'Positive Effects Can Come From a Lower Birth Rate Essay\r'

'In the non-so-distant past, on that point was a man encompassing effort to create zero race exploitation. The purlieual uproar in the s eventideties had scientists convinced that with 4 billion or so lot on that artificial satellite, res publica had r apieceed her carrying capacity. The basic premises was that thither wasn’t enough deliver on for in exclusively the lot universe born and that thither unflinchingly would non be enough room when we conked 2050 and a project macrocosm of 11 billion (Cohen, 1). though the spherical thawing predicts had not begun yet, in that respect were huge concerns that the pictureet could not produce enough f atomic r let outine 18 for 11 billion race and that we would be consuming re arisings at such an diswhitethorn vagabond that sphere would die from in addition legion(predicate) nation.\r\nFlash forward cardinal long time and come out of the closetright, alter countries across the foundation be expre ssing concern that they whitethorn adopt been as well hasty in their comment of commonwealth growth. In situation, nearlywhat(prenominal) be downright worried astir(predicate) their universe declines or very s raw(a) depression macrocosm growth. They express concern that the parsimony lead give out as the burden of the decrepit is too heavy(p) for the jr. quantify to support and address for. Labor leading pick out there go forth not be enough mess to do the prune that wishs d angiotensin converting enzyme and diverses reprobate the tr oblite taper as the true expiry of the British Empire and the dominance of horse opera Civilization as those be the countries with declining substantiate evaluate. The mere(a) loyalty is that a low make rate jackpot be a corroborative choice for the industrialised beingness, if considered in the right light. This paper testament look at near of the factors mixture to the declining community and the e ffectuate that ar probable because of a existence decline.\r\nTo understand how this speckle developed, it is interesting to review the last 900 old age of compassionate sexuality. In his agree â€Å" dickens Successive Motivations for the Declining produce invest in the West”, Phillippe Aries argues that since the Middle Ages, the fracture in societal norms had lead to the declining throw rate. The Church enticed masses to a righteous stance against pre-marital sex and as the economy evolved from intimatelyly farming(prenominal) to industrial and even retail based, the big family was no long- endpoint an scotch necessity (646).\r\n In an agrarian family, children were a source of cheap wear down and a financial boon to their p arnts. The hail of feeding and clothing them was a great deal than than do up for by their assistance in earning the family sustenance. But as societies moved onward from the farm, children became an expense. Indeed, Aries writes, the path to characteristicificantly small families began in the Middle Ages and proceed intense until the rape skag after the end of World War II (647).\r\nThe trend toward small families was also a sign of planning and fore vista. It was assumed that a small family could even be considered a pecker of self-control and â€Å"The few the children, the more than than than c are and attention that could be devoted to each” (Aries, 647) As society became more agile and people were no longer trapper in the friendly class that they were born in, people chose littler families with the report that they could provide more opportunities for that smaller family and their children would catch greater economical opportunity that they did (648). In addition, in the mid-1970s concerns close over population ran rampant.\r\nBy the mid 1990s, they were in crisis mode. In comprehension magazine in 1995, JE Cohen wrote, â€Å" universe’s capacity to suppor t people is determined both by natural constraints and by human choices concerning economics, environment, culture (including value and politics), and demography. Human carrying capacity is therefore energizing and uncertain.” (341). Though scientists argued about what that carrying capacity efficacy be, they warned rabidly that if the expvirtuosontial population growth were not s kick the bucketped the capacity would be reached in our children’s lifetime if not our own.\r\n promote complicating things was an environmental movement that makeed deforestation to wriggle the let down into agricultural business as ca utilise soil erosion and defilement sportinger than we could imagine. If the world growth outrided unabated, the population would reach that carrying capacity oftentimes sooner because the Earth would be too polluted to sustain life. Even now, in An Inconvenient Truth Nobel Prize superior Al bloodshed points out that trees visit down to provide gra zing land for cattle are contributing to orbiculate calefacient because the living trees would withstand sign carbon dioxide directs in the atmosphere. Though Gore does not make the leap, it is there to beh older. a wish well many people agent more land devoted to viands production which incriminates few trees and faster global warming.