Population growth, China, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

India produces almost as much to more people a year than all of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, you can hardly deny that China's absolute population growth is still massive.

And I should care about this why?

China is 20% of humanity. A fifth of everyone, of all the people that exist anywhere. Of course their absolute population growth is massive. So what? I see no reason even to mention it. It is a poor distraction from the fact that China's population growth rate is quite small, thanks entirely to their policy of population control, and that this has had a noticeable effect on their ability to build up their economy. Which, of course, you are obliged to deny, because it would torpedo your argument that population control is an irrelevant side issue that can be safely ignored while the real business of development goes on.

Hardly. Minus "clean air," these are the only reasons for even having government from a Hobbesian perspective.
I was referring to things more along the lines of "I DEMAND A DECENT JOB," or "I DEMAND FREE COLLEGE." Whether or not such things should be "rights" in a First World nation is debatable. However, in a nation which can hardly even pay for electricity, let alone universal healthcare, the answer is a resounding NO.

Who does this? I mean, as in, who is actually jumping up and down and demanding these things for themselves? Is this really a major cultural phenomenon, as opposed to people who are demanding things for other people, and willing to pay to ensure that they get them?

Also, why is military protection less of an entitlement than clean air? Do I need air less than I need not to be robbed by bandits or rules by warlords? Is government less obliged to ensure that the air is free of poisoners than it is to ensure that the land is free of brigands?

My point is that it is too significant a part of the UN's program. If we halved or quartered the amount of money we spend on condoms and contraceptives, and put it towards economic development, trade, and preventable diseases in the Third World instead, progress would likely be a lot more noticable.

Why do you say that? Has someone checked this? Someone with real credentials, who I can be reasonably confident isn't just making up shit like "more babies are born in China than in sub-Saharan Africa" based on their false memories of a statement that was itself based on statistics that are nearly fifteen years out of date?

With the possible exception of China (which is ultimately debatable, but I simply don't have the time to do the research required to debate the subject in depth right now), I have yet to see a case where population control should be anything more than a secondary or tertiary concern in Third World nations.

This is foolish, because there are many countries with population growth rates just as large, and therefore just as problematic, as 1976 China.

Once again, I'm not saying that population control isn't a problem. I'm simply saying that its not quite so pressing a problem as the others which have been mentioned.

Third World nations will have plenty of time to address population control (as India and China are doing now in ways which I both agree and disagree with to various degrees) once they have gotten their "ducks in a row" where their economies and governments are concerned.

How do you know there will be time, or that this is a secondary issue? Why do you say so?

Non-productive minors grow into, at the very least, potentially productive adults. If they can be gainfully organized and employed, a nation's lot in the world can be improved. If not, then yes, overpopulation in said nation is a problem.

You see, that misses the problem: It does not matter whether the non-productive minors grow into productive adults. Because they also grow into adults of childbearing age, and in turn have several children per couple, unless contraceptives are made available. Thus, wait a few decades and the 200 productive adults in a village caring for 400 children will become 400 productive adults... caring for 800 children and 200 grandparents.

It's called exponential growth for a reason.

A country that is overpopulated today will not become less overpopulated tomorrow; it will become more so. And will continue to become more so until the birth rate comes down... which requires that people start using contraceptives.

Once again, however; unless you plan on nuking the overpopulated sections of the Third World off the face of the Earth tomorrow, the fact that these nations are overpopulated isn't going change. As this fact isn't going to change, it would be infinitely more productive to address the economic concerns these nations have outside of overpopulation (which generally tend to result in a decrease of overpopulation pressures anyway), rather than dumping funds into a futile money pit simply because contemporary environmental ideology demands it.

Can you demonstrate that population control in Third World countries is:
-Futile?
-Actually demanded by ideology? The fact that people believe something does not mean it is an ideology.
-NOT a necessary precondition for addressing economic concerns at all, as the vast majority of people who have studied the subject well enough to know what the hell they're talking about believes?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Again, I ask, so fucking what?

They brought it up, not me. I'm simply responding to their arguments. China still has a massive population, which is growing ever more massive with each passing year.

They are the one's forwarding the argument that if we don't change this problem RIGHT NOW, the entire Earth will go to Hell in a handbasket.

My argument basically amounts to, "well, its not going to change by much regardless of what we do, so maybe we should start looking for other alternatives."

they could really impact their total number within a few generations.

Meaning another what, 80 years to a century, if not longer? You do realize that China's population is just going to continue to grow during that time frame, even if it does do so more slowly, right?

Once again, Denryle's argument was that we would be basically fucked by then.

Mostly, I hear things like, I DEMAND TO NOT DIE FROM STARVATION or I DEMAND TO NOT DIE FROM EASILY TREATABLE DISEASES.

We were discussing per capita income and other such economic and social developments. Get with the program or butt out.

Ok, figures for the amount of money the UN spends on population control vs. economic development, trade and preventable diseases please. Also account for the use of condoms and prevention of STDs please in your figures to justify your BS.

Unfortunately the UN website seems to be rather stingy about giving out information (any one know a good place to get such information?). However, I have been able to locate a few sources dealing with issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world ... .html?_r=1

The U.S. government, the world's largest donor of condoms, has bought more than nine billion condoms over the past two decades. Under President George W. Bush's global AIDS plan, which dedicates billions of dollars to fight the epidemic, a third of the money for prevention must go to promoting abstinence. But that leaves two-thirds for other programs, so the U.S. government's distribution of condoms has risen, to over 400 million a year.

According to these sources, even under the abstince friendly George W, the US pledged to donate $15 billion dollars to fighting aids in Africa, roughly 2/3s of which went to programs which undoubtedly included family planning education, birth control, and condom distribution programs.

By way of contrast, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf, the United States' entire budget for fostering development across the globe (not just in the Third World) amounted to only 6.2 billion dollars, which included allocations which I assume factor into the 15 billion dollar figure.

Development assistance programs are
designed chiefly to foster sustainable broad-based economic progress and social
stability in developing countries. For FY2004, Congress appropriated $6.2 billion
in such assistance, an amount accounting for 30% of total foreign aid appropriations.
Most of these funds are managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and are used for long-term projects in the areas of economic reform and
private sector development, democracy promotion, environmental protection,
population and human health. Development activities gaining more prominence in
recent years have been debt relief for the poorest nations, mostly in Africa, and
support for treatment of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. (See question on sectoral
priorities below.) Other bilateral development assistance goes to distinct institutions,
such as the Peace Corps, the Inter-American Development Foundation, the African
Development Foundation, the Trade and Development Agency, and the new
Millenium Challenge Corporation. The latter is expected to provide significant
levels of assistance to countries that meet specific standards of good governance and
free market economic reform.

This source also verifies the 15 billion dollar figure, and notes that it will go towards "global HIV initiatives," which, as has been already stated, are mostly involve birth control and condoms, in addition to more explicit family planning initiatives.

One of the most striking changes in the distribution of
economic aid resources in recent years has been the sharp growth in funding for
Global Health, especially in the area of HIV/AIDS programs. The budget for Global
Health has nearly doubled since FY2001, while HIV/AIDS resources have increased
almost five-fold.7 In FY2004, the Bush Administration launched a five-year, $15
billion Global AIDS Initiative, with the goals of 7 million new infections, treating 2
million HIV-infected individuals, and caring for 10 million infected people and AIDS
orphans.
Funding for two other health sectors are rising, but far more modestly than
HIV/AIDS programs. Child Survival and Maternal Health projects aim to reduce
infant mortality by, among other interventions, decreasing the incidence of acute
respiratory infections, diarrheal disease, measles, and other illnesses that occur in the
first 28 days of life and combating malnutrition, and to improve the quality of child
delivery facilities and raise nutritional levels of mothers. Funding for these activities
has grown by 27% in the past four years.

While the figures shown in this article do indicate that the single largest percentage of funds in this budget are going to economic development, roughly 2.4 billion dollars (the most frequent recipients of such AID are strongly implied to be states like Israel and Turkey, however; not the Third World), it should be noted that HIV/Aids and Family family planning take up the second largest chunk of the budget, roughly 1.8 billion dollars.

Furthermore, this 2004 study from Tel Aviv University rather ironically indicates that all of our foreign aid to African nations is actually counterproductive from a population reduction perspective.

Foreign Aid and Population Growth: Evidence from Africa*

In other words, even under "conservative" Presidents, the US spends an exorbitant amount of money on birth control and condoms in the Third World (and Africa in particular), AND THESE MEASURES AREN'T EVEN EFFECTIVE.

You know what, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. WHAT THE HELL MAN?

Condoms and sexual education are so relatively fucking cheap

The way we use these programs, they most assuredly are not.

Why? Because it is so fucking simple and hey, it helps so many things at the same time. Want lower crime, higher per capita income, increased resources for education, reduced load on adults vs. children, bring on the condoms and birth control. You could probably pave a small African country in condoms for the amount of money spent to try and depose a random African dictator.

Who in the Hell said anything about deposing dictators? I'm simply suggesting that we ease off the APPARENTLY INEFFECTIVE birth control and condom distribution, and focus more heavily on economic development in the Third World.

