The global population reached eight billion this week — three times what the population was in 1950.

We often hear dire predictions about how humanity’s ever-increasing numbers are actually a threat to our continued existence, from more pollution to increased carbon emissions to dwindling food supplies. But this isn’t anything new.

Back in the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich’s famous book The Population Bomb warned of the negative consequences of unchecked population growth. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “Driving the criticism of The Population Bomb were its arresting, graphic descriptions of the potential consequences of overpopulation: famine, pollution, social and ecological collapse.”

Of course, none of Ehrlich’s predictions became reality. Yet these warnings were without merit from the start. The planet’s population growth is largely the result of capitalism and free markets, which have allowed more humans to live more prosperous, more healthy, more productive lives. The human boom couldn’t have occurred were it not for important developments in health, science, and technology — developments that have made the world cleaner, safer from disease, and more capable of producing food.

“You might think massive population growth since 1950 would expand poverty,” reports the Fraser Institute, “but that misunderstands free market dynamism. By 2015 (the most recent global poverty estimate), world population had exploded to 7.35 billion yet only 0.7 billion lived in poverty, less than 10 per cent albeit still too many. Despite a three-fold increase in global population, the absolute number of people living in poverty dropped by more than 60 per cent.”

In more developed countries in the West, the greater concern is not a population boom but a decline.

“This year,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “the U.S. will record at least 300,000 fewer births because the uncertain economy and the pandemic dissuaded women from having babies, according to projections by economists Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine. Provisional government data already show births in the first three months of 2021 declined compared with 2020.”

The Journal adds: “The longer-term decline stems from millennials having fewer children. Extended financial insecurity among young adults and women’s rising educational attainment are among factors overlapping with the pandemic year’s health and financial shocks, many demographers say.”

On a global scale, the data suggest the same trend. In analyzing a 2019 United Nations study, the Pew Research Center concluded as follows: “For the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century, due in large part to falling global fertility rates.” The projection? “By 2100, the world’s population is projected to reach approximately 10.9 billion, with annual growth of less than 0.1% — a steep decline from the current rate.”

Even left-leaning Vox admitted as much a few years back: “Under the mainline UN estimates, global population will grow for the rest of this century, but slowly, and this will be the last century with a growing population. The UN has an impressive track record in this area, but some European analysis groups think that the UN is estimating fertility that’s higher than realistic, and that population numbers will fall much sooner.”

And there’s even more evidence suggesting that our real concern should be keeping the human race alive rather than worrying about an overpopulated planet Earth: Sperm counts have dropped more than 50% in the past 50 years, and while no one knows exactly why, some experts attribute the steep decline to chemicals, diet, stress, obesity, and other factors.

Given all this, it seems the last thing we ought to be worrying about is too many humans.

Our planet contains enough room and resources for a growing population to continue to thrive. What’s more important, then, is making sure the right political and economic systems are in place to meet the needs of the human race.