Posted on 07/13/2007 7:47:28 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
This week's UN "State of World Population" report warns that by 2008, more than half the world's population will live in urban areas. Shock, horror! But there is a serious point to the UN report: it wants to slow down urbanization by reducing birth rates. The only problem is that it provides no compelling reason for so doing.
For years, the UN Population Fund has been seeking to justify its existence by issuing reports claiming that we must reduce birth rates in poor countries in order to achieve "sustainable development." While intuitively appealing, these ideas are not supported by evidence. In reality, global living standards improved dramatically over the past century, despite a near-quadrupling of human numbers--and they can continue to improve at current and future population levels.
There is no need for governments to alter our patterns of reproduction. Moreover, apart from morally reprehensible coercive schemes such as China's one child policy, it is not clear that government population policies can do much to change human numbers anyway.
Let's start with the much discussed idea of "overcrowding." If population density is taken as the basic criterion for overcrowding, India and Rwanda (each with over six times the world's average population density) would surely qualify as "overcrowded." But Belgium is considerably more "overcrowded" than Rwanda, and oil rich-Bahrain is three times as "overcrowded" as India. Wealthy, urbanized Monaco, meanwhile, is the most "overcrowded" country in the world, at 700 times the world average.
In most minds, the notions of "overcrowded" and "overcrowding" conjure images of hungry children, unchecked disease, squalid living conditions and teeming slums. Those problems are all too real in today's world--but the proper name for those conditions is "human poverty."
Even though the number of people on the planet has increased considerably over the last 200 years, we are not running out of resources and we are certainly not getting poorer. Consider the twentieth century's "population explosion": between 1900 and 2000, human numbers almost quadrupled, leaping from 1.6 billion to six billion. But global GDP per capita quintupled over this same period.
Over these same years, furthermore, food production has steadily outstripped population growth, while practically all natural resources--ranging from copper to aluminum--have become cheaper in real terms: which is to say less scarce.
These trends provide some clues as to why there was a "population explosion" in the first place. It was not due to people suddenly breeding like rabbits--it was because they finally stopped dying like flies. Over the 20th Century, average life expectancy doubled from around thirty years to over sixty years and infant mortality rates have declined substantially all over the world. With fewer people dying, populations increased, even though global fertility levels have been in decline since the 1960s.
This "health explosion" caused the "population explosion"--and this dramatic, ongoing health surge is in large part due to unprecedented and extraordinary improvements in material living standards, particularly over the past few decades. Food continues to become cheaper and medical technology continues to improve.
Nevertheless, proponents of population stabilization worry that human numbers will more than double over the coming century unless governments take action. But their plans to control population by imposing state-mandated family planning have no scientific basis.
Globally, there is no causative link between the availability of contraception and fertility levels--the rate of contraception use is virtually identical in Jordan and Japan, for instance, but Jordan's fertility rate is more than three times higher. In 1974 Mexico brought in, a national family-planning program. Brazil has never implemented such a program but, during the following 25 years, Mexican and Brazilian fertility levels fell at nearly identical rates.
The truth is that parental preference is the key determinant of family size amongst illiterate people in poor countries, just as it is among educated people in rich countries. Anti-natal population plans are therefore futile--unless they follow China's lead and impose coercion with its terrible consequences.
At any given income level--including even very low income levels--parents around the world have been opting for fewer children since the 1960s. As a result, future world population may be far lower than the population alarmists have imagined, and "world population stabilization" will be achieved without the emergency government interventions they advocate.
Fortunately for our troubled planet, "overpopulation" is not a problem. With sensible policies, health and prosperity will continue to spread around the world, as will continuing improvements in nutrition and medicine.
Human ingenuity has historically found the answers to the problems of scarce resources, and it is humans who create the technologies that allow us to accommodate larger numbers of people on the planet, in increasing comfort.
By ignoring the potential of human beings, anti-natalists blame the poor for their poverty and propagate false solutions. The poor need economic freedom so they can raise themselves up, not sterile UN schemes.
So do we want people living and working in our cities, reducing so-called “suburban sprawl”, or not?
Oh wait, if we reduce the number of teh unwashed, this will all work itself out!!!! I understand now !!!!!
There are more Germans, Swedes and Japanese than there have ever been - but those numbers are on the verge of dropping precipitously.
If the life expectancy of these nations were the same now as 20 years ago, they would be depopulating at an amazing rate.
BEWARE ANYTHING that comes out of the un with regards to population growth and birth rates!
The muslim world is cranking at nearly double replacement rate throughout the world. Europe is nearly done at half of replacement rate, and the US is breaking even.
In order to win, one needs to be present.
Check out “AMERICA ALONE” by Mark Steyn. The prologue alone is enough to disturb sleep.
The US has one of the highest annual population growth rates, .89%, among the developed countries, primiarily due to immigration, legal and illegal. According to Census Bureau projections, we will increase our population by 62 million [the equivalent of the current population of the UK] in the next 23 years and will have a population of 420 million by 2050.
The non-Hispanic white population will be about 50% in 2050. The overall white population including Hispanic would be 72%. In 2010, three years from now, the non-Hispanic white population will be 65.1% down from the 69.4% in 2000. Today, half of the children below the age of five in the US are minorities. Demography is destiny. We are rapidly changing as a nation. What should be most disturbing is the fact that the Hispanic and black high school dropout rate is much higher than the population at large as are the birth rates. We are creating a permanent underclass.
Spay and neuter Muslims...
Get ready to push 2 for English
It has also been noted in demographics, or population study, that when a nation achieves a particular economic plateau, which varies by nation, suddenly the birthrate drops to between 2.1 and 2.3 children per family, which is population equilibrium.
Before, having a large family helped insure prosperity. But when prosperity can be obtained through normal work, the need for additional children diminishes.
That is, when the average annual wage reaches a given level, people naturally start to have just two children instead of more, because it is no longer critical that they have more.
At this point of equilibrium, it is also noted that a major transfer of population from rural to urban areas takes place. This is because a stable population seeks to improve its standard of living further, which is far easier to do in the cities, than in the country.
This happened in the United States many years ago, now it is happening in many other countries. So ironically, what the UN detected meant that populations are stabilizing, so there is less need for population controls.
This is just the two sides of the same statistical coin.When infant mortality rates decline average life expectancy increases by definition.
“Sustainable development” has nothing to do improving the human condition, and everything to do with the anti-human pseudoreligion of its advocates.”
You got that right. ‘Sustainable development,’ or ‘sustainability’ are buzz words refering to the UN globalist elite grab for power.
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