Contraception: Why Not? (part 2)

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.

Slide: Babies: Blessings or Burdens?

We now live in a culture in which we no longer know whether babies are blessings or burdens.  The population control people are adamant that there are too many children in this world.  They point at a pregnant woman in the Third World and say “That is the problem; they will consume all of the world’s resources.  We need to deal with them before it is too late.”  One the other hand, the pro-freedom people say, “Those are future problem-solvers, they can produce more than they can consume.  We need to help them reach their full potential before it’s too late.”

Until 9/11, when the World Trade Towers collapsed, people believed the worst problem in the world was over-population.  Your children are being taught from kindergarten through college that there are simply too many people on the face of the earth.  Every baby is treated as though it’s a little environmental hazard, someone who’s going to “take a bite of my piece of the pie.”  Some children think that they are one of those too many people on the face of the earth.  I read about one little girl, nine years old, who came home and threw out all of her dolls.  Her mother asked her: “Why are you doing that?” She replied: “Because there are too many people on the face of the earth.  I’m never going to be a mother.”  She got the message: she’s been taught that it is irresponsible to have children.

Slide: World Population

I’m going to give you a quick explanation why people think there is an over-population problem and why there is good reason to doubt whether that is true.  Around the year 1750, there were about slightly more than a half a billion people in the world.  By 1950, there were 2 billion people.  So, between 1950 and the year 2000, the world’s population tripled.  It went from 2 billion to 6 billion.  So in a short 50-year period, the world’s population tripled, where it had taken about 200 years to do that before.  The population controllers would have us believe that the world’s population is going to continue to triple every 50 years.  But they couldn’t be more wrong.  If the world’s population were to double between the year 2000, when it was six billion people, by the year 2050 it should reach 18 billion people.  Data from the UN tells us it is only going to hit about 9 billion or 9.5 billion by the year 2050.  If it had reached 18 billion by the year 2050, by the year 2100 we would expect there to be 54 billion people on the face of the earth.  But UN data tells us that there will only be slightly more than 10 billion people by the year 2100.  If we had reached 54 billion in the year 2100 and the population tripled again in 50 years, by the year 2150 it would be at 162 billion people.  The UN tells us the world’s population is barely going to be more than 10 billion people by the year 2150.

So we have two questions here.  First: why did the world’s population triple between the years 1950 and the year 2000?  Second: why did it virtually level off?  The major reason for the huge increase of population between 1950 and 2000, for its tripling, is largely the availability of better health care.  Because of better hygiene, vaccines, better medical care, and antibiotics, fewer babies die in infancy and more people live longer.  If a lot of babies die in the first year of life, the population is not going to be very large.  As people live longer, the world population gets larger.  In countries such as Pakistan, the average lifespan doubled during that period.  If the average lifespan doubles, the population doubles. So the major reason for the huge population increase, surprisingly, was not that people were having more babies.  As a matter of fact, the fertility rate has been going down all over the world for many, many decades. Why?  Again, it’s not that people are having more babies; it has to do with the fact that these babies are living longer.

Second question:  Why does the world’s population level off?  In more developed countries around the year 2000, population started leveling off and even began declining.  About 10 years ago, the UN held, for the first time, simultaneous conferences on what to do about overpopulation and what to do about declining population.  Declining population is a major problem. It is in the news regularly.  About 10 years ago it was a well-kept secret, but now it is headline material that Western Europe and  countries such as Japan are simply not reproducing themselves.  A country needs about 2.2 children per family to reproduce its population.  Most of Europe is under 1.4 children per family.  For instance, Italy in the year 2000 had 57 million people.  Unless Italians radically change their reproductive practices, the population of Italy in the year 2050 will be 41 million people, down 16 million people.  They will lose about a quarter or more of their population.  We now have a world in which countries are not reproducing themselves.

As you know, there are many places now that have an aging population.  Thus, it is going to be very difficult to provide for social security, retirement, etc. because we don’t have children coming up whose wages will support the social security system.

That fact is populations tend to level off as a country becomes more industrialized. As a country industrializes, it needs a more educated populous.  A more educated populous means people must stay in school longer.  When people stay in school longer, they get married later.  When they get married later, they have fewer children.  In agricultural cultures, often girls marry and start having children at 14, 16, 18.  They may have a lot of babies by the time their fertility runs out.  The average age of marriage in the United States is 27 years of age.  Many women don’t start their childbearing until after 30.  Women are less fertile after 30. Moreover, in industrialized countries, people want fewer children since they live in urban areas, sometimes in small apartments.  They hope to provide a college education for their children and the expense leads them to have fewer children.

Certainly contraception and abortion have contributed to both the control and the decline of population.  In fact, up until about 1993, in all of the UN conferences concerning what to do about overpopulation, the major proposal was to help countries industrialize because as they industrialize, again, they need a more educated populous.    Now the world seems to think that contraception, and sometimes even just the condom, is going to solve all of the world’s problems.  Too few people know about natural family planning that can assist families in limiting their family size when necessary. Moreover, natural family planning costs nothing and is perfectly healthy.  Imagine all the good things we could do with all the money spent for contraception!

I went to Zimbabwe, one of the poorest nations on the face of the earth, a few years ago and I found myself apologizing to the people there.  They’re dying right, left, and center in Zimbabwe from AIDS and also now from starvation.  In my talks, I said I don’t know why it is that I come from a country that thinks that you can fill in sentences this way:   “There are all these hungry people in this world…what they need is … a condom.”  “There are all these sick people in the world…what they need is …a condom.”  “There are all these jobless and homeless people in the world…what they need is …a condom.”  You know what, there’s another way of filling in those sentences.  “There are all these hungry people in the world…what they need is … food.”  “There are all these sick people in the world…what they need is …health care.”  “There are all these jobless and homeless people in the world…what they need are…jobs and homes.”  But the UN has now said that it will not give any kind of aid to Third world countries, no health care, no education, no financial incentive for industrialization, unless they have aggressive population control programs.  The women I met in Zimbabwe were not so concerned to have fewer children.  They wanted to have healthy and educated children.  I believe we are imposing our view on the rest of the world that the best way for them to deal with their problems is to have fewer children rather than to help them have healthier children.

Slide: Total Fertility Rate

It is easy to see that the total fertility rate in the world has been going down.  This chart shows that from 1950 to 1955, the total fertility rate – number of children per family worldwide– was 5.  By the year 2005, the number of children per family was about 2.7, a little bit above replacement rate.  By about the year 2030 or so, the Total Fertility Rate will be below replacement rate.  We need 2.1 to 2.2 children per family to replace the population. Current studies show that by the year 2050, the world will be below replacement rate without question.  We will not be replacing the number of people who are already on the globe.

You might ask: How many people can the world sustain?  Obviously there must be a limit to the number of people that the world’s resources can sustain.  A couple of years ago I was in Australia and I spoke with a group of scientists who were working on exactly that problem.  They said that their studies were totally inconclusive.  In the history of mankind the food supply and the energy supply have always out- stripped the population increase.  As long as we’ve been keeping records to show how much food we have per capita, how much energy we have per person available to us, these records show that we have more now than we ever had.  Mankind keeps finding new resources for energy and for food.  In fact, the United States could feed the whole world.  We pay farmers not to farm.  So when people say we’re running out of resources, ask them for their evidence.

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