A more developed nation is less less likely to fall into the hands of a dictator to begin with.

Let's not think long term! Short term solutions only!

Population control in the way you are talking about the issue is the very definition of a short term solution. Allowing for greater economic development would be a long term answer.

[Alyrium Denryle]

This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (though such developments are bound to induce at least some "growing pain"). In fact, after the Third World has managed to develop some semblence of economic and political stablity (which more often than not results in reduced birth rates anyway, even when not accounting for such measures as birth control), all of those extra people you are complaining about might very well prove to be an economic boon to the Third World (more workers, larger markets, ecta), rather than the albatross you are claiming them to be. This is already the case in China and India.

You have definitely not been reading the posts of the guy trained to deal with population demography...

In the short term, yes. The increase in population is a boon. It wont be in the long run as per capita food supply (to say nothing of distribution) plummets into the floor and the age structure inverts a generation from now, which BTW will be after we have reached carrying capacity (or have overshot it by 2-3 billion, depending on the estimate you use). The increase in population will in fact be a clusterfuck in the long term.

Education is all well and good. However, undertaking massive social reform without first establishing an economic base strong enough to suport it or a political structure stable enough to deal with the societal changes this is going to bring about, generally isn't a good idea.

In order to bring about a strong political structure, you need an economy strong enough to support it, and social reforms that make said strong government more than a tinpot dictatorship. All of these things must happen at once, not linearly. The west did as well as it did at this because of a confluence of events. Social and governmental reforms brought about by thinkers like Locke, Hobbes, Goethe, Bentham and Mill and Adam Smith. At the same time the first industrial revolution occurred, which set the stage for the economic developments which would make these ideas feasible to properly implement. Increases in production led to shifts in birth and death schedules, and as the economy grew so did life expectancy. Notions like social justice however did not occur to many until the socialists showed up (Saint-Simon, Marx and Engles etc), as well as the Progressives. Then systems were put into place (gradually) in order to ensure more equitable distribution of the fruits of industry. Birth and death schedules shifted again. In the US, with many of those wealth redistribution apparati were degraded.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I noticed a problem in my data, need to fix.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

In the short term, yes. The increase in population is a boon. It wont be in the long run as per capita food supply (to say nothing of distribution) plummets into the floor and the age structure inverts a generation from now, which BTW will be after we have reached carrying capacity (or have overshot it by 2-3 billion, depending on the estimate you use). The increase in population will in fact be a clusterfuck in the long term.

Once again, however; this assumes that no technological advances or improvements in agricultural efficiency or organization which increase food production or overall carrying capacity are made between now and then.

Furthermore, as the source I listed above shows, studies have actually proven a positive connection between foreign aid and increased population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The "lets just throw condoms at them and hope that it evens out" approach simply isn't working.

Furthermore, if your models are correct, then it would seem that we are going to be screwed either way. Perhaps it is time to stop trying to avoid crashing into an iceberg with which collision is certain, and instead start closing the compartment doors and readying the pumps?

In order to bring about a strong political structure, you need an economy strong enough to support it, and social reforms that make said strong government more than a tinpot dictatorship. All of these things must happen at once, not linearly. The west did as well as it did at this because of a confluence of events. Social and governmental reforms brought about by thinkers like Locke, Hobbes, Goethe, Bentham and Mill and Adam Smith. At the same time the first industrial revolution occurred, which set the stage for the economic developments which would make these ideas feasible to properly implement. Increases in production led to shifts in birth and death schedules, and as the economy grew so did life expectancy. Notions like social justice however did not occur to many until the socialists showed up (Saint-Simon, Marx and Engles etc), as well as the Progressives. Then systems were put into place (gradually) in order to ensure more equitable distribution of the fruits of industry. Birth and death schedules shifted again. In the US, with many of those wealth redistribution apparati were degraded.

This is what I have been saying all along. The Third World should experience similar progress if left to its own devices. The issue we seem to be having is that you apparently feel that the increases in population this would entail would be disasterous, whereas I am of the opinion that said disasterous consequences could be lessened if the progress of economic development were to be pushed along at a greater pace.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Now, lets take a look at some statistics. I ran multiple regressions of population and economic factors regressed over population growth. I am only reporting significant factors.

Cause of population growth...

Included Variables: Per capita GDP (PPP), GINI, Economic Growth (in percent), Fertility Rate, Life Expectancy.

All were significant except GDP.

Ran univariate regressions on retained variables. Reporting Squared Multiple R, or the proportion of Pop Growth explained by parameters, may not add to 1, due to co-linearity.

GINI: .128,
Economic Growth:.401
Fertility Rate:0.767
Life Expectancy:. 0.293 relationship negative.

What this means is that having an unequal wealth distribution, high rates of economic growth, and high fertility positively contribute to population growth. However long life expectancies do not.

This we would expect from Population Ecology 101.

Fertility rate explained the most variance. Lets see what may effect that.

Included variables:
Infant mortality
Life expectancy
economic growth
GINI
Log Per capita GDP

Significant Variables, univariate results on these retained.
Infant Mortality: 0.770
Life Expectancy: 0.591 (negative relationship)
Log GDP per capita: 0.626 (relatioinship negative)
These results should explain the co-linearity in the prior test (and themselves have some co-linearity as well, life expectancy being dragged down by infant mortality). Resource availability and high life expectancy drive down birth rate, while high infant mortality causes more to be born as fitness insurance.
Also population ecology 101.

So, what explains life expectancy and infant mortality?

For Life expectancy
Included variables
Per capita GDP log transformed
GINI

Retained variables with univariate results
per capita GDP (log):0.665
GINI: 0.183

In other words, it has everything to do with the distribution of wealth, and per capita GDP.

For infant mortality
Included variables

Fertility rate
Population growth
Economic growth
GINI
LOG GDP

Variables retained with Squared Multiple R
Fertility: 0.770
Population Growth: 0.484
Log Per Capita GDP: .689 (relationship negative)
In other words, the more kids you have, the more will die, the faster population growth is, the more babies die, and the higher your GDP per capita, the more kids live.
Other variables such as growth rate or economic inequality were not significant.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Once again, however; this assumes that no technological advances or improvements in agricultural efficiency or organization which increase food production or overall carrying capacity are made between now and then.

And what pray tell would these be? Will they be large enough to compensate for a 2-3 billion overshoot, because that is what will be required?

We have had one of those. In the entire history of humanity, and its positive effects will be short lived because they damage the long term production capacity of the soil.

Furthermore, as the source I listed above shows, studies have actually proven a positive connection between foreign aid and increased population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The "lets just throw condoms at them and hope that it evens out" approach simply isn't working.

See my stats above. Foreign aid increases growth, not GDP. Increased economic growth creates increases in population, but are otherwise not associated directly with other issues. However population growth leads to high infant mortality, and as a result lower life expectancy.

This is what I have been saying all along. The Third World should experience similar progress if left to its own devices. The issue we seem to be having is that you apparently feel that the increases in population this would entail would be disasterous, whereas I am of the opinion that said disasterous consequences could be lessened if the progress of economic development were to be pushed along at a greater pace.

Math disagrees with you.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

And what pray tell would these be? Will they be large enough to compensate for a 2-3 billion overshoot, because that is what will be required?

Once again, according to your figures, there doesn't seem to be much of anything we can do to avoid the overshoot in question.

What exactly are you advocating here?

In other words, the more kids you have, the more will die, the faster population growth is, the more babies die, and the higher your GDP per capita, the more kids live.
Other variables such as growth rate or economic inequality were not significant.

What are you trying to say? In english please.

Of course having a higher GDP and economic growth tends to initially drive up birth rates. However, history has shown that these rates tend to even out after these advances bring about corresponding societal changes(EDIT: as your figures pointed out, due to increases in life expectency and other variables).

Once again, jargon aside, what, exactly, are you advocating?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Of course having a higher GDP and economic growth tends to initially drive up birth rates. However, history has shown that these rates tend to even out after these advances bring about corresponding societal changes.

No. You need to learn to read. Economic growth drives up birth rates. But it also drives up the per capita death rate of infants, and drives down life expectancy even faster if this is not accompanied by an already high per capita GDP. Population growth is high, but the attrition rate is fucking astronomical, the price of high economic growth is paid in blood. The reason this happens is because females (of many species, humans included) use a sort of portfolio diversification model for the reproductive allocation. In unstable conditions they have a first kid and heavily invest. Then they have a second as an insurance policy in case the first one dies, and just in case they end up on the better side of a dice roll. They do this again, and again throughout their reproductive lives, which in environments with high growth but low GDP is short (generation time is shorter too because they reproduce early). The growth gives her the excuse to keep doing this. If growth were stagnant, and GDP Low she would not have nearly as many kids because she would have worse odds of improving her condition and the cost of producing each marginal child increases.

In situations where there is high GDP, this is not the case to the same degree. Women can delay reproduction and have a few highly competitive offspring rather than having to cast lots with several children and hope one or two get through. This is the case regardless of growth, though lower growth prevents what I will call "diminishing returns" babies from being born.

Bear in mind, no one sits around and talks about their fitness like this. However they did evolve in order to go through cognitive processes which will lead them to these behavioral patterns.

