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Population Panic Pushed Deadly Policies — The Truth Finally Comes Out
This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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In 1980, the free market economist Julian Simon made a bet with environmentalist Paul Ehrlich. The author of “The Population Bomb,” Ehrlich believed population growth would doom humanity. Simon believed the opposite — and he was proven right. After Ehrlich’s death, Julian’s son David reflects on the bet and the far-reaching effects of the disproven claim that Ehrlich never recanted.
The first sentence of Paul Ehrlich’s mega-bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” made him famous: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
Ehrlich, who died last week at age 93, never recanted and refused to come to terms with the evisceration of his doomsday prediction.
Since 1970, the world’s population has more than doubled, growing from 3.7 billion to 8 billion. Yet only nations with socialist command and control economies such as mid-1980s Ethiopia and more recently North Korea have experienced mass starvation.
The University of Oxford’s Our World in Data reports that worldwide famine deaths per 100,000 people have fallen by over 98%, from 990 in the 1960 decade to 13 in the 2020 decade.
The vast reduction in famine deaths, moreover, has been accompanied by a deep reduction in worldwide extreme poverty. Another Our World in Data report shows that from 1970 through 2015, the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty shrunk from almost 48% to less than 10%.
Ehrlich, however, never cared about scientific facts. In 2023, for example, he insisted that “humanity is not sustainable.”
Ehrlich’s predictions were not merely scientific misconduct. They had deadly consequences. They convinced repressive foreign governments in China, India, Africa, and Central America to pursue horrendous population control programs that included forced abortions and sterilizations. China’s notorious one-child policy was the most gruesome, resulting in millions of sex-selection abortions and infanticides.
Stanford University, Ehrlich’s employer, never disciplined him for his scientific misdeeds. Ehrlich did, however, suffer public humiliation: He famously lost his bet with my father, the late economist Julian Simon, regarding Ehrlich’s related claim that population growth would lead to shortages of natural resources and resulting higher prices for them.
In 1980, Simon — who devoted most of his professional life to amassing a vast array of scientific data showing that population growth is beneficial — wanted publicly to puncture Ehrlich’s claims of impending global doom. Simon offered Ehrlich and his partners, Harvard University scientist John Holdren and University of California-Berkeley ecologist John Harte, a $1,000 bet. Ehrlich and his partners could choose a group of raw materials that they expected to rise in price because of population growth over a time period of their choosing. If the total inflation-adjusted price of raw materials went up over the time period, they would win. If the price went down, they would lose.
Ehrlich and his partners selected 10 years and copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. By 1990, the total inflation-adjusted price of these metals was 36% lower. Ehrlich sent Simon a check for $576.07 to reflect the inflation-adjusted decrease in prices, and the New York Times Magazine featured the story of the bet on its cover. When Simon offered to make a bigger bet, Ehrlich declined.
In addition to proving that Ehrlich’s theory was wrong, the bet also gave Simon an opportunity to highlight the comprehensive scientific data that show that population growth, particularly combined with human freedom, creates prosperity, increases longevity, makes people healthier, produces a cleaner environment, and generally makes life better on earth.
People, as Simon explained, are the “ultimate resource.” They are not just mouths to feed. They have hands to work and produce and, more importantly, minds that create the innovation that drives economic growth. Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize winner for his work on economic growth, put it this way: “The virtuous circle between population and ideas accounts for the acceleration of growth.”
As Simon explained, population growth in the short term can cause problems: more traffic, crowded schools and hospitals, and stretched family and government budgets. But over time, population growth pushes people to find solutions through innovation that expand the economy, increase prosperity, lengthen our lives, and improve our health and environment.
The most beneficial form of population growth (along with increased skilled immigration) is more traditional nuclear families having and raising more children. The data show that children raised by married couples have far better outcomes.
A July 2020 U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee report summarizes research that shows that children not raised in homes with married parents are more likely “to experience physical, emotional or sexual abuse,” have worse health, exhibit more aggression, “engage in delinquent behavior,” have lower educational achievement, earn less as adults, and “live in poverty.”
Ehrlich’s death provides hope that the war against population growth will now end — and that society instead will wholeheartedly shift to encouraging more people to marry and raise more children.
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David M. Simon is a senior fellow with Unleash Prosperity and a lawyer in Chicago.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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