LESSON 9 GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
“If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for
us by nature, brutally and without pity—and will leave a ravaged world.”
--Henry W. Kendall
Today, 191 million people live in countries other than their
own, and the United Nations projects that over 2.2 million will
move from the developing world to the developed countries.
Countries welcome immigrants as they offset the debilitating
effects of an aging population, but they are also perceived as
threats to the job market because they compete against citizens
for jobs.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the lesson, you must be able to:
1. Discuss the relationship between populations and economic welfare; and
2. Differentiate between contrasting positions over reproductive health.
FOCUS QUESTION
How can technology and interventions in development offset the pressures of
population growth?
Under what circumstance is rapid population growth beneficial to societies?
JUMPSTART POINT
Family Trees
1. You will create two family trees based on interviews with each
of your parents.
2. You will trace your family connection as far back as you can
and will expand lateral connections as well. The higher you
go vertically, the better (unless you are child of a single
parent).
3. You will have to remember that you have to trace the lines of
two families---your mother and father sides.
4. If you have a family of migrants, you need to determine if
your family moved from the provinces to the big cities or vice
versa.
After doing your family trees, you have to answer the questions below:
Think it
through…
1. If you migrated to the city, what were your reasons of leaving the provinces?
Answer:
2. What opportunities opened to your family in the city?
Answer:
3. What problems did you encounter when living in the city? In what ways did you try to resolve
them?
Answer:
Your Journey continues….
HEAD ON
When couples are asked why they have children, their
answers are usually about their feelings. For most, having a
child is a symbol of a successful union. It also ensures that the
family will have a successor generation that will continue its
name. The kinship is preserved, and the family’s story
continues. A few, however, worry how much strain a child can
bring to the household as he/she “competes” for the parents’
attention, and, in reverse, how much energy the family needs
to shower its love to an additional member. Viewed from
above, however, having or not having children is mainly driven
by economics. Behind the laughter or the tears lies the
question: Will the child be an economic asset or a burden to
the family?
Lesson 9 will help you find the connection between populations and
economic welfare as well as distinguish contrasting views on
reproductive health.
Things to
ponder…
What could be the effects of aging and overpopulation to the society?
Rural communities often welcome an extra hand to help in crop
cultivation, particularly during the planting and harvesting seasons. The
poorer districts of urban centers also tend to have families with more
children because the success of their “small family business” depends
on how many members can be hawking their wares on the streets.
Hence, the more children, the better it will be for the farm or the small
by-family-street corner enterprises.
Urbanized, educated, and professional families with two incomes,
however, desire just one or two progenies. They set aside their
significant parts of their incomes for their retirement, health care, and
the future of education of their children. Rural families view their
children and large kinship networks as critical investments. These
different versions of family determine the economic and social policies
that countries craft regarding their respective populations.
You have to take note that these differing versions of family life
determine the economic and social policies that coutries craft
regarding their respective populations. Countries in the “less
developed regions of the world” that rely on agriculture tend to
maintain high levels of population growth.
Urban populations have grown, but not necessarily because
families are having more children. It is rather the combination of the
natural outcome of significant migration to the cities by people
seeking work in the “more modern” sectors of society. This movement
of people is especially manifest in the developing countries where
industries and businesses in the cities are attracting people from rural
areas. This trend has been noticeable since the 1950s, with the pace
accelerating in the next half-a-century.
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. Robert Malthus predicted in 1798 that the growing population will
inevitably exhaust world food supply by the middle of the 19th century. Paul and Anne
Ehrlich revived this prediction in the late 1960s. The Ehrlich couple argued that
overpopulation in the 1970s and the 1980s would bring about global environmental
disasters that, in turn, lead to food shortage and mass starvation. They proposed that
countries like the US take the lead to reduce population growth rate to zero.
The following were their recommendations:
1. Chemical castration
2. Taxing an additional child and luxury taxes on child-related products (policy-
oriented)
3. Paying off men who would agree to be sterilized after two children (monetary
incentives)
4. Establishment of Department of Population and Environment (institution-building)
You see, there was some reason for this fear to persist since we have
hit the 7 billion mark in global population in 2015.
By limiting the population, vital resources could be used for
economic progress and not to be “diverted” and “wasted” to feeding
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 rates on the belief that
unless controlled, the free expansion of family members would lead to a
crisis in resources, which in turn may result to widespread poverty, mass
hunger, and political instability.
The concern of speedy population growth is likewise at the core of
the economist argument for the promotion of reproductive health.
