PS477/577: International Environmental Politics
Prof. Ronald Mitchell
 Winter Term 2008

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Lecture #18
6 March 2008
Copyright: Ronald B. Mitchell, 2008

I. Introduction

II. The Determinants of Population Growth.

A. Basic elements:

1. Birth rate

2. Infant mortality rate

3. Average lifespan

4. Death rate

B. Income: increasing income leads to decrease in the number of children by providing opportunities to do other things in life (career, etc.)

1. Assumption: Either one wants to have fewer kids but doesn't know how, or…

2. Assumption: Education clarifies that having more kids is not in one’s interest.

C. Women’s role (and power) in society: women in developed world have more freedom to decide when to have children and how many.

D. Values attached to children: some people get more pleasure from having more children. Compare perceptions of value and roles of children in different cultures and at different levels of development.

III. Population Control Policies

A. What are the mechanisms that control population growth?

1. Religion: it affects the issues of contraception and abortion and sexual morality.

2. Respect for national sovereignty: The US and China can disagree on whether and how to control the population growth.

3. Culture: differences about the importance of children to a fulfilling life; of the value placed on having many or few children; of the value of having children while you are young or old.

4. Freedom: Gives people more choices about children planning.

5. Nationalism: French-speaking Moroccans don’t count as French in France’s demographic policy in order to boost the growth of the white French population.

6. Economic factors: countries in Eastern Europe have negative population growth, but not due to any explicit policy inducing it.

IV. Discussion of the Chinese Population Control Policy

A. The quote from the US congressional hearings: "We already knew some of the gruesome details of People Republic of China’s coercive population control program. We knew, for instance, that the government routinely imposes exorbitant fines on couples who had unauthorized children with sometimes amount of three or four times the average Chinese income and that it destroyed their homes and confiscated their private property when they cannot pay. We knew that when a woman has an unauthorized pregnancy, she is typically brought to the family planning center and subjected to intense psychological pressure, often with a personal involvement of her boss or other people with a power over her, until she agrees to the abortion. We knew that when the psychological pressure does not work, women are sometimes dragged physically to abortion mills and the physical force is employed against both women and men when they refuse to be sterilized."

B. Chinese policy -- the policy itself, as of 2002:

1. Source: http://www.unescap.org/esid/psis/population/database/poplaws/law_china/china%20pop%20and%20family%20planning.pdf

2. Article 3: "The population and family planning programs shall be combined with the efforts to offer more opportunities for women to receive education and get employed, improve their health and elevate their status."

3. Article 12: "Villagers' committees and residents' committees shall, in accordance with law, make a success of the family planning programs."

4. Article 18: "The State maintains its current policy for reproduction, encouraging late marriage and childbearing and advocating one child per couple. Where the requirements specified by laws and regulations are met, plans for a second child, if requested, may be made."

5. Article 19: "Family planning shall be practiced chiefly by means of contraception."

6. Article 25: "Citizens who marry late and delay childbearing may be entitled to longer nuptial and maternity leaves or other welfare benefits."

7. Article 21: "Couples of reproductive age who practice family planning shall receive, free of charge, the basic items of technical services specified by the State."

8. Article 22: "Discrimination against and maltreatment of women who give birth to baby girls or who suffer from infertility are prohibited. Discrimination against, maltreatment, and abandonment of baby girls are prohibited."

9. Article 26: "Citizens who undergo surgical operation for family planning shall enjoy leaves as specified by the State. Local people's governments may give them rewards."

10. Article 27: "Couples who [volunteer to have only one child in their lifetime] shall enjoy rewards in accordance with the relevant regulations of the State."

11. Article 31: "People's governments at all levels shall take measures to ensure citizens' access to technical services for family planning in order to improve their reproductive health."

12. Article 41: "Citizens who give birth to babies not in compliance with the provisions of Article 18 of this Law shall pay a social maintenance fee prescribed by law."

C. Rather than implementing a Chinese-like policy, which limits the growth of population directly, could countries implement the policy of income growth, that naturally limits the growth of population. If incomes rise, people have more natural incentives to limit the number of children.

1. The problem of such policy is that i) in some cases (Thailand) high birth rate can coincide with high income growth and ii) it is hard to help developing countries increase their incomes, especially the distribution of incomes.

D. What are the employed policies in this example?

1. Making opportunities for contraception available.

2. Rewards

3. Fines

4. Social pressure

E. What alternative policies could there be to reduce population growth?

1. Tax benefits (in the US)

2. Education

3. Decrease of infant mortality

4. Alter gender roles, empower women

5. Adoption

F. What current policies have the "de facto" affect of LIMITING population?

1. Failure to address any number of diseases for which we have cheap available ways of controlling them -- malaria, dysentery, etc.

2. Maldistribution of food and distribution of food based on ability to pay rather than need to survive

G. What current policies have the "de facto" affect of INCREASING population?

1. Improved health care generally

2. Specific efforts to address various epidemics, including malaria, diarrhea

3. Providing better food, nutrition, clean water.

4. Pro-natalist policies: longer maternity leaves, tax credits for children, free childcare

V. French pro-natalist policies (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/HNurton/france-99335/)

A. Tax incentives -- up to 1000 British pounds for having a third child

B. Family allowances to increase purchasing power of 3-child families

C. Up to 40 weeks of maternity leave for 3rd child

D. Preferential mortgage treatment for 3 child families

E. Subsidized and available child care

F. Which do you prefer -- French policy or Chinese policy?

VI. Criteria for Good Population Policies

A. Which policies are acceptable and why? What criteria should we use in determining a good population policy, if any? What determines which policies are acceptable and why?

B. Effectiveness: does the policy obtain its objectives in expected ways?

1. Should the intended affect matter more than the unintended but known effect? Compare de facto population control policies to intentional ones

2. Would the ends ever justify the means?

C. Effects:

1. Does the program lead to unintended but predictable effects (like costs, hazards, risks, and social consequences)?

2. Does the program lead to unpredictable effects?

D. Means: Some effective means of birth control are not acceptable in our society (forced sterilization, etc.)

E. Responsibility for "doing nothing": If the policy is not implemented, who takes responsibility for that?

F. Would what is acceptable change if we get to 12 billion people? 20 billion people? 50 billion people?

VII. Discussion of General Population Control Policy

A. What happens to the global population growth if we don’t have any control policy? Continue increasing exponentially? Stabilize later?

B. Maybe there is no real population problem? There might be many alternative outcomes…

C. So we just let the trend of starvation in developing countries continue, and let people die in future, as they do now?

D. Perhaps starvation is happening there not due to their population growth?

E. Then we should still identify the most appropriate policy (distributing food, sterilization, tax benefits, fines, etc.)?

F. Poor people will not have access to the civilized preventative medicine and contraception AND they will have to pay fines for having children!

G. Yet doing nothing counts, there must be some policies implemented.

 
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Ronald Mitchell - rmitchel@uoregon.edu 
Department of Political Science - http://www.uoregon.edu/~rmitchel
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1284
Tel: 541-346-4880; Fax: 541-346-4860
© Ronald B. Mitchell, 2008