Introduction
- 100,000 of years for the world pop to reach 1b but it only took around 200 years to reach 7b
- World population in 2018 was 7.6 b according to the UN and projected that we would reach 10b by 2056
- Sociologists agree that global development will slow down population growth but have different methods of bringing this about
Malthusian Theory: Malthus
- Argued pop growth is increasing at a rate that is faster than the pops ability to feed themselves.
- Led to ‘checks on population’ (famine, malnutrition, war) which reduces the pop as it causes death
- Solutions include delaying marriage and abstaining from sex over global development that raises living standards and changes culture
Malthusian Theory: Elrich
- Adopted M’s views in his book: ‘The Population Bomb’.
- Analysed birth and death rates, comparing them to food production and malnutrition rates
- Claims that the ‘bomb’ has already gone off and the “the battle to feed the humanity is over”.
- Blames developing countries for this as 99% of the pop increase happens in less developed parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America.
- “Birth rates much be brought into balance with death rates or mankind will breed into oblivion”.
- Suggested family planning and can be done “by coercion is voluntary methods fail” like aid and trade regs imposed by DCs and forced sterilisations.
Malthusian Theory: Elrich Supporting Evidence
=Ghana has one the worlds lowest GDPs in the world had their pop grow from 4 million to 25 million and it is expected to reach 50 million by 2050.
=Ehrlich’s ideas led to policies in both India and China.
-India: rewards like cars and food processors were offered to women in the poorest areas who already had two or more children.
-China: a one-child policy. Fitted women with IUDs after giving birth and the refusal would lead to the loss of gov employment and no healthcare/education for that child
Evaluation of Malthusian Theory
-M and E overstate the case and cherrypick data analysed
-Cornell suggested that tech change in food production means it’s growing faster than pop.
=Malnourished people has fallen over 3 decades from 37% to 18%. Food also stockpiled or destroyed in the West due to overproduction to the point that governments pay farmers not to produce any more food as it would diminish prices
-Theories are based on trends of the time and don’t take into account the changes that have taken place since due to past warnings.
= Two-child families are now the most common and over 50 years the average amount of children fell from 5 to 2.8
-Hartman suggested that the myth of over-population helps explain away troubling human suffering so westerners feel absolved of the responsibility. Attempting to justify developed countries overconsumption
=Person in the poorest part of Africa is responsible for 200th of Co2 emissions of the average Americans
-By blaming the pop of the poorest areas the west maintains an abundance of food, water and shelter and can continue to over-consume them without sharing
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory
- Development is the solution to slowing down pop growth and critiques the Mal view as confusing the real issue
- Not overpop but unequal consumption and distribution
- Critical of the view that LDCs are to blame when they can’t control family size.
- Suggest they are ignoring the fact that birth rates are falling in almost all areas of the third world bar s-s Africa
- Ignoring the social and economic context of reproduction in these countries. They don’t have the same opportunities or reproductive choices
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory: Adamson
- Claims that Ehrlich ignores the social context of fertility because he mistake the high pop as causing poverty when in reality it is poverty that causes high birth rates.
- Supporting the idea that global development would slow pop growth as it would reduce poverty and thus reduce the pop.
- Children are seen as assets as they are able to provide labour power and extra income. These communities don’t have any welfare structures, so no pensions, social care, meaning that children provide this insurance for adults in old age.
- Need to have many children due to high mortality rates. Logical to have a lot as don’t know who will survive
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory: Adamson Evidence
In Sub-S Africa adults must have ten kids to statically have one son live to the age of 38.
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory: Development Plans
- Pop control programmes will fail if poverty and IMR aren’t tackled.
- Economic prosperity will slow down rates as it would improve medical standards meaning parents wouldn’t need to have as many children
- Development is the best contraception
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory: Mamdani
- Point out the neglect of attention given to the economic inequality within developing countries.
- Argued that people in these countries must have more children to generate income due to factors like TNCs using the land for export over feeding the base country
Anti-Malthusian/Dependency Theory: Mamdani Evidence
Mexico produces vegetables for export to the US despite the high malnutrition rate amongst it’s own population’s children.
Patriarchy
- Exists in LDCs prevalently that is ignored
- Women are economically dependent on men and can’t make the same choices that Western Women
- Abortion and contraception are often denied.
- Poorest women have the highest IMR.
- Empathises on boys as they attract dowries, have more earning potential and care for parents as girls would get married and have to take care of their in-laws parents instead
- These beliefs combined with Malthusian solutions to pop growth lead to gender imbalances
- The insistence of having boys also leads to more pregnancies as this increases the chance to have more sons.
Patriarchy: Evidence
- In India, there are less than 8 women for every 10 men due to selective abortions of girls
- In China, the one-child policy ended in an attempt to ‘improve balanced development’ as so much more men than women
Patriarchy: Harrison
- In many of these cultures, religion discourages contraceptives and promotes the idea that the only way males can promote vitality to himself and others is to get women pregnant.
- Changing cultural ideas towards gender can slow pop growth as boys and girls will be valued equally.
- Give women more status and power through education
Patriarchy: Solutions
- Women are key to development and slowing pop growth.
- Education is the best form of contraception is it prevents girls from being married young so less time to have children and enables them to understand information about contraception, illiteracy would prevent
- Right now girls are less likely to complete education globally and instead face forced marriages and child labour.
- LDCs would earn an average of $21 b per year dividend if all ten-year-old girls completed secondary education
Unequal Distribution of Resources
- Promotes pop growth over pop slowing down. Another obstacle to the slowing of pop
- Adamson: Mals ignore this cause of poverty and more importantly the over-consumption of resources by developed countries
- Another indicator is Ecological Footprint which measures the pop’s consumption of food, materials and energy
- The 16m babies in DCs have more impact on resources than the 109m babies from LDCs if nothing changes
- To slow pop growth DCs will have to stabilise and reduce their own consumption through resource efficiency, reducing waste and investing sustainability.
- Share resources with world pop. Will become balanced.
Unequal Distribution of Resources: Supporting Evidence
=The US contains 6% of the population but consumes 40% of the world’s resources
=England has an ecological footprint of per capita of 5.1 while Nigeria has 1.44.
=The average American consumes 300 times more than the average Bangladeshi. In fact, boys in Bangladesh produce more than they consume and by the age of 15 their production exceeds their lifetime’s consumption
Conclusion
- Both sides agree that development will slow pop growth but there is debate over what the real issue is overpopulation or over consumption.
- Population growth is slowing down and the supposed explosion has begun ‘fizzing out’
- Rosling argues eliminating poverty and raising living standards of the poorest in an environmentally friendly way and cultural change towards greater gender inequality will stabilise pop worth at 9 billion in 2050 instead of the UN’s prediction of 10.5 billion in 2110
