Population and sense

Of the many predictions made concerning the new year, probably one of the most sobering has experts saying that the Philippine population will reach 94 million in 2010. The reckoning was made based on an estimated increase of two million new births during the period, at a growth rate of roughly 2 percent annually.

Think about it. That’s around 5,500 Filipino babies born every day, or almost 230 an hour.

In the entire Asean region, we already have the highest population growth rate. Compared to the entire world’s average population growth rate of around 1.17 percent (roughly the same rate that the population of our big neighbor Indonesia is increasing), we’re up there in the upper third of the fastest-growing countries—which also happen to be some of the poorest lands on earth.

Population-wise, the Philippines is already the 12th most-populated country in the world. But that isn’t quite the whole story: in that thickly-populated company, the Philippines is actually the second fastest-growing, losing out only to Nigeria with its astronomical 3.49 percent annual growth rate.

What this means is, if the current trend continues, we will soon dislodge countries like Mexico (1.12 percent) and Japan (-0.02 percent) in the most-populated lists and finally barge into the most-crowded top ten. Considering that some experts insist that up to 10 percent of the Filipino population resides overseas, no one would be surprised if we’re already in the list.

Of course, not all thickly populated countries are poor. But when one looks at any list of the countries with the highest population growth rates (meaning those that are growing fastest), the obvious conclusion seems to be that the faster the population grows, the poorer the country.

Thus, the leaders of the United Nations’ list of fastest-growing countries sounds a lot like a list of very deserving recipients of aid programs—Liberia, Burundi, Afghanistan, Western Sahara, East Timor, Nigeria, Eritrea, Uganda, Congo and Palestine, to name just the top 10. (The CIA World Fact Book places the Philippines at 58th in the world with our 2 percent, even if that still probably wouldn’t make those in the “pro-life” camp happy.)

According to Tomas Osias, executive director of the Population Commission, the Philippines must halve its current growth rate to around one percent so that it matches the rate the national economy is growing. Or, argued another way, we’d have to double our economic growth just so we can afford to feed, clothe, house and school all Filipinos at the rate we’re having babies.

No one, now that the list of presidential candidates in the coming elections has been pared down to eliminate the obvious crazies, is promising to double the economic growth rate. And with the House of Representatives declaring recently that the heatedly debated reproductive health bill is not among its priorities, we’re probably not going to see quick official action to control the population anytime soon, either.

On the ground, as it were, many Filipinos have no trouble understanding the connection between ever-growing families and poverty. Even in a country that is largely Catholic, these people are starting to realize that having a lot of children is not only keeping them poor but is also severely limiting the chances of success later in life of young people who grow up deprived of basic necessities, to say nothing of even the most rudimentary of comforts and luxury.

The Catholic Church, the biggest stumbling block to any official program promoting contraception and family planning, must understand this connection, as well, even if cannot be expected to back down on the population debate on doctrinal grounds. The population-control advocates, on the other hand, seem to have shifted their focus to women’s reproductive health and welfare, instead of hammering away at the obvious degradation of the quality of life of everyone—not just women—that untrammeled population growth inevitably brings.

But, at the end of the day, unchecked population is still an economic issue. And that’s something that no one needs to explain to families burdened with too many mouths to feed and too little money to do so.

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Indeed, reducing the argument for population control to economics—instead of religious doctrine, say, or women’s rights—will clear up a lot of the obfuscation that surrounds the debate. It is also something that all Filipinos who are on the verge of deciding whether or not to have children will identify with.

Neither the Church nor the government, after all, will have to live with the consequences of that decision as directly as the people who have children themselves. Which is why, more often than not, neither of these institutions actually figure in the calculations made by people who actually make it, regardless of how officials of both pretend to be involved, either because they have to save souls or get votes.

Common sense cannot be decreed by spiritual leaders nor legislated by political ones, after all. And more and more Filipinos, aware of the economic repercussions that having an additional child brings, seem to understand that it makes good sense to limit the number of children they will have, without the help or advice of either Church or State.

Of course, any important decision will have to be an educated one, if it is to be a conscious and deliberate one. And the decision not to have children, to postpone having them or to limit their number is often made by better-educated Filipinos, who are more aware of the aforementioned economic consequences.

Thus, if the population still continues to grow at a faster and faster rate overall, it’s probably because the numbers of the poorer, less-educated Filipinos continue to swell. And unless the poor are disabused of the archaic, uneducated and agriculture-based idea that more children mean more hands to help earn more money, the cycle will continue.

Given the current hard times, no one in his or her right mind should be having more children than they can afford, right? But they apparently still do, and the poorer they are, the more they seem to do so, whether they be families or entire countries.

But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands in despair and accept that we will soon have too many people than we can possibly afford to feed, clothe and educate. Instead, we should inject more education and common sense into the population debate—and hope that more Filipinos will decide that more children, unless they can really afford it, is a lot more than any of us should be having. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today