*The more countries are lifted from poverty, the higher the child survival rate and therefore the impetuous to have greater family size is dramatically diminished.*

Csteele, whatever makes you think that women want to have all these
children? 45 million of them would not be having abortions, if they did. Melinda Gates finally twigged on all this, when she went out into the third world and talked to third world women. They made it clear to her that they wanted a choice, which hundreds of millions of them are simply too poor to afford. Google the latest UN Convention in London on this, of earlier in July.

So finally more money is being made available to more hundreds of millions of women to give them a choice, something that we have denied many of them.

Its exactly how Melinda Gates eventually twigged. She realised that she had the choice to have 3 children, unlike many third world women who are simply too poor to afford contraception.

Of course the world is overpopulated. The only way we can keep increasing the human population, is to keep wiping out other species habitats in the process. More and more humans, stuff the other species. Hardly sustainable

http://www.economist.com/node/21558564

There ya go. Even the Economist agrees that giving women a choice about family planning is a good thing. The religious right spent years under Bush, trying to put a spanner in the works on this one.
Thankfully the Catholic lobby has some opponents out there.

csteele,
The drop in birthrates in Bangladesh was the result of government sponsored and financed family planning. It is to do with education in family planning. A signioficant drop, but is still way above the replacement level of 2.3 India, Pakistan, Phillipines and Manamar are well above replacement level also.

Some Asian countries such as, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia are below replacement levels.

It will take 20-30 years for the drop in birthrate to show up in population trends.

Again I post this link below which shows the economic benefits of government sponsored family planning.

From recollection many African countries are in the 5-6 range of babies per woman.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/9489/family-planning-in-thailand-ph

Dear Yabby,

Point taken, and of course the word was impetus rather than impetuous though either could fit in a fashion.

Yet as Hans' animation shows the remarkable figures in Bangladesh were achieved without a dramatic jump in wealth, the kind that would give women access to all the choices afforded women in the US.

Other measures have been undertaken that have had sizeable impacts. One of them was to raise the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 for women and 21 for men. These laws have been backed up with strong penalties with two years imprisonment the ultimate sanction. Prior to this the UN estimated that half the women aged between 15 and 19 had been married.

So while the donations and aid from western individuals and governments are of course part of the mix we really need to acknowledge that these countries recognise the issue and are prepared to act on it. They are not the kind of backward, unthinking, and uncaring societies that some would have us believe.

Many nations around the world are having real successes managing populations so much so that rather than the exponential growth touted by some here the projections have numbers peaking then dropping.

As to the world being over populated I certainly think parts of it are and as a result there is quite significant impacts on species and the environment. For instance over 60% of Bangladesh's energy comes from fuel woods much of it taken from the foothill around mountains which is also vital habitat for species. Assistance to move away from this reliance would have and enormous benefit.

I keep coming back to Japan but if a country with its population density, food production and manufacturing can retain over 60% forest coverage then it should we be saying they are overpopulated?

We have the tools to dramatically lessen the impact the human species has on our planet even at the 10 billion mark. This should be our focus now as that figure is inevitable but not unmanageable.

Dear Yabby,

It wasn't only Bush my friend.

In 1996, the Howard (Liberal/National Coalition) government, desperate for the support of Harradine in the Senate, made amendments to Australia's foreign aid guidelines demanded by Harradine. The AusAID family planning guidelines forbade any organisation that accepts Australian aid dollars from providing, recommending or even supplying information on abortion - even when to do so may save the woman's life.
Wikipedia

From memory this ban is still in place.

Dear Banjo,

I agree family planning gets a lot of credit. What I am reacting to is some of the sentiments posted here such as;

“The only remedies that are known to work are the old standards of War, Pestilence and Famine.”

“However, birth control is unlikely to act quick enough to avoid a very high level of starvation.”

“No aid or loans of any nature or help for ANY country not signing up for two child policy in third world and ANY country.
Without effort and results , laugh if you wish, we will one day have a world dictatorship and see our freedoms die.
Current view growth is good is foolish and clearly untrue a day just has to come that ends population growth, be it war famine or disease.”

“There will come a time when limits by law will have to be placed on births.”

“I believe such death rates will be frequent occurances in some countries.”

“Is dictatorship ahead or mass deaths world wide.”

The facts don't support them.

And you may well claim India's fertility rate at 2.4 births per woman is still above replacement of 2.1 but to say it is 'well above' is just plain wrong, particularly in light of where they were 30 years ago. In fact nearly a third of the Indian states have fertility rates equal or below Australia's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_fertility_rate

I'm only trying to bring some balance to the debate by highlighting the actual statistics. I'm not advocating any slacking of the effort to bring nations out of poverty but much of the negativity posted here is unwarranted.

csteele I do, truly, find it strange you continue to question my heart yet oppose the view we are over populated.
I am warm and happy with the thought the true left is sinking, forever.
Pointless to continue to send endless aid, if it does not include birth control.
Every human on the face of this planet has opinions and every right to them.
But not one of them is always right.
I stand firmly, concerned at a blindness, I THINK I see in you, an inability I think YOU HAVE, to see any cultural wrong, in ONE belief, including haveing far too many children.
What other reason can you have for claiming we need not be concerned