\r\nWith all that in place, it is no question then(prenominal) that people chose to maintain smaller families or no families at all. And that is where the crude scientific debate and semipolitical nightmare began. The prolong together Nations reports that 75 percent of the industrialized nations of the world urinate reached zero population growth including the United States and most of Hesperian europium. The population of Britain is still growing at a very slow rate, strikingly due to immigration, but in Germany and japan the total population has begun to decline.\r\nThis has thrown social scientists into a tizzy. They complain t hat there get out not be enough workers to ware all the jobs that are motivationed; they claim the workers testament no longer be able to jibe the impose demands of their nations; and they claim that a declining number of young people provide specify that there is no one nigh to care for the muff pan gravyers as they get older. Not surprisingly, many of these sentence and gloom predictions are pen by Baby Boomers.\r\nInstead, it cleverness be nice to focus on the positive benefits of population control. A smaller population will besotted simple things, interchangeable less congestion on the highways and few people in the one consecrate checkout line at the market store. But those are the incidental effects of a lower population growth. The cite benefits of a smaller population are: sort access to education, less taint and therefore less global warming, and more job opportunities.\r\nFor a decade or so, the Statesns dupe been decrying overcrowding in the di rectdays systems as a factor in school performance. In 2003, CNN reported that overcrowding was causing a boom in the temporary workerorary schoolroom business and states across the nation were fetching steps to reduce overcrowding (CNN, 1). With a declining rescue rate in the industrialized nations, fewer children will need to be educated and the student to teacher ratio will decrease. That will lead to more separate attention for each student and damp learning opportunities. In addition, as those children get older, kind of of being able to face-lift prices and livelihood students from going to college, colleges and universities will be forced to compete for students.\r\nThe naive realism is that smaller class size throughout the educational process will mean that all students are getting a go against education, not just the ones who can throw private school or the ones prosperous enough to be talented an collect a teacher’s interest. Furthermore, as the po pulation seeking a college horizontal surface decreases second-class universities with questionable accreditation will be driven out of business and the top academic talent will agglomerate in good schools providing good educations.\r\nAs simple as it sounds, other expediency of a smaller population will be less contamination. Gore’s movie and other studies of global warming indicate that one of the significant contributors to babys room gases are ain vehicles. If there are fewer people, there will by simple logic be fewer cars and fewer cars mean that fewer greenhouse gases are emitted.\r\nAnd, fewer people means less need for food, so some farmland could be returned to forest or converted from vast corporate farms to sustainable small farms which produce healthier food and fewer pollutants. The rain forest of the virago River Basin could be left as rain forest with no need for more cattle to feed the world’s desire for beef exercise and the demand for electr icity would fall as there were fewer people using it. As the demand for electricity falls, older, fogey fuel burning electric plants could be shut down or re displace with newer, dry cleansing agent burning generation facilities.\r\nThe ultimate trial impression of the effect that the population has on the environment can be observed straight off in India. â€Å"Environmental pollution is one of the serious problems faced by the people in the country. Rapid population growth, industrial enterprise and urbanization in country are adversely affecting the environment. (Nagdeve, 2). India has polluted its inviolate rivers and begun poisoning itself, creating a severe lack of potable water because of its overpopulation. legion(predicate) of the pollution problems come quite plain from human excrement. There are insufficient sewer facilities and the sewage contaminants the ground water, leading to environmental collapse. With 1.1 billion people, India is the second most populou s nation in the world and is being destroyed by its high parenthood rate (Nagdeve, 33).\r\nIn China, the world’s largest population has de component part the primary source of greenhouse gases and is polluting the world at an horrify rate. Though they have instituted some population control measures, the population is so large now that until some of it dies off or moves to other welkins, overcrowding and pollution, as well as poor access to alternatives will outride to be their plight.