Population expert Steven Mosher warned of a coming world crisis due to declining population growth in a speech to about a dozen students yesterday.
Invited to speak by Penn for Life as part of the group's Respect Life Week 2006, Mosher, who speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, focused a majority of the discussion on China.
The president of the Virginia-based Population Research Institute, an antiabortion organization, Mosher began by speaking about his time as the "first American social scientist to live in rural China" as a young Stanford student in 1980.
"I got there just in time for the one-child policy," Mosher said, referring to a limit on the number of children Chinese couples were allowed to have. "I was living in rural Guangdong when the governor ordered that every village not increase their birthrate beyond 1 percent in the year 1980."
He then went on to describe an incident in which 18 pregnant women were jailed when they refused to follow the policy until they finally acquiesced and had abortions.
It was for reporting such events that he was labeled an "international spy" by the Chinese government, and he subsequently left China.
Mosher said such measures were unnecessary because "there is no such thing as overpopulation, in China or elsewhere."
He stated that food and water shortages, not just in China but around the world, were mainly the product of government mismanagement.
He then went on to talk about what he said is a "depopulation crisis" in the industrialized world.
"Italy is averaging 1.1 children per woman," Mosher said. "This is far below replacement levels."
He also cited Japan and the rest of Western Europe as having declining birth rates.
Mosher said that AIDS in Africa and a rising standard of living in Latin and South America were contributing to a slower rate of population growth in those regions.
He linked economics and population, saying that having more people enables countries to be more productive.
"You will live to see the specter of depopulation," Mosher said.
Students in the audience were receptive but skeptical on some points.
"He had some nice points about the correlation between a high population and economic growth," Wharton freshman Bohan Li said. "But I would have liked to see a more direct conversation."
Joe Gasiewski, a College alumnus, enjoyed the speech but was wary of Mosher's conclusions.
"Incredibly interesting," Gasiewski said. "Honestly, a little frightening if you accept these premises."