Advocates of population control contend for universal access to
reproductive technologies (such as condoms, the oral contraceptive
pills, 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 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 the
latter as conservative societies. For instance, population experts blamed the
“irresponsible fecundity” of Egyptians for that nation’s run-on population growth, and
the Iranian peasant’s “natural” libidinal tendencies for the same rise in population.
These policy formulations lead to extreme policies like the forced sterilization of twenty
million “violators: of the Chinese 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.
Population growth has, in fact, 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 methods of cultivation, increased yields globally,
but more particularly in the developing world. The global famine that
neo-Malthusians predicted did not happen but instead, global grain
production increased by over 250 percent between 1950 and 1984.
Lately, a middle ground emerged between these two extremes.
Scholars and policymakers 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
The character in the middle of these debates—women—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 be able to 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. First World Nations and fast-developing countries were able to
sustain growth in part because women were given the power of choice and easy
access to reproductive technologies. Moreover, the more educated a woman is, the
better are her prospects of improving her economic position. Women can spend most
of the time pursuing either their higher education or their careers, instead of forcibly
reducing this time to take care of their children.
Added things
to ponder…
What could be contrasting views over reproductive health? What is the feminists
take on reproductive health? What is the relationship between population
growth and food security?
Contrasting Views on Reproductive Health
PRO- REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ANTI- REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
Most countries implement reproductive opponents regard reproductive rights as
health laws because they worry about the nothing but false front for abortion
health of the mother They contend that this method of
In 2014, the United Nations report noted preventing conception endangers the life
that the proportion of countries allowing of the mother and must be banned
abortion to preserve the physical health of The religious wing of the anti-
a woman increased from 63 percent to 67 reproductive rights flank goes further and
percent describes abortion as a debauchery that
those to preserve the mental health of a sullied the name of God; it will send the
woman increased from 52 percent to 64 mother to hell and prevents a new soul,
percent the baby, to become human
The opposition’s 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
Muslims 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 a reproductive health law in
place, but conservative politicians have enfeebled it through budget cuts and
stalled its implementation by filing a case against the law in the Supreme Court
A country being industrialized and developed, however, does not automatically
assure pro-women reproductive regulations. In the United States, the women’s
movement of the 1960s was responsible for the passage and judicial endorsement of a
pro-choice law, but conservatives controlling state legislatures have also slowly
undermined this law by imposing a restriction on women’s access to abortion. While
pro-choice advocates argue that abortion is necessary to protect the health of the
mother, their conservative rivals shift the focus on the death of the fetus in the mother’s
womb as the reason for reversing the law. This 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 actually
does not empower women.
They believe that government assumptions that poverty and
environmentnal 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 unviersal health
care, education and gender equality prorgrams
Feminists also point out that there is very little evidence that point to
overpopulation as the culprit behind poverty and ecological
devastation
Governments have not directly responded to these criticisms, but one of the goals
of 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development
suggests recognition of this issue. Country representatives to that conference agreed
that women should receive family planning counseling on abortion, the dangers of
sexually transmitted diseases, the nature of human sexuality. However, the conference
also left it to the individual countries to determine how these recommendations can be
turned into programs. Hence, globally, women’s and feminist arguments on
reproductive rights and overpopulation are acknowledged, but the struggle to turn
them into policy is still fought at the national level. It is the dilemma that women and
feminist movements face today.
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. The median age of this population is 30.1
with the male median age at 29.4 years and female, 30.9 years. Ninety-five percent of
this population growth will happen in the developing countries, with demographers
predicting that by the middle of this century, several countries will have tripled their
population. The opposite is happening in the developed world where populations
remain steady in general, but declining 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 this population will be an immense challenge.
The decline in fertility and the existence of a young productive
population, however, may not be enough to offset this concern over
food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that in
order for countries to mitigate the impact of population growth, food
production must increase by the 70 percent; 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 her is that the global rate of growth 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 aimed at fighting 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 delivery of health services, and education
especially for the poor. If domestic production is not enough, it becomes
essential for nations to import. The FAO, therefore, enjoins governments to
keep their markets open, and to eventually “move towards a global
trading system that is fair and competitive, and that contributes to a
dependable market for food.
The aforementioned are worthy recommendations but nation-states shall need the
political will to push through these weeping 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.
Concluding Thoughts
Demography is a complex discipline that requires the integration of various social
scientific data. As you have seen, demographic changes and policies have impacts
on the environment, politics, resources, and others. Yet, at its core, demography
accounts for the growth and decline of the human species. It may be about large
numbers and massive effects, but it is ultimately about people. Thus, no interdisciplinary
account of globalization is complete without an accounting of people, and will focus
particularly on their global movement.
