Italian Population Bust

“Italians’ Baby Boom Goes Bust,” by William Montalbano (June 24), was quite interesting. Though we could quibble about whether Italy’s total fertility rate of 1.3 is the lowest in the world, an honor that may currently go to Spain with its 1.2, the more important thing to note is that fertility in most of Europe, and in Japan as well, is substantially below the replacement level of 2.1. Furthermore, the United States is just right at that 2.1 figure.

Though there is not complete agreement about why fertility has fallen so low in most of the world’s economically advanced areas, some of the consequences are made quite clear by Montalbano--aging populations, rising costs for health care and pensions, and a growing demand for labor, which, in Italy, as well as elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, is increasingly being supplied by immigration from less developed countries, which collectively have a total fertility rate of 3.6, and in some individual cases total fertility rates that exceed 7.0. In our species, economic success seems to be coupled with reproductive failure, a seemingly un-Darwinian phenomenon, but one that is going to reshape the world.

Just as Montalbano cites the rapid growth of places like Nigeria and Morocco, we can note also that the population of Latin America, now about 470 million, will, at current growth rates, double to 940 million over the next 35 years. Figuratively speaking, there is little difference between the Mediterranean and the Rio Grande--globalizing economies, rapid improvements in communications and transportation, and a growing supply of labor in the less developed countries will work together to ensure that immigration will remain a major feature of life in the world’s developed countries for the next few decades no matter how individuals may feel about it or what moves we make to slow it.

GARY PETERS

Professor of Geography

Cal State Long Beach

* Montalbano explains how in 30 years the Moroccan population will grow from 26 million to 47 million, Nigeria from 115 million to 285 and Iran from 61 to 144 million. Then he explains that many will immigrate to Italy, legally or illegally.

Italy should be praised and used as an example. Even fish in the oceans are becoming scarce, farmland is getting worn out, air and water are polluted and forests are being destroyed in much of the world. The earth’s resources are not infinite, starvation is terrible and crowding brings on fighting. We must encourage smaller families.

E. G. VAN LEEUWEN

International Ecology Council

Los Angeles