Is Colombia Overpopulated?

We cannot speak of Colombia, with a population of 51

million occupying an area twice the size of Texas, as being
“overpopulated.” First of all, demographers don’t even
know what “overpopulation” means; there is no working
definition. Second, Colombia’s population density is less
than that of Texas. No reasonable person would call the
vast open spaces of Texas “overpopulated.”
When people say “overpopulated,” they actually mean
“underdeveloped.” But Colombia’s economy is booming.
The economic policies of fiscal restraint that have been in
place for the last four years in Colombia seem to be
succeeding. Population control programs, on the other
hand, have been in place for 40 years, and have produced
no appreciable economic benefits. To put it bluntly, you
don’t eliminate poverty by attempting to eliminate the
poor through population control.
One way to illustrate how quickly Colombia has reached
replacement rate fertility is to look at what are called
population pyramids.
With population growth leveling off, how long will it take
for Colombia’s population to peak and then decline? This
depends upon the number of children that the next
generation of Colombians have, and so is difficult to
predict.
The low variant of the UN Population Division predicts
that Colombia’s population will peak at  55,96 million in
2050, and then decline. Following 2050, the population
will slowly decline for the rest of the century, going back
down to 45.52 million in 2099.
In neither case can it reasonably be argued that this is
explosive, or disastrous, population growth. It is not. The
disaster comes later, as the population ages and declines.

What Should Colombia Do?

Many countries still have foreign-funded programs in
place that they find uncongenial and which compromise
their future. Take sparsely populated Bolivia, for example,
a country whose nine million inhabitants are spread out
over an area the size of Texas. The democratically elected
government regards both its fertility rate and its rate of
population growth as “satisfactory”— both have been
falling in recent years—and has specifically adopted a
hands-off policy of “no intervention” in these matters.
Yet the population control establishment is not content to
leave well enough alone. USAID and others pour tens of
millions of dollars into reproductive health programs in
that country which have the effect, not unintentional, of
further reducing the birthrate.
Given that fertility levels are already close to replacement
and appear likely to continue to fall, what should the
government’s population policy be? First of all, it should
discard its anachronistic view that fertility levels in
Colombia are “too high”—they are not—and abandon its
policy of attempting to convince couples to hear fewer
children by promoting various methods of contraception.
Second, it should tell the UN Population Fund and other
population control agencies that its population control
programs are no longer welcome in Colombia.
Third, the government should instead seek to strengthen
marriages and families by enacting family-friendly tax
policies that recognize, through tax deductions, the
contribution that parents make to the nation’s economy by
raising children. Couples should he encouraged, as were
our first parents, to be fruitful and multiply.