Religions and babies - Hans Rosling

I'm going to talk about religion, but it's a broad and very delicate subject. So, I have to limit myself, and therefore I will limit myself to only talk about the links between religion and sexuality. No, this is a very serious talk, so we'll talk about what I remember as the most wonderful: it's when the young couple whispers, "Tonight we are going to make a baby." My talk will be about the impact of religions on the number of babies per woman. This is indeed important because everyone understands that there is some sort of limit on how many people we can be on this planet. There are some people who say that the world population is growing like this: three billion in 1967, billion just last year, and it will continue to grow because there are religions that stop women from having few babies. It may continue like this. To what extent are these people right?

When I was born, that was less than 1 billion children in the world, and today, 2000, there's almost 2 billion. What has happened since, and what do the experts predict will happen with the number of children during this century? This is a quiz. What do you think? Do you think it will decrease to 1 billion? Will it remain the same and be 2 billion by the end of the century, with the number of children increasing here to 15 years? Or will it continue at the same fast rate and be 4 billion children up there? I will tell you by the end of my speech, but now, what does religion have to do with it?

When you want to classify religion, it's more difficult than you think. You go to Wikipedia, and the first map you find is this; it divides the world into Abrahamic religions and Eastern religions—not detailed enough. So we went on and we looked in Wikipedia. We found this map, but it subdivides Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism into many subgroups, which were too detailed. There, for a cap minder, we made our own map, and it looks like this. Each country is a bubble; the size is the population—big China, big India—and the color now is the majority religion. It's a religion where more than 50% of the people say that they belong. It's Eastern religion in India and China in neighboring Asian countries. Islam is the majority religion all the way from the Atlantic Ocean across the Middle East, southern Europe, and through Asia all the way to Indonesia. That's what we find: Islam majority and Christian majority religions. We see in these countries they are blue, and that is most countries in America and Europe, many countries in Africa, and a few in Asia. The white here are countries which cannot be classified because one religion does not reach 50%, or there is doubt about the data, or there are some other reasons. We were careful with that, so bear with our simplicity.

Now, when I take you over to this short, this is in 1960, and now I show the number of babies per woman here: two, four, or six—many babies, few babies—and here the income per person in comparable dollars. The reason for that is that many people say you have to get rich first before you get few babies, so low income here, high income there. Indeed, in 1960, you had to be a rich Christian to have few babies. The exception was Japan. Japan here was regarded as an exception. Otherwise, it was only Christian countries, but there were also many Christian countries that had six to seven babies per woman. They were in Latin America, or they were in Africa, and countries with Islamist majority religion—almost all of them had six to seven children per woman, irrespective of the income level. All the Eastern religions, except Japan, had the same level.

Now, let's see what has happened in the world. I start the world, and here we go—1962. Can you see? They're getting a little richer, but the number of babies per woman is falling. Look at China; it's falling fairly fast, and all the Muslim-majority countries across the income are coming down, as do the Christian majority countries in the middle-income range. When we enter this century, you find more than half of mankind down here, and by 2010, we are actually eighty percent of humans who live in countries with about two children per woman. It's quite an amazing development that has happened. These are countries from the United States here with $40,000 per capita: France, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia, India, and all the way to Bangladesh and Vietnam, which have less than five percent of the income per person in the United States and the same amount of babies per woman.

I can tell you that the data on the number of children per woman is surprisingly good in all countries. We get that from the census data. It's not one of these statistics that is very doubtful. So, what we can conclude is you don't have to get rich to have few children. It has happened across the world, and when we look at religions, we can see that the Eastern religions indeed—that's not one single country with a majority of that religion that has more than three children. Whereas with Islamist majority religion and Christianity, you see countries all the way, but there's no major difference. There's no major difference between these religions. There is a difference with income. The countries that have many babies per woman here—they have quite low income. Most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, but there are also countries here like Guatemala, like Papua New Guinea, like Germany, and Afghanistan. Many things—Afghanistan here and Congo, which have suffered severe conflicts—that they don't have fast population growth. It's the other way around. In the world today, it's the countries that have the highest mortality rates that have the fastest population growth because the death of a child is compensated by one more child. These countries have six children per woman; they have a sad death rate of one to two children per woman. But thirty years from now, Afghanistan will go from 30 million to 60 million. Congo will go from 60 to 220. That's where we have the first population growth, and many think that all these countries are stagnant, but they are not.

Let me compare Senegal, a Muslim-dominated country, with a Christian-dominated country, Ghana. I take them backwards here to their independence when they were up here in the beginning of the 1960s. Just look at what they have done—it's an amazing improvement. From seven children per woman, they've gone all the way down to between four and five. It's a tremendous improvement! So what does it take? When we know quite well what is needed in these countries, you need to have children to survive; you need to get out of the deepest poverty. So children are not of importance for work in the family; you need to have access to some family planning, and you need the fourth factor, which perhaps is the most important factor. But let me illustrate that fourth factor by looking at Qatar. Here we have Qatar today, and there we have Bangladesh today. If I take these countries back to the years of their independence, which are almost the same years—seventy-one, seventy-two—it’s quite an amazing development that has happened.

Look at Bangladesh and Qatar. With such different incomes, there's almost the same drop in the number of babies per woman. And what is the reason in Qatar? Well, I do as I always do. I went to the statistical authority of Qatar, to their webpage. It's a very good webpage; I recommend it, and I looked up: oh yeah, you can have lots of fun here. This provided free of charge, I found Couture social trends—very interesting, lots to read. I found fertility at birth, and I looked at the total fertility rate per woman. These are the scholars and experts in the government agency in Qatar, and they say the most important factors are increased age at first marriage, increased educational level of Qatari women, and more women integrated into the labor force. I couldn’t agree more—science couldn’t agree more. This is a country that indeed had gone through a very, very interesting modernization.

So what it is is these four children should survive; children shouldn't be needed for work. Women should get education and join the labor force, and family planning should be accessible. Now look again at this. The average number of children in the world is, like in Colombia, 2.4 today. There are countries up here which are very poor, and that's where family planning, that the child survival is needed. I strongly recommend Melinda Gates' last TED talk. And here down there are many countries which have less than two children per woman.

So when I go back now to give you the answer to the quiz, it’s two. We have reached peak child. The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child, and the world population will stop growing. The United Nations Population Division has said they will stop growing at ten billion. But why do they grow if the number of children doesn't grow? Well, I will show you here; I will use these cardboxes in which your notebooks came. They are quite useful for educational purposes. Each cardbox is one billion people, and there are two billion children in the world. There are two billion young people between 15 and 30. These are round in number. Then, there is 1 billion between 30 and 45, almost 1 in 45 and 60. And then it’s my box; this is me: 60 plus—we are here on top.

So what will happen now is what we call the big fill, and you can see that it's like 3 billion missing here. They are not missing because they've died; they were never born because before 1980, members must have fewer people born than they were during the last 30 years. So what will happen now is quite straightforward: the old, sadly, will die; the rest of you will grow older and get 2 billion children. Then the old will die, the rest will grow older and get 2 billion children, and then again the old will die, and you will get 2 billion children. This is the great fill-up; it's inevitable. Can you see that this increase took place without life getting longer and without having children?

Religion has very little to do with the number of babies per woman. All the religions in the world are fully capable of maintaining their values and adapting to this new world, and we will be just 10 billion in this world if the poorest people get out of poverty, their children survive, and they get access to family planning that is needed. But it's unbeatable that we will be 2 to 3 billion more. So, when you discuss and when you plan for the resources, for the energy needed for the future for human beings on this planet, you have to plan for 10 billion. Thank you very much.