Politics

Author: Richard R. Tryon and others

Myths behind the Overpopulation Theory
by Alfonso Agulilar-Sartori

Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington, D.C.

Many people accept as fact that overpopulation is the primary reason for the poverty which afflicts many developing nations as well as the pockets of poverty that exist in more developed countries. With an elitist tone, they berate such people for reproducing “like rabbits.” What a comparison! It seems that a few self proclaimed experts have acquired scientific wisdom from their studies, which enables them to identify population levels as the root cause of world poverty. I think they are mistaken. Furthermore, I think that science and statistics prove them wrong.
The truth is that overpopulation is little more than a myth supported by the vast economic interests of pharmaceutical companies that produce every type of contraceptive, by developed countries who fear that developing countries could become their political and economic competitors, and by international organizations and their local subsidiaries, like the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, the Ford Foundation and others, which have been influenced by the governments of developed nations and their “creative” economists or by the agenda of anti-life groups that seek to undermine the very fabric of society to legitimize all kinds of aberrations.
Let us set the record straight It has been scientifically proven that there is no correlation between population growth rates and low economic growth. Renowned economist and Nobel prize winner Simon Kuznets was the first to demonstrate this. Other studies have supported this conclusion Ronald Lee, in his review of documentation for the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population noted in 1983 that “dozens of studies, beginning with that of Kuznets, have found no relation between population growth rates and the rate of growth in per capita income. These studies point to other factors in varving degrees such as trade, financial and technical assistance, and investment.”
Although there exists no link between population and economic growth, scientific research does show a relation between population density and economic growth. According to Danish economist Ester Bosoerup, population should grow above a minimum level before economic development can take place. It has been demonstrated that the United States, the United Kingdom, an Hong Kong all experienced rapid economic growth rate during times of unprecedented population growth. For Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, the wealthiest nations are among those with the highest population. Clearly, a higher population generates a greater labor force as well as an increased number of inventions an experts in various fields. One piece of data which tend to confirm this is that while fertility rates in Brazil and many other developing countries have dropped in the wake of aggressive birth control campaigns, poverty and unemployment have remained constant or have risen.
Families in developing countries have many children because that is their preference. For families in poor nations with agricultural economies, having a large farmily means having more hands to work the family farm. Accordingly, such persons should not be considered stupid or irresponsible. This would be unjust and condescending.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, many nations have sufficient resources to feed and provide a dignified living to their citizens. Moreover, according to a 1990 repot of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, all nations are capable of feeding their people. What happens is that the ability of poor countries and communities to provide for their people is obstructed internally or externally. The solution to poverty, conesequently, lies in having a public and private sector that does not engage in corruption and guarantees social justice so that a nation’s resources are not wasted. Furthermore, there should he a commitment among the most developed nations and the most profitable sectors of each developing nation to seek a more equitable distribution of wealth as well as greater access to educational opportunities for people of scant resources.
On the other hand, the projected “population bomb”— an unbounded explosion in population with — which Professor Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome predicted, has not occurred. In fact, in the last two decades, the birth rate in developed countries, including the United States, Western Europe, and Japan fell below the rate of replacement — more people died than were born. This has led countries like France and Germany to carry out initiatives to increase the birth rate.

The unavoidable aging of society brings with it a series of grave social and economic problems for developed countries. Not only is there a smaller work force, but also fewer consumers demanding goods and services. Moreover, it becomes increasingly difficult to finance pro- grams for the elderly. In the United States, for example, there is a virtual crisis in the Social Securitv system since there may not be retirement funds in the future for those who are working today. Currently, the system is excessively drained, while the shrinking labor force contributes relatively little.

In the final analysis, there are not too many of us, as conventional wisdom would have it, but quite the contrary. Economist Jacqueline Kasun states that all the men and women of the world could live comfortably in the state of Texas (about 680,OOO square kilometers), granting each family of three about 3,400 square feet of space. Undoubtedly, we should recognize that there exists a problem with the high population density of certain ulban centers, but as we have already said, this can he resolved through better policies and planning that guarantee a more equitable distribution of resources and greater social justice. Such policies would also ensure that urban crowding does not result in damage to the environment.


Commentary by Richard R. Tryon
Dec. 10, 2000

It is hard to know where to begin when someone like the Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington, D.C. named Alfonso Agulilar-Sartori writes an essay entitled: “Myths behind the Overpopulation Theory”.

One wonders where this person learned to study? Are there schools that do such a poor job of teaching logic, science, history, and statistics, that someone can actually believe and come to write such a fantastic array of nonesense as this?

But, it will not do to ‘put-down’ such sloppy thinking with just pejorative language and generalities. One really has to take this fellow step by step to an understanding of why his position is so shallow and lacking in understanding of important factors that he totally ignores.

