Population

I'm not only post menopausal Absent, but also post men.

Lower birthrates follow better education, female emancipation, and equal opportunities. Even those who do not want to use contraception have smaller families now than the 12 or 15 they would have had a couple of centuries ago. You cannot impose population control before there is a good reason for people not to have a large family to help provide for them.

As a nation gets more prosperous and more organised to look after its weaker members, the need for the insurance of many children lessens.

But when the state has taken over the whole role of providing for everyone, cradle to grave, disabled or able bodied, hard-working or idle, the connection between producing children and the family working together to raise them to an age where they can help support the older and younger members is blurred.

I don't advocate leaving children to starve because their parents have no work, or exposing unwanted infants, but I do follow carboncopy's reasoning about China. That is not the way to go - but it did have a result!

Do you think we shall see the contraceptive police knocking on people's bedroom doors Notsogrand. That would really be Big Brother watching you. Not you personally, of course, especially if, like many of us, you're post menopausal. Perhaps we would have to register that we are post menopausal. Shut up absent.

I appreciate that absent, perhaps exception would have been a better choice of word. My point, as you have already highlighted, is that 'coming up with something effective and fair is tricky'

The more I think about a population policy the more it seems like a minefield. What about IVF and fertility treatment? What about immigration – this government seems to have a very crass approach. And at the other end of the scale – what about the elderly? Health care is already rationed and the elderly are already feeling the thin end of the wedge. Yet, there is a logic, if no humanity, in refusing medication to, say, those over 75 and providing only palliative care.

A policy isn't legislation so exemption wouldn't arise.

Would any population policy have to include an exemption clause for those whose religion prevents the use of contraception?

Saying we need a population policy (not population control) is easy but coming up with something effective and fair is tricky. There are already people who know that they cannot afford more than say one or two children and so don't have any more, but there are also those who still can't afford them but procreate anyway. Do we decide that child benefit should be for the first child only? Do we make family housing even more difficult to find than it is already? Education is a possible route but doesn't seem to be doing very well on a wide variety of other social subjects – sex and drugs and binge drinking, for example.

^be

There are twenty countries that have zero population growth, that's a start I guess, but I read that the UK population increases by 500,000 per year. Where exactly are all of these people going to live? It must having an impact on the price of houses, transport, health care, pollution levels, energy, water, etc etc. I can see the negative impact in Australia on having an increasing population in the last twenty years and we are getting close to the 23 million mark.

I don't understand? What I am saying is that we don't want to be forced into doing what the Chinese have done but on the other hand if they hadn't done it things populationwise would be a lot worse. OK that sounds like a contradiction but we (the rest of the world) have to learn the lesson and not let ourselves get into that position. We could do this by having a sensible population policy that educated the public about the dangers of continual and/or rates of population growth; about contraception; about being responsible about our fertility; about women's rights; about depleting resources; about poverty, and so on and so on......
Does that clear things up?

I think we're talking at cross purposes cc. I've probably explained myself badly.

Exactly. And setting an example is not a bad thing too

I am not in favour of selective genocide as the Chinese are want to do, carboncareful, which is what population control really means.
Education, within a country's cultural dynamics, has to be the way forward.

Of course I feel sorry that girl babies have died. I also feel sorry for the mothers who have been persuaded to get rid of their girl babies. That is something the Chinese should have dealt with/deal with. It happens elsewhere too - where boys are worth more than girls.

There is a big difference between "population control" and having a "population policy". One of the reasons for advocating having a population policy is to avoid the future necessity of having population control.

The population increase (and the rate of increase) and the sheer numbers involved lead to China having population control. It is not very nice! That is why we have to convince people - and help them - to voluntarily limit their populations.

please and thank you. and !

and convert your links. it's not difficult.

Do recommend you click on this (or copy & past). It is a real eyeopener. You can put in your date of birth and see how much the population has increased since then.......

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-15391515&h=aAQFP6bCdAQGnNxwlZA7Cgs9KO6pC72mKgreWgVn5I81e0w

NO YOU DON'T !!!!! YOU NEED TO FEEL SORRY FOR THE POOR DEAD BABIES!!!!

But you need to work out how many Chinese there would be now if they hadn't done something about it.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-15391515&h=aAQFP6bCdAQGnNxwlZA7Cgs9KO6pC72mKgreWgVn5I81e0w

Not legislation. (girl babies left to die in China)

What about a policy?

Yes; I was listening to the news just now; the "responsible" number of children for us in the UK to have is 2.1 ( yes, I know, but it was a statistician!) We are in danger of becoming the most densely populated country in (I think) Europe. So what do we do about it?

And in Africa, while there is room for more people, the resources aren't there. About 900,000,000 people in the world already don't have access to safe water anyway...so what can be done about it?

DH and I are committed to Wateraid, but there is so much more to do....

Education, education, education. Or legislation? That was the question asked on the radio.

Well, today is the day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My brother, an engineer, was an executive for Yorkshire Water. The prices walloped up year after year once it was privatised, and in the end he took the golden handshake because he was sick of being told to make good, hardworking needed people redundant.

The whole privatisation thing stinks - some things should not be there for profit and water is one of them.