I am advocating programs to artificially decrease the birth rate. Down below replacement. Not only because we need to be that far to avoid the oscillating holocausts that will be a carrying capacity overshoot, but to avoid those happening on the microscale in the mean time.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

BTW, how are you defining "resource availability?" Are you classifying it as only including those resources which are available to an individual because he has less competition, or did you account for variables such as industrialization creating a greater supply of available resources to draw from?

I am advocating programs to artificially decrease the birth rate.

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China. Inspite of the fact that most of our aid to Sub-Saharan Africa already goes towards family planning and condoms, population growth is still increasing.

Furthermore, you haven't told me how you account for the fact that, by your own model, we are going be screwed anyway. Even with reduced birth rates (which you haven't even shown to be feasible on a global scale), the Earth's population is still going to exceed what you deem to be a reasonable carrying capacity.

Economic growth drives up birth rates. But it also drives up the per capita death rate of infants, and drives down life expectancy even faster if this is not accompanied by an already high per capita GDP. Population growth is high, but the attrition rate is fucking astronomical, the price of high economic growth is paid in blood.

Yes, but once again, only initially. After an extended period of economic growth, GDP should increase, and cause a corresponding increase in lifespans and decrease in birthrates.

By your model, the West should have never been able to industrialize.

If growth were stagnant, and GDP Low she would not have nearly as many kids because she would have worse odds of improving her condition.

So...We should just let the Third World wallow in poverty and under development because it will keep birthrates down?

[Alyrium Denryle]

BTW, how are you defining "resource availability?" Are you classifying it as only including those resources which are available to an individual because he has less competition, or did you account for variables such as industrialization creating a greater supply of available resources to draw from?

It is both. Steady state, and that which is made available due to growth.

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China.

Which I advocate.

Even with reduced birth rates (which you haven't even shown to be feasible on a global scale), the Earth's population is still going to exceed what you deem to be a reasonable carrying capacity.

That depends on where between 6 and 9 billion it is. If we can get our fertility rates below 1.6 or so children per female by 2050, we will level off at around 8 billion. Even if we have damped oscillations around carrying capacity after that for a few generations, it wont be nearly as horrific as it would be at 9 billion or higher.

Yes, but once again, only initially. After an extended period of economic growth, GDP should increase, and cause a corresponding increase in lifespans and decrease in birthrates.

And that period is going to be more than 50 years.

By your model, the West should have never been able to industrialize.

No, it can do it. It was just a long fucking climb. It took a century and a half from when the industrial revolution really kicked off in order to bring infant mortality down below the level of modern Zimbabwe.

[K. A. Pital]

Okay, I see the discussion continues.

The Third World should experience similar progress if left to its own devices. The issue we seem to be having is that you apparently feel that the increases in population this would entail would be disasterous, whereas I am of the opinion that said disasterous consequences could be lessened if the progress of economic development were to be pushed along at a greater pace.

So essentially you agree with us that explosive population growth is disastrous or has disastrous consequences (not as a sole reason, but being one in a complex of reasons); however, you then say that one should not look towards the issue of population growth, but merely mitigate the consequences of such.

That's like saying one should not look at the various types of virus or bacteria that cause a disease, but only offer treatment alleviating symptoms.

And this:

India is not in decline. It simply is not as growing as quickly as China. There is a difference.

Simon spoke of a relative decline - that's when your position becomes RELATIVELY worse compared to another competitor. That's kind of like market shares - both companies can be growing, but one can swiftly outpace the other and then the first company will be considered in "relative decline" to the forerunner; because it's position becomes worse compared to it's competitor. Case in point - Argentina.
Argentina's GDP per capita relative to USA, in %:

Argentina's GDP per capita, vs. Canada's:

I think it does tell something. All mentioned nations have growth; however, for Argentina this growth represents a relative decline in life level, income, etc. It probably also means a reduction of Argentina's share in world trade and manufacturing, which is the straight path to poverty.

This is exactly what you fail to accept; socio-economic welfare of nations is a complex problem, which has many subcomponents. Population growth, like it or not, is one of them. Control of said population growth can be lax or strict; birth control can be automatic (via forced urbanization, mass spread of contraceptives, for example - Russia can be a case-in-point, just like some other nations), or it can be deliberate (One Child Policy).

However, nations without any forms of birth control do not do well when having initial or similar starting points similar to nations with birth control; which indicates that, while birth control might not be the only problem hindering economic and social development, it's certainly part of the issue, and a fairly major part.

Saying that one should focus on the overall issue of socio-economic development, but not focus on one of it's subsets (popultion growth) is saying that one shouldn't separate a larger problem into smaller issues that collectively cause the greater problem, and try to solve them in addition to looking how the overall development goes. It's illogical.

[wolveraptor]

Quick question (that may have been answered already but I missed it): a lot of people are advocating policies that curb population growth in the 3rd world. Won't that result in there being a generation of retirees that greatly outnumbers the population of working-age individuals? Isn't that an inherently difficult model to sustain, partiulcarly if Western-style social security programs are in place.

[K. A. Pital]

Quick question (that may have been answered already but I missed it): a lot of people are advocating policies that curb population growth in the 3rd world. Won't that result in there being a generation of retirees that greatly outnumbers the population of working-age individuals?

Slow or fast, it's going to result in ageing. The general counter to ageing is modern medicine and a longer life expectancy.

There is already evidence from developed countries that older people today are healthier than past generations and that they want to remain socially engaged and productive.

Isn't that an inherently difficult model to sustain, partiulcarly if Western-style social security programs are in place.

The issue is that an industrialized society has rapidly falling (and converging) death and birth rate (excluding major social catastrophes).

An industrialized, developed society can produce much more than the previously existing poor society; therefore, it can actually "do more with less" - produce a greater GDP with a smaller working population. Moreover, if the population is slowly shrinking, that means the GDP growth increases the welfare of each remaining member of society.

A slow decline in the workforce can be mitigated by prolonging the working age, once the life expectancy rises. Moreover, once the high development level becomes stable, it seems that high-HDI nations can achieve replacement rate (Australia and France are a few examples where sub-replacement fertility rate slowly rose back to 2.0).

However, the question is not in having sub-replacement fertility, but in having a stable fertility once the size of population is stabilizie - not explosive growth, neither sub-replacement rate which causes major decline. That's how I see it.

Most of the Third World (really POOR Third World) has rates above 2.0, which is not good and does not lead to a stable population. Temporarily lowering the rate to below-replacement can help to increase the welfare of remaining people. Like I said, having a 2.0 growth rate is the optimal rate once the population is stabilized.

[TheKwas]

The Kwas, you are still stubbornly refusing to see my point here.

http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-Pu/Pop ... rowth.html

Western mortality decline was relatively slow, paralleling socioeconomic development, and it occurred in a global context in which European population "surplus" (arising from gaps between lowering mortality and more slowly lowering fertility) was able to migrate to new areas (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia) that were very sparsely populated by Aboriginal peoples (whose numbers were reduced even more by contagious diseases brought by Europeans).

Mortality decline in less developed cou ... d of time. A classic example is Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where the death rate was halved in less than a decade, starting in the early 1950s. (In the West, a comparable reduction typically took around one century.) In these less developed countries, mortality decreases were not matched by fertility decreases, where they produce population growth rates much greater than those experienced in the West. So the demographic transition that took two centuries to unfold in the West occurred (or is occurring) within the span of a single life. Third, mortality decline did not parallel economic development. Rather, the impetus behind third world mortality reductions originated, for the most part, in factors external to the society.

Decreases in Western mortality occured over an extended time scale. Those in the Third World are taking place at an accelerated pace due to having Western medicine and technology dumped on them all at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (though such developments are bound to induce at least some "growing pain"). In fact, after the Third World has managed to develop some semblence of economic and political stablity (which more often than not results in reduced birth rates anyway, even when not accounting for such measures as birth control), all of those extra people you are complaining about might very well prove to be an economic boon to the Third World (more workers, larger markets, ecta), rather than the albatross you are claiming them to be. This is already the case in China and India.

I don't see any reason to throw a spastastic alarmist hissy fit just because the Third World is doing exactly the same thing that the West did during the Industrial Revolution, only on an accelerated time scale. As I already pointed out (and you apparently saw fit to ignore), population growth in the Third World actually fairly closely parallels the growth seen in the West during the 19th century (albeit on a more substantial scale due to the technological advances made in agriculture and medicine since the 19th century). Your own graph shows this.

I get your point just fine and I'm also perfectly aware of the reasons why the third world has higher pop growth rates so quoting other sources is a waste of both your and my time. I already mentioned the exact same factors.

What you fail to see is the importance of capital dilution and marginal returns to land. These two factors cause population growth to be negatively correlated with growth. Having 'bigger markets, more workers" means abosolutely dickall if you have an equal amount of more mouths to feed. It's not an economic boom from a development perspective, despite the fact it may be a boom from a international power perspective (china being more internationally important due to it's population, despite being poor),

You say that the third world experiance paralles the growth seen in the west, except that it's on a more substantial scale due to technological advances made in medince. That 'except' was my entire fucking point. Growth rates in the developing world are WELL beyond the rate the western world ever experianced even during their peak, and growth rates (much more than overall population) have a direct negative impact on per-capita income growth rates (one of the better measures of development). In the western world, the pop growth rate was relatively (a word you have troubling understanding? Look it up) constant under 1% with it peaking a bit above 1%. In the developing world, a population growth rate just above 1 is considered decent or average rather than an extreme like it was in the western experiance. For many countries, we're talking growth rates in the 3,4,5% ranges. That is a MASSIVE difference if you understand how exponential growth works.

