Gender and climate – how do they add up?

Climate Change

Gender and climate – how do they add up?

Helen Broadbridge looks at the surprising overlap between birth rates, female empowerment and helping climate change.

Economic growth is the foundation of the Great Acceleration – the explosion of human activity, wealth creation and planetary damage that has taken place since the middle of the 20th century. The human rewards of long-term economic growth are clear: improved sanitation, food and water security, life expectancy and lower levels of violence. But can this growth go on forever? There is a tension between the policy objective of infinite growth and the finite resources of our planetary system, with the full range of climate risks going beyond tonnes of carbon dioxide: biodiversity loss, loss of pollinators, depleting soil fertility, deforestation, overfishing, ocean acidification, clean water scarcity, chemical pollution, damage from extreme weather and zoonotic disease transmission all pose serious risks to the global economy.

There is another trend that has coincided with the Great Acceleration: the slowing rate of global population growth – by half since its peak in the late 1960s. This is good news. The trend that increasingly educated, financially independent women choose to have fewer children means fewer people to consume resources and emit greenhouse gases. But the headlines are not so sure. In South Korea and China, policy changes have been put in place to encourage women to have more children; in the US and Europe, some have voiced disappointment that the Covid-19 pandemic led to a baby bust rather than a baby boom.

What links these two trends? Female empowerment is an effective carbon mitigation strategy. What is good for women seems to be good for the planet. So why are falling birth rates a concern for some?

Taking a step back, when a country’s birth rate falls below 2 (the “replacement rate”), the population should decrease (subject to net migration). Over the long term, policy makers may worry that the working (in other words, taxpaying) population will shrink in relation to the non-working population and it will become more difficult to pay for public services, such as pensions and long-term care. In other words, population growth is a shortcut to economic growth.

Balancing a state budget is a legitimate concern, but should the blame fall on women for having fewer children? Far from it. The countries with the highest birth rates (around 6) – Niger, Chad, Mali, for example – are also statistically significant for other reasons: Niger has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world (~40% of 15-24 year olds), a child mortality rate of around ~80 per 1,000 births and overall life expectancy of ~62 years old (compared to 99%, 30 and 81 in the UK). In fact, a declining birth rate and an ageing population are symptoms of many positive human development indicators: lower child and maternal mortality, higher vaccination rates, better sanitation, bans on child labour, higher access to education and the workplace for women, higher life expectancy, and better quality healthcare and elder care. The global demographic shift is not a symptom of women making the “wrong” choices, but the culmination of human progress leaving a large retired generation side-by-side with one where working women have something to lose by having a child.

Therefore, economic growth via population growth at the expense of women and the planet is not the best solution. Policies designed to persuade women to have more children also further the damaging narrative that women are reproductive assets of the state in need of remedial action, rather than financially-independent agents exercising their own free will. A better solution for women and the planet would be for policy makers to plan for smaller populations and smaller, more efficient economies – that can still provide the high standards of living that economic growth advocates so desire. Fortunately, there are many ways to increase the size of the working population relative to the non-working population without looking to the birth rate:

1. The first priority should be to keep women in the workforce throughout their careers. Clearly, a baby born in 2021 will not contribute tax for, let’s say, 21 years, whereas a woman (just like a man) who has a baby in 2021 has the potential to contribute tax every year for the rest of their working life. As long as the public and private sectors put enough infrastructure in place that they do not leave the workforce (cutting their tax-paying years well short on account of one baby), it should be possible to secure the tax contributions of both parents for many years to come.

2. Secondly, we should all expect to work for longer, as the retirement age will inevitable increase with life expectancy – and there is much more to be said about why ageing populations are not such a bad thing.

3. Thirdly, immigration and technology should be used to plug workforce shortfalls.

In summary, the need for change is clear. Our economies are both exposed to the risks of planetary damage and contributing to those risks. In terms of exposure, half of the global economy (approximately $44 trillion) depends on the direct extraction of resources from forests and oceans or the provision of ecosystem services, such as soils, clean water, pollination and a stable climate. In terms of contribution, in 2019 the world’s 50 biggest banks directed $2.6 trillion to biodiversity loss. Perhaps it is time to embrace the trends of having fewer children and living longer and plan our economies accordingly. ■

Helen Broadbridge

Helen Broadbridge is a Tax solicitor working in the City of London and Honorary Secretary of Westminster & Holborn Law Society.