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172 GÁBOR PIRISI 3 vo n 4 % u G 15 = 2 = 2 2 3 à 3 5 5 E a © o 10 uw a > 2 he od 2 5 1 — Population increase —— Fertility rate o Sm Oo AN A gp e Gá Oo wo ON Od Oo oN DH DP ON Dd LE OND wd LE D À OD PSP SP PP PP PP PPE ES PP PP PP PP PS DS DS D D DS D D D Figure 3. The annual pace of growth of the global population and changes in the fertility rate (1951-2021) Source of data: Our World in Data The question is what comes next. The theory of demographic transition, present in the social sciences since the 1940s or 1950s (Coale 1989; Kirk 1996; Lee 2003), has stood the test of time. The theory links the four stages of demographic development to the modernization of society. In the first, the high fertility rate of the pre-modern era goes together with high mortality, producing a low population growth rate. In the industrializing phase, the death rate begins to decline but a continuously high birth rate causes a population explosion, which becomes mitigated in the third phase by a decrease in the fertility rate. In the fourth phase, a new, lower level of equilibrium has evolved (or will evolve), with low fertility and mortality rates. Apparently, every society on Earth progresses or has progressed along this course of development, although the differences are not negligible (in terms of the length of the phases and the intensity of the changes). The fourth phase, presuming a state of equilibrium, rather appears to be the product of wishful thinking or an aspiration for elegance; it is practical experience that there is no lengthy stability in the fourth phase, but the model needs to be completed with a fifth phase, in which a further decline of fertility will cause a massive drop in the population. This particularly applies to closed migration-free countries such as Japan which clearly illustrate that it is illusory to wait for the demographic processes to settle in a new equilibrium along some socially, politically and economically comfortable stability. In other words, we must prepare for a steady decline of the global population, as the demographic reserves are gradually depleted. In countries already past this major turn, there is a highly pressing and urgent social-political dilemma in need of an answer: are they willing to use in their own national economies the demographic resources still being produced in less developed regions by proclaiming an open, pro-immigration policy together with all its real or alleged conflicts, or will they accept the problems entailed by the inevitability of their shrinking and aging populations? So it seems that there is no third option, however strongly many people want to believe it. It is, however, still an open question whether all this is to be seen as a problem. We rush to qualify certain demographic processes as “good” or “bad”, whereas it is not sure that this approach is the right one to take. Actually, in a society, both
