Filipino poverty and population

The Philippine population reached 100 million in 2014, and is projected to reach 101.6 million this year. The projection is based on an annual growth rate of 2.1%, which, while lower than the 2.42% rate from 1990 to 1995, is still the highest in the Southeast Asian region. Population growth rate was 1.9% in Cambodia, 1.6% in Malaysia, 1% in Vietnam and Indonesia, and 0.4% in Thailand, according to Rosalinda Marcelino, Population Commission director for Metro Manila. During the public hearings on the Reproductive Health Bill, Marcelino also told the House Committee on Population that the population would continue to grow for the next 50 years even if couples were to limit the number of their children to two each, because the population is predominantly young. Some 35% of Filipinos are below 15 years old, while 15% are 15 to 24 years old. “…More than 50% of [Filipinos] are young and, in due time, would become parents. And even if each couple would only have two children, our population will still continue to grow in the next 50 years,” Marcelino said.

For many politicians such figures are “the best argument for birth control”. They argued that high population growth rates exacerbate poverty, and that there is more poverty among big families. In addition, families with fewer children can better provide for the education, health, nutrition and other needs of each child, since whatever income they earn can be divided among fewer individuals. There was nothing new in these arguments. Almost all have been raised in other countries with high incidences of poverty.

Against the argument that a lower population growth rate would reduce poverty is that the causes of poverty are: flawed philosophies of development, misguided economic policies, greed, corruption, social inequities, lack of access to education, poor economic and social services, poor infrastructures, etc. The conclusion is unavoidable: to escape from poverty, we have to address the real causes of poverty and not population. South Africa, for example, has lowered its previously high population growth rate, but is still hounded by poverty.

The Philippines can arguably support a population of 200 million — but only if the structural causes of poverty were addressed. Among these is the grossly unequal distribution of wealth, in which the 25 wealthiest individuals appropriate the equivalent of the incomes of 70 million Filipinos. IBON Databank also points out that while the wealth of the richest Filipinos tripled during the last five years, there are more poor Filipinos (25.8% of the population) during the same period. The solutions to Philippine poverty are fairly well known, but unlikely to be adopted by a political class that is hardly committed to the authentic transformation of Philippine society from one in which economic growth benefits only a handful of families to one in which economic development would benefit the majority. In the Philippine context, a key solution include the outright abolition of the land tenancy system. The archaic, grossly inefficient and unjust tenancy system has persisted, primarily because the attempts at so-called land reform have been deliberately riddled with loopholes by the landlord-dominated Congress.

Poverty is the cause of overpopulation, rather than its result.

http://bulatlat.com/main/2015/08/15/poverty-is-the-cause-not-the-result-of-overpopulation/

The Problem is UNDER-Population

There is no question but that the populations of most European countries will decline in the next generation, and in the cases of Germany and Russia, the decline will be dramatic. In fact, the entire global population explosion is ending. In virtually all societies, from the poorest to the wealthiest, the birthrate among women has been declining. In order to maintain population stability, the birthrate must remain at 2.1 births per woman. Above that, and the population rises; below that, it falls. In the advanced industrial world, the birthrate is already substantially below 2.1. In middle-tier countries such as Mexico or Turkey, the birthrate is falling but will not reach 2.1 until between 2040 and 2050. In the poorest countries, such as Bangladesh or Bolivia, the birthrate is also falling, but it will take most of this century to reach 2.1. Even with the lifting of "one child" China has still maintained a very low birth rate. The United States also has a birthrate for white women at about 1.9, meaning that the Caucasian population is contracting, but the African-American and Hispanic populations compensate for that

The process is essentially irreversible. It is primarily a matter of urbanization. In agricultural and low-level industrial societies, children are a productive asset. Children can be put to work at the age of 6 doing agricultural work or simple workshop labor. Children become a source of income, and the more you have the better. Just as important, since there is no retirement plan other than family in such societies, a large family can more easily support parents in old age.