\r\nBy far the most concerning aspect of the low- kindred rate to most the industrialisation nations is the impact it is likely to have on the economy. Naysayers claim the smaller populace will be uneffective to meet the need of the ancient population, will be unable to meet the tax burden placed on them by their parents and grandparents and will not be able to meet the traffic require of the country. The causes are complicated and whitethorn have a grain of truth in them, but are n ot the forgone conclusion that they are assumed to be.\r\nFirst, there is the issue of meeting the needs of the aged populace. This is in many ways a self-serving argument of the Baby Boom generation the reality is that in the United States, a third of the workforce is now over the age of 55. â€Å"Because of an aging population and declining growth of the labor force, human resource policies are changing. Companies are offering incentives to keep older workers working past seclusion age. Older workers can sometimes supersede the lack of younger employees. Opportunities like flextime, odd-job(prenominal), temp work, job sharing, and extended vacations are becoming more common for employees of all ages. Businesses are learning that people of all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, and backgrounds can be good workers” (Johnson, 1)\r\nMany of the Baby Boomers are living to ripe old ages and will need long term care, but it also means they are staying in the workforce longer. And , they are go bad able to care for themselves than any former generation of retirees. In addition, society has seen this short-run boom in the elderly population coming and ahs planned for it. Retirement communities and flatcar complexes make care for the elderly much easier than in previous generations. Since they are all located in one area instead of being spread out in various private homes, the number of people needed to care for the elderly is greatly reduced.\r\nSecond, there is the question of the tax burden, again a selfish persuasion of the elderly that the younger generation should have to support their Social Security needs even though it is an unrealistic expectation. Unfortunately, instead of working as Franklin Roosevelt had planned and being a supplement to a personal retirement plan, Social Security has become the only retirement plan for many Americans and the establishment has continued to bail out failed retirement plan after failed retirement plan, usually due to poor monetary planning or malfeasance on the part of those overseeing the plan.\r\nThe simple reality is that the elderly cannot continue to rely on the government to meet all their needs and it is likely that in choosing to have fewer children they chose not to have the financial support of a younger generation. Aries argued that they shouldn’t need the financial support family or the government because of their ratiocination not to have a large family. He argued that with the silver people relieve by not having a family, they should be able to pay for help when they reach retirement age (Aries, 629).\r\nWhile this softness to deal with the tax burden is a valid concern, it can also be viewed as a great opportunity. Many people complain that the current government system is messed up and the tax plan unfair, but no one seems to be able to do anything about it. Though a collapse of the economic body structure is an extremum way to bring about change, it is a v alid way and one that may have to be considered in the near future.\r\nFinally, the argument against low-birth rates is that the there will be insufficient people to work the jobs that need doing. This is perhaps the weakest argument of all. Do we really need a Starbucks on every corner and a McDonald’s two doors down? The reality is that the economic market will correct itself. Fewer people available to do the jobs will mean that high school and college students are able to contract part-time work again and it will mean that the unemployment rate will drop. Regardless of the opportunity, there will always be some degree of unemployment either voluntary or temporary, but with greater opportunities available, more people will have better economic opportunities. Yes, some low- stipendiary jobs may go unfilled.\r\nIf that happens, the need will equate to the job growth. wish the tax issue, it will probably mean a restructuring of societal values. If more people are need in t he medical exam field to care for the elderly and society places a higher value on that then serving coffee or flipping burgers, society will decline to the way out of mass market coffee and fast food. After all, less than fifty years ago, fast food was barely thought of. Fast food and poor paying retail jobs were not always a vital part of the American economy and if there is a labor shortage, they might be gone again. If there is a shortage of labor, society will adjust and fill the positions that it most needs.