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TODAY Friday 29 August 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 29 August 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Babies
The other day there was an article in The New York Times about the intersection of prosperity and baby-lust in contemporary China. Everybody knows that the Chinese government has a one-baby-per-family policy. Until recently, that policy was supported by a propaganda campaign extolling only-child-hood, by Party scolding directed at transgressors, and by big monetary fines.
It now appears that the steam has run out of the propaganda and scolding machinery and that more and more couples are summoning the nerve and the money to pay the fines. Young couples rarely say they want large families, but two or three children are often cited as ideal. Peasants calculate that they can earn much more money through the work of a few extra hands around the house than they can lose through the fines and the costs of childrearing. Relatively well-off urban workers and professionals want the same kind of domestic atmosphere as city people everywhere seem to want: private bath, two kids. Only a small slice of European society prefers one child to two, and the slice is even smaller in America. In Asia, moreover, most people (and most governments) believe that support of parents by children during the parents' old age is a foundation stone of social policy; it helps to have at least a couple of wage earners in the family to shoulder the burden.
Meanwhile, there is demographic news of interest from the world's second-most populous nation. India, the first country to initiate a government family-planning program (1951), now counts 960 million inhabitants, 620 million more than at the dawn of her independence 50 years ago. Indian officials say that the national family planning program has succeeded in the sense that it helped avert 200 million births that would have occurred otherwise. Yikes.
The Indian government says it wants to slow population growth dramatically, but is eschewing numerical goals. Instead, it says, it will concentrate on an integrated program of primary health care, higher literacy (especially among girls), readily-available contraceptives, and broader opportunities for women. This may sound like pie-in-the-sky, but there's hardheaded evidence that the most important determinant of smaller family size is the rate of female literacy. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, population grows 5.1 percent per year and female literacy is 42 percent. In Kerala, where the population grows 1.8 percent per year, female literacy is 90 percent.
Interestingly (perhaps), Kerala's 1.8 percent growth rate is the same as the highest growth rate of any European country -- Ireland. Actually, we Irish are having fewer babies than ever before, but we still want them much more than, say, the Hungarians, who haven't hit demographic replacement level in decades. From the Ireland-as-Zion point of view, it is encouraging that the historically low Irish birthrate is offset by the historically novel fact that more people are immigrating to rather than emigrating from the island. And lest you surmise that Catholics will always outbreed agnostics or Protestants when given half a chance, consider that the West European nation with the lowest birth rate is -- Spain. Asi es la vida.
TODAY ON THE SITE:
For a full range of information on world population trends -- plus a spirited exchange on immigration policy in the US -- give a look to the excellent work of Dianne Sherman for our In The Trenches section.
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8/18: Thirty Glorious Years
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