In a mature urban society, the economic value of children declines. In fact, children turn from instruments of production into objects of massive consumption. In urban industrial society, not only are the opportunities for employment at an early age diminished, but the educational requirements also expand dramatically. Children need to be supported much longer, sometimes into their mid-20s. Children cost a tremendous amount of money with limited return, if any, for parents. Thus, people have fewer children. Birth control merely provided the means for what was an economic necessity. For most people, a family of eight children would be a financial catastrophe. Therefore, women have two children or fewer, on average. As a result, the population contracts. Of course, there are other reasons for this decline, but urban industrialism is at the heart of it.

The contraction of the population, particularly during the transitional period before the older generations die off, will leave a relatively small number of workers supporting a very large group of retirees, particularly as life expectancy in advanced industrial countries increases. In addition, the debts incurred by the older generation would be left to the smaller, younger generation to pay off. Given this, the expectation is major economic dislocation. The most obvious solution to this problem is immigration. The problem is that Japan and most European countries have severe cultural problems integrating immigrants. The Japanese don't try, for the most part, and the Europeans who have tried — particularly with migrants from the Islamic world — have found it difficult.

The United States is an efficient manager of immigration, despite all the current controversies and past immigration scares. The American solution of relying on immigration will mean a substantial change in what has been the historical sore point in American culture: race. The United States can maintain its population only if the white population becomes a minority in the long run. The second point is that some of the historical sources of immigration to the United States, particularly Mexico, are exporting fewer immigrants. As Mexico moves up the economic scale, emigration to the United States will decline. Therefore, the third tier of countries where there is still surplus population will have to be the source for immigrants.

World population was steady until the middle of the 16th century. The rate of growth increased in about 1750 and moved up steadily until the beginning of the 20th century, when it surged. Put another way, beginning with European imperialism and culminating in the 20th century, the population has always been growing. For the past 500 years or so, the population has grown at an increasing rate. That means that throughout the history of modern industrialism and capitalism, there has always been a surplus of labor. There has also been a shortage of capital in the sense that capital was more expensive than labor by equivalent quanta, and given the constant production of more humans, supply tended to depress the price of labor.

For the first time in 500 years, this situation is reversing itself. First, fewer humans are being born, which means the labor force will contract and the price of all sorts of labor will increase. This has never happened before in the history of industrial man. In the past, the scarce essential element has been capital. But now capital, understood in its precise meaning as the means of production, will be in surplus, while labor will be at a premium. The economic plant in place now and created over the next generation will not evaporate. At most, it is underutilized, and that means a decline in the return on capital. Put in terms of the analog, money, it means that we will be entering a period where money will be cheap and labor increasingly expensive. One of the key variables mitigating the problem would be continuing advances in technology to increase productivity. We can call this automation or robotics, but growths in individual working productivity have been occurring in all productive environments from the beginning of industrialization, and the rate of growth has been intensifying. A growth in productivity so vast that it would leave labor in surplus. Of course if that happened, then we would be entering a revolutionary situation in which the relationship between labor and income would have to shift.

The pattern of falling death rates, followed by falling birth rates applies for most of the world. Saving lives doesn't lead to overpopulation - just the opposite. Creating societies where people enjoy health, prosperity and fundamental equality is the only way to a sustainable world.

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/global-markets/population-decline-and-the-great-economic-reversal?post=59016

Go forth and multiply

Overpopulation is good for Filipinos, says a bishop.  Bishop Garcera said the huge Philippine population could be part of “God’s plan for Filipinos to be caregivers to ageing nations whose populations had become stagnant.” He also said many Filipino women would make “good wives” for foreigners in countries that have low population growth. He said that the overpopulation that breeds poverty was not a problem because poverty itself was not a problem. He said poverty even brought people “closer” to God and was instrumental in realizing God’s plan for Filipinos to take care of other nationalities by inducing migration and working abroad.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/331529/overpopulation-good-for-filipinos-says-bishop

population myths

Our great universities search diligently for "the answer" to the problem of poverty and hunger. They look at everything except the cause - the powerful own the world's social wealth. As a major beneficiary, the capitalist class have much to gain by perpetuating the myths of overpopulation.

