Group Creative Presentation on Contemporary World

1. GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY (Summarized Notes)
 Couples want to have children because of their feelings. A Child for them symbolizes a
successful union or you have successor generation that will continue their name. It
also means kinship is preserved and the family story will continue.
 Others though are worried whether a child will feel the strain of the household as they
will compete for the attention of the parents and how a family will have to give so much
energy to ensure children are loved and cared for.
 Viewed from above, having or not having children is driven by economics.
Rural Communities tend to have more children to help in crop cultivation during planting
and harvesting seasons. Poorer districts of urban centers also tend to have more children
because the success of their “small family business” depends on how many of their family
members can be hawking their wares from the street. Hence, the more children, the better
it will be for the farm or the small by the street corner enterprises.
Urbanized, Educated and Professional Families with two incomes, however, desire just
one or two progenies. Families like this have committed to their respective professions and
neither has time to devote to having more kids. They set aside significant part of their
income for retirement and future savings for health care and education for their children.
Rural families view multiple children and large kinship networks as critical investments
while Urban families however may not have the same kinship network because they move
out of farmlands and work on more upscale business.
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Different views of family life determine the economic and social policies that countries craft
regarding their respective populations. Countries in the “less developed regions of the world”
that rely on agriculture tend to maintain high levels of population growth. The 1980 United
Nations report on urban and rural population growth states that “these areas contained 85
percent of the world rural population in 1975 and are projected to contain 90 percent by the
end of the 20th century.”
Since then, global agricultural population has declined. In 2011, it accounted for over 37
percent of the total world population, compared to the statistics in 1980 in which rural and
urban population percentages were more or less the same. The blog site “Nourishing the
Planet”, however, noted that even “as the agricultural population shrunk as a share of total
population between 1980 and 2011, it grew numerically from 2.2 billion to 2.6 billion people
during this period.”
Urban populations have grown but not necessarily because families are having more
children. It is rather because of the natural outcome of significant migration to the cities by
people seeking work in the “more modern” sectors of society. This movement of people is
especially manifest in the developing countries where industries and business in the cities
are attracting people from the rural areas.
THE PERILS OF OVERPOPULATION
Development planners see urbanization and industrialization as indicators of a developing
society, but disagree on the role of population growth or decline in modernization. Population
growth will inevitably exhaust world food supply by the middle of the 19th century (Thomas
Malthus 1798 – An Essay on the Principle of Population). Overpopulation in the 1970s and
1980s will bring about global environmental disasters that would, in turn, lead to food
shortage and mass starvation (Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne 1960 – The Population Bomb).
They proposed that countries like the United States take the lead in the promotion of global
population control in order to reduce the growth rate to zero.

2. Recommendations include:
Bizarre (chemical castration)
Policy-oriented (taxing an additional child and luxury taxes on child-related products)
Monetary Incentives (paying off men who would agree to be sterilized after two children)
Institution-building (a powerful department of population and environment)
By limiting the population, vital resources could be used for economic progress and not be
“diverted” and “wasted” to feeding more mouths. This argument became the basis for
government “population control” programs worldwide.
In the 20th century, Philippines, China and India sought to lower birth rates. (Foreign Affairs
– American Policy Journal) advocated “contraception and sterilization” as the practical
solutions to global economic, social, and political problems.
Overpopulation is the core of the economist argument for the promotion of reproductive
health. Advocates of population control contend for the universal access to reproductive
technologies (such as condoms, pills, abortion and vasectomy) and giving women the right to
choose whether to have children or not.
Politics determine these “birth control” programs. Developed countries justify their support
for population control in developing countries by depicting the latter as conservative societies.
IT’S THE ECONOMY NOT THE BABIES
Critics about population control to prevent economic crisis. (Betsy Hartmann) disagrees with
the advocates of Neo-Malthusian theory and accused governments of using population
control as “substitute for social justice and much-needed reforms – such as land distribution,
employment creation, provision of mass education and health care and emancipation.
Others pointed out that population growth aided economic development by spurring
technological and institutional innovation and increasing the supply of human ingenuity.
Acknowledged the shift in population from rural to urban areas.
Megacities are clusters in which income disparities along with the transportation, housing,
air pollution and waste management are major problems. But they are also the center of
economic growth and activity.
The median of 29.4 years for females and 30.9 for males in cities means a young working
population. With this median age, states are assured that they have a robust military force.
There will always be new younger generations to replace an older becoming generation.
Malthusian theory explained that the human population grows more rapidly than the food
supply until famines, war or disease reduces the population. He believed that the human
population has risen over the past three centuries.
Green Revolution created high-yielding varieties of rice and other cereals and, along with the
new methods of cultivation, increasing yields globally, but more particularly the developing
of the world. The global famine that neo-Malthusians predicted did not happen. Instead
between 1950 and 1984 global grain production increased by over 250 percent, allowing
agriculture to keep pace with population growth, thereby keeping global famine under
control.
WOMEN AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Women is often subject to population measures. Reproductive rights supporters argued that
if population control and economic development were to reach their goals, women must have
control whether they will have children or not. By giving women this power, they will be able
to pursue their vocations – be they economic, social or political – and contribute to economic
growth.
The serial correlation between fertility, family and fortune has motivated countries with
growing economies to introduce and strengthen their reproductive health laws, including
abortion. High-income First World Nations and fast developing countries were able to sustain

