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Hand in
hand with the dwindling supply of power and water is the
proliferation of people, the population “explosion”
(2.36-percent increase for this year) that the National
Statistics Office (NSO) has warned us about—a case of
plenitude in the midst of penury. A far cry from the
zero growth rate (2 percent) of 1991, obviously the
result of the martial law politely termed
“family-planning program.”
Malthus’s grim vision is upon us, but a consensus on how
what Paul Elrich called “the population bomb” can be
defused isn’t likely in the immediate future. For us
Filipinos, the reason is obvious: as Catholics, we are
officially against abortion and contraceptives despite
the abundance of condoms in our stores, but for a few
“lost” souls, no politician can safely advocate birth
control apart from masturbation (which is also a sin) or
the bird called “swallow.” It’s said that one of the
reasons Marcos got in Dutch with the Catholic Church,
apart from human-rights issues, was his administration’s
distribution of artificial contraceptives, a practice
discontinued by President Aquino by scraping the foreign
assistance for population control. Succeeding presidents
addressed the population issue with a “family-planning
program,” taking care not to offend religious or moral
sensibilities. With the NSO “red alert,” the debate will
not soon be resolved.
The
debate is not only a moral one. It has ideological,
sociological and, of course, economic dimensions. In
spite of scientific population studies, everyone, from
ordinary citizens to academicians and politicians, seems
to be influenced by population theories dating back to
antiquity.
The
ready example is
China,
where overpopulation was seen as a problem since ancient
times. Chinese philosophers, especially Confucius, in
looking for means to check the increase of numbers,
entertained the notion of a numerical balance between
population and the environment. Their writings are the
foundation of the 20th-century theory of an optimum
population level.
In
ancient Greece, however, the earliest thinkers favored
the expansion of population, against which Plato argued
the restrictionist point of view. In his Laws, Plato
advocated an absolute limit to the number of citizens,
but it was local rather than global. But the fear of
overpopulation finally contributed to the decay of
Hellenic civilization, and by the time Polybius analyzed
the causes of the low fertility of the Greeks and
proposed remedies, it was too late for Hellas.
Early
Rome, on the other hand, had a fertility cult, which
found practical support in military and political
expansion. From “political scientists” Ennius to Varro,
all the writers of Republican Rome held that the primary
function of marriage was to provide citizens and
soldiers for the state.
Later
writers even denounced the evils of depopulation, and
several emperors, notably Augustus Caesar, introduced
legislation to encourage parenthood. Still, imperial
legislation did not produce enough men to hold back the
barbarian invasions that finally led to Rome’s downfall.
These
ancient examples stressed the importance of a large
population.
The
Middle Ages and the Enlightenment
Although
Medieval population theory was not grounded in
economics, population growth was held as a good thing, a
mark of divine favor, especially after the depopulation
brought about by barbarian invasions and the Plague. The
emergence of a social hierarchy strengthened this line
of reasoning as the leisure classes dreaded any decrease
in the numbers of those whose labor they exploited. This
marked the return of the populationist tradition in the
reorganization of Western society. This view survived a
long time, and it has not completely vanished to this
day.
The
populationist theory which appeared during the 17th
century and flourished in the 18th rested, on the other
hand, on paternalistic premises. Profound statements
were: “The king’s glory is in the multitude of the
people.” “Who will carry the weapons if men are
lacking?” The philosopher Jean Budin was more explicit:
“There is no wealth nor strength but in men.”
The
natural extension of populationist theory to the
political and economic realms was Mercantilism, a
nationalist outlook aimed at increasing both employment
and the number of men by processing as much raw material
as possible within national boundaries. As a theory, it
was more of a political attitude since increasing
population was the means of promoting wealth and power
for the lord, the king and, later, for the state, an
attitude that extended well beyond the period of
mercantilism.
The
frankest statement of this attitude was given by Turmeau
de la Morandiere in “one brutal sentence”: Subjects and
beasts must be multiplied, which sounds like a parody of
“Go forth and multiply.” Political thinkers also
observed that dictatorships are more prone to
populationist arguments than democratic regimes.
The
founder of demography called “political arithmetic,”
William Petty, was also a populationist, but Adam Smith,
the father of classical economics, took little interest
in the population question, it baffled him.
It took
Malthus to raise the alarm over what we now call the
“population explosion.” The notion that the king needed
men and more men to strengthen his realm collided, in
17th-century England, with the laudable result of the
poor laws. Christian concern for the poor became an
increasing burden for the ruling class at the same time
that the poor, relying less on charity, became conscious
of their rights. Malthus’s solution was to restrict the
progeny of poor families. It’s described as both
altruistic and egotistic, being, on the one hand, pity
for paupers and, on the other, dread of having to share
with them.
This
also justified the resistance of the upper classes to
all efforts to reform existing social and political
institutions, for if poverty was due to the unequal race
between population and subsistence, only the working
class itself, by practicing prudential restraint, could
improve its own conditions.
