Recently, when asked if he would take action to “curb population growth” because “the planet cannot sustain that growth,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said yes, noting that he would focus on “poor countries around the world”.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Sanders’ rivals and current leading contender for the Democratic nomination, has previously voiced his acceptance of China’s one-child (now two-child) policy, telling a Chinese public: “Your policy has been one that I fully understand – I’m not guessing – of one child per family.
The problem with adopting a population goal to “restrain population growth” rather than letting each family make their own decisions is that it often results in coercion. Moreover, the very idea of ”overpopulation” is fundamentally flawed.
Today, China’s two-child policy still limits family size and requires parents to apply for a birth permit. This year, a couple who could not afford to pay a $9,570 fine for breaking family planning rules had their modest savings confiscated. Although rarer than under the one-child policy, cases of forced sterilization and abortion still exist.
“A third baby is not allowed, so we rent a house away from our village. The local government conducts pregnancy check-ups every three months. If we weren’t in hiding, they would have forced us to have an abortion,” said a Chinese father of three told the BBC.
The idea of population control is old. In 1798, an English clergyman, Thomas Robert Malthus, published An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning that population growth would deplete natural resources. To prevent famine, he deemed it morally permissible to “court the return of the plague” by making the poor live in the swamps and even to prohibit “specific remedies for ravaging diseases”. His nonchalant attitude toward the welfare of the poor would prove a lasting part of overpopulation alarmism.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Malthus’ vision resurfaced. In 1966, US President Lyndon Johnson made foreign aid dependent on countries adopting population control. In 1969, President Richard Nixon created a separate population office within USAID and gave it an annual budget of $50 million. In 1977, bureau chief Dr. Reimert Ravenholt said he hoped to sterilize a quarter of the world’s women.
In the 1980s, the reference document for the International Conference on Family Planning, co-authored by the United Nations Population Fund, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Population Council, declared: “When the provision of contraceptive information and services does not lower fertility fast enough to help accelerate development, governments may choose to limit the current generation’s freedom of choice.
Neo-Malthusianism spread among international organizations and government leaders. Neo-Malthusians offered financial support to the cause of reducing population growth, rewarding governments in poor countries that adopted population control without sounding the alarm when such measures became coercive.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared an emergency (1975-1977) suspending civil liberties and mandated some 11 million sterilizations. China’s one-child policy (1979-2015) saw over 300 million Chinese women fitted with IUDs modified to be irremovable without surgery, over 100 million sterilizations and over 300 million abortions, many of whom been forced. In 1983, UNFPA awarded the first People’s Prize to Indira Gandhi and Qian Xinzhong, the man who was then in charge of China’s one-child policy.
Ironically, population growth can be beneficial. Wherever people are free to engage in innovation and exchange, economist Julian Simon has noted that they are the “ultimate resource”, increasing the supply of other resources, discovering alternatives and improving efficiency.
Research found that every 1% increase in population lowers commodity prices by nearly 1%, meaning that each person contributes to reducing scarcity, on average.
Today, population is at an all-time high, but wherever economic freedom allows humanity to realize its potential for innovation, prosperity has exceeded the imagination of our ancestors.
Human well-being is improving rapidly, as evidenced by websites like HumanProgress.org (of which I am the editor) and Our world in data. Whatever challenges, environmental or otherwise, loom on the horizon, it is human ingenuity that will have to rise to the occasion.
The more minds working on solutions, the better.
In any case, birth rates tend to fall without coercion as countries get richer. But the potential for human rights abuses alone is reason enough to oppose the goal of “curbing population growth”.
Chelsea Follett is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute.