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Globalization and global population

Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Middle East instilled Greek culture in a vast population ranging from North Africa to India; and Roman, Chinese, and Mayan empires brought dominant languages and new immigrants to conquered regions. The movement of goods along the thousands of miles of the silk road trade route raised wages and wealth in both China and Europe in the Middle Ages without inducing major flows of population from one region to another; at the same time it facilitated the transmission of the Black Plague from Mongolia to Europe. The global diffusion of vaccines preventing polio, smallpox, and measles reduced death rates dramatically in developed countries after 1870 and in developing countries after 1945. In contrast with continued increases in life expectancy in Asia, the Americas, and Western Europe, life expectancy has collapsed in sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe since 1990. The globalization of war over the last 250 years has entailed the temporary migration of millions of soldiers and the often more permanent migration of million of refugees. Changing population age structures induced global flows of capital in both the 19th and 20th centuries, while international immigration was a critical cause of relative and absolute factor price convergence across Europe and Americas. And the large increase in world population over the last 300 years may be at least in part responsible for the recent surge in inventions that have markedly reduced computing and communication costs and, consequently, set off the most recent surge in globalization.

Globalization is not new, and neither its interaction with demographic trends. Are globalization and population growth or decline connected? Will a more globalized world have fewer people or more? Scientists were once confident that the number of humans on the planet would continue to grow leading to a huge resource crisis. That still may happen. But other trends are emerging which point to alternative futures. In the industrialized world, populations are growing at a very slow rate (or even declining) for a number of reasons. If globalization leads more countries to become industrialized, will their populations start to shrink as well? In addition, the AIDS tragedy is actually causing the population of some African nations to shrink. South Africa, better off than most countries in Africa, will see life expectancy in some regions drop to age 33 because of overwhelming AIDS crisis.

See the second half of this editorial in next week’s issue of the Village News.

 

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