Bangladesh: The population problem

DESPITE significant successes in reduced infant and maternal mortality rates, as well as, to an extent, fertility rates, overpopulation remains a key concern in Bangladesh, which has the highest population density in the world and a projected population of 20 crore by the year 2050. Experts claim that early marriage and adolescent pregnancy are major aggravating factors. Eliminating child marriage could reduce the number of annual births by 7.5 lakh.
Four out of five of the world’s 580 million adolescents are from developing countries, with Bangladesh ranking the global third in terms of adolescent pregnancy. Despite 18 being the legal of age of marriage for women in this country, early marriage is rampant, especially in rural areas, with 17 percent of girls getting married before the age of 15. Most of them have two children by the age of 18. Not only does early marriage raise population statistics, but it also has adverse effects on the participants, especially girls. Their education often comes to a halt, reducing their options for employment along with it and making them dependent on their partners and families. Poor health is a major issue, with 194 out of every 1 lakh women dying during childbirth, most of them adolescents.
Laws prohibiting early marriage must be strictly and diligently enforced. More importantly, through social and media campaigns, people must be made to understand the country’s population problem and the risks of early marriage and pregnancy to themselves.

Daily Star

5 Comments on "Bangladesh: The population problem"

DMyers on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 2:01 am 



“Laws prohibiting early marriage must be strictly and diligently enforced.” So says the article. I am not advocating early marriage or early pregnancy. But it’s time we see the folly in this kind of thinking. In other words, making natural human behavior a crime does not change natural human behavior. Rather, it destroys the lives of people more than the crimes being punished. If this problem is to be solved, it will take something more creative than throwing people in jail.

BillT on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 2:56 am 



Why the sudden concentration on 3rd world countries that have high birth rates? Distraction? Finger pointing? Ignorance?

The West consumes more than the entire rest of the world. Over 50% of the world’s resources. So, who is ‘over breeding’? Or should we say, “over greeding”?

Yes, conditions are bad in those countries, but look at who they are. ALL past colonies of the West. ALL stripped bare of resources for the most part and left with nothing to build on.

No, Westerners, don’t look in the mirror. You might not like what you see if you take the blinders off.

Kenz300 on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 11:20 am 



If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child…….

Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it….

Birth Control Pictures: Types, Side Effects, Costs, & Effectiveness

http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/ss/slideshow-birth-control-options?ecd=wnl_day_071113&ctr=wnl-day-071113_hdln_1&mb=dtfWIHfXZxtqE9pudELmLeHnVev1imbCq%2f0xB3s74mA%3d

Frank Kling on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 11:57 am 



Replying to BillT, because overpopulation is a global problem and the developing countries energy consumption is growing fastest of all as these people, perhaps understandably, seek a Western lifestyle.

Arthur on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 6:56 pm 



“The West consumes more than the entire rest of the world. Over 50% of the world’s resources. So, who is ‘over breeding’? Or should we say, “over greeding”?”

The rest of the world aspires to copy the lifestyle of the West. Let’s not postulate the presence of a set of virtues in the so-called third world, that does not exist. The West developed an economic-technological machinery that generated all that wealth. Yes it uses the resources located outside the West, but the West pays for it, heck even extracts it. Without the West these resources would have stayed in the ground and the Arabs would have remained cameleers in much smaller numbers, rather than bored shopping mall frequenters and Mercedes drivers.

The Club of Rome is typically a Western club and so is the Green Movement and the wind and solar engineers. There is no third world moral superiority, just endless indigence and me-too mentality. I do not blame them, but expect nothing from them either.