Four million and slowly counting

By WARREN GAMBLE

Less than a century after New Zealand struggled past its first million people, here we all are, four million and counting.

But if population experts are right, the counting will not be too onerous in the next 100 years.

The best population projection based on long-term trends is that we will not get to five million this century.

Instead, Statistics New Zealand forecasts that the population will peak at 4.8 million in 2046, then decline to 4.4 million by 2101.

The world's population, now at 6.2 billion, is also projected to follow a long-term decline. Where demographers had been predicting 10 or 11 billion people by the middle of the century, they have revised the figure down to eight or nine billion as fertility rates in populous countries such as Brazil, China and India decline rapidly. Some predict that in the next 200 years the world's population will fall back to five billion.

It is far from the grim picture of overpopulation current in the early 1970s, when there was a widespread fear of planetary overload.

The 1973 film Soylent Green showed a starving, overcrowded 2022 New York where Charlton Heston was shocked to discover the staple mass-produced food was reprocessed human. Zero Population Growth showed a world where births were banned for 30 years, children were replaced by talking dolls, and the penalty for reproducing was public suffocation. In 1971, the year that film came out, New Zealand statisticians were projecting the country would hit five million by 2001.

That prediction highlights the uncertainties of long-term projections, but demographers now are confident that slow-growing or shrinking populations will be the norm this century. They say the four million mark is not iconic, it just highlights we are not growing that fast.

So what on earth has been going on? The answer lies in what hasn't been.

The natural increase of births over deaths has been responsible for more than 80 per cent of New Zealand's population growth in the past century.

But from the end of the postwar baby boom in the mid-1960s, fertility rates have been dropping to the point where they are now below the level needed to replace the population without immigration. This replacement level is 2.1 births a woman (one child for each parent plus a factor to compensate for children who die before the age of reproduction).

New Zealand's fertility rate is 1.9, down from 4.2 in 1962. Italy and Spain's fertility rates have slid to 1.3.

The fertility slump is the main reason it has taken New Zealand 30 years to get from three to four million, compared with the 21 years it took to get from two to three million (1952 to 1973).

As the New Zealand baby boomers and their children, born in a "baby blip" in the early 1990s, move past reproductive ages the lower fertility rates will take greater effect. After 2030, as the baby boomers begin dying, the number of births and deaths will converge until 2041, when it is projected deaths will exceed births.

That projection, in the model that forecasts we will not get to five million, is based on a fertility rate of 1.85.

Efforts by overseas governments to encourage more babies have met mixed success. Sweden claimed its family-friendly policies - such as extended paid parental leave and free preschool lessons - boosted birthrates in the late 1980s, but its fertility rate is now 1.6.

France, though, has managed to arrest its fertility decline, maintaining its rate around 1.9 with a package of family support measures.

Waikato University population studies specialist Professor Ian Pool argues it is vital for New Zealand to do the same, particularly when the children of baby boomers, born in what he has termed a baby blip in the early 1990s, reach child-rearing years.

Because they will also be needed to drive the country's economic performance they will have to be highly educated, have quality jobs to go to and get help to start a family.

Pool says that will require a much improved package of parental leave and child-care support as well as easing the punitive student loans scheme.

"As a country we win or lose depending on what we do to support human capital at this time," he says.

Pool says the the baby blip wave offers an opportunity unique in the developed world. If it can catch the much heralded knowledge wave of high-tech jobs the country will be in good shape; if not, it will be a "window of disaster".

With most factors pointing to a natural population decline, the other part of a country's population equation, migration, will assume more importance, particularly to fill skill gaps in a shrinking workforce.

The 4.4 million population model by 2101 assumes New Zealand will continue to gain from migration - the numbers arriving here exceeding the numbers of New Zealanders leaving - at a rate of 5000 a year.

That has been the average for the past century, but in the 1990s, as the Government went on an immigration drive, the average increased to 10,000. If that figure was used for population forecasts, New Zealand would hit the five million mark in around 2030 before levelling off.

Net migration gains are a highly elusive target though, largely because a government cannot control how many people leave the country. The rite of passage of overseas experience for young New Zealanders, plus the lure of economies such as Australia, has seen tens of thousands leaving each year.

Waikato University population expert Professor Richard Bedford says younger New Zealanders will always go, and "we should welcome this rather than condemn it" because they can come back with valuable skills and experiences.

In fact, he believes it likely that increasing numbers of New Zealand expatriates will come home, drawn by a safer, more relaxed, cheaper lifestyle. "I think we could be quite surprised at the numbers who will get a bit nostalgic to come back."

Bedford says that from talking to many returnees, it seems most go through a readjustment to a slower-paced life. But "they come to realise the incredible advantages of living in a country which is still quite safe and where in an hour's drive of anywhere you can get to excellent recreation facilities in a beautiful country".

Fewer New Zealanders will also leave as the population ages, factors that last year helped to cut the net loss of New Zealanders in half.

Immigrants, though, are likely to continue contributing significantly to population gains, and to creating the greatest debates.

The year to March 2003 saw the largest net permanent and long-term migration gain - 41,600 - largely because of 72,500 immigrants, with large flows from China, India and Britain.

Bedford says those figures - taken from airport cards - have to be treated with caution, because they include some international students, and others on extended work permits who will not stay. But on the other side of the equation they also do not pick up those who change categories, such as those who obtain permanent residence while in New Zealand after arriving on short-term permits.

Bedford expects the current ebbs and flows of migrants to continue. One factor that might make it difficult to get young immigrants will be the increasing competition from other developed countries as their workforces also age and shrink.

And even if we could lure masses of new immigrants, there are likely to be political and cultural limits to the numbers New Zealanders would be prepared to accept.

Demographers say there can be no magical population number for a country such as New Zealand, either in physical or economic terms.

"If the majority in our population was still directly dependent on farming for their livelihood then we might be able to experiment with estimates of carrying capacity of the land for people," says Bedford.

"This isn't the case - around 85 per cent of New Zealanders live in towns and cities, and as the economists often tell us, we have a consumption lifestyle that is in no way supported by our domestic activity."

New Zealand has around the same land area as Britain and Japan, but the respective populations are four million, 60 million and more than 100 million.

Pool says it's silly to equate the size of a country or its population with wealth. The tiny, rich island of Singapore and the poor, battle-scarred African nation of Eritrea, which both have around four million, people, dispel that argument.

He is equally dismissive of environmentalists who equate population size and density with environmental concerns. It is more about how we each use more resources compared with previous generations, rather than straight numbers, he argues.

Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons agrees the debate is about consumption and lifestyle, rather than numbers.

She is not alarmed by the slowing population growth, saying it will give the country space to find better solutions, for example sustainable energy sources.

While membership of the four million club might not affect us directly, the population movement within the country could.

Auckland has around 30 per cent of the population and is the destination for most immigrants. But Bedford argues its infrastructure problems are more due to poor planning 30 years ago than to population increase.

Pool says the three main urban centres, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, are continuing to grow, particularly as the nodes for highly skilled workers needed for the new economy. It is curious that technology allows these workers to operate from almost anywhere, but the United States experience shows they gather in specific areas (such as San Francisco).

That is bad news for "have not" areas such as Northland, Gisborne, eastern Bay of Plenty and the West Coast.

With the rural sector increasingly dominated by large concerns, these areas will have to develop a new hook to get people back.

Dunedin, with its university and innovative partnerships with business and local government, has shown that smaller areas can create an attractive niche.

As with New Zealand it seems, it's not how big you are, it's how smart you are that will matter in the long run.

Population Counter
Continuously updated by Statistics New Zealand