Will an economic crash reduce population levels?
I've long maintained that the main thing that triggers population declines is economic calamity. My evidence for this was what happened to the populations and economies of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia after the collapse of the USSR. Their economies declined drastically, as did their net birth rates, which went negative in each case.
I just took a closer look at the relationship between economic activity and net birth rates. What I found forces me to revisit my reliance on economic collapse as the main force behind population reduction. The economies of the three countries declined an average of 50% between about 1988 and 1996. in the same period their net annual birth rates fell on average from about +0.5% to -0.6%, a drop of just over 1%.
The world's overall net birth rate is currently about 1.1%. The ex-Soviet example suggests that if the world suffered an economic catastrophe that reduced global GDP by 50%, our population might not fall, but would instead only level off.
One factor to consider is that during the collapse of the USSR, the rest of the world kept right on ticking. This might have offered some indirect socioeconomic support to the affected nations, that might have kept their populations from falling as fast or as far as they might have otherwise. It's hard to say how such an effect would play out in the case of a global economic collapse.
It's also worth noting that all three nations have experienced significant economic recoveries since 1998, but their net birth rates have not recovered at all - they are all stuck at about -0.6%.
So while an economic crash of that magnitude would undoubtedly do wonders for the world's CO2 emissions, we shouldn't count on it to reduce our population.
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