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Optimism and Overpopulation
“Without the motivation to limit family size, access to modern contraception is nearly irrelevant.” Virginia Abernethy, The Atlantic Monthly December 1994.
The above quote is from an article that was written almost 20 years ago. The author argues that the key driver of population growth is the desired number of children, rather than the lack of contraception. The desired number of children is linked to local environmental factors, therefore, if resources and opportunities are perceived as being abundant then the desired number of children and consequent fertility rate will be greater than if resources and opportunities are scarce. One example she gives is that of the low fertility rates during the great depression in the early 20th century, the baby boom after the second world war and then the lowering of fertility rates during the oil crisis of the late 1970s and continuing economic uncertainty into the 1980s and 90s.
Here are some key quotes from the article if you do not have the time to read it all. Do her arguments have validity? Could it be contended that her argument has greater validity now than it did 20 years ago?.
“Overpopulation afflicts most countries but remains primarily a local problem — an idea that this article will seek to explain. Reproductive restraint, the solution, is also primarily local; it grows out of a sense that resources are shrinking. Under these circumstances individuals and couples often see limitation of family size as the most likely path to success.”
“Cross-cultural and historical data suggest that people have usually limited their families to a size consistent with living comfortably in stable communities. If left undisturbed, traditional societies survive over long periods in balance with local resources. A society lasts in part because it maintains itself within the carrying capacity of its environment.”
“In sum, it is true, if awkward, that efforts to alleviate poverty often spur population growth, as does leaving open the door to immigration. Subsidies, windfalls, and the prospect of economic opportunity remove the immediacy of needing to conserve. The mantras of democracy, redistribution, and economic development raise expectations and fertility rates, fostering population growth and thereby steepening a downward environmental and economic spiral.”
10 Comments on "Optimism and Overpopulation"
DC on Wed, 7th May 2014 4:51 am
Quote#1-we seldom, if ever see this happening. This is clearly what the author wants to believe, as opposed to how people actually act.
Quote#2 ‘Traditional societies’ maybe, but what are those exactly? And who decides? Our distinctly ‘non-traditional’ families are not living in anything like ‘balance’. The only ones anything close to that do so because of extreme poverty. Not out of some non-existent human desire to live in ‘balance’. Another ‘belief’ that bears little resemblance to how people actually are.
Quote#3. ‘We’ arent really interested in alleviating poverty, at least policy makers aren’t. ‘We’ provide food and medicine to the most prolific breeders. Enough to keep them alive to breed more mouths to feed. Poverty reduction really has never entered into it.
Time has done nothing for those poor arguments. They were bad arguments 20 years ago, they are bad ones today.
Kenz300 on Wed, 7th May 2014 7:22 am
The worlds poorest people are having the most children. They have not figured out the connection between their poverty and family size. Why would want to have a child only to watch them starve?
Birth Control Pictures: Types, Side Effects, Costs, & Effectiveness
http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/ss/slideshow-birth-control-options?ecd=wnl_day_050114&ctr=wnl-day-050114_ld-stry_2&mb=dtfWIHfXZxtqE9pudELmLeHnVev1imbCq%2f0xB3s74mA%3d
Makati1 on Wed, 7th May 2014 10:37 am
Resource consumption in the US = the consumption of the poorest 4,000,000,000 people in the world. That consumption is made possible by destroying the countries of those 4,000,000,000.00. The life style of Americans is paid for with foreign blood.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 7th May 2014 10:54 am
Sure, Mak, and what about the rest of your Poster girls and their rape and pillage of the world. And Mak, you know anyone else in the superpower position of the US would have gone the same route. Yet, you are so consumed with American hatred you may think Russia and China would benefit all peoples in the world with benvolence if they rocketed to the top like you desire.
Boat on Wed, 7th May 2014 10:56 am
It wasn’t that long ago 95% of the US population were farmers. My great grandpa moved from Sweden to the US, got a job, got some land, sent for his wife 7 years later and then proceed to have 13 children. After the 6th child they had enough money for a stick built house a huge improvement from the dugout in the side of a hill they were residing in.
It takes a tremendous amount of manpower to farm 160 acres when your tools are a team of horses and a two bottom plow.
By all rights he was very successful because he started off with 10 acres.
Today over 95% of the US population does not farm. This is what China is trying to accomplish. Technology has stripped the need away for kids and the population has adjusted.
The next generation, my grandpa. Had 80 acres and 3 children and after WWll my dad came home from the war and bought him his first tractor.
Now 60% of the US population is 1-2 person households. If it were not for immigration the US would be shrinking in population.
I don’t blame the 18% of the worlds population for having way to many children. they are just doing what they know without an education. I am just lucky my great grandpa valued education and taught his 13 kids how to read and wright and sent them to school with a team of horses 7 miles every school day on a buckboard and established tradition.
We were also lucky to be born in a country where you can do well if you work hard and can think.
Resource help without education in impoverished countries will continue as long as the world doesn’t help them. But once education is established and they develope, the population will drop dramatically as the need for a huge family to survive goes away.
J-Gav on Wed, 7th May 2014 4:00 pm
Davy – “And Mak, you know that anyone else in the superpower position of the U.S. would have gone the same route.”
That certainly rings true! At least if we add ‘more or less,’ because the cards would then have been dealt otherwise. Maybe it’s sort of a curse to be (for a while) the country everybody else looks up to; tends to create that hubris, arrogance, complacency and self-satisfaction that hegemons (or empires) always fall prey to. Yeah, we saw the excesses and horrors the Spanish, Portuguese, French and British indulged in during their days in the sun. Not to mention the German experience … Nothing lily-white about that shit.
What I’m coming to is this: I’ve been following Makati for some time here and don’t have quite the same impression of his general take. He’s pissed off for sure, having seen presidential (and other), assassinations, Vietnam, The 1st Gulf War, then Afghanistan and Iraq etc for what? Any victory for ‘democracy?’ Hmmmm … I agree that China or Russia in the driver’s seat would not have been likely to end up with a better result but I’m not sure Makati is as hate-filled vis-à-vis the U.S. as you imply (he does, after all, have some American children and he returns every year). Nor do I believe that he puts China or Russia quite as high on any pedestal as some of his comments might suggest. I try to read between the lines and I see somebody who’s worked hard, been through a lot, been disappointed with the failed rhetoric and actions of Washington and made a decision to expatriate. To make a long story short, I don’t think he’s your enemy.
noobtube on Wed, 7th May 2014 7:26 pm
Americans and Europeans are eating, trashing, and polluting the entire Earth out of house and home.
Yet, somehow, they never see themselves as the source of the problem.
Interesting.
Boat on Wed, 7th May 2014 8:53 pm
noobtube,
Why not blame anyone who had ever owned a car that needed a road. Or anyone that needed a house that needed a way to light it and heat it. How about blame any human that used resources for an army instead of quietly fishing in his stream. I blame the blacksmiths that used coal for shaping metal without carbon capture and for the life of me why didn’t they use the lost heat for some good purpose. But whatever at least pick on those Europeans because in the beginning America was formed by many of them.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 7th May 2014 9:07 pm
noob climb back into your hole you are scaring the kids
Ozman on Wed, 7th May 2014 10:54 pm
“Reproductive restraint […] grows out of a sense that resources are shrinking”. I think this is borne out through urbanisation. As people realise that having many children will result in being cramped into a dwelling within a city the birthrate reduces. Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan all come to mind. Although they may have financial resources the immediate local resource constraint is space, i.e. lack of it.