With the possible exception of China (which is ultimately debatable, but I simply don't have the time to do the research required to debate the subject in depth right now), I have yet to see a case where population control should be anything more than a secondary or tertiary concern in Third World nations.

Considering the interdependence of all the variables involved, trying a definite ranking of concerns is relatively naive and impractical. It really depends on what country we're talking about and what existing prioritities exist, and what's the marginal effectiveness of what approach. If we're talking about India, then perhaps capital investment will be a more pressing concern at the margin. However, if we're talking about Nigeria, which has plenty of oil money which can be used for investment, then population control and economic institution quality-control (which is largely impossible for foriegners to influence) are much more important at the margin. If we're talking about a hypothetical country starting at a hypothetical level 0, then they're all roughly equally important.

Ignoring one variables completely in favour of another causes the whole house of cards to fall apart though. Ignoring population growth undermines capital investment and institution building, just as ignoring capital investment undermines population control and economic institution building.

However, considering how cheap it is to put in place family planning policies (unless you aim big like China or certain areas of India), there's no reason why countries shouldn't adopt them right away.

Population control in the way you are talking about the issue is the very definition of a short term solution. Allowing for greater economic development would be a long term answer.

...The Third World should experience similar progress if left to its own devices. The issue we seem to be having is that you apparently feel that the increases in population this would entail would be disasterous, whereas I am of the opinion that said disasterous consequences could be lessened if the progress of economic development were to be pushed along at a greater pace.

It's part of the same coin! Population control is allowing for greater economic development, and vice versa!

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China. Inspite of the fact that most of our aid to Sub-Saharan Africa already goes towards family planning and condoms, population growth is still increasing.


Furthermore, as the source I listed above shows, studies have actually proven a positive connection between foreign aid and increased population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The "lets just throw condoms at them and hope that it evens out" approach simply isn't working.

You're a dimwit. Read your own source and you'll notice that he doesn't regress foriegn aid focused on population control against population growth, but just general foriegn aid on population growth. If you knew anything about economics, you'd know that Malthus could have predicted that result more than a hundred years ago, and it in no way violates what anyone here is saying.

If you want to illustrate that giving condoms away (which is probably the laziest way you can support family planning by the way, and is really a strawman to distract attention away from what real family planning entails) is associated with population growth, you have do a regression with those variables. Otherwise you're either being incompetent or intellectually dishonest.

For examples of places that have implemented successful family planning without resorting to 'Orwellian' measures, look to Kerala, India.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Quick question (that may have been answered already but I missed it): a lot of people are advocating policies that curb population growth in the 3rd world. Won't that result in there being a generation of retirees that greatly outnumbers the population of working-age individuals? Isn't that an inherently difficult model to sustain, partiulcarly if Western-style social security programs are in place.

Yes. The population will collapse top down due to aging, and not infant mortality. I would much rather have more people dying from old age, maybe earlier than they otherwise would due to health issues, than have little children starving to death and dying from communicable infections that prey on the malnourished in high density populations.

However, such countries do not have those programs. So an economic collapse will be less severe. Typically they operate in large extended families so the old can contribute some amount to wage earning or child care while the working age individuals pick up the slack.

If we can keep growth negative for a bit, then ease it up to simple replacement after population growth levels off, we can avoid the horror that will be carrying capacity. You see, unlike the typical logistic growth model where generation times are short, and react instantly to changes in resource availability, we have long generation times and after we reach long term carrying capacity the earth will be able to support an overshoot for a little while(partially due to the generation time, partially due to the fact that it will take a bit for food production and stuff like that to peak, and the plummet)

[Simon_Jester]

Alyrium, what would you say are the main bottlenecks affecting carrying capacity?

[wolveraptor]

Thanks to Aly and Stas for your explanations. So if I'm reading you right, ideally we would have an oscillation in birthrates, from excessively high, to below replacement rate, and then back to replacement rate.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

You say that the third world experiance paralles the growth seen in the west, except that it's on a more substantial scale due to technological advances made in medince. That 'except' was my entire fucking point. Growth rates in the developing world are WELL beyond the rate the western world ever experianced even during their peak, and growth rates (much more than overall population) have a direct negative impact on per-capita income growth rates (one of the better measures of development). In the western world, the pop growth rate was relatively (a word you have troubling understanding? Look it up) constant under 1% with it peaking a bit above 1%. In the developing world, a population growth rate just above 1 is considered decent or average rather than an extreme like it was in the western experiance.

Once again, this is where your arguments start to fall apart for me. Faster population growth is bad...why exactly? You, Denryle, and Stas seem to simply treat this as if it were a given.

Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that having more people results in less per capita income. My real question here is, "so what?"

This has been my point all along. There will be plenty of time for the Third World to focus on bringing up per capita income after they have experienced substantial economic growth. In fact, it might even be easier.

Sure, this might also bring about a temporary increase in population growth in the form of increased birth rates and infant mortality. Once again, however; so what? That is the path the West took during the Industrial Revolution and it is the path India is currently taking (and doing so rather successfully all things considered) whether you or I may like it or not. No one ever said that Industrialization was going to be or even should be a perfectly painless process. In fact, I think it might be more humane in the longrun to simply allow the Third World to take its licks on this issue, so that they eventually can come about and enjoy the benefits which industrialization and modernization bring to a nation's overall standard of living. The process may take longer, but it will ultimately result in a signifcantly more stable, and internationally relevant Third World.

The alternative you are proposing; namely that we hamper the economic growth of third world nations by fostering increases in per capita income through the depression of birth rates without first building up infrastructure or an industrial base simply strikes me as being an absolutely ass backwards way of going about doing things. Furthermore, with the exception of China (which might not even be a valid example given the fact that China has massive international power and Deng actively went about opening and reforming markets to bring about both economic growth and per capita increases in wealth, therefore casting doubt on the idea that population control even was the major impetus for development), this philosophy has been shown to actually work ABSOLUTELY NO WHERE. We have been smothering Sub-Saharan Africa in condoms and population control programs for well over 20 years, and the place is still a poverty stricken humanitarian nightmare due to its lack of political stabiliity, industry, and infrastructure, WITH ridiculously high population growth rates to boot.

Once again, I'm sorry, but the population control centric model of development simply hasn't been satisfactorily shown to actually work in a real world environment. We have nothing to show for decades of such policies.

It's part of the same coin! Population control is allowing for greater economic development, and vice versa!

We have been at this for over 20 years in Sub-Sarahan Africa, and we have seen no such development. In fact, India has pushed through with development IN SPITE of what your model states should have been the case.

The only reason I can even fathom for supporting this lunacy lies in the environmental concerns cited by Denryle. However, are things really quite so bad as he claims?

His primary argument for stopping population growth in the Third World lies in his claim that the global population will continue grow exponentially and peak at or around 12-13 billion within the next 50 years to a century, and that this will ultimately bring the whole world crashing down around our ears. However, not all sources agree with this figure. In fact, the US Census bureau actively disagrees with it.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldgrgraph.php

The world population growth rate rose from about 1.5 percent per year from 1950-51 to a peak of over 2 percent in the early 1960s due to reductions in mortality. Growth rates thereafter started to decline due to rising age at marriage as well as increasing availability and use of effective contraceptive methods. Note that changes in population growth have not always been steady. A dip in the growth rate from1959-1960, for instance, was due to the Great Leap Forward in China. During that time, both natural disasters and decreased agricultural output in the wake of massive social reorganization caused China's death rate to rise sharply and its fertility rate to fall by almost half.

Some sources even predict that we will see a total halt in global population growth by the end of the century, which will result ultimately result in negative growth.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 543a0.html

There has been enormous concern about the consequences of human population growth for the environment and for social and economic development. But this growth is likely to come to an end in the foreseeable future. Improving on earlier methods of probabilistic forecasting1, here we show that there is around an 85 per cent chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the century. There is a 60 per cent probability that the world's population will not exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability that the world's population at the end of the century will be lower than it is today. For different regions, the date and size of the peak population will vary considerably.

Furthermore, what is your basis for claiming that productivity is certain to drop in agriculture over the course of the next century? In fact, two technologies are being researched to up agricultural technology and bring new lands under cultivation every year.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE2/China-S ... gation.htm

Chinese scientists have announced using seawater to successfully irrigate and grow genetically modified crops of tomato, eggplant, and hot pepper on beaches--the world's first ocean-water irrigation, the China Daily reported on June 25.

Rice and rape are the next target crops for the research group at Hainan University, on Hainan Island in southern China.

PlanetRice learned of the breakthrough last January, but did not report it, because we could not verify its authenticity.

