be the case. Because it may not be that the problem — and the problem we’re talking about really is a problem of poverty — but somehow population growth is the explanation for poverty. The argument is that population growth explains starvation and explains famine. We now know that that is not the case. Let’s take the case of famine. Famine is caused generally by human intervention in the forms of wars, in terms of corruption. It’s a distribution problem. It’s getting the food to people because we know of countries while in the middle of famine have been exporting food. So it’s to somebody’s profit to do so. So often population seems to be, population growth seems to be the problem. Often it’s at best a secondary cause. Usually there’s some other more direct cause. With problems with the environment it’s often not population pressure forcing itself on the environment. It’s because there are no clear property rights. I don’t own this land. I don’t know who owns this land. So I’m going to go there and use it to grow stuff on or harvest something from. It’s cost-less to me because there’s no — I don’t suffer from that. You know the tragedy of the commons argument. So when we look more closely at a lot of these issues population may make things worse because the fundamentals are screwed up. So what we need to do is to look at the fundamentals because again as I said if we solve the population problem we don’t solve the poverty problem. Because the underlying root causes of poverty — it may be low education. It may be the position of women. There are lots of other causes it may be behind it. Population is the most obvious.

FdSL: But frequently — and I’ve heard this in India as well — people will say, "Look this country now has so much more food than it did at Independence 50 years ago. We’re so much more prosperous. But all these gains are wiped out because there are so many more of us here."

Ahlburg: But the gains aren’t wiped out. The gains would possibly —

FdSL: - substantial per capita, obviously.

Ahlburg: Right, on the assumption that population had nothing to do with the gains. And obviously those people who are around contributed in some way. I mean they weren’t totally unproductive. So that’s what makes the argument a bit difficult because we want to take away people from the denominator and say they didn’t contribute to the numerator on the production per capita. So we’re saying all they do is consume. They don’t produce. That’s clearly not the case. So the argument is that all they do is use resources; they don’t contribute to them. And I think that’s where we’re missing part of it.

FdSL: Well, most of them are under 19. The age is so low so they’re clearly not at optimal productivity. The growth obviously is not in the most productive segments of the population.

Ahlburg: Well, not yet so what we need to do is to look at them over their lifetime. How much do they consume? How much do they produce? Most countries would not want to get rid of their young population. We may argue that it would be nice if it were smaller because then it’s an easier problem to deal with. And I think you’re putting your finger on the problem of job creation. I mean one of the main difficulties in countries like India is can we in fact produce enough jobs to make these kids productive? And I think that’s the kind of population dilemma, if there is one. It’s we have so far been successful in absorbing them and making many of them productive. Can we continue to do that in the future?

FdSL: In this series we’ve gone to Bangladesh and parts of the subcontinent. And anybody just looking at a street scene there would say, "This is a country with a population problem."

Ahlburg: Right.

FdSL: There’s just too many people. And there’s not enough stuff to go around for them — food and material. You don’t see it as a problem necessarily?

Ahlburg: No, I mean I’d like to look more deeply at the problem. Just because there are a lot of people around to me isn’t a problem. That’s a preference. I personally don’t like those kinds of scenes because I like more open spaces. I’m Australian. I have lots of land, lots of land. So that’s my preference. The density is similar in Oxford St. I don’t feel comfortable there. I don’t like it. When we say there’s a population problem in Bangladesh, I may agree with you but for different reasons. What I want to look at is the poverty level. What I want to look at is measures of health. What I want to look at is calories. That to me is where we start saying there is a problem. And then I say okay, let’s identify if there’s a problem there. And then let’s see what role population plays. In Bangladesh we may be on safer grounds, maybe not but we can’t just look out and take the simple-minded view of there’s so many people that’s got to be the basis of the problem.

FdSL: Surely it’s a major factor in terms of how many people are contending for how many resources? Clearly it’s an aggravating factor, is it not?

