Everywhere in the world, in every kind of culture, the poorest people have the most children. Does having many children make people poor? Or does being poor make people have many children?
That is a hot question in the continuous struggle over how to spend foreign aid money. Those who think population growth causes poverty advocate programs in family planning and population education. Those who think poverty causes population growth favor direct economic aid, jobs, capital investment. Take care of development, they say, and the birth rate will take care of itself.
Advocates of both sides have come to the village of Manupur in the province of Punjab in north India to prove themselves right.
There is nothing special about Manupur. It is a typical Indian village, with a population in 1950 of about 1200, mostly farmers. Its people are not well off, though their lives are slowly improving. New seeds, fertilizers, and credit systems have caused wheat yields to quadruple since 1950.
In 1953 a team from the Harvard School of Public Health came to Manupur to try out one of the world's first family planning programs. They visited all homes regularly, took a census, registered all births and deaths. They also instructed people about modern methods of birth control and handed out free contraceptives.
The Harvard team expected that the birth rate would fall. The Punjabis were rural, poor and uneducated. They had an average of seven children per family. Many young people migrated to the city to find jobs; the ones who stayed inherited smaller and smaller plots of land. Surely if families knew how to prevent having so many children, they would have fewer.
The people of Manupur politely accepted the contraceptive foams and jellies. At the beginning of the Harvard study their birth rate was about 40 babies per 1000 people per year. Six years later the birth rate had gone down a little, to 37.7. But the birth rate had also gone down all over the Punjab, even where there were no family planning programs.
The Harvard researchers concluded that the villagers were not so ignorant after all. Family size had always been controlled with crude methods such as abstinence and self-induced abortion. Increasing prosperity caused people to want smaller families, because there was less need for children to work in the fields or support parents in their old age. Once that happened, birth rates went down. Modern contraceptives helped them go down more easily and quickly.
They thought that rich women kept contraception a secret. Wardell included that women in poverty had to work longer hours to support their numerous children. Wardell’s article involved a survey that stated that the number of the child deaths grew exponentially in those times, because there was little to no contraception available for women living in poverty. Therefore, less fortunate women were more vocal about their need for birth control, when Sanger went to trail, ninety-seven per cent of the public favored Sanger’s views – a great support for Wardell’s article’s argument
Since the sixteenth century, one of the most important roles of mothers, or women in general, was to have children. Although most women accepted this role and believed it was their duty to have children, not every woman was pleased with this seemingly confining role. Within the confines of this role there were also many misconceptions. At the time, most people believed that although male involvement was necessary for the conception of children, women controlled many aspects of the child, including the sex of the child. While it was a common belief that women controlled certain aspects of pregnancy, women really had no control over when and if they got pregnant. Prior to the eighteenth century there was really no indication of widespread use of birth control methods. Without reliable birth control, women would often become a mother within their first year of marriage and continue to have children every couple of years until menopause. Although women during this time period experienced high birth rates, they often did not end up raising nearly as many children as they gave birth to, since the infant mortality rate and death rate were very high. With such a high death rate, birth control was not as necessary as it would be in a more modern...