The Hainan scientists claim to have transferred genes from plants that can survive a salt-saturated environment into the fresh-water crops, said Lin Qifeng, the project's chief scientist.

Mangrove is probably the salt-tolerant plant in the project, foreign scientists have told PlanetRice.

A panel has approved large-scale promotion of the technology across the country, the China Daily reported.

China has 20% of the world's population, but only 7% of the world's arable land. China's per capita access to fresh water is only about 20% of the world's average. Agriculture accounts for 70% of the nation's water use, and 60% of the cultivated land is short of water.

Some scientists that PlanetRice contacted are skeptical of the seawater irrigation report. Others believe the report, but aren't sure that plants will tolerate salt water for a long period.

The China Daily stated that "biological molecules" of salt-resistant plants were transferred "through a pollen tube" into the susceptible plants.

Dr. Ray Wu, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Cornell University, USA, explained the "pollen tube method," a biotechnology technique developed in China, that was apparently used to transfer foreign DNA into the tomato, eggplant, and pepper.

"During normal fertilization, a pollen tube is formed through which pollen travels to the ovary, or egg," Wu told PlanetRice.

With the pollen tube method, scientists transfer the total DNA from salt-resistant plants such as mangrove through the tube to the ovary, thus producing a transgenic plant.

"But it's not certain that the transgenic plants will be truly stable and useful," Wu said. "The introduction of foreign DNA adds thousands of new genes, so the plants may continue to segregate for many generations.

"But it is possible that some offspring may be stable."

The Hainan group claims that transgenic progeny have survived, irrigated with seawater, for four generations.

Some fertilizer is necessary to grow these crops in seawater, Lin said. The yield and nutritional levels are about the same as normally grown crops.

"The taste is even better," Lin added.

Zhou Guanyu, a biologist who has developed improved varieties for decades, said the Hainan research is of great significance because of the worldwide shortage of fresh water and decrease in cultivated land.

"It's a giant step forward in technological terms," she observed.

The cultivation of salt-resistant crops has been a goal for international biologists for years. Scientists in Japan and the United States are reportedly conducting similar research, but Lin's team is ahead, the China Daily reported.

Saline soils comprise 20% of China's total cultivated land, according to government statistics. Salinity is on the rise, because of inappropriate irrigation systems,

The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture estimates that 13 million hectares of coastal land of China, if cultivated, can produce enough to feed 150 million people.

Yu Dannian, director of the appraisal panel, said the central government will soon promote the technology China-wide.

Earlier reports of seawater irrigation

In January, PlanetRice found two obscure stories from China that scientists were experimenting on irrigating crops with seawater in vast areas of coastal provinces. We didn't publish the breakthrough news because of difficulties in verifying it.

One January article stated that, "With crossbreeding and genetic manipulation, Chinese scientists have cultivated a group of halophytes capable of living in a saline environment.

"A special species of wheat developed by Professor Xia [Xia Guangmin of Shandong University], for example, reported nearly 400 kilograms of yield per mu [1 hectare equals 15 mu] and tastes exactly the same as wheat grown using fresh water...

"The experiment [with saltwater irrigation] is moving forward smoothly from the Yellow River Delta in east China to the Pearl River Delta in south China, where wheat and rice are growing in abundance.

"Dongying and Binzhou counties, where seawater was first introduced for irrigation, reported an annual increase of millions of kilograms in agricultural output.

Potential benefits

In the January reports, Professor Xia estimated that saltwater-resistant crops could bring 40 million hectares of new land into cultivation--producing 150 million metric tons of agricultural products, about 30% of China's yearly output.

Prof. Xu Zhibin of Zhanjiang Oceanic University said that use of seawater for irrigation could save as much as 300 billion metric tons of fresh water--at 1/30th the cost of converting seawater to fresh water.

Furthermore, studies don't even really support the accusation that global waming and overfishing will kill off biomass in the oceans.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/334605.pdf
http://www.iss-foundation.org/files/e71 ... 283%29.pdf

No offense Denryle, but I think you might be overstating matters a bit in order to make them fit your agenda.

For examples of places that have implemented successful family planning without resorting to 'Orwellian' measures, look to Kerala, India.

The Kwas, you are still stubbornly refusing to see my point here.

http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-Pu/Pop ... rowth.html

Western mortality decline was relatively slow, paralleling socioeconomic development, and it occurred in a global context in which European population "surplus" (arising from gaps between lowering mortality and more slowly lowering fertility) was able to migrate to new areas (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia) that were very sparsely populated by Aboriginal peoples (whose numbers were reduced even more by contagious diseases brought by Europeans).

Mortality decline in less developed cou ... d of time. A classic example is Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where the death rate was halved in less than a decade, starting in the early 1950s. (In the West, a comparable reduction typically took around one century.) In these less developed countries, mortality decreases were not matched by fertility decreases, where they produce population growth rates much greater than those experienced in the West. So the demographic transition that took two centuries to unfold in the West occurred (or is occurring) within the span of a single life. Third, mortality decline did not parallel economic development. Rather, the impetus behind third world mortality reductions originated, for the most part, in factors external to the society.

Decreases in Western mortality occured over an extended time scale. Those in the Third World are taking place at an accelerated pace due to having Western medicine and technology dumped on them all at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (though such developments are bound to induce at least some "growing pain"). In fact, after the Third World has managed to develop some semblence of economic and political stablity (which more often than not results in reduced birth rates anyway, even when not accounting for such measures as birth control), all of those extra people you are complaining about might very well prove to be an economic boon to the Third World (more workers, larger markets, ecta), rather than the albatross you are claiming them to be. This is already the case in China and India.

I don't see any reason to throw a spastastic alarmist hissy fit just because the Third World is doing exactly the same thing that the West did during the Industrial Revolution, only on an accelerated time scale. As I already pointed out (and you apparently saw fit to ignore), population growth in the Third World actually fairly closely parallels the growth seen in the West during the 19th century (albeit on a more substantial scale due to the technological advances made in agriculture and medicine since the 19th century). Your own graph shows this.

I get your point just fine and I'm also perfectly aware of the reasons why the third world has higher pop growth rates so quoting other sources is a waste of both your and my time. I already mentioned the exact same factors.

What you fail to see is the importance of capital dilution and marginal returns to land. These two factors cause population growth to be negatively correlated with growth. Having 'bigger markets, more workers" means abosolutely dickall if you have an equal amount of more mouths to feed. It's not an economic boom from a development perspective, despite the fact it may be a boom from a international power perspective (china being more internationally important due to it's population, despite being poor),

You say that the third world experiance paralles the growth seen in the west, except that it's on a more substantial scale due to technological advances made in medince. That 'except' was my entire fucking point. Growth rates in the developing world are WELL beyond the rate the western world ever experianced even during their peak, and growth rates (much more than overall population) have a direct negative impact on per-capita income growth rates (one of the better measures of development). In the western world, the pop growth rate was relatively (a word you have troubling understanding? Look it up) constant under 1% with it peaking a bit above 1%. In the developing world, a population growth rate just above 1 is considered decent or average rather than an extreme like it was in the western experiance. For many countries, we're talking growth rates in the 3,4,5% ranges. That is a MASSIVE difference if you understand how exponential growth works.

With the possible exception of China (which is ultimately debatable, but I simply don't have the time to do the research required to debate the subject in depth right now), I have yet to see a case where population control should be anything more than a secondary or tertiary concern in Third World nations.

Considering the interdependence of all the variables involved, trying a definite ranking of concerns is relatively naive and impractical. It really depends on what country we're talking about and what existing prioritities exist, and what's the marginal effectiveness of what approach. If we're talking about India, then perhaps capital investment will be a more pressing concern at the margin. However, if we're talking about Nigeria, which has plenty of oil money which can be used for investment, then population control and economic institution quality-control (which is largely impossible for foriegners to influence) are much more important at the margin. If we're talking about a hypothetical country starting at a hypothetical level 0, then they're all roughly equally important.

Ignoring one variables completely in favour of another causes the whole house of cards to fall apart though. Ignoring population growth undermines capital investment and institution building, just as ignoring capital investment undermines population control and economic institution building.

However, considering how cheap it is to put in place family planning policies (unless you aim big like China or certain areas of India), there's no reason why countries shouldn't adopt them right away.

Population control in the way you are talking about the issue is the very definition of a short term solution. Allowing for greater economic development would be a long term answer.

...The Third World should experience similar progress if left to its own devices. The issue we seem to be having is that you apparently feel that the increases in population this would entail would be disasterous, whereas I am of the opinion that said disasterous consequences could be lessened if the progress of economic development were to be pushed along at a greater pace.

It's part of the same coin! Population control is allowing for greater economic development, and vice versa!

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China. Inspite of the fact that most of our aid to Sub-Saharan Africa already goes towards family planning and condoms, population growth is still increasing.


Furthermore, as the source I listed above shows, studies have actually proven a positive connection between foreign aid and increased population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The "lets just throw condoms at them and hope that it evens out" approach simply isn't working.

You're a dimwit. Read your own source and you'll notice that he doesn't regress foriegn aid focused on population control against population growth, but just general foriegn aid on population growth. If you knew anything about economics, you'd know that Malthus could have predicted that result more than a hundred years ago, and it in no way violates what anyone here is saying.

