Learning outcome

1. Discuss the relationship between population

and economic welfare;
2. Identify the effect of aging and over
population; and
3. Differentiate between contrasting positions
over reproductive health
 PATRICIO ABINALES, PH.D. Lisandro E. Claudio

Educational Background Administrative Position:

•BA History, University of the Philippines-Diliman Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
•Ph.D. Government and Asian Studies, Cornell, 1997

Worked at UP for nine years

The Contemporary World

Current World Population
7,743,554,421
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
TOP 20 LARGEST COUNTRIES BY POPULATION (LIVE)

1 China1,435,830,613 11 Japan126,718,173
2 India1,371,428,125 12 Ethiopia113,137,380
3 U.S.A.329,780,407 13 Philippines108,656,064
4 Indonesia271,694,031 14 Egypt101,103,720
5 Pakistan218,156,022 15 Vietnam96,785,413
6 Brazil211,606,819 16 D.R. Congo87,805,438
7 Nigeria202,863,003 17 Turkey83,764,897
8 Bangladesh163,652,110 18 Germany83,615,678
9 Russia145,895,264 19 Iran83,311,447
10 Mexico128,075,927 20 Thailand69,690,045

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
Facts about the world's changing population

The global population is

expected to reach 8.6 billion
in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050
and 11.2 billion in 2100. .
Demography – the study of human populations
Demography is the study of human populations
– their size, composition and distribution across
space – and the process through which
populations change. Births, deaths and
migration are the ‘big three’ of demography,
jointly producing population stability or change.
 Demography is very useful for
understanding social and
economic problems and
identifying potential solutions.
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 of their members can be hawking
their wares on the streets.

Hence, the more children, the better it will be

 Urbanized, educated, and professional families
with two incomes, however , desire just one or
two progenies.

These families also have their sights on long-term

savings plan. They set aside significant part of
their incomes for their retirement, health care,
and the future education of their child/children
Rural families view multiple children network as
critical investment.

Children, for example, can take over the

agricultural work. Their houses can also become
the retirement homes of their parents, who will
then proceed to take care of their grandchildren.
These differing version of family life
determine the economic and social
policies that countries craft
regarding their respective
population.
Countries in the “less developed regions of the world” that
rely on agriculture tend to maintain high levels of population
growth.

The 1980 United Nation report on urban and rural population

growth states that
85% of the population
90% by the end of 20th century
Since then, global agricultural population has declined.
In 2011, it accounted for over 37% of the total world
population, compared to the statistics in 1980.

The blog site “Nourishing the Planet,” however, noted

that even as the agricultural population shrunk as a
share of total population between 1980 and 2011, it
grew numerically from 2.2 billion to 2.6 billion people
during the period.
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.
Thomas Malthus
• British scholar
• (1798) “Essay on the Principle of Population”

-population growth will inevitably exhaust world food

supply by the middle of the 19th century

OFF BASE
Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife Anne
• American Biologist
• (1960) “The Population Bomb”

-argued that overpopulation in the 1970s and the

1980s will bring about global environmental disasters
that would, in turn, lead to food shortage and mass
starvation.
They proposed that countries like UNITED STATES take the
lead in the promotion of global population control in order to
reduce the growth rate to zero. (Department of Population
and Environment)

Recommendation : Bizarre Chemical castration Policy-oriented

2 children
(Taxing an additional child and luxury taxes on child-related
products)
Recommendation: Bizarre Chemical castration Policy-
oriented

Monetary incentives Paying off men who would agree

to be sterilized after two children ) Institution-building
A powerful department of population and environment
By limiting the population, vital
resources could be used for
economic progress and not be
diverted and wasted to feeding
more mouths.
Free expansion of family members
would lead to a crisis in resources,
which in turn may result in
widespread poverty, mass hunger
 As early as 1958 the American policy
journal, Foreign Affairs, had already
advocated CONTRACEPTION and
STERILIZATION as the practical solution
to global economic, social and political
problems.
In May 2009 a group of American
billionaires warned of how a
nightmarish explosion of people
was a potentially disastrous and
threat to the world
Reproductive technologies

•Condom
•Pill
•vasectomy
 Finally politics determine these birth control
programs.

These policy formulation lead to extreme policies

like the forces sterilization of twenty million
“violators” of the Chinese government’s one-child
policy.
The use of population control to prevent economic crisis has its
critics.

For example, Besty Hartmann disagrees with the advocates of

Neo-Malthusian theory and accused government of using
population control as a "substitute for social justice and much -
needed reforms -such land distribution, employment creation,
provision of mass education and health care and emancipation
'As a country' baby-boom generation
gets older for a time it constitutes a
large cohort group of working age
individual and later a large cohort of
elderly people
 Population growth has, in fact , spurred
"technological and institutional innovation
and increased the supply of human
ingenuity" advance in agriculture production
have shown that the Mathusian nigthmare
can be prevented.
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.
• In North America and Europe, 73 percent of
governments allow abortion upon a mother’s request.
• In 1960, Bolivia’s average total fertility rate (TFR) was
6.7 children.
• In 1978, the Bolivian government put into effect a
family planning program that included the legalization
of abortion.
• By 1985, the TFR went down to 5.13 and further
declined to 3.46 in 2008
• Opponents regard reproductive rights as nothing but a
false front for abortion.

• The religious wing of the anti-reproductive rights flank

goes further and describes abortion as a debauchery
that sullies the name of God; it will send the mother to
hell and prevents a new soul, the baby, to become
human.
This position was 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
• Russia
 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.
Feminist approach the issue of reproductive
rights from another angle. They believe that
government assumption that poverty and
environmental degradation are caused by
overpopulation are wrong.
 Country representative to that conference
agreed that women should receive family
planning counseling on abortion, the dangers
of sexually transmitted disease, the nature of
human sexuality and the main elements of
responsible Parenthood.
“
 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. 95% 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 food and agriculture
organization( FAO) warns that in
order for countries mitigate the
impact of population growth, food
production must increase to 3billion
tons from the current 2.1 billion.
 The FAO recommends that
countries increase their
investments in agriculture , craft
long term policies aimed at
fighting poverty and invest
research and development.
The aforementioned are worthy
recommendations but nation-
states shall need 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 countries, have yet
to attain.