Sigh… And global warming deniers keep arguing that the world’s climate is not being altered… Except that they don’t have any evidence to support their claims, and the “true believers” actually do. But evidence is secondary to ideology for the deniers; this is why we generally dismiss them as conspiracy theorists.
China’s one-child policy is not really about population. China had a population boom in the period between better health and lower birth rates. But the natural birth rate is close to replacement. Furthermore, there are so many exceptions to the one-child policy that it’s hard not to see that it’s primarily aimed at upwardly mobile urban people (and villagers unlucky enough to get a cruel local official.)
It’s basically a construction designed to provide handy way for officials to harass people and butt in to their daily lives.
According to this recent article The ‘simple life’ manifesto and how it could save us we would need 9 earths for everyone to enjoy a western lifestyle
Poor countries have a tendency to screw up and spill their excess population on to richer countries. Apparently Nigeria alone is projected to reach 1 billion people sometime this century. That’s not going to happen of course, something is going to break first. Civil war, mass starvation, exodus to Europe - or perhaps they’re going to get their shit together and limit their numbers.
Baby booms aren’t really particularly important. What matters in the long run is the fertility rate, and that’s declining, in general, in most of Africa. Much slower than I’d like, and much slower than elsewhere in the world, for reasons that are unclear to me. But some signs of progress are being made. (Which is not what I would have said if we were having this conversation 20 years ago).
Baby booms and busts are misleading because they reflect the age structure of the population, but in the long term population trends are determined by the fertility rate. Likewise, Russia is headed for a baby bust soon, because the small generation born during the Nadir of the Nineties is roughly around 20 right now. That said, I’m somewhat optimistic about Russia because their fertility is increasing (though most of that is being driven, not by Russians, but by minority Muslim and Buddhist ethnicities).
I am concerned about fertility rates in poor places, and I’m well aware of the vast difference in carbon footprints. I’m concerned with preventing people from being born into poverty. Wouldn’t it be much better if Haiti’s population was shrinking, a la their neighbor Cuba? The opponents of the Reproductive Health law in the Philippines were claiming that advocates of the law were saying the poor were to blame for poverty. No, the poor are the victims.
As for the more-developed world, we/they are at least doing something right, as fertility rates, despite some slight upticks, are usually at or below replacement. Short of killing one’s self, having fewer or no children is just about the best thing you can do for the planet. I give thanks for my vasectomy (and the childfree-friendly doctor I easily found) every day.
Also, low fertility often (not always) leads to labor shortages, which leads inexorably to migration (in fits and starts, but it happens). Migration, one of the best ways to reduce poverty, is good for the economies of senders and receivers, and remittances (among other things) mean more people can afford education, and health care, and various forms of art/entertainment depicting smaller families, etc… and fertility rates drop in the countries that send migrants.
I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we let poor people decide if they want to have kids or not?
Are you asking me? Because I’m not advocating a Chinese-style policy, since, as you quite rightly pointed out, fertility declines there don’t have a lot to do with that coercive policy.
Well, we can’t really get the poor to stop reproducing anyway, without being cruel. And we aren’t going to be cruel. So the same result is going to happen whether we take a position for or against the poor reproducing.
We’re going to feed populations to keep them from starving, and support them getting richer where we can, and not butt very directly into affairs of reproduction.
For african countries, this is going to mean that over-reproduction will continue, poverty will continue, and the african world will never get flat (on average). The assortment of blames for why africa remains dysfunctional will continue, but so will reproduction and overpopulation, according to most estimations.
But I’ve never seen any workable alternative, so it just sort of is what it is.
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Saying ‘Africa’ here is a gross oversimplification. Southern Africa has an acceptably low fertility rate right now, 2.6 or thereabouts. That proves that reducing African fertility can happen, it just hitherto hasn’t. The problem is the rest of the continent, but if we can figure out what the causative factors in southern Africa were, then we can maybe solve the problem.
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Fertility rates in the rest of Africa are decreasing, women in west and central Africa have fewer children than they did a few decades ago. They’re just decreasing very slowly.
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‘We’ aren’t going to be cruel, but it’s possible that African governments may eventually take coercive measures of their own to limit population. Or they may not. The explicitly Islamic-theocratic government of Iran made an about-face on population policy and rapidly achieved a lower fertility rate than America, so I wouldn’t rule out suprising political changes in the future.