3. growth in part because women were given the power of choice and easy access to reproductive
technologies.
Most countries implement reproductive health laws because they worry about the health of
the mother. In Bolivia, since they have high fertility rate, the Bolivian government put into
effect a family planning program that included the legalization of abortion after noticing a
spike of unsafe abortion and maternal deaths.
Opponents regard reproductive rights as nothing but a false front for abortion. They contend
that this method of preventing conception endangers the life of a mother and must be banned.
The religious wing of the anti-reproductive rights flank goes further and describes abortion
as a debauchery that sullies the name of God; it will send the mother to hell and prevents a
new soul, the baby, to become human.
A country being industrialized and developed, however, does not automatically ensure pro-
women reproductive regulations. The Women’s Movement of 1960 was responsible for the
passage and judicial endorsement of a pro-choice law, but conservatives controlling state
legislatures have also slowly undermined this law by imposing restrictions on women’s access
to abortion.
THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE
Feminists approach the issue of reproductive rights from another angle. They are against of
any form of population control because they are compulsory by nature and therefore does
not empower women. They believe that government assumptions that poverty and
environmental degradation are caused by overpopulation are wrong. These factors ignore
other equally important causes like the unequal distribution of wealth, the lack of public
safety nets like universal health care, education, and gender equality programs. Feminists
also point out that there is very little evidence that point to overpopulation as the culprit
behind poverty and ecological devastation.
POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD SECURITY
Today’s global population has reached 7.4 billion and it is estimated to increase to 9.5 billion
in 2050, then 11.2 billion in 2100. 95 percent of this population growth will happen in
developing countries. The opposite is happening in the developed world where populations
remain steady in general, but declining in some of the most advanced countries.
Demographers predict that the world population will stabilize by 2050 but feeding this
population will be an immense challenge.
There is a decline in fertility of the young productive population. The Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) warns that in order for countries to mitigate the impact of population
growth, food production must increase.
FAO recommends that countries increase their investments in agriculture, craft long-term
policies aimed at fighting poverty, and invest in research and development.
UN body also suggests that countries develop a comprehensive social program that includes
food assistance, consistent delivery of health services and education especially for the poor.
If domestic production is not enough, it becomes essential for nations to import.
FAO, therefore, enjoins governments to keep their markets open and to eventually “move
towards a global trading system that is fair and competitive, and that contributes to a
dependable market for food. (Globalization)
Good governance is also a goal that many nations, especially the developing world has yet to
attain so applying such suggestions will take some time.
CONCLUSION
Demography is a complex discipline that requires the integration of various social scientific
data. As you have seen, demographic changes and policies have impacts on the environment,
politics, resources, and others. Yet, at its core, demography accounts for the growth and

4. decline of the human species. It may be about large numbers and massive effects, but it is
ultimately about people. Thus, no interdisciplinary account of globalization is complete
without an accounting of people. The next lesson will continue on this theme of examining
people, and will focus particularly on their global movement.