by Rob Dietz
To be fair, population growth is a tricky topic, and population stabilization efforts have a sordid history, including compulsory abortions and forced sterilizations. With that backdrop, it’s important to recognize that hidden in population numbers are real people—mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Focusing solely on the numbers obscures the faces and personalities. Bobby ceases to be Bobby; instead, he becomes just the 200-millionth American.
Viewing population stabilization through a humanistic lens raises issues that need to be considered in any discussions of future policy. Marq de Villiers, an award-winning Canadian writer, embraces this humanistic perspective and raises questions about how we can arrive at the “right” number of people without being coercive.19 Failure to contemplate such questions—failure to put a human face on our numbers—could lead to the development of immoral policies. To sidestep such an unwelcome possibility, we need to keep the social consequences of population policies firmly in mind as we attempt to stabilize the number of people on the planet.
WHAT COULD WE DO INSTEAD?
Many people, pundits, and politicians are content to take a wait-and-see approach to population growth. Most agree that stabilizing population is a worthy goal, but at the same time, they are relying on some sort of “natural” path to stability. It’s easy to dodge the issue or hope the problem will take care of itself, but doing nothing, in light of evidence that we are already transgressing important environmental limits, may be the riskiest course.
Taking action is a more prudent approach, and there’s a simple strategy that all nations can put into practice together—providing education about family planning and ensuring access to condoms and other contraceptives. Globally, roughly 80 million unintentional pregnancies occur each year. By coincidence, 80 million is also about the size of annual global population growth.20 Widespread knowledge of contraceptives and more ease in obtaining them could significantly decrease the number of unplanned pregnancies and go a long way toward stabilizing global population. The high potential of this strategy explains why the Center for Biological Diversity, which recognizes the link between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, runs a project to distribute condoms.
Distribution of condoms can help avoid unwanted pregnancies, but there’s a lot more work to do to reach population stability. Appropriate policies for any given nation depend on where its population increase is coming from: domestic births or immigration. Some nations with growing populations have high fertility rates and low—or negative—immigration rates. These tend to be low-income nations like Uganda and Mali. Other countries have low fertility rates and high immigration rates. These tend to be high-income nations like the United States and the United Kingdom (Table 6.1).21 There are exceptions to this categorization, but generally we can declare two policy tracks, one for low-income, high-fertility countries and another for high-income, low-fertility countries.
TABLE 6.1. ESTIMATES OF INCOME, TOTAL FERTILITY RATES, AND IMMIGRATION RATES FOR SELECTED NATIONS IN 2011
Stabilizing Population in Low-Income, High-Fertility Nations
China introduced its one-child-per-family policy in 1980. Although the policy succeeded in slowing population growth, it is viewed mostly in a negative light for three main reasons. First, it has placed substantial constraints on personal freedom. Second, although taxes and propaganda have been the preferred ways of enforcing the policy, there have been cases of forced sterilizations and abortions. Third, the policy has produced an unforeseen demographic imbalance—the cultural preference for boys has skewed China’s gender ratio, since many couples went out of their way to make sure that their one child was a boy. China now has perhaps 30 million single men called guang gun (bare branches).22
With the bad taste of China’s one-child policy still lingering, demographers and activists have almost unanimously settled on a less coercive way to decrease fertility rates: the empowerment of women. Such empowerment requires that women have the same rights and opportunities as men. It also requires that girls have access to education. Girls who go to school and obtain an education tend to grow up to be mothers of fewer children.23 The economist Jeffrey Sachs lists four reasons:
• Girls in school are likely to postpone marriage and child rearing.
• When girls learn about sex, contraception, reproductive health, and the trade-offs associated with having lots of children, they are more likely to aim for having smaller families.
• Having an education can empower a young woman to be a stronger negotiator with her spouse about family size and child rearing.
• Having an education can help a young woman develop a career, something that often leads her to desire a smaller family.24
The strategy of educating girls has benefits beyond reducing fertility rates; it also has the potential to help alleviate poverty—a true win-win for societies with high birth rates and low incomes. The challenge is to make sure families are able to send their daughters to school. This challenge requires a society to prioritize education and come up with the financial resources to pay for it. Education, often hailed as a key to growing the economy, is actually a key to stabilizing population and setting the stage for a transition to a steady-state economy. The high-income nations, whose fate is connected to the low-income ones, have a role to play in supporting education around the globe, but they also need to attend to population issues within their own borders.
Stabilizing Population in High-Income, Low-Fertility Nations
Roger Martin is a former U.K. diplomat. In that role, he participated in many negotiations to protect the environment. The more he examined environmental problems, the more he came to understand that most of them could trace their roots to there simply being too many people. Realizing that continuing population growth in the United Kingdom was undermining efforts to achieve a sustainable society, he decided to accept a position as chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (now Population Matters). In this capacity, Martin has made a number of recommendations for stabilizing population in the United Kingdom—recommendations that apply equally well to other wealthy nations.
One of his main recommendations is to raise the profile of sustainable population as a topic on the government’s agenda. To accomplish that, he suggests appointing a high-ranking, inter-departmental official whose job description includes two main duties: (1) helping government agencies assess how their policies affect population growth, and (2) recommending a range of population stabilization measures. Among such measures, Martin especially supports incentives to keep family size to two children or fewer. But another of his policy recommendations—the most important one for a nation with the United Kingdom’s demographics—is to change immigration policy to achieve equal levels of immigration and emigration. Striking such a balance would require decreasing the number of people admitted through immigration.
On the other side of the Atlantic, famous lines from a sonnet inside the Statue of Liberty read:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!25
Lady Liberty has been conveying this unofficial U.S. immigration policy since 1886 when she settled on her island near the tip of Manhattan. But in 1921, when waves of immigrants were making their way past her gaze to the entrance station at Ellis Island, Congress added some rules limiting the size of the huddled masses. Nowadays, the United States places strict limits on immigration, but its policies retain much of the humanitarian spirit of Lady Liberty’s pronouncement. According to the Congressional Budget Office, U.S. immigration policy has four goals:
1. Admit workers with desired skills to fill job openings.
2. Reunite families by admitting immigrants who have relatives in the United States.
3. Provide refuge for people at risk of political, racial, or religious persecution.
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br /> 4. Ensure diversity by admitting people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.26
These goals divide immigrants into three categories: (1) workers, (2) relatives, and (3) refugees (immigrants admitted under the fourth goal fall into one of these three categories). Other wealthy nations, like Canada, also apply similar categories.27 Any plan to reduce the number of immigrants forces a decision about which categories of immigrants to reduce. We can’t maintain the humanitarian spirit of immigration policy if we prevent families from reuniting or turn away refugees. That leaves workers as the primary category for cuts, but such cuts, it turns out, can actually strengthen the humanitarian nature of immigration policy.
The United States and other wealthy countries are recruiting immigrant workers, especially highly educated and skilled workers, for the purpose of spurring economic growth. This practice creates a “brain drain,” in which the top talent in developing nations is lured away.28 The practice is inappropriate for wealthy nations needing to make the transition to a steady-state economy—not only are they increasing their populations in the name of economic growth, but they’re doing so at the expense of poorer countries. The home nations of these talented immigrants are often the very places that need their skills the most. Instead of recruiting educated and entrepreneurial people from abroad, wealthy nations should cultivate talent at home and encourage nations abroad to retain their most capable workers. This change would serve the humanitarian purpose of alleviating the conditions that induce emigration in the first place.
Immigration reform is necessary to stabilize populations in wealthy nations and around the globe, but it’s a sensitive subject. So is the development of policies aimed at reducing birth rates. Think of the controversies and ideological battles swirling around family planning, contraception, immigration, and reproductive rights. That’s why any policies in this area must be founded upon the principles of compassion and noncoercion—not just from an ethical standpoint, but also from a practical one. Without these two principles, proposed population policies will likely be rejected, and rightfully so. Compassion is necessary to avoid past mistakes and to establish policies beneficial to people of all nations. Noncoercion is necessary to put aside fears about trampling people’s rights. After all, what impinges on our freedom more—non-coercive policies designed to limit family size, or the inevitable exhaustion of resources that will come from continued population growth? The answer is clear, but even compassionate, noncoercive population-stabilization policies will be a nonstarter unless we can open space for civil discussion.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
If starting an intelligent conversation is the first step toward gaining traction on population policies, then we’re fortunate to have a role model who can show us how to get the conversation going. Despite the gray in his hair, Bill Ryerson projects youthful energy. He’s quick on his feet and can recall population statistics from an impressive reservoir of knowledge. His job title is founder and president of the Population Media Center (PMC), a nonprofit organization concerned about overpopulation. But really Ryerson’s job title should be “soap opera producer.”
PMC’s soap operas are different from the standard fare—yes, there are plenty of melodramatic conflicts and betrayals, but their purpose is to help people consider and talk about reproductive options, which, in turn, helps them make healthy decisions about family size. The soap operas, broadcast in both TV and radio formats, might seem like an unscientific way to influence behaviors related to sex and family planning. But in reality, the storytelling framework stems from peer-reviewed research, and PMC statistically analyzes the results of each soap opera to assess how well the message is being received.
