As of July 2021, United Nations estimates a current world population of 7.9 Billion. The question is, does the world need the more babies?
As fertility rate falls from across the world, more evidence shows that the world does not need overpopulation, and the declining birth rates is good for societies.
While cities in Italy and China are already shutting down their maternity wards due to population stagnation and a fertility bust, and population aging were said to have increased dramatically, demographer Ron Lee of the University of California, Berkeley showed in a study that people's living standards are in its highest when fertility rate declines, just below replacement level (around 2.1 births per woman), to at least 1.6.
UNDISCLOSED, GERMANY - AUGUST 12: A 4-day-old newborn baby, who has been placed among empty baby beds by the photographer, lies in a baby bed in the maternity ward of a hospital (a spokesperson for the hospital asked that the hospital not be named) on August 12, 2011 in a city in the east German state of Brandenburg, Germany.
Meanwhile, when fertility is either much higher or much lower than that, quality of life falls again. Lee and his team discussed in the study if low fertility really is a problem.
Having more or less babies is 'rather pointless'
In the 19th century, youth were more needed for countries to cope economically and for military forces. However, the 20th and 21st century gradually realizes the truthfulness of that reality, as there was little to no evidence that young ones are any more productive than older ones today. For sure, they do have different set of skills, but both equally play a part in entrepreneurship, said gerontologist Sarah Harper of the University of Oxford.
Since the 19th century ways had already set the foundations of how to distribute workforce, we do have to adapt to that reality. When elderly people do finally stop being productive, the younger ones fill in the loss from the workforce.
In immigration, for instance, where young adults are brought in more often, a few overwhelming evidence shows that more immigrants mean higher average incomes and lower unemployment and poverty rates, thus suggesting that what society needs are people with attributes than new-born babies. As a matter of fact, the idea of forcing people to either have more or less babies turns out to be 'rather pointless'. Exhibit A: China's one-child policy which lasted over a decade now and France's efforts to encourage large families with financial incentives haven't made much difference.
What the world needs now are improvement of women's health and education, and quality parental and childcare provision, which is more likely to be achieved when parents invest more time, money and love in fewer children.
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Saving the Planet with Fewer Children
Although the relationship between population growth and climate crisis cannot be pointed at exactly, most people believe that having few to no children saves the planet. Apparently, six births per woman is bad for the environment.
However, Harper discourages denying yourself of having children, as long as you raise one or two who are environmentally conscious consumers.
According to the experts, we do need solutions far better than having more babies in order to save the planet through more effective and timely tools of reducing carbon emissions and plastic wastes.
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