Let’s talk about Population and Development

Population control violates the dignity of the human person and is unacceptable policy in civilized society.

Population control measures are based on the assumption that human beings are a burden to society and must be controlled or managed rather than cherished and a source of national wealth. Such an understanding violates our conception of the human person as possessing dignity, and is also an impoverished economic and social view. International human rights law recognizes the right of individuals to freely determine the number and spacing of their children; a right which population control or management policies ignores and abuses. Responsible parenthood is an aspiration of individuals, not a mandate controlled by governments and the state. Population control policies have failed in every instance of implementation over the past thirty years, because they do not recognize the prior and intrinsic freedom and dignity of all persons.

The assumption that a smaller population will increase economic prosperity is wrong, as leading economists have pointed out time and time again.

New York University professor and

economist William Easterly, formerly of the World Bank, notes that “there is no association in the data between getting population growth under control and seeing a rise in living standards.” Population control measures assume that a large population will result in limited resources, which will lead to increased poverty. This view of economics is, quite simply, wrong.

Economic and national prosperity arises when individuals are educated and engaged in cycles of productivity. Once this engagement with productivity has taken place, additional human resources enable greater economic development. Attempting to achieve prosperity or economic growth by limiting the population decreases possible human resources, and does nothing to produce the desired outcome, which requires an investment in the human person, not fewer people.

Population policies historically seek to lower fertility in order to achieve demographic targets, to the detriment of women’s health, rights and freedoms.

The implementation of demographic targets requires coercion. Demographic targets deny women and couples the freedom to choose the number and spacing of their children – a denial of fundamental rights and freedoms, as articulated in the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

No matter how well-intentioned such policies might claim to be, the imposition of state regulated births harms women, and ignores the relationship between demographics and social development. Healthy societies, in which individuals are educated and included in economic activity, flourish when individuals are left to choose their own fertility goals.

Singapore is a perfect example of population policies gone wrong, and women have suffered the most. Implementing coercive population policies throughout the 1970s and 1980s did not lead to an increase in overall development, nor to benefits in the areas of maternal health. The policy led to a manpower shortage, and to the current reversal of that policy and the adoption of a pro-fertility policy. Population policies that seek to lower fertility are not easily reversed, and Singapore now faces two problems: an aging population, and stagnated development.

Unhealthy mothers = unhealthy kids = higher costs = economic decline.

What’s the true driver of economic development? Healthy moms. A population control bill masquerading as a reproductive health bill will only further damage the health care women and mothers need. Without a policy

dedicated to maternal health (health care during pregnancy and delivery), women and mothers die or are disabled, which increases child mortality. Death and disability drive healthcare costs up. Harvard economist Lant Pritchett notes that policies should be targeted to women–raising their income, increasing their education and encouraging empowerment. Only then will we see healthy women and healthy economies.

When inadequate health, education, job skills training, and employment opportunities exist, the direct causes of those imbalances and shortages – coupled with aggressive anti-corruption monitoring – must be the place to start. Blaming poverty on the poor only leads to further corruption, and further losses of human rights.

Investment in the human person, especially in education, drives economic development – when the government invests in people, people invest themselves in development.

Developed countries, including those in the Asia Pacific region, got many things right on the road to economic prosperity. Places like Hong Kong invested in their banking and legal infrastructure. Japan invested in education. Both Hong Kong and Japan respect human rights and have low taxation. Investing in education, especially for women, ensures that a population understands its government, has a national identity that it’s proud of, and feels driven

to give back through the workforce and in raising the next generation of citizens. Violations of human rights brought on by the government seeking to achieve demographic targets at all costs will lower the morale of citizens and teach them to resent their country. They will have no desire to make their country a better place. Productivity will go down, which will in turn drive down the GDP.

The “Tiger” economies in the Asia Pacific region invested in education, anti-corruption and infrastructure – this drove growth, not population policies.

The success of the “Tiger economies” such as Hong Kong and Japan in the Asia Pacific region are the results of large initial investments by both governments and families in human capital through education, anti-corruption regulations, and infrastructure, has led to remarkable growth and success. In contrast, countries that pursued population control policies, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and China, are now suffering from aging populations that are struggling to replace themselves and are limited in their future growth by smaller and younger working class which must support a large, ageing population.

Correlation is not causation.

Although many developed countries, especially in the West,

tend to have both high GDPs and lower populations, this does not mean that lower populations have caused high GDPs. A better explanation, and one that is supported by leading economists like Walter McMahon and William Easterly, is that higher levels of education, due to investment by the government in human capital, drive economic growth and overall development. Easterly notes that “even some countries that have seen a slight increase in the population growth rate have [economic] growth just as fast or faster than the countries that had a reduced population growth rate.”

Larger, denser populations are often the source of economic development.

Population can equal potential! India’s population doubled from 1971 to 2011, but its economy grew faster. Its expected new working age population for 2010-2020 is 123 million, five times that of China. Another example is Japan, which, with a much denser population of 30 million more people than the Philippines has a GDP 10 times the size of ours. When the proper conditions are provided, human ingenuity leads to personal, as well as economic, flourishing. Economist Walter McMahon has shown that large initial investments by governments and families in human capital through education has been the cause of immense per capita growth in East Asia.