population problems?

I have already offered evidence and much more is available, that the population situation isn't really quite the crisis many say that it is. But, let's consider whether, even if it were, the argument for coercive reduction of growth rate would be compelling. The argument for this always points to China as a success story for coercive methods of reducing population growth rates that should be followed some where else. The cries to do something other than promote development have no content without actual programmatic aims, and the Chinese pattern of regulating family size by law as well as providing financial incentives for not birthing and penalties for birthing is the one that points the programmatic way.

And, certainly China's total fertility rate (reflecting the number of children born per woman) is now at the replacement level of 2.0, compared with India's 3.6 and the weighted average of 4.9 for low-income countries other than China and India. This shows that though the Chinese approach of legally limiting family size to one child has caused a large loss in reproductive freedom for women, has arguably enhanced state power at the cost of individual freedom more generally, and has led to large increases in infant mortality as parents commit infanticide of girl babies to try again for a preferred boy child, with all the attendant effects this type behavior no doubt has, on victims and perpetrators, at least the population growth rate is down, and the positive benefits of that outweigh the losses incurred due to the drastic means chosen for restricting births.

Even the demographic part of the argument is not as tight as it may at first appear, regardless of how one might feel about the assessment of relative costs and benefits. For given that China has also had very high levels of improvement of health care, literacy, female workforce participation, etc., before jumping to conclusions about the cause of declining rates of population growth, we need to ask just how much of the reduction in growth rate is likely due to compulsion, as opposed to what would have taken place any way, due to these other social gains.

We can't know the answer to this question for sure, of course, but we can look at some relevant data. For example, do countries that closely match China in life expectancy, female literacy rates, and female participation in the labor force have a higher fertility rate than China? It turns out that the three countries that fit this profile are very close indeed to China's level: Jamaica (2.7), Thailand (2.2), and Sweden (2.1).

So what is the upshot? (1) Of course population can reach a point where, for a given level of technical know-how, and with a given social structure, more people means more environmental degradation and a lower standard of living for most. But (2) there is no evidence that we are near such a population level. And (3) there is no evidence that current poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation etc. owe their origins or tenacity In any significant degree to a population problem, but, instead, the evidence is abundant that these particular crimes against humanity are rooted in oppressive institutional structures and the abhorrent misallocations of labor and energy and a poor distribution of product that they foster. (4) In any event, non-coercive approaches to population reduction emphasizing improving standards of living, economic security, education, rights of women, and health care generally, not only promise reductions of growth rate to the 2.0 fertility level that marks no growth, but promise this in a time period comparable to or better than what can be accomplished with coercion, assuming the latter would in fact work at all without parallel social progress. And, finally, whereas the developmental approach to stabilizing population dovetails nicely with concerns for justice, equity, an end to patriarchy, etc., the coercive approach in practice leads almost inexorably to misogynist, racist, and colonialist formulations and practices, even against the protests of its more humane and thoughtful advocates.

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/albert3.htm