A numerical exercise on climate change and family planning: World population might reduce from 11 to 8 billion in 2100 if women of age 15-29 wait and have their first child at age 30+

Thomas Colignatus ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Family planning could focus on delaying the having of children, instead of (just) reducing the number of children per woman. 66% of all children are born in the mothers’ age group of 15-29. A delay of births to the age of 30+ would cause a reduction of the world population by about 0.8 billion in a direct effect. A secondary effect arises when the later born children grow up and have their delay too. There can also be a learning effect. World population might reduce from 11 to 8 billion in 2100. This would cut projected emissions by some 20%. The effect seems important enough to have more research on reasons, causes and consequences of such delay. Strong delay will cause swings in the dependency ratio, which would require economic flexibility, like a rising retirement age from 65 to 70 years. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 stipulates the right to education. This right need not be discussed anew. It may be that education does not adequately discuss family planning though.

Keywords: family planning; fertility; birth delay; climate change; population; carbon tax; fertility tax; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J13 P16 Q01 Q54 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-11, Revised 2019-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/97447/1/MPRA_paper_97447.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:97447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().