Republic of the Philippines

AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Baler, Aurora

As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This
does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for
its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world.

Lech Walesa
 Republic of the Philippines
AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
Baler, Aurora
MODULE 12 GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
“Demography is changing us; we are older societies, we’re living longer. How the
generations balance each other out, how that affects education and health care.”
Howard Baker

Specific Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. understand the concept of demography and its effects to global population;
2. understand the Malthusian theory and its criticisms; and
3. analyze the demographic transition theory and its criticisms.

DISCUSSION:

THE PERILS OF OVERPOPULATION

Development planners see urbanization and industrialization as indicators of a developing
society but disagree on the role of population growth or decline in modernization. This
lengthy discussion brings back the ideas of British scholar Thomas Malthus. In his 1798 “An
Essay on the Principle of Population,” he warned that population growth would inevitably
exhaust the world food supply by the middle of the 19th century. Malthus’ prediction was off
base, but it was revived in the late 1960s when American biologist Paul R. Ehrlich and his
wife, Anne, wrote The Population Bomb, which argued that overpopulation in the 1970s and
1980s will bring about global environmental disasters that would, in turn, lead to food
shortage and mass starvation. They proposed that countries like the USA take the lead in
promoting global population control to reduce the growth rate to zero. Their
recommendations ranged from the bizarre (chemical castration) to the policy-oriented (taxing
an additional child and luxury taxes on child-related products) to monetary incentives (paying
off men who would agree to be sterilized after two children) to institutionbuilding (a
powerful Department of Population and Environment). There was some reason for this fear to
persist. The rate of global population increase was at its highest between 1955 and 1975 when
nations were finally able to return to normalcy after the devastations wrought by World War
II. The growth rate rose from 1.8% per year from 1955 to 1975, peaking at a 2.06% annual
growth rate between 1965 and 1970. By limiting the population, vital resources could be used
for economic progress and not be diverted and wasted to feed more mouths. This argument
became the basis for government population control programs worldwide. In the mid-20th
century, the Philippines, China, and India sought to lower birth rate in the belief that unless
controlled, the free expansion of the family members would lead to a crisis in resources,
which may result in widespread poverty and mass hunger, and political instability. As early
as 1958, the American Policy Journal, Foreign Affairs, advocated “contraception and
sterilization” as the practical solutions to global economic, social, and political problems.
While criticisms have challenged this argument, it persists to this very day. In May 2009, a
group of American billionaires warned of how a nightmarish explosion of people was a
“potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat” to the world. This worry is
likewise at the core of the economist's argument for promoting reproductive health.
Advocates of population control contend for universal access to reproductive technologies
(such as condoms, the pill, abortion, and vasectomy), and more importantly, giving women
the right to choose whether to have children or not. They see these tools as crucial to their
 Republic of the Philippines
AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
Baler, Aurora
nation’s development. Thus, in Puerto Rico, reproductive health supporters regard their work
as the task of transforming their “poor country” into a “modern nation.” Finally, politics
determine these birth control programs. Developed countries justify their support for
population control in developing countries by depicting them as conservative societies. For
instance, population experts blamed Egyptians' “irresponsible fecundity” for that nation’s
run-on population growth and the Iranian’s peasant’s “natural” libidinal tendencies for the
same rise in population. From 1920 onwards, the Indian government “marked lower castes,
working poor, and Muslims as hypersexual and hyper-fecund and hence a drain on national
resources. These policy formulations lead to extreme policies like the forced sterilization of
twenty million violators of the Chines government’s one-child policy. Vietnam and Mexico
also conducted coercive mass sterilization.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, NOT THE BABIES

The use of population control to prevent economic crisis has its critics. For example, Betsy
Hartmann disagrees with the advocates of neo-Malthusian theory and accused governments
of using population control as a substitute for “social justice and much-needed reforms – such
as land distribution, employment creation, provision of mass education and health care, and
emancipation. Others pointed out that the population grew fast in many countries in the
1960s. This growth aided economic development by spurring technological and institutional
innovation and increasing the supply of human ingenuity. Population growth has spurred
technological and institutional innovation and increased the supply of human ingenuity.
Advances in agricultural production have shown that the Malthusian nightmare can be
prevented. The “Green Revolution” created high-yielding varieties of rice and other cereals
and, along with the development of new cultivation methods, increased yields globally, but
more particularly in the developing world. Lately, a middle ground has emerged between
these two extremes. Scholars and policy makers agree with the neo-Malthusians but suggest
that if governments pursue population control programs, they must include “more inclusive
growth” and greener “economic growth.”