If you want to illustrate that giving condoms away (which is probably the laziest way you can support family planning by the way, and is really a strawman to distract attention away from what real family planning entails) is associated with population growth, you have do a regression with those variables. Otherwise you're either being incompetent or intellectually dishonest.

For examples of places that have implemented successful family planning without resorting to 'Orwellian' measures, look to Kerala, India.

I never said that I opposed such measures, only that they shouldn't be our major focus in the Third World.

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China.

Which I advocate.

How exactly? Spending 15 billion dollars on condoms, abstinence programs, and birth control had no appreciable effect. How are you planning on enforcing such a stringent birth control policy in states which have little to no effective government?

What's the next step? Invading these nations and forcing them to capitulate to our demands by force?

What if that doesn't work? Will we next resort to forced sterilizations and mandatory abortions.

When I asked earlier, "How do you think history will view our actions in the Third World two or three centuries down the road" this is actually pretty close to being the worst case scenario for what I was talking about. I actually think that the phrase, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" may have been explicitly invented for such a policy.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

You say that the third world experiance paralles the growth seen in the west, except that it's on a more substantial scale due to technological advances made in medince. That 'except' was my entire fucking point. Growth rates in the developing world are WELL beyond the rate the western world ever experianced even during their peak, and growth rates (much more than overall population) have a direct negative impact on per-capita income growth rates (one of the better measures of development). In the western world, the pop growth rate was relatively (a word you have troubling understanding? Look it up) constant under 1% with it peaking a bit above 1%. In the developing world, a population growth rate just above 1 is considered decent or average rather than an extreme like it was in the western experiance.

Once again, this is where your arguments start to fall apart for me. Faster population growth is bad...why exactly? You, Denryle, and Stas seem to simply treat this as if it were a given.

Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that having more people results in less per capita income. My real question here is, "so what?"

This has been my point all along. There will be plenty of time for the Third World to focus on bringing up per capita income after they have experienced substantial economic growth. In fact, it might even be easier.

Sure, this might also bring about a temporary increase in population growth in the form of increased birth rates and infant mortality. Once again, however; so what? That is the path the West took during the Industrial Revolution and it is the path India is currently taking (and doing so rather successfully all things considered) whether you or I may like it or not. No one ever said that Industrialization was going to be or even should be a perfectly painless process. In fact, I think it might be more humane in the longrun to simply allow the Third World to take its licks on this issue, so that they eventually can come about and enjoy the benefits which industrialization and modernization bring to a nation's overall standard of living. The process may take longer, but it will ultimately result in a signifcantly more stable, and internationally relevant Third World.

The alternative you are proposing; namely that we hamper the economic growth of third world nations by fostering increases in per capita income through the depression of birth rates without first building up infrastructure or an industrial base simply strikes me as being an absolutely ass backwards way of going about doing things. Furthermore, with the exception of China (which might not even be a valid example given the fact that China has massive international power and Deng actively went about opening and reforming markets to bring about both economic growth and per capita increases in wealth, therefore casting doubt on the idea that population control even was the major impetus for development), this philosophy has been shown to actually work ABSOLUTELY NO WHERE. We have been smothering Sub-Saharan Africa in condoms and population control programs for well over 20 years, and the place is still a poverty stricken humanitarian nightmare due to its lack of political stabiliity, industry, and infrastructure, WITH ridiculously high population growth rates to boot.

Once again, I'm sorry, but the population control centric model of development simply hasn't been satisfactorily shown to actually work in a real world environment. We have nothing to show for decades of such policies.

It's part of the same coin! Population control is allowing for greater economic development, and vice versa!

We have been at this for over 20 years in Sub-Sarahan Africa, and we have seen no such development. In fact, India has pushed through with development IN SPITE of what your model states should have been the case.

The only reason I can even fathom for supporting this lunacy lies in the environmental concerns cited by Denryle. However, are things really quite so bad as he claims?

His primary argument for stopping population growth in the Third World lies in his claim that the global population will continue grow exponentially and peak at or around 12-13 billion within the next 50 years to a century, and that this will ultimately bring the whole world crashing down around our ears. However, not all sources agree with this figure. In fact, the US Census bureau actively disagrees with it.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldgrgraph.php

The world population growth rate rose from about 1.5 percent per year from 1950-51 to a peak of over 2 percent in the early 1960s due to reductions in mortality. Growth rates thereafter started to decline due to rising age at marriage as well as increasing availability and use of effective contraceptive methods. Note that changes in population growth have not always been steady. A dip in the growth rate from1959-1960, for instance, was due to the Great Leap Forward in China. During that time, both natural disasters and decreased agricultural output in the wake of massive social reorganization caused China's death rate to rise sharply and its fertility rate to fall by almost half.

Some sources even predict that we will see a total halt in global population growth by the end of the century, which may even ultimately result in negative growth.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 543a0.html

There has been enormous concern about the consequences of human population growth for the environment and for social and economic development. But this growth is likely to come to an end in the foreseeable future. Improving on earlier methods of probabilistic forecasting1, here we show that there is around an 85 per cent chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the century. There is a 60 per cent probability that the world's population will not exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability that the world's population at the end of the century will be lower than it is today. For different regions, the date and size of the peak population will vary considerably.

Furthermore, what is your basis for claiming that productivity is certain to drop in agriculture over the course of the next century? In fact, technologies are being researched to up agricultural productivity and bring new lands under cultivation every year.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE2/China-S ... gation.htm

Chinese scientists have announced using seawater to successfully irrigate and grow genetically modified crops of tomato, eggplant, and hot pepper on beaches--the world's first ocean-water irrigation, the China Daily reported on June 25.

Rice and rape are the next target crops for the research group at Hainan University, on Hainan Island in southern China.

PlanetRice learned of the breakthrough last January, but did not report it, because we could not verify its authenticity.

The Hainan scientists claim to have transferred genes from plants that can survive a salt-saturated environment into the fresh-water crops, said Lin Qifeng, the project's chief scientist.

Mangrove is probably the salt-tolerant plant in the project, foreign scientists have told PlanetRice.

A panel has approved large-scale promotion of the technology across the country, the China Daily reported.

China has 20% of the world's population, but only 7% of the world's arable land. China's per capita access to fresh water is only about 20% of the world's average. Agriculture accounts for 70% of the nation's water use, and 60% of the cultivated land is short of water.

Some scientists that PlanetRice contacted are skeptical of the seawater irrigation report. Others believe the report, but aren't sure that plants will tolerate salt water for a long period.

The China Daily stated that "biological molecules" of salt-resistant plants were transferred "through a pollen tube" into the susceptible plants.

Dr. Ray Wu, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Cornell University, USA, explained the "pollen tube method," a biotechnology technique developed in China, that was apparently used to transfer foreign DNA into the tomato, eggplant, and pepper.

"During normal fertilization, a pollen tube is formed through which pollen travels to the ovary, or egg," Wu told PlanetRice.

With the pollen tube method, scientists transfer the total DNA from salt-resistant plants such as mangrove through the tube to the ovary, thus producing a transgenic plant.

"But it's not certain that the transgenic plants will be truly stable and useful," Wu said. "The introduction of foreign DNA adds thousands of new genes, so the plants may continue to segregate for many generations.

"But it is possible that some offspring may be stable."

The Hainan group claims that transgenic progeny have survived, irrigated with seawater, for four generations.

Some fertilizer is necessary to grow these crops in seawater, Lin said. The yield and nutritional levels are about the same as normally grown crops.

"The taste is even better," Lin added.

Zhou Guanyu, a biologist who has developed improved varieties for decades, said the Hainan research is of great significance because of the worldwide shortage of fresh water and decrease in cultivated land.

"It's a giant step forward in technological terms," she observed.

The cultivation of salt-resistant crops has been a goal for international biologists for years. Scientists in Japan and the United States are reportedly conducting similar research, but Lin's team is ahead, the China Daily reported.

Saline soils comprise 20% of China's total cultivated land, according to government statistics. Salinity is on the rise, because of inappropriate irrigation systems,

The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture estimates that 13 million hectares of coastal land of China, if cultivated, can produce enough to feed 150 million people.

Yu Dannian, director of the appraisal panel, said the central government will soon promote the technology China-wide.

Earlier reports of seawater irrigation

In January, PlanetRice found two obscure stories from China that scientists were experimenting on irrigating crops with seawater in vast areas of coastal provinces. We didn't publish the breakthrough news because of difficulties in verifying it.

One January article stated that, "With crossbreeding and genetic manipulation, Chinese scientists have cultivated a group of halophytes capable of living in a saline environment.

"A special species of wheat developed by Professor Xia [Xia Guangmin of Shandong University], for example, reported nearly 400 kilograms of yield per mu [1 hectare equals 15 mu] and tastes exactly the same as wheat grown using fresh water...

"The experiment [with saltwater irrigation] is moving forward smoothly from the Yellow River Delta in east China to the Pearl River Delta in south China, where wheat and rice are growing in abundance.

"Dongying and Binzhou counties, where seawater was first introduced for irrigation, reported an annual increase of millions of kilograms in agricultural output.