Ahlburg: Well, I mean it will aggravate the problem. It may not be the problem. Bangladesh may not be poor because of its population. Let’s look back in time. Has it always been poor? It’s very difficult because it used to be part of a different country and so on. So what we have to say is if we were somehow magically halving the population would we solve the problems of Bangladesh whatever they may be? And I’m not sure that we would. It may be that the problems in Bangladesh are more fundamental. It may be that part of the problem is where Bangladesh is. You know nature is not particularly kind to Bangladesh. Having a large population makes that impact even worse. But would it be any kinder if there were half the population? I’m not sure that it would. So what I’m trying to say is we have to go beyond it to identify the problem and then identify what role population plays.

FdSL: Which is where I want to go next. Which is to some of these fundamental factors. In Bangladesh we visited the Grameen Bank and did its story. It’s a compelling story unto itself, a compelling yarn. But what we would like to zero in on now is the fertility rate of Grameen borrowers, which is lower than an already low Bangladesh rate. How key is the status of women as a factor in fertility rate and population growth?

Ahlburg: It’s a tough question and it varies with the particular countries. And in Bangladesh, for example, we would argue that the status of women is quite low and yet they’ve been able to lower fertility from around 6 kids per woman to about 3.3. Now the status of women has changed, has improved somewhat but not enough to explain a halving of the fertility rate. And so the status of women in Bangladesh plays some role but it doesn’t seem to have played a critical role. The argument in Bangladesh is it’s the effectiveness with which they have been able to deliver family planning services to women who can go to those services. And for women in Perder who cannot they bring the services to the women, which doesn’t mean that that woman is untouched by that outside contact and her status within the household may change. But it’s a much slower process. So again in another country the status of women may play a much bigger role. In Africa where the status of women is much different, where women in some the countries are the traders, the entrepreneurs, they have free access, free mobility the fertility rate is around 5 or 6 — what it used to be in Bangladesh way back when. So again just looking at those two cases, one the status of women much lower but fertility has dropped dramatically. Africa, again a huge country so we have to look at — I mean a huge continent. Let’s look at particular cases. But in general if we can talk about Africa then much freer movement of women but fertility is kind of stuck. So there’s got to be more to the story.

FdSL: One typically conjures up the image of women who in the power equation lacks the power to essentially say no when her male partner or husband who want to have sex, basically. And that is what the status of women has boiled down to frequently. In other words countries where women have the ability to control their sex lives, their own destiny economically they tend to have fewer kids. Is that a truism that applies universally?

Ahlburg: I think there’s a lot to the statement because often it’s the woman who really is concerned about providing for the kids. In some countries, even the economic contribution of the male is not particularly high. It’s the woman who runs the household who really does know how expensive it is to try and educate a kid or look after a kid. So maybe the woman is closer to where the decisions are made. So I think that part of it’s true. There’s also the fact that disagreements about the number of kids are not as common as we would think. There’s some research that suggests that males and females often have very similar notions about the number of kids that they want. So — and again that does tend to vary a bit. In terms of the decision-making calculus, if you’ve got to split off the decision to have sex, which is not necessarily the same decision to have children. So what we want to ask is what’s driving the male here? Is it the desire for sex or the desire for kids? The women can satisfy the first without necessarily leading to the second. And in the case of Bangladesh why the delivery of contraception is important. And again does the male disagree with the notion of contraception? Does he want children? That’s a much, much different question to deal with than the demand for sex.

FdSL: Is there a population lesson from the Grameen story however?