Many scientist and specifically sociologists are concerned with the population on planet Earth. Many couples today are choosing not to have children. This choice does not just effect the couples personally, however it effects the whole country's demographic. The increase in childlessness among couples generates economic and social problems. Many countries are facing this problem. Hara in a journal article mentions that Japan and Germany are a couple of the countries that are going through childlessness (Hara, 2008).Today, more than 80 countries depend on immigration to prevent the populations from declining, due to the death rate being higher than birth rate. (Becker-Posner, 2013) How will declining birth rates affect demographics in many countries around the world? How will it affect the Global economy? How will it affect societies in different countries; will it raise social and racial tensions? Will it affect relations
For thousands of years, people have used various birth control methods to limit the number of children in their families. Birth control encompasses a wide range of devices along with rational and irrational methods that have been used in an attempt to prevent pregnancy. It has been and remains controversial. Today, birth control is an essential part of life. In fact, 99% American women of childbearing age report using some form of contraception at one time or another (NIBH). In his book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, author Jonathan Eig writes "For as long as men and women have been making babies, they 've been trying not to” (Gibson). He reports that early contraceptive options offered
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In their book "The Population Explosion", Paul and Anne Ehrlich explain the problem of overpopulation could be solved with no change in the number of people, but by advencements of industrial production and changes in consumption, however difficult it might be (Avilés). According to the US Census Bureau, a total of 83 countries and territories are now thought to encounter below-replacement fertility (Eberstadt). Below-replacement fertility primarily means that the rate of people being born is less than the rate of people dying. Those places have nearly 2.7 billion people that are about 37% of the world population (Eberstadt). Global population growth is predicted to decelerate over the next generation. In fact, slightly fewer people will be born around the globe in the year 2025 than at any point over the last four decades (Eberstadt). A quantity-quality of correlation was discovered by Willis and Becker Lewis in 1973 discussing how the quantity and quality of children is related (Shah). They explained how the marginal cost of a child is higher the greater the cost is per child (Shah). On the other hand, the marginal cost of child quality is higher the more children there are. This pertains to why most poverty-stricken people who live in developed countries have much higher birth rates than higher-income people in more western countries because the impoverished parents tend to lean toward the quantity approach (Shah). Figure 2 demonstrates the quantity-quality tradeoff curve. The curve illustrates how as quantity increases past the maximum utility curve, the quality quickly decreases. This means when the people of developing countries begin to have increases in income, the quantity of children should decrease and birth rates should
The first factor that affects the human population is Fertility, i.e., number of children born. (Brain, 2013, page100).In 1951, the sex ratio of India (number of males per 100 females) was estimated to be 105 to 108 due to the male favoured society at birth and high female feticide. The sex ratio increases to a faster rate for urban areas than rural areas. (Sanyal S.K., 1985, page1130). Fertility varies from socioeconomic groups, more educated are supposed to have less children, thus, less urban population of rural areas than urban areas and it also varies by religion, in India there is an evidence that there is high fertility rate among Muslims than any other major religion. However, fertility differentials occur to the account of differences
The Indian Family Planning Program, initiated in 1952, was a sign of the desire of Indian leadership to develop the nation and take the steps necessary to do so. The program has evolved throughout the years, meeting varied success; however, in the year 2000 one aspect of the program has become blatantly clear – it has not succeeded in slowing India’s rapid population growth to a population replacement level. One of the major reasons India has failed to reach the replacement rate is because of a family planning program that emphasized sterilization as the main method of contraception and de-emphasized temporary methods. The services provided by the program were of poor quality. If the Indian government can even hope to reach its ultimate total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 in all of its states and provinces, it must shift its policy from the emphasis on sterilization as the main method of birth con...
Many Indians supported Britain and the war effort at the start of the war in 1914 could
Family planning activity started in 1949 and was actively carried out by the board in 1966 (Chen, 1977). The 70s ‘Stop at two!’ policies were made to facilitate better planning of families, a matter of national importance. Abortions and sterilizations were legalized here.
The birth rate also varies between traditional and modern societies. Women in traditional societies gave birth to many children, because many children made light work. The more children a family had the more hands they had for their chores. Parents in traditional societies have high expectations for their children and delegate many duties. Children in modern societies have a much simpler life. The average child today spends hours watching television and playing video games rather then tending to chores or helping their parents. People of modern societies have less children which is proven through the recorded low birth rates. It is very expensive to raise a child in a modern society; therefore, m...
Sharif, Mohammed. Poverty Reduction- An Effective Means of Population Control. Rhode Island, USA: Ashgate, 2007.
A consequence of uncontrolled population growth drains resources that could be otherwise used to build a sound economy based on education. It has been observed that the population growth is high in countries which also have many health and economic problems. Take for example many African countries such as Rwanda, t...
Many people are needed to reap a field when the crops are ready. Therefore, many children must be born. The birth rates in third world cultures are very high as a result. Males are obviously preferred. Because of the...
...he second way to attempt to decrease the population is through increased active family planning programs. Especially in poor countries, it is a lot harder for women just to jump into the work force, and even harder for a poor country to become industrialized. For example, in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, birth rates have decreased from seven children per family to only 5.5. This is largely because forty percent of Bangladesh's woman now take part in some form of family planning.