Potential benefits

In the January reports, Professor Xia estimated that saltwater-resistant crops could bring 40 million hectares of new land into cultivation--producing 150 million metric tons of agricultural products, about 30% of China's yearly output.

Prof. Xu Zhibin of Zhanjiang Oceanic University said that use of seawater for irrigation could save as much as 300 billion metric tons of fresh water--at 1/30th the cost of converting seawater to fresh water.

Furthermore, studies don't even really support the accusation that global waming and overfishing will kill off biomass in the oceans.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/334605.pdf
http://www.iss-foundation.org/files/e71 ... 283%29.pdf

No offense Denryle, but I think you might be overstating matters a bit in order to make them fit your agenda.

For examples of places that have implemented successful family planning without resorting to 'Orwellian' measures, look to Kerala, India.

I never said that I opposed such measures, only that they shouldn't be our major focus in the Third World.

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China.

Which I advocate.

How exactly would you plan on making that work? Spending 15 billion dollars on condoms, abstinence programs, and birth control had no appreciable effect. How are you planning on enforcing such a stringent birth control policy in states which have little to no effective government?

If it doesn't work, what's the next step? Do we invade these nations and force them to capitulate to our demands by force?

What if that doesn't work? Would you support resorting to forced sterilizations and mandatory abortions?

When I asked earlier, "How do you think history will view our actions in the Third World two or three centuries down the road" this is actually pretty close to being the worst case scenario for what I was talking about. I actually think that the phrase, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" may have been explicitly invented for such a policies as you are advocating.

[Simon_Jester]

Once again, this is where your arguments start to fall apart for me. Faster population growth is bad...why exactly? You, Denryle, and Stas seem to simply treat this as if it were a given.

Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that having more people results in less per capita income. My real question here is, "so what?"

This is extremely simple.

If your population doubles, and your nation's per capita wealth and income are constant, you have not experienced development. You are still a nation of peasant farmers; it's just that there are now twice as many peasant farmers.

For example, China has twice the GDP* of Italy, but China has over twenty times more people than Italy. Therefore, there are ten times more goods, ten times more money, floating around in Italy for each Italian to own. This makes Italians much richer and better off than the average Chinese person- the typical Italian lives much like the typical American, and has cool stuff like lots of electric appliances, plenty of leisure time, and maybe their own car. Whereas the average Chinese person works their butt off in a factory or on a small rural farm all day for no more than a few dollars a day, and doesn't have nearly as much cool stuff.

*You know what that is, right? It's a really common word, don't be afraid to look it up if you haven't heard of it.

China is not, in any useful sense of the word, more developed than Italy... even though when you add up all its production, its yearly goods and services add up to twice the value of what Italy produces in a year. Nor would doubling the number of Chinese people change this: individual Chinese people would not suddenly become individually richer, healthier, or happier simply because there were now so many more of them.

Absolute figures do not matter. Relative figures matter. And that's where overpopulation becomes a killer.

Population growth increases a country's absolute productivity, but at best it leaves the per capita productivity and wealth constant. The new peasant farmers do not suddenly become more productive than the old ones, after all.
________

But then you get problems.

The first problem is that when the ratio of children to adults is high (rapid population growth), each adult must spend a large fraction of their labor just feeding and housing those children. If, at any given moment, every woman of childbearing age has three to six children... every woman of childbearing age is desperately busy caring for them all, and will not have time for other things that might improve her future life or strengthen the economy- like going to school.

That reduces the disposable income of the average person in the country: the wealth that can be invested in their future, either by the people themselves, or by the government in the form of taxes that are spent to build roads, schools, and hospitals. If the money is being spent to feed children, it cannot be spent on other things.

The second problem is caused by the first. If money is being spent to feed children, it cannot be spent to, say, send children to school. In the developed world, look at the problems faced by families with several children when all those kids reach college age. Poor countries have the same problems just sending kids to elementary school, let alone high school. Which means that of all the children growing up in the fast-growing country, only a small fraction of them will have an education... which makes it harder for the country to develop itself in the future, because most of its people are illiterate or can't do math.

The third problem is related to the second. The overpopulation problem does not go away when the current crop of children grow up. They become productive adults, yes, though not very productive adults because there wasn't money to send many of them to school. But they will in turn have as many children as their parents had, and problems (1) and (2) will repeat themselves in the next generation.

The fourth problem is related to the first and third: famines and plagues. High population densities promote the spread of disease, and if most people in the country are still farming using old Iron Age methods, there are sharp limits on just how much food a given number of acres can raise. If there are more people living on those acres than the farms can support, then in bad years people will starve. Even if no one starves, diseases will spread faster, becasue more people are living crowded into smaller spaces, and because there was less money to spare for things like sanitation systems.
__________

So to sum it all up:

Overpopulation does not improve the economic condition of the average person in the country; the increased number of workers does nothing for an individual worker. Overpopulation does make it harder for people to work to better themselves or their country because they must spend so much effort raising a large number of kids that they have none to spare for other things. Overpopulation does make it harder for the country to send its children to school or provide medical care for them all. In the future, overpopulation will make the country more vulnerable to famine and disease, and will not go away on its own... until the country manages to improve its economy and provide more wealth and freedom per person. Which will happen in spite of the high population, not because of it.

This has been my point all along. There will be plenty of time for the Third World to focus on bringing up per capita income after they have experienced substantial economic growth. In fact, it might even be easier.

No, there will not and it will not; see above. Having the economy grow in absolute terms without having per capita growth is not "substantial economic growth." It just means that the country now contains more people than it did before, none of whom are any better off than their parents and grandparents were.

If simply increasing the population could help improve a country's economy, the solution to all our problems would be world government, because then we'd all live in one big seven-billion-person country! Would that help? It would not, for obvious reasons... which apply equally well to population growth within a country. Adding one poor person to one poor person does not make two rich people.
________

We have been smothering Sub-Saharan Africa in condoms and population control programs for well over 20 years, and the place is still a poverty stricken humanitarian nightmare due to its lack of political stabiliity, industry, and infrastructure, WITH ridiculously high population growth rates to boot.

Is it not possible that those problems would be worse without the programs? Or do you ignore arguments of that type?

Furthermore, what is your basis for claiming that productivity is certain to drop in agriculture over the course of the next century? In fact, technologies are being researched to up agricultural productivity and bring new lands under cultivation every year.

Yes, but at the same time, old lands already under cultivation are being made sterile every year. Not all farming is sustainable: some techniques amount to strip-mining the land's topsoil or water supply, and when the soil and water are gone they cannot be replaced. It is very possible to farm land so intensively that within a few years or decades you must cut back production whether you like it or not... and in much of the world we're already doing that.

Farm production is not guaranteed to increase any more than it is guaranteed to decrease, but we're in a Red Queen's Race: we need to keep coming up with better and better technology to farm with just to stay in place, let alone to increase production to feed even more people.

No offense Denryle, but I think you might be overstating matters a bit in order to make them fit your agenda.

What makes you think Alyrium has an agenda? How does he actually stand to gain from any of this? Why on Earth would you presume that he does not sincerely believe, based on the available evidence, that this is the only way to make sure the world has a stable, happy future?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

If your population doubles, and your nation's per capita wealth and income are constant, you have not experienced development. You are still a nation of peasant farmers; it's just that there are now twice as many peasant farmers.

For example, China has twice the GDP* of Italy, but China has over twenty times more people than Italy. Therefore, there are ten times more goods, ten times more money, floating around in Italy for each Italian to own. This makes Italians much richer and better off than the average Chinese person- the

You're misunderstanding my point. I never denied this.

You see, this is what I was talking about with "Liberal entitlement" earlier. The Third World shouldn't be looking to develop it wealth per person, but strengthen its economic base. You are going about development backwards from how it played out historically during the industrial revolution.

Frankly, the Third World has no rational reason to expect to be able to pick up its per capita income without first paying its dues where growth, industrialization, and infrastructure are concerned.

China is not, in any useful sense of the word, more developed than Italy... even though when you add up all its production, its yearly goods and services add up to twice the value of what Italy produces in a year.

China is more powerful than Italy, and it is much more productive. Frankly, this is all it needs to be.

You are confusing "living comfortably" with just plain living. Regions like Africa need to forget about the former for the time being and focus on the latter.

The first problem is that when the ratio of children to adults is high (rapid population growth), each adult must spend a large fraction of their labor just feeding and housing those children. If, at any given moment, every woman of childbearing age has three to six children... every woman of childbearing age is desperately busy caring for them all, and will not have time for other things that might improve her future life or strengthen the economy- like going to school.

That reduces the disposable income of the average person in the country: the wealth that can be invested in their future, either by the people themselves, or by the government in the form of taxes that are spent to build roads, schools, and hospitals. If the money is being spent to feed children, it cannot be spent on other things.

The second problem is caused by the first. If money is being spent to feed children, it cannot be spent to, say, send children to school. In the developed world, look at the problems faced by families with several children when all those kids reach college age. Poor countries have the same problems just sending kids to elementary school, let alone high school. Which means that of all the children growing up in the fast-growing country, only a small fraction of them will have an education... which makes it harder for the country to develop itself in the future, because most of its people are illiterate or can't do math.