Ahlburg: That’s highly debated, highly debated. There is some evidence to suggest that, as you said, that women who have participated with Grameen have lower fertility. The argument there is chicken and the egg. Did they have lower fertility before Grameen? So what role does Grameen play? We actually find that the kinds of women who choose to participate in Grameen kinds of activities or are chosen tend to be women with characteristics that lead to a lower fertility. So we have to control for that. And when we do so it does seem that there are fertility reducing effects from whatever happens in the current activities of Grameen Bank that does in fact lower fertility somewhat. So it’s not just that one instance. There are other cases in Bangladesh of other kinds of schemes that are similar. There’s micro-credit schemes where it’s the discussions that the women have. It’s the dynamic that goes on that somehow changes their worldview and changes the kind of costs that they put on kids. And so they now shift away and are more aware of the true cost of kids. And somehow that allows them. And some of the economic gains that give them more control over resources that may be feeding into this lower fertility. But I think that, as you’re aware that kind of style of Gramine has been tried all over the world. Sometimes it’s very successful. Sometimes it isn’t. So it’s not just a template that we can put anywhere and say this is going to solve the population problems.

FdSL: The Grameen model perhaps is not applicable as effectively as you just noted. However, the issue we’re trying to get at it is is the role of women. One looks at India versus Thailand, which we did in another one of our segments. And India, of course, has a much higher fertility rate than Thailand. The sex ratio is abysmal. In some parts of India it’s 780 females (per 1000 males). In Thailand it’s the natural course of events. Status of women issue here? Homogeneity? What would you say accounts for the success that Thailand has? They’re almost a pro-natalist system now, society now. What would you say accounts for their relative success?

Ahlburg: One of the things that would strike us is the level of development that Thailand is quickly moving towards. If we look at a scale of undeveloped and developed it’s much, much more on the developed end of the scale than say India. And so the relative costs of children is much different. The value placed on education and so on, the poverty level is so much less, one could argue that the country is in some way more unified. You don’t really don’t have to have a large family to protect yourself against another group who may be competing for your space and your resources and so on. So I think all of those. But maybe I think it’s mostly an argument of the stage of development of the two countries and how expensive it is to have kids.

FdSL: And in Thailand, what’s been the key to their success? What’s brought the development about so successfully?

Ahlburg: Well, largely is export-led economic development. And a lot of that export-driven growth was associated with employment for women. And so now, if we can speak in rough terms that it’s now more valuable to have your daughter working in one of these export zone factories than it is to marry her off. So for parents it is not you invest in the education of your daughter. Get her a good job. And she returns more to you than if you marry her off to somebody. And so I think that economic importance of women has been very important in the case of Thailand and some of the other East Asian countries where export growth associated with textiles or industries that employ a lot of women has really changed the economic equation for parents’ minds about what to do with their daughters. In some countries daughters are seen as being a burden. You have to get rid of them as soon as you can. That’s not the case in Thailand. Your daughter is a valuable economic contributor to the household. And that changes when she gets married. And it changes when she starts having kids.

FdSL: Is that where literacy fits into this whole equation?

Ahlburg: Sorry, say that again.

FdSL: Is that where literacy fits in? Because Thailand, I think is almost universally literate now versus countries like India or any part of sub-Saharan Africa?

Ahlburg: I think party, I mean literacy gives you a different worldview. And it gives you access to the outside world. And you start to question the kinds of assumptions that you live under. And of course it does lead to more productive workers. And that fits in well with development and transition from agriculture to industry or more formal or even informal sector employment where you really need to have language skills, calculating skills, etc. So I think that literacy is very important. And one of the strong ties is between the education of girls and fertility and rate of population growth. Some people question that but by and large most of the evidence suggests that that’s a very, very wise investment. Education is always a good investment, primary and to some extent secondary as well.

FdSL: Because it defers childbearing as well, I imagine?

Ahlburg: Right.

FdSL: What do you make of China in terms of population?

