Solving country’s high population growth

Statistical projections tell RP will have 103-million people in 2015 and in 40 years we will be 180 million – almost double in less than half a century.

It is a typical Third World country problem. In 1978, an economist Thomas Malthus in his “Essay on Population” dismally forecasted that since “population would grow geometrically and food production arithmetically – the world will be in trouble.”

Technology and food production productivity had foiled that event- there is enough food for everyone- but it is the distribution of wealth, resources and opportunities that have made millions starve while others throw up from eating and drinking too much.

Verily, the economists would generalize that the “per capita income” of the world had in fact risen but the social scientists say some countries have better “per capita” than others – that is why there are First and Third World countries.

There are even unconventional economists like Steven E. Landsburg, author of “The Armchair Economist,” more population will solve more problems.

He says further that twice as many population will produce twice as many geniuses – and the greater the population, the better incentive is there for the geniuses to excel and be rewarded for their efforts to help humanity. Even those of us with lesser talents will try to exceed our limits since there is a large population out there to serve. For instance, simplistically, lawyers will have a bigger market with a higher population – Steven argues.

In fact, the Industrial Revolution that saw the blooming of new modern technology and appliances took time before it produced multi-billion earnings for firms because they had to wait for a large chunk of population to be alive to serve on earth to produce a critical mass of market for their products and services.

A Harvard economist Michael Kremer, meantime, studying a million years of history, declared that population rise drives technology to prosper even more.

To prove our improved productivity – they cite that housewives used to spend twelve hours daily to cook, wash, iron clothes and sew – carrying buckets of water and coal. Today, it is three hours with faucets, power, electric iron, sewing machines and vacuum cleaners. A few years ago, we struggled with 3 channels-black and white TV and electric typewriter with the ancient “delete” mechanism. Today, we have cable colored TV with live satellite news and multi-tasking computers.

One hundred years ago, only 26% of men retire at age 65; today it is 90%. We work less and produce more and better goods. It is hard to argue against that.

The contrarians even want to go further and say that the world is not overpopulated. If we create simple two-storey houses for a two families in all of Texas (without gardens etc. – and anything else) – we can actually put the entire 6 billion people on earth inside the state of Texas.

Facetiously, they say that 37% of New Yorkers claim (during surveys) that they want to leave the Apple City- but none of them ever does. The conclusion is that huge crowds (population) support the Broadway shows, good jobs, plush restaurants, pricey bars and signature clothes that keep them there. That’s why the bitching New Yorkers do stay because if they “can make it there, they can make it anywhere” or so Sinatra croons. How difficult to argue.

Their final argument is that when a family gets a third child – the pie is reduced by one-third but only for that family. It does not make the other families any more destitute with the third child’s birth. It is only particular to that family.

But that is only true in theory in most First World milieu. Not in the Philippines where 80% of the popula¬tion is poor and only 20% rich. Any new child impoverishes the nation in a large sense since most of the people are poor. And given the finite and debt-driven re¬sources of government for “free” social services – one baby more is always a fiscal burden.

That is why the United Nations and 43 other member states (including the Philippines) signed a Millen¬nium Development (8) Goals (in 2000) especially zeroing on in the reduction of poverty. In many poor countries – the issue of GDP growth is sometimes secondary to “inclusive growth” – or how it affects all sectors of society, not just the affluent. (Of course, one can argue, you have to increase the pie first or the arithme¬tic “dividend” before one can impact the “divisor.”)

Thus for the Philippines, the 2015 goal (one year before President Aquino steps down) will be to reduce the number of those Filipino families earning below US$1 (P42) per day to 27.7% or close to just one fourth of the population. Let us recall that it was just 20 years ago in (1991) when those below this threshold of poverty was an enormous 45.3% of the population (almost half were poor).

By 2009, this was reduced to a meaningful 32.9% which means the administrations from Ramos, Es¬trada and GMA did something right to alleviate poverty.

The so-called “poverty gap” ratio targeted at 6.5% by 2015, improved from 19% in 1991 to 7.7%. The other measure is that the last quintile of the population has increased its national consumption from 4.7% share in 1991 to a modest but good 4.8% since the UN MDG goal in this aspect is merely to keep that share “increasing” rather than “decreasing”– as another measure of inclu¬sive growth.

But why are we having this sense that, despite these statistics, there are still many who are poor? The answer is – we continue to add 2 million new, unproductive mouths to feed every year at about 2% per annum population growth.

That is why the road map is cut out for President Aquino to find ways to journey through successfully till 2015. It has to be a combination of GDP growth and an increasing share of the “have nots” of the national pie so as to somehow correct the mal-distribution of wealth in the country and combine this with a reduction of a runaway population growth which is already one of the world’s highest. –ZOILO P. DEJARESCO, III, Manila Bulletin