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The Forum > Article Comments > Population: some boom, some decline > Comments

Population: some boom, some decline : Comments

By Joseph Chamie, published 6/4/2009

Wildly varying fertility rates among nations threatens global stability.

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Sorry, at # 2 in the previous post, I should have said 'The education of women is correlated NEGATIVELY with fertility rates.'
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 8 April 2009 1:39:20 PM
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Loudmouth, the education of all women in the third world is indeed
a noble goal and we should aim towards it. Meantime if our
educated Western women could not pop down to their pharmacy to
pick up their supplies of family planning aids, they might be popping
out far more babies then they wished, education or no education.

If you spend time in the third world, reality eventually hits you.
Hundreds of millions of women have neither the money nor the
convenient pharmacy down on the corner, but they still have sex
with their husbands, willingly or unwillingly.

It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that when this
takes place, they will be popping out babies, wanted or not.

The more boatloads of food that we send, the more babies they will
produce, the more the problem feeds on itself.

Now whilst people like yourself follow noble goals of educating
them all, which is wonderful, a simple implant next week would
no doubt be a huge relief for them, so that they actually have
some time to go and study.

I don't believe we have to force people like in China, but at
least offer them the option of family planning, if they wish.
That is something that hundreds of millions don't have, at the
present time.
Posted by Yabby, Wednesday, 8 April 2009 2:40:29 PM
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Loudmouth,

Of course a one-child policy plays hell with the age structure and creates a variety of problems. However, it is an attractive choice compared to the alternative of a collapse where millions of people starve, die in epidemics, or are killed in communal violence.

With respect to what we can do to help, I agree with Yabby that the first and most cost effective priority has to be to give everyone access to effective contraception. Beyond that, we could help by funding clean water and primary health care projects to improve child survival, free school meal programs to make it easier for parents to say no to child labour and send their children to school, economic opportunities for women, which introduce opportunity costs for childbearing, and pensions for people who don't have children.
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 8 April 2009 3:33:56 PM
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Divergence: "Beyond that, we could help by funding clean water and primary health care projects to improve child survival, free school meal programs ... which introduce opportunity costs for childbearing..."

Hello? Increasing childhood survival rates, and free things for kids decreases the opportunity costs of children. Children need to be made more expensive, not cheaper, so they are valued more, not treated as free sources of labour.

I would suggest compulsary school is the key factor.

However, your other points are very true
Posted by PartTime, Wednesday, 8 April 2009 3:38:42 PM
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Yabby,

Yes, I presumed that readers would understand the indirect connection between higher education levels for women and lower fertility rates, given that
(a) the more years of education that women engage in, the later they may start their families,
(b) the more education, the more likelihood of being employed outside the domestic economy and at higher levels,
(c) the more education women gain, the more discernment and power they may have in choosing a husband,
and (d) the more power women may have over their own bodies, and their own family-planning decision-making, the more information they may have about birth control and the more wherewithall (control over their own income) they may have to exercise their rights to birth control.

In fact, the more education, perhaps the more assertion of more rights. Nothing is written in stone, so my repeated use of the word 'may'. Nor do I envisage that women's education can be brought about everywhere easily, it will be a very long, hard, and very political process in most Third World countries, especially in those with anti-women cultural practices.

Divergence,

I guess we can't really rebut one argument with some horrific either-or scenario: there may be alternatives to (a) China's one-child policy and (b) 'a collapse where millions of people starve, die in epidemics, or are killed in communal violence'. The long, slow grind of extending education for women, of bringing in (and funding) universal and compulsory education systems, the development of modern economies which can employ (and build on) the skills of education women and men - one may not have to go down either of the roads that your dilemma suggests.
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 9 April 2009 11:49:41 AM
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Growth reduction programs?

Does anybody know any other successful and morally acceptable population growth reduction programs?

China's One-Child policy is morally questionable.

Europe's strong feminism and poicies that provide strong financial incentives for welfare reciepients for having many children (while middle-class people are unable to afford large families), has created a sort-of self-genocide, particularly against the middle class.

But THAILAND has achieved replacement fertility levels by free contraception, education and pushing even poor rural children into school (making them dependant on their parents).

Does anybody know of other sucessful programs like Thailand's?
Posted by PartTime, Thursday, 9 April 2009 12:07:22 PM
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