WOMEN AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

In the middle of these debates, the character is often the subject of these population measures.
Reproductive rights supporters argue that if population control and economic development
were to reach their goals, women must have control over whether they will have children or
not and when they will have their progenies if any. By giving women this power, they will
pursue their vocations – be they economic, social, or political – and contribute to economic
growth. This serial correlation between fertility, family, and fortune has motivated countries
with growing economies to introduce or strengthen their reproductive health laws, including
abortion. High-Income First World nations and fast-developing countries were able to sustain
growth partly because women were given the power of choice and easy access to
reproductive technologies. In North America and Europe, 73% of governments allow
abortion upon a mother’s request. Moreover, the more educated a woman is, the better are her
prospects of improving her economic position. Women can spend most of their time pursuing
either their higher education or careers instead of forcibly reducing this time to take care of
their children. Most countries implement reproductive health laws because they worry about
the mother's health. In 1960, Bolivia’s average fertility rate (TFR) was 6.7 children. In 1978,
the Bolivian government implemented a family planning program that included the
legalization of abortion (after noticing a spike in unsafe abortion and maternal deaths). By
 Republic of the Philippines
AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
Baler, Aurora
1985, the TFR decreased to 5.13 and further declined to 3.46 in 2008. A similar pattern
occurred in Ghana after the government expanded reproductive health laws out of the same
concern as the Bolivian government. As a result, “fertility declined steeply….and continued
to decline (after) 1994. Such examples seemed to draw the attention of other countries. Thus,
in 2014, the UN report noted that the proportion of countries allowing abortion to preserve
physical health increased from 63% to 67%, and those to preserve the mental health of a
woman increased from 52% to 64%. Opponents regard reproductive rights as nothing but a
false front for abortion. They contend that this method of preventing conception endangers
the mother's life and must be banned. The religious wing of the anti-reproductive rights flank
goes further and decides abortion as debauchery that sullies the name of God; it will send the
mother to hell and prevents a new soul, the baby, from becoming human. This position was a
politically powerful one partly because various parts of the developing world remain very
conservative. Unfailing pressure by Christian groups compelled the governments of Poland,
Croatia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and even Russia to impose restrictive reproductive health
programs, including making access to condoms and other technologies difficult. Muslim
countries do not condone abortion and limit wives to domestic chores and delivering babies.
Senegal only allows abortion when the mother’s life is threatened. The Philippines, with a
Catholic majority, now has reproductive health laws in place. Still, conservative politicians
have enfeebled it through budget cuts and stalled its implementation by filing a case against
the law in the Supreme Court. However, industrialized and developed countries do not
automatically assure pro-women reproductive regulations. In the USA, the women’s
movement of the 1960s was responsible for the passage and judicial endorsement of a pro-
choice law. Still, conservatives controlling state legislatures have also slowly undermined this
law by restricting women’s access to abortion. While pro-choice advocates argue that
abortion is necessary to protect the mother's health, their conservative rivals shift the focus on
the death of the fetus in the mother’s womb as the reason for reversing the law. The battle
continues to be played out in all the political arenas in the United States.

THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

Feminists approach the issue of reproductive rights from another angle. They are foremost
against any form of population control because they are compulsory by nature, resorting to a
carrot-and-stick approach (punitive mechanisms co-exist alongside benefits) that does not
empower women. They believe that the government's assumptions that poverty and
environmental degradation are caused by overpopulation are wrong. These factors ignore
other equally important causes like the unequal distribution of wealth, the lack of public
safety nets like universal health care, education, and gender equality programs. Feminists also
point out that very little evidence points to overpopulation as the culprit behind poverty and
ecological devastation.

POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD SECURITY

Today’s global population has reached 7.4 billion, and it is estimated to increase to 9.5 billion
in 2050, then 11.2 billion by 2100. This population's median age is 30.1, with the male
median age at 29.4 years and female at 30.9 years. Ninety-five percent of this population
growth will happen in developing countries, with demographers predicting that several
countries will have tripled their population by the middle of this century. The opposite is
happening in the developed world, where populations remain steady in general but decline in
some of the most advanced countries (Japan and Singapore). However, this scenario is not a
run-off that could get out of control. Demographers predict that the world population will
stabilize by 2050 to 9 billion, although they warn that feeding it will be an immense
 Republic of the Philippines
AURORA STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
Baler, Aurora
challenge. However, the decline in fertility and the existence of the young productive
population may not be enough to offset this concern over food security. The Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that for countries to mitigate the impact of population
growth, food production must increase by 70%.; annual cereal production must rise to 3
billion tons from the current 2.1 billion, and yearly meat production must go up to 200
million tons to reach 470 million. The problem here is that the global growth rate of cereals
had declined considerably – from 3.2 percent in 1960 to just 1.5 percent in 2000. The FAO
recommends that countries increase their investments in agriculture, craft long-term policies
to fight poverty, and invest in research and development. The UN body also suggests that
countries develop a comprehensive social service program that includes food assistance,
consistent food services, and education, especially for the poor. If domestic production is not
enough, it becomes essential for nations to import. Therefore, the FAO urges governments to
keep their markets open and eventually “move towards a global trading system that is fair and
competitive, and that contributes to a dependable food market for food. The aforementioned
are worthy recommendations, but nation-states shall have the political will to push through
these sweeping changes in population growth and food security. This will take some time to
happen, given that good governance is also a goal that many nations, especially in the
developing world, have yet to attain.