The third problem is related to the second. The overpopulation problem does not go away when the current crop of children grow up. They become productive adults, yes, though not very productive adults because there wasn't money to send many of them to school. But they will in turn have as many children as their parents had, and problems (1) and (2) will repeat themselves in the next generation.

The fourth problem is related to the first and third: famines and plagues. High population densities promote the spread of disease, and if most people in the country are still farming using old Iron Age methods, there are sharp limits on just how much food a given number of acres can raise. If there are more people living on those acres than the farms can support, then in bad years people will starve. Even if no one starves, diseases will spread faster, becasue more people are living crowded into smaller spaces, and because there was less money to spare for things like sanitation systems.

Once again, I never denied this. I'm simply saying that the Third World needs to focus on fostering its infrastructure and industry before it begins looking towards such matters as individual wealth and education. You can't have an educated middle class without first having schools and the necessary industry and infrastructure to support their material needs. Sending all of the condoms in the world isn't going to change this.

It just means that the country now contains more people than it did before, none of whom are any better off than their parents and grandparents were

Once again, absolute growth results in improved economic stability and productivity, which results in less scarity and better service infrastructure, which results in lower birthrates, which results in increased per capita income.

You have essentially taken the last couple of developments in that sequence and tried to shoehorn them into the beginning of the sequence. I'm sorry, but this simply isn't going to work, and it HASN'T worked so far for precsiely this reason.

Is it not possible that those problems would be worse without the programs? Or do you ignore arguments of that type?

There is a difference between maintaining the status quo and actually taking measures to bring about progress. As far as I can tell, our current policies only do the former.

Yes, but at the same time, old lands already under cultivation are being made sterile every year. Not all farming is sustainable: some techniques amount to strip-mining the land's topsoil or water supply, and when the soil and water are gone they cannot be replaced. It is very possible to farm land so intensively that within a few years or decades you must cut back production whether you like it or not... and in much of the world we're already doing that.

Proof? All the evidence I've seen shows that food production is only increasing.

What makes you think Alyrium has an agenda?

Comments like this perhaps?

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China.

Which I advocate.

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How does he actually stand to gain from any of this?

How did the average Republican benefit from the Iraq war? Sometimes people simply become really, REALLY attached to a certain idea.

[TheKwas]

Once again, this is where your arguments start to fall apart for me. Faster population growth is bad...why exactly? You, Denryle, and Stas seem to simply treat this as if it were a given.

Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that having more people results in less per capita income. My real question here is, "so what?"

This has been my point all along. There will be plenty of time for the Third World to focus on bringing up per capita income after they have experienced substantial economic growth.

Because the stated goal of just about every developing country, and every economist working in developing countries, is development. No matter which definition you choose to define 'development', they are all directly related to per-capita income and living standards.

Most (read: all except maybe china) developing countriesdon't have any interesting in getting in an economic powerstruggle or pissing contest with the US or Europe. They just want a better standard of living.

In fact, it might even be easier.

Why on earth would it be faster? It just means there's more resource depletation once the country actually gets around to industrializing.

In fact, I think it might be more humane in the longrun to simply allow the Third World to take its licks on this issue, so that they eventually can come about and enjoy the benefits which industrialization and modernization bring to a nation's overall standard of living. The process may take longer, but it will ultimately result in a signifcantly more stable, and internationally relevant Third World.

Why would greater population growth cause more industrialization and moderiztion? You're contradicting even your earlier statements now.

The alternative you are proposing; namely that we hamper the economic growth of third world nations by fostering increases in per capita income through the depression of birth rates without first building up infrastructure or an industrial base simply strikes me as being an absolutely ass backwards way of going about doing things.

How does a lower population growth rate hamper building up infrastructure/an industrial base? You don't make a lick of sense.

We have been at this for over 20 years in Sub-Sarahan Africa, and we have seen no such development. In fact, India has pushed through with development IN SPITE of what your model states should have been the case.

...
There is a difference between maintaining the status quo and actually taking measures to bring about progress. As far as I can tell, our current policies only do the former.

Have you ran a regression? No? then shut the fuck up and stop assuming that correlation must equal causation. Simple understanding of economic theory 101 can illustrate that high pop growth is bad for development.

'As far as you can tell' obviously isn't any meaningful measure.

I never said that I opposed such measures, only that they shouldn't be our major focus in the Third World.

Our focus should depend totally on the situation of the individual country. Any approach needs to be multipronged, but here you've said that higher pop growth is GOOD and population control HAMPERS economic development. Make up your mind.

You are confusing "living comfortably" with just plain living. Regions like Africa need to forget about the former for the time being and focus on the latter.

Why on earth would you concentrate on the latter when you can concentrate on the former?

Once again, absolute growth results in improved economic stability and productivity, which results in less scarity and better service infrastructure, which results in lower birthrates, which results in increased per capita income.

My god you're braindead. No it doesn't, if that growth is spread out among more people. By this logic, India should be much more stable and productive than Taiwan with much lower population growth rates, since it has a GDP 5 times larger than Taiwan.



Lets start with the basics: Do you or do you not agree that a drop in birth rates would increase the growth rate of per-capita income?

Do you agree that per-capita income is roughly a good measure of development?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Because the stated goal of just about every developing country, and every economist working in developing countries, is development.

And I'm saying that this is exactly why they have been failing so miserably so far. Every Third World country to effectively industrialize so far has looked to growth, industry, and infrastructure first, and per capita development second.

Why on earth would it be faster? It just means there's more resource depletation once the country actually gets around to industrializing.

They would have a more solid base up off of for one thing. It might take longer to actually reach the point where such development is possible, however; they would have a better chance of actually reaching that point to begin with.

Why would greater population growth cause more industrialization and moderiztion? You're contradicting even your earlier statements now.

You misunderstood. Denryle said that growth and industrialization cause a spike in birth rates, and that they should be avoided in the Third World for that reason.

I'm saying that this is a risk the Third World simply has to take if they are going to get anywhere. What we are doing now...I'm sorry, but it simply isn't working.

How does a lower population growth rate hamper building up infrastructure/an industrial base?

Once again, there's nothing wrong with lower birth rates. However, they aren't going to accomplish dick by themselves. A poor country with fewer people is just that, a poor country with fewer people.

Have you ran a regression? No? then shut the fuck up and stop assuming that correlation must equal causation.

Dude...LOOK AROUND YOU. Its 20 years later, and Africa is still underdeveloped and poor as shit, and it still has booming birth rates in spite of all of your (and other economists') talk about "population control."

To put it bluntly, "something's gotta give."

Why on earth would you concentrate on the latter when you can concentrate on the former?

Because the former isn't even a remote possibility when you are struggling to even meet the latter. Once again, this isn't difficult stuff here.

We are wasting our time.

My god you're braindead. No it doesn't,

Yes it most certainly does, and it did historically during the Industrial Revolution.

[TheKwas]

Because the stated goal of just about every developing country, and every economist working in developing countries, is development.

And I'm saying that this is exactly why they have been failing so miserably so far. Every Third World country to effectively industrialize so far has looked to growth, industry, and infrastructure first, and per capita development second.

Japan has failed so miserably because it's focus was on development?
Are you even reading my posts anymore? Every country that has developed, developed because they put emphasis on developing. I didn't even mention population control in that part of my post.

They would have a more solid base up off of for one thing. It might take longer to actually reach the point where such development is possible, however; they would have a better chance of actually reaching that point to begin with.

Explain how it has a more solid base and what that means. How would a country like Nigeria have a more 'solid' base if it's population growth was higher?

Despite what some may think, economics isn't a field where you can use vague words with vague meanins and expect to be taken seriously.

You misunderstood. Denryle said that growth and industrialization cause a spike in birth rates, and that they should be avoided in the Third World for that reason.

Denryle said that growth and industrialization should be avoided? Where?

Once again, there's nothing wrong with lower birth rates. However, they aren't going to accomplish dick by themselves. A poor country with fewer people is just that, a poor country with fewer people.

Of course not, no one is advocating pop control by itself. But it's an important piece of the puzzle which you continue to ignore.

Absolute economic growth also doesn't accomplish dick if pop growth occurs even faster. All you have is a bigger but even more poor country.

Dude...LOOK AROUND YOU. Its 20 years later, and Africa is still underdeveloped and poor as shit, and it still has booming birth rates in spite of all of your (and other economists') talk about "population control."

To put it bluntly, "something's gotta give."

Have you ever noticed that potatoes tend to grow mostly in cooler climates? Obviously potatoes cause cold climates.

Until you actually provide evidence that pop control is contributing to underdevelopment, you're proving nothing except how stupid you are.

Because the former isn't even a remote possibility when you are struggling to even meet the latter. Once again, this isn't difficult stuff here.

We are wasting our time.

You realize that "living" is a subset of "living comfortably", yes?

Yes it most certainly does, and it did historically during the Industrial Revolution.

The industrial revolution had absolute growth grow faster than pop growth. That's per capita income growth. Absolute growth doesn't mean anything unless it's coupled with per capita income growth.

See again the part of the post you blantantly ignored comparing India and Taiwan.