The process starts with customized plotlines and characters to reflect a targeted audience. The serial dramas are entertaining (some of PMC’s programs have topped the ratings), but the real intent is to provide role models. Albert Bandura, a widely cited psychologist, has demonstrated that mass-media role models can be powerful teachers of attitudes and behavior.29 As the characters in PMC’s soap operas deal with the consequences of their decisions regarding sex—exposure to sexually transmitted disease, treatment of wives and daughters, and pregnancy—the audience gets to live vicariously and absorb some take-home lessons. Audiences cringe as “bad-guy” characters make dubious decisions and their lives spiral out of control. But the truly influential characters are those who overcome obstacles and uncertainties to make positive changes in their lives.30
Some of the plots are heartwarming, but not nearly as heartwarming as the results. For example, PMC broadcast 257 episodes of the radio drama Yeken Kignit (Looking over One’s Daily Life) in Ethiopia between 2002 and 2004. An independent study, which surveyed both listeners and non-listeners before and after the program aired, found:
• Nearly half of Ethiopia’s population tuned into Yeken Kignit regularly.
• The fertility rate fell from 5.4 to 4.3 children per woman.
• Demand for contraceptives increased by 157 percent.
• Listeners were five times more likely than non-listeners to know three or more methods of family planning.
• There was a 50 percent increase in communication between mothers and their children about sexuality issues.31
PMC’s TV and radio projects provide an artistic way to get the conversation started. Another encouraging way has been demonstrated by the Global Population Speak Out. Organizers of the Speak Out recruit participants who are asked simply to fulfill a promise to deliver a public presentation on population issues. Up and running for only a few years, the Speak Out program has been active in fifty nations on six continents. The theme of reaching a global population of 7 billion dominated the Speak Out in 2011.32
There’s that unfathomably large number again—7 billion. With 7 billion of us on the planet, the passing of the torch from the 200- to the 300-millionth American seems like a nonevent. In fact, news articles about it took a human-interest angle, with whimsical titles like “Time to Move Over, Mr. 200 Millionth.”33 Few questioned the environmental or social sustainability of adding 100 million more people to the U.S. population. But the reality is that it was a major event, and world population growth to 7 billion is a mind-blowing event. Unprecedented numbers of people are using unprecedented quantities of resources. If we want to achieve a sustainable economy, conserve some natural ecosystems on this finite planet, and give people—including those not yet born—a fair piece of the pie, we need to stabilize our numbers.
[ CHAPTER 7 ]
ENOUGH INEQUALITY
Distributing Income and Wealth
Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me with greater force than the equality of conditions. I easily perceived the enormous influence that this primary fact exercises on the workings of the society.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1835)1
WHAT ARE WE DOING?
In 1897 two tremendously influential artists were born in the American South. One lived a life of poverty, died in his forties among the ashes of his burned-down house, and remained anonymous until years after his death. The other lived into his mid-sixties, garnered international fame, and accumulated plenty of money and prestigious awards.
If you have a name like Blind Willie Johnson, then you just might be a blues musician. In the life stories of blues artists, it’s hard to separate myth from fact, but according to a mishmash of sources, Johnson was raised by his father and stepmother, both of whom had a mean streak. When Johnson was seven years old, his father beat his stepmother when he caught her with another man. In a ghastly moment of revenge, she picked up a handful of lye and threw it into the face of her attacker’s son.2 Blind as a result of this violent act, Johnson turned to religion and gospel music. He went on to preach and perform on street corners. He played a soulful slide guitar while singing with a gravelly bass voice “that could grind glass.”3 He caught the attention
of Columbia Records and recorded a set of songs between 1927 and 1930. Despite his musical talents, he lived his whole life in poverty. When his home burned down in 1945, he had nowhere else to go, so he remained among the ruins. In the open air, he fell ill and died.4
The details of Johnson’s life stand in stark contrast to what happened after it. Is there another musician whose obscurity blossomed into such far-reaching influence? Musical acts such as Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Grateful Dead, Beck, and the White Stripes have commended his work and covered his songs. But the pinnacle of his posthumous career is the inclusion of his song “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” on the Voyager satellites’ Golden Records. The emotive force of Blind Willie Johnson’s music is hurtling through space on its way to distant star systems.
Johnson’s contemporary and fellow Southerner, William Faulkner, lived a different sort of life. He was born into a well-to-do family in Mississippi, and he received a good education. While Johnson was recording his songs, Faulkner was writing his novels, including The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930). In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel,”5 and he also collected a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 and a second one in 1962, the year of his death. His passing was widely reported in the media, including coverage of his funeral by the novelist William Styron in Life magazine.6