For example, he points out that the U.S., Great Britain and Hong Kong all prospered with dense populations. Having travelled throughout all but Hong Kong, I do not know how he can even put the three places into the same arbitrary group! Further, the success of each of these three places in economic terms rests not in population density, but in such socio-political-economic-religious factors as having a setting in which individual motivation has been free to develop. Not without pain and suffering as all have their share of the world’s poor. But it was freedom and people who were motivated and able to perform, coupled with natural resources in the case of the U.S. and before that in Great Britain. Even my grandson knows that Britain enjoyed a security as an island that gave it the chance to build a global empire, lead by intelligent, highly trained people. To be sure, the British Empire, like all such colonial adventures suffered there eventual demise in a world that craved, after WWII, independence for all such colonies, including that of Puerto Rico, which Mr. Anguilar-Sartoni has represented. I submit that the people of Hong Kong are the only real example, along with Singapore, which has shown that a determined people, with proper training and motivation can be successful in building an economic engine that provides wealth sufficient to make many enjoy a much higher standard of living than is found elsewhere.

To contend that population density is the driving force in building an equitable chance to enjoy a higher standard of living is to ignore many other details that individually and collectively are far more profound than a theory that all that is missing is a higher birth rate! How is it that Haiti, Zimbabwe, the Zaire, or Nigeria all fail to grow in prosperity? Nigeria is the most densely packed country in Africa and enjoys enormous oil reserves. Yet corruption is so bad that nobody can count on electrical power to be steady or of a useful quality for more than lighting. No, something else is missing, not lack of people.

All good socialists know what is missing. It is a dictatorship of the proletariat such as rose up to rule Russia and its neighboring collection that became the Soviet Union. With intelligent people, why did it fail? Could it have been a lack of religion or honesty in government? Could it have been the failure of socialist central planning that fails to know what it needs to know to deal with the needs and wants of the people? Or was it just a lack of population and the right leadership? Is this the reason why Cuba can’t make it under Castro? Has he failed to demand a high enough birth rate? After all, they can grow a lot of sugar that nobody in the world wants anymore- could they feed it to the babies in the baby factories to gain critical mass for economic development?

On one point the author is right. It is not population density alone that creates poverty and eliminating the density will not cause prosperity any more than doubling the density will. Until people are motivated to rise above their minimal life style, they are destined to remain in a poverty that is cyclical. Why? Because they do not have the time, nor the inclination to train their children into being something more in life than their parents. Of course, all to often such children have only a limited exposure to at least one parent and often do not even know the other. For that matter, how many men have fathered children that they do not even know exist? 1% of six billion would make 60,000,000 men world wide in this category! Do we expect that their accidental fathering lead to one or more children with much chance to rise above the society into which they were born?

It is not over population that is destructive. It is wanton population that multiplies because the Roman Church, and most of the more liberal governments in the world see strength in generating more votes for their cause among the poor. It is an interesting observation that most of the people in the world who seem to suffer from lack of motivation tend to live either in the tropics where nobody can freeze or starve as food literally ‘grows on trees’ available almost everywhere.

As this is written, we in America are struggling to determine who will be our next President. We lose sight of the fact that even though the vote was so close, there is a great gap between the philosophies of the two candidates. One would listen to this author’s argument and work to build more social programs aimed at re-distribution of wealth, because he would think that the poor would take such money and use it to get an education and a life with motivation for something other than simple pleasure. Such money is almost always spent in trivial ways and such expense always rises up to meet any level of income. Over production of population of this type is a problem, and not a panacea for the failure of the liberals who have over hyped Social Security as the welfare system for the elderly to replace pensions and savings.

I have enjoyed almost thirty years of exposure to life in Puerto Rico and it is a lot improved in so many ways. I do see evidence of motivation and determination. I also see signs of failure that mirrors the failures of the mainland- especially those of the Clinton years. We are a nation that has lost its moral compass. Those of the extreme right Christian moral-majority types did not make a dent on the thinking of the ‘yuppies’ of the ‘baby boomer’ crop. Today, almost half of the nation fails to see any conection between morality at the personal level and the ability to lead the nation to moral positions on national or international matters. How sad!

The vote showed 20 industrial densely populated states as being for Gore, with 30 states of lesser dense populations for Bush. The county map of the U.S. makes the 60-40 ration into about 80-20. In short, we now have two Americas. One with the poor mixed into 20 states that have voting power equal to that of the other 30 states. But not the majority of population! Only 47% of us live in the Gore counties. I sure don’t want to see another civil war. But, if the author were to have his way and try to encourage higher birth rates in the densely populated counties, he will be moving us toward a national show-down. It will take Bush, as a compassionate conservative, a lot of effort to avoid this.

Keep in mind that the following election statistics do have bearing:

National election stats that the media won't report:
Counties won by Gore: 677 21.7%
Counties won by Bush: 2,434 78.2%

Population of counties won by Gore: 127 million
Population of counties won by Bush: 143 million
Square miles of country won by Gore: 580,000
Square miles of country won by Bush: 2,427,000
States won by Gore: 20
States won by Bush: 30

Professor Joseph Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St.Paul Minnesota has produced another interesting new statistic. Professor Olson looked up the crime statistics for all of these counties and came up with this:
Average Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2
Average Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Bush: 2.1


I hope Mr. Agulilar-Sartori will start doing a little more homework before he pontificates further about how we need to build baby factories for the impoverished nations!

Of course, readers should recognize that nothing here has been written to address such other global problems that relate to population such as clean and abundant water, air and abundant power. That will come later...