Ahlburg: I think China is famous in being number one. It’ll soon at some stage become number two. Probably it was the rapid growth and then the reaction to that rapid growth in the 1970’s. The leadership became concerned of the Malthusian consequences. And they wanted to basically quadruple the standard of living in a relatively short time. And thought it was impossible to do so. And so used very, very Draconian methods to bring down the rate of population increase — the so-called one child family, which was really one child for urban, two children for rural areas. But it was not so much people disagreed with what the government wanted to do and why they wanted to do it; people disagreed strongly with how they did it. And I think if there’s a population issue in China that is it. It’s the methods that they used. And what happened is they instituted the one child family and then looked forward and said, "Now what does that do in terms of the long range?" It may solve the short run population crisis but it actually created another one. And two researchers here at the University of Minnesota did some population projections of a one-child policy for China. And found out that they would have an unwieldy burden of elderly with no children to support them and with no government social security system. And some people argue that that longer run population problem actually caused the government to ease off from the one child policy. It wasn’t so much the outcry from the west and from other developing countries about the methods that were used in China. China looked ahead and saw that oh, we’ve created this terrible problem of an aging population. We better step away a bit from the one child policy. And so they eased up a bit partly to try and solve this second population that they’d caused with the first one-child.

FdSL: So not a program that one could send to the rest of the world both methodological as well as real outcome issues?

Ahlburg: Wouldn’t want to in the first place. And probably couldn’t because of the nature of Chinese society. It was a fairly regulated society. The infrastructure was there to punish people who didn’t do what you wanted and reward those who did. In most other countries there wasn’t that kind of infrastructure to institute a one-child policy even if the government wanted to.

FdSL: There are some people who now look at China, whose standard of living has quadrupled if not more and think of the notion of a car in every driveway in China, a chicken in every pot in China is just unsustainable, un-producible given the finite resources of the world. Is that true? What happens if they achieve that goal?

Ahlburg: If they achieve that goal —

FdSL: At what expense?

Ahlburg: Exactly, it’s a matter of how they achieve it. If they’re able to use technology to achieve it with less resources than we in the west have been able to achieve it, with less pollution, then maybe it’s attainable. I don’t think there’s anyone who really, truly believes that story. There may be two cars in every garage and three chickens in every pot of the elite but I don’t think it’s going to go much beyond even maybe the middle class. I’d like to be wrong. But I don’t think — I think the task is too large. And China is also now aware of some of the environmental consequences that — it may outgrow in the short run but in the long run impinge on your ability to sustain that growth. So I think that we’re going to see maybe a moderation of the aggression with which China is trying to grow. But that really depends on the expectations of the population and whether they’re going to wait for a more controlled growth. And so that’s going to be the difficult story politically within China is what they can attain, when they can attain it. And it’s going to be more political than an economic decision I think.

FdSL: You mentioned how India and other parts of the developing world have been able to increase their calorie intake even when the population has gone up. Key to this has been the green revolution in India and the use of modern agricultural methods, which are now increasingly seen as unsustainable for a variety of reasons. Can we feed the world’s population?

Ahlburg: Clearly we can. We can. I mean we can grow enough food to feed the world’s population now and probably a significantly larger population. One of the problems, of course is distribution that we don’t grow the food in the same place that people need to consume the food. So the argument is whether we can make the economics work so that it’s profitable for people in one place to grow food to meet the demand in another place. And so it’s really a question of economic growth, poverty, income distribution, whether the consumers can generate enough income to buy Canadian wheat, Australian wheat or whatever. Or whether we can change agriculture technology so that say in sub-Saharan Africa where there hasn’t been a lot of investment, they haven’t shared in the green revolution whether we can focus agricultural technology in those areas to increase dramatically the productivity of the areas where population growth is going to come — say in South India or in sub-Saharan Africa.

FdSL: Now you’ve talked in aggregate terms there being sufficient resource, sufficient food. But if we want to reconcile with the inevitable, which is the distribution problem, the economics etc, etc. Where do you see the fortunes going for countries that are in the developing world that clearly cannot afford Australian wheat or Canadian wheat? What’s to happen to countries that are seeing burgeoning populations and declining standards of living?

