To the Editor: Population trends play an important role in shaping our world, but Michael Geruso and Dean Spears’s fretting over “depopulation” is misplaced, given that the world’s population is projected to grow by at least two billion people this century.

In many places around the world rapid population growth persists, posing problems for governance and the environment, for example recent conflicts over water rights along the Indus River and the Rio Grande, where population pressures have skyrocketed in recent decades.

Rapid population growth in many areas is linked to curtailment of rights and opportunities for women and girls, especially when it comes to determining whether and when to have children. Global health and education funding can ameliorate that problem while bolstering women’s labor force participation and economic productivity. But now the problem is worsening as the United States and other rich countries withdraw support.

Actual population decline may be many decades away. Hand-wringing over it now is a dangerous distraction from the needs of people alive today, whose numbers will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Kathleen Mogelgaard
Washington
The writer is the president and chief executive of the Population Institute.