Population is projected to grow until about 2050. But before the end of the century, it may fall by nearly 20 percent. In 103 of 222 countries listed in the CIA World Factbook, total fertility rates are below replacement. In 37 more, they barely exceed it. Birth rates are falling in nearly all. It takes 2.1 live births per mother to keep a population stable. Here are the total fertility rates in the world's most populous countries: China (1.54); India (2.62); the United States (2.06); Indonesia (2.25) and Brazil (2.18). The average rate for European women (1.53) is well below replacement. Fertility rates are falling fast among Muslim states, too. (They remain high only in Yemen and Palestine.) Iran in 1979, the total fertility rate was 6.5. Now, it's 1.7.

European and North American fertility rates peaked in 1955, dropping steadily since. In Asia and Latin America, fertility has fallen steadily from about six in 1950 to below three in 1995. In Africa, fertility peaked at 6.75 in the early 1960s, dropping slowly through the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In 1995 it stood at 5.7, about where South Asia and Latin America were twenty years earlier, and precisely the fertility level at which those regions then experienced accelerated fertility declines.

Belgium, a relatively rural country has a population density of about 345 people/sq.km. If the entire United States had the same population density, we could fit 3.3 billion people. If the entire world was modeled on Belgium, the 50% of the land that is considered "suitable" for human habitation now (that is, not desert, not high mountains, etc) would hold 22 billion people. And that's using Belgium as a model - if we used the densities of South Korea where the density is 487/sq. km, that same land would fit 31 billion. And of course, if we converted even half of the "unsuitable land" in the future, by converting deserts to grasslands (assuming cheap power and desalination plants, or other tech to increase water there) and learning to build small cities on the more accessible mountain ranges, that alone would put us to 46 billion or so. If the entire population of the planet (6.8 billion) lived at a population density of New York City we would all easily fit inside the state of Texas with room to spare.

South Korea has just under half the farmland per person found in Bangladesh, yet no one speaks of over-crowding causing hunger in South Korea. Costa Rica, with only half of its neighbour,Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy - one indicator of nutrition - eleven years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of northern countries. Netherlands, where there is very little land per person has not prevented it from eliminating hunger and becoming a large net exporter of food

People are hungry because they cannot afford food, not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce. most hungry people live in countries that have food surpluses. Rather than growing food to meet the needs of local communities for a healthy, diverse diet, industrial agriculture produces crops to sell on world markets. While world crop production has trebled since the 1950s, more people go hungry now than 20 years ago.

One important aspect about the causes of hunger is often ignored and that is land ownership and who controls the land. In Latin America, 80 percent of agricultural land is in the hands of 20 percent of the farmers; the other 20 percent of the land is in the hands of the remaining 80 percent. In British history it is forgotten that through repeated acts of enclosure the peasants were pushed off the land so that the gentry could make money raising wool for the new and highly productive power looms. They could not do this if the peasants were to retain their historic entitlement to a share of production from the land. Massive starvation was the inevitable result of this expropriation. The learned circles reasoned that overpopulation was the cause of this poverty. This was the accepted because the intellectual elite were doing the rationalising and it was they who controlled the educational institutions which studied the problem so naturally the final conclusions absolved the wealthy of any responsibility for the plight of the poor.

Similar blinkered thinking failed to appreciate the connection between colonialisation and hunger. In the underdeveloped countries European colonizers understood well that ownership of land gave the owner control over what society produced. The powerful simply re-distributed the valuable land to themselves, eradicating millennia-old traditions of common use. Since custom is a form of ownership, the shared use of land could not be permitted. If ever re-established, this ancient practice would reduce the rights of these new owners. For this reason, much of the land went unused or underused until the owners could do so profitably. This is the pattern of land use that characterises most Third World countries today, and it is this that generates hunger in the world. These conquered people are kept in a state of relative impoverishment. Permitting them any substantial share of the wealth would negate the historic reason for conquest - namely plunder. The on-going role of Third World countries is to be the supplier of cheap and plentiful raw materials and agricultural products to the developed world. Nature's wealth was, and is, being controlled to fulfill the needs of the world's affluent people.