Ahlburg: Well, I think if those populations can’t afford to buy food then we have obviously a significant problem. In the past there’ve been emergency food or more generally more foreign aid. Now that has decreased over the last decade. So the situation that we face is we have a developing world where there is a need — malnutrition, whatever. And we have a developed world where we can in fact produce more than we want. And in fact there have been some declines in agricultural production not because of population pressure or we’ve just forgotten how to be successful. It’s because the prices were not sufficient. We paid people not to grow stuff. So we’re going to have to face some of those issues. And it’s not going to be easy. I mean it’s easy in producing enough. It’s not easy in meeting the demand because it’s an economic question. There’s also a technological question. People are also starting to question well can we keep the gains going? And that’s where we get in to some genetic engineering and so on. Because it’s not so much that there’s — we can’t grow enough, there are also cases where we lose a lot. Well, where do we lose a lot of food to? To pests and so on. We lose a lot in terms of spoilage. And so if we could save some of those gains. We really don’t have to increase productivity very much at all if we just increase our efficiency. And then there’s the secondary story of whether we can make further gains with new varieties and so on. I think people are optimistic that we can if there is the political will, if there’s the economic will, if there’s the organizational will. In a lot of the developing world the west has supported a lot of the experimental stations. A lot of the gains have been made in these experimental stations. We now seem to be less willing in making agriculture productive, making sure the institutions are there, the universities, the research stations. And there hasn’t really been the same investment in problems in sub-Saharan Africa as there have been in Asia. So there are some significant institutional problems. There are some problems in agricultural technology that raise concerns among some people about genetically engineered strains and what are the implications of those. So I mean there are a lot of questions there. But I think basically the capacity is there to feed the world, feed a much larger world a population we expect in 2050 of somewhere between 9 and 11 billion people. I think we can do it.

FdSL: And what do you make of the genetic modification drive? Countries such as India and China seem to be embracing this emerging technology tightly claiming or saying that they cannot afford the luxury of not doing so, that they have to take the risk?

Ahlburg: Right. And I think that’s an economic decision they’re making that pests are a major problem. They lose a lot of their potential production. And if you can come along to pests and so on — and pests, both while the grain is growing but also when it’s being stored. And if you can come along and say we can give you a better variety. There’s much more drought resistant or pest resistant. Obviously they’re going to say fine. There’s some discussion about the price of course but this is something that they’re going to be much open to. Our situation is different because we’re sitting here thinking about mad scientists and saying, "Well what exactly are we releasing? And can we put it back into the box?" if we find out it was a mistake. And so I think that there again one, openness is being driven by need. And on our side we have the luxury to say well hang on, let’s sit back and think about this. We have to trust the scientist to say that it’s okay. But they’ve been wrong in the past. And again, coming from Australia we’ve had a long history of introducing stuff to take care of one problem and it turns out to create a worse problem. So there’s some reticence. And so I think that creates a problem that we have the luxury of the reticence. People who are trying to feed their family don’t have that luxury.

FdSL: Then, of course all of this is not happening in a political vacuum. There are other realities to be dealt with. There’s a strong sentiment that one hears frequently about this all; meaning the re-colonization of this world through this globalization buzzword. How much of a factor is this going to be down the road do you think?

Ahlburg: I think globalization will be a key factor. And I think that - there’s been a recent study of globalization. Most people think that it’s a new phenomenon but it’s actually been going on for hundreds of years. There’s a new study from a Harvard economist from the University of California at Davis who looked at 200 years of history to try and see if globalization is all positive and all negative. And basically what they find is that the gainers are not always the rich. The losers are not always the poor. But what they found is that if you’re not in the game then you suffer. So that I do think that it is important for developing countries to be in the game to be part of globalization. And globalization is not just say opening your financial markets, not just lowering tariff barriers and so on. Because education is global. Health is global. There have been huge benefits from health and education that have been largely ignored. And people are focusing on income and inequality. So I think the debate is a bit too narrow. And even with the narrow debate of the economic gains from globalization, by and large we do gain from globalization. There are some people that lose. And some people that gain more than others. We can redistribute so that the gainers give something back to the losers and then everyone else is better off. But I think that globalization is with U.S. for the future.