The
Shavian view
However,
populations fluctuate. Wars, pestilence and other
natural disasters have their effect on population,
although Malthus’s prediction of misery through
increasing population was refuted by the rising standard
of living in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution.
His rebuttal was “moral restraint” on the part of the
working classes. Technology was another explanation,
although applicable only to industrialized countries,
where economic development is generally seen as
encouraging voluntary decline in the birth rate of the
emerging middle classes. As held by Malthus, it’s the
poor who continue to breed abundantly, but anxiety over
population was expressed, then as now, by the more
fortunate classes, a large segment of which is also at
the vanguard of “pro-choice” against “pro-life.”
“Pro-lifers,” mainly evangelists or conservatives, if
not reactionaries, can very well take comfort in George
Bernard Shaw, the champion of the Life Force, unless he
was speaking ironically when he wrote: “If nature can
and does increase fertility to prevent the extinction of
the species by excessive fertility, need we doubt that
she will decrease it to prevent its extinction by
overcrowding? It is certain that she does, in a
mysterious way, respond to our necessities, rather than
to her own.”
GBS a
socialist and like Owen, Fourier and Proudhon was
reacting to Malthus’s egoistic altruism or altruistic
egotism. Marx himself rejecting to ascribe pauperism to
excessive population and rejected the remedies advocated
by Malthus, who also stated that “a man born into the
world already owned by others has no inherent right to a
place in nature’s feast.” One hears the Shavian
anti-Malthusian attitude in today’s populationists, or,
as they are called, “pronatalists,” which, in an
important sense, joins Marxists and religionists
together.
However,
modern economists and demographers say now that the
reaction to Malthus is partly responsible for the
misconceptions surrounding the population problem, even
if communist countries like the erstwhile Soviet Union
and the People’s Republic of China now accept a
restraint on population growth.
Clearing
the misunderstandings through the most recent scientific
developments, the concept of optimum population was
formulated by social scientists, the determination of
which is laid out in a mathematical formula, which,
however, is only applicable to industrialized countries.
However,
the economic and social advantages of growth have been
cited. In a stationary population with low mortality,
the economically active population is replenished by the
younger age groups at a rate of only 2.2 percent a year,
a rate insufficient to ensure the occupational
reallocation required by technological change. The
advantage, therefore, of a higher population increase is
that it will prevent an excess of people in obsolete
trades and consequently a slowing down of economic
growth.
As for
the social advantages, low birth rate and low mortality
means that fewer young people will take over from the
elders. In such a population, most positions of power
and responsibility are held by elderly people, and
institutional rigidities set in. It’s also recognized
that the spirit of enterprise does not flourish in an
aging population.
And yet
it’s still harder to measure the advantages against t
the disadvantages of population growth, since it’s
necessary to choose between maintaining current
standards of living and making sacrifices for future
generations. In our case, the challenge is even harder:
it is raising, rather than just maintaining, living
standards. Knowing that demographic trends are so slow
and far-reaching that the consequences of any change
that is too sudden may be felt for years afterward, one
is reminded that the zero growth achieved in 1992 means
nothing now that the growth predicted is 2.36 percent.
That will certainly be felt for years to come.
Still,
concern for living standards is an argument in favor of
some acceptance of birth control. Is this concern about
greed or about science?
Malthusian theory today
The name
of Malthus is still bandied about in debates on
population policies in the Majority World, although some
social scientists find it difficult to see the
relevance, since Malthusian theory tells little about
the demographic relationship between fertility and
mortality. It’s silent on the economic consequences of
changes in the age distribution of a population, and is
of no help in framing policies for areas of heavy
population pressure.
All the
same, most developing countries today have the worst of
both worlds: the typical high birth rates of agrarian,
or ante-modern, economies and the typical low death
rates of urbanized industrialized societies. This may
very well be the case in our own country.
Economic
development may cure this difficulty in time, as it did
in industrial Europe, but for some time yet, according
to social scientists, the next few generations will be
facing the alternative of the Malthusian checks of
famine and disease or voluntary family limitation as
opposed to prevailing religious mores.
The
conjunction of ecological disaster and population
“explosion” is, however, remote from the narrow horizons
of political and economic leaders of developing nations,
notwithstanding their professions of concern. It’s
probably because that nothing in this world is
inevitable but death and taxes (more or less).
They can
take comfort in the words of Alfred Sauvy of College de
France, who rightly sees more work to be done in
demographic science:
“Building a coherent theory of the interrelations of
economy and population requires continuous and careful
appraisal of actual developments. Because of the
practical complexity of such an undertaking, prejudice
and facile theories always tend to have the upper hand.
As a result, continuous observation of the facts leads
to conclusions different from those currently held.
These conclusions give food for thought. In particular,
they suggest that economic research should focus on the
working population and its problems rather than on
finance, monetary policy, or materials. These latter are
only the results of something else; as economic
phenomena, they lie only on the surface, and lead all
too often to neglect an essential factor: men as
producers and consumers.”
In the
history of ideas, authors have always believed that they
have given the final answer to a problem only for the
world to find out that it was not. |
