The Environment— Protecting the Global Commons 413These regions all share in a remarkable trend of increasing women’s access to educa-
tion and career employment outside the home. As a result, one of the world’s most
power ful demographic trends— women having fewer babies and having babies later in
life— can be explained by the extraordinary demands of education and career.
The aggregation of these individually rational decisions is a declining birthrate. In
China, this dramatic decline may not have been by individual choice, but by the gov-
ernment policy of one child per couple. But in 2013, the Communist Party Central
Committee announced that couples could have two children if either husband or wife
is an only child; rural families were already permitted to have two children. In 2015,
China rescinded the one- child policy, recognizing the deleterious economic conse-
quences of a declining population.
In China and India as well, the prob lem is also a surplus of males, since males are
still preferred for cultural reasons and sex- selective abortions have become increas-
ingly common. From 2010 to 2015, the sex ratio at birth was 116 boys to 100 girls in
China and 111 boys to 100 girls in India, above the 105 to 100 natu ral rate, leading to
what is called the “marriage squeeze”— many males in search of too few females.
This imbalance (bare branches) leads to brides for sale, prostitution, and, some scholars
suggest, actually threatens domestic and international security.^8
In Rus sia, characterized by one demographer as a “demographic disaster,” there has
been a steep decline in population, due to a combination of two de cades of dramatic
underinvestment in health care and education, widespread alcoholism, and heart dis-
ease. This decline has occurred despite significant immigration into Rus sia from the
Central Asian states.^9
One exception to the pattern of population growth decline is the Nordic countries
(in par tic u lar Norway and Sweden), where parental leave and strongly enforced anti-
discrimination policies make it pos si ble for women to avoid having to choose between
becoming mothers and obtaining higher education and lifetime employment.
What is clear about world population growth and decline, and the disparities
among regions, is that the prob lems and opportunities they create are international.
Decisions affect not just states with high rates of population growth but also their
neighbors, as people on overcrowded land contend for scarce resources, seek a better
life in other countries through migration, or may turn to vio lence to get more desirable
space.
States are not the only actors affected by population pressures: this issue affects
individuals, couples, and communities, along with their deepest- held religious and
humanistic values. Population pressures also involve the nongovernmental community,
including groups such as Population Connection or the Population Council that try
to change public attitudes about population and procreation, as well as the Catholic
Church and fundamentalist Islamic sects that oppose artificial restrictions on family