By ‘fertilizers’ do you mean ‘irrigation water’? A fertilizer like ammonium nitrate can’t contribute to salinization, by definition, because both the positive and negative ions are consumed by the plant. (This is not the case for all fertilizers of course).
Salinization is a perennial problem for irrigation-dependent agriculture, true, but that has nothing to do with organic vs. conventional agriculture (except inasmuch as modern agriculture is more productive and therefore requires more water). Mesopotamia ended up salinizing its soil long before modern industrial fertilizers were ever heard of.
There is hardly any doubt. Countries in Africa with improving economies, like Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa already have fertility rates more typical of European countries than African ones. As more African countries stabilize and improve their economies, they’ll see their fertility rates drop.
:smack:
There is more to it than that. For various reasons South Africa has an enormous amount of labor migration, to the point that working age men are a rarity in many rural communities. Villages are primarily inhabited by women, children and the elderly.
These communities really do have no jobs. Nobody makes money, nobody spends money. There are no shops- not even the little cottage industries you see elsewhere in Africa. Those who somehow get money leave immediately. But poor young women are stuck, because the cities are so spectacularly dangerous for the poor that women aren’t willing to move like men are.
So, you are 18 years old and you are stuck for the foreseeable future in a village of old women and tiny children. Jobs don’t exist. What are you going to do with your time? Watch Oprah? Walk around in circles? Twiddle your thumbs? Pray?
A family of your own can make that situation seem less like a prison.
If South Africa wants to lower birth rates for poor mothers, there needs to be a massive change in migration and living patterns. And
given the economic structures and historical damage done to these communities, it won’t be a quick fix.
I wasn’t criticizing the women taking advantage of the grants offered, just saying if population growth is a concern among policy makers there has to be a more intelligent way to distribute money to poor communities besides forcing people to have kids they don’t even want. That isn’t just a recipe for population growth, but societal problems on a large scale.
Grude, did you read my comment above? Southern Africa in general has a fertility rate of 2.6 right now, and South Africa specificially has a fertility rate of 2.23, which is probably below replacement in the long run for their level of development. So, no, ‘women having too many babies’ in South Africa is not a serious societal problem, anecdotes about ‘Simpiwe’ notwithstanding.
The real question is how to get countries like Niger, Burkina Faso and Uganda to resemble countries like Namibia and Botswana in their fertility patterns, but that’s where to focus your efforts, on tropical Africa, not on southern Africa.
Sure and the article is non-specific and seems to imply all of Africa is having a baby boom, see this part here:
And the quote I posted earlier from an academic.
It very well could be written with an South African anti-maternal payout bias.
‘Baby booms’ are based on crude birth rate and reflect population age structure. Total fertility rate is less intuitive, but in my mind more meaningful. This chart shows countries by total fertility rate.
There may be individual cases in South Africa, as elsewhere, of women who have more babies than they want (as well as the reverse). But South Africa’s fertility right now, overall, is very low, and may even be below replacement. Namibia and Botswana are also below 2.5, and Swaziland and Lesotho are below 3. (I realize that in some very poor countries, birth and fertility may not be well recorded and the numbers may be biased downward, but these are all among the more prosperous and educated African countries so I doubt it’s the case).
South Africans’ life expectancy is now about the same (low 60s) as it was for Americans in the 1930s. The US fertility rate was slightly above 2.0 for that decade, and the population increased 7.3% 1930-40 despite negative net migration. Therefore South Africa is sure to be well above replacement unless there are a huge number of emigrants.
Life expectancy in Niger, Burkina Faso and Uganda is not all that far behind SA (mid 50s), and is about the same as the US was in 1920. US fertility was about 3.0 in 1920, but steadily declined to just above 2.0 by 1930, and the population increased 15.2% 1920-30 (immigrants were about 1/17 of the total increase). Therefore Niger, Burkina Faso and Uganda are sure to be well above replacement there are a huge number of emigrants.
Oh, thanks. I had heard a ‘rule of thumb’ that replacement fertility was around 2.1 for developed countries, 2.3 for middle income and 2.5 for poor, based on the expected infant mortality rates. But I guess that’s wrong. South Africa is above replacement then, although not hugely so.