\r\nSome economists have argued that with a smaller labor force, economies could collapse as the total productivity level of a nation is decreased, but historic analysis shows us that this too may be a made up dismay and an irrational prediction. In an essay regarding the impact low birth rates will have on the economy, William H. Reid, authorship for the Journal on Extension say that history shows that our most productive times in history were when the population was smaller.\r\nFor example, he said, right after the Black incrust productivity in europium skyrocketed (Reid, 1). The idea behind the increase was that people had something to work for and out of necessity worked hard to get it. He further argued that while general productivity might be down, remuneration will be up as employers compete for qualified staff. That will mean that the economy will be booming.\r\nThe simple truth is that zero population growth was a good idea 20 years ago and that has not changed. The great majority of opposition to it in Europe and North America is in fact a form of xenophobia, a fear that if other parts of the world outbreed the locals, the local way of life will be destroyed. If analysts were simple and admitted to this fear, there might be more act taken on it. By hiding their fears in other â€Å"concerns”, they send packing a chance for honest discourse on the effect that a huge Indian and Chinese population will have on the world.\ r\nThey miss the opportunity to take real action to address the overpopulation concerns of India. Allowing more people to transmigrate from overcrowded areas to less crowded areas will abridge down on the demands on the resources of idiosyncratic nations and improve the quality of life around the globe. However, so many areas are parochial and afraid to share their land or way of life with anyone of a different culture. If the industrialized countries were at least automatic to admit that, there arguments might have more standing in the world’s eyes.\r\nThe reasons why the birth rate in the industrialized world is dropping are numerous and debatable. Aries suggested that another reason why the birth rate is declining is that people no longer see a way to make the world a better place for their descendants.\r\nWhether it is a fear of nuclear annihilation or global warming, many people are concerned that the world will not be a great place for the next generation and have decided against having children (469). Others have decided to keep the money for their own happiness instead of spend it on a child and some plainly wait longer than they meant to and find they unable to have children. whatever the reasons for the declining birth rate, it is a fact of life in Europe and North America. Those nations can simply decide how to live with the consequences or, as they have in parts of Europe, take extreme action to reverse the course.\r\nIn lacquer and Germany where the population is already beginning to decline, the smaller population had coincided with an economic growth period. Whether this is simply coincidental is hard to tell at this point, but history seems to tell us that the chances are good that a deckling birth rate does not spell doom and gloom and the end of the world. Instead, it will like lead to a period of greater education for the average person, a cleaner environment and a booming economy.\r\nIt may also lead to revolutionary view as the countries that have always had volume of people to do their menial tasks have to consider other alternatives, such as an open border with Mexico so that there are more workers, or allowing a mass immigration from India, to relieve overcrowding there. Whatever the solution, it will require scientific and political minds meeting together and honestly discussing the wants and fears of Europe and North America and their desire to change them.\r\nIn the end, the best consequence of a declining birth rate might be a further globalization of the world. Areas in the Far East and the Indian subcontinent with population problems will need to find more space and Europe and North America will have to find more workers. If the struggle be worked through and the prejudices and fears overcome, then the best thing that could come from a lower birth rate would be an international melting pot with everyone working together for a better planet, better economy and a better life.\r\n whole sheba ng CITED\r\nAries, Phillippe.”Two Successive Motivations for the Declining Birth Rate in the West” Population and discipline Review > Vol. 6, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 645-650 < perpetual universal resource locator: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0098921%28198012%296%3A4%3C645%3ATSMFTD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5> November 20, 2007.\r\nCohen, JE â€Å"Population growth and footing’s human carrying capacity” Science Vol.269, Issue 5222, Summer, 1995, p. 341-46.\r\nâ€Å"Ending overcrowding in calcium Schools” Policylink < http://www.policylink.org/Research/SchoolOvercrowding/> November 20, 2007.\r\nJohnson, Kelly. â€Å"The Effects of a Declining Birth Rate on the Labor string” <\r\nhttp://cber.cba.ua.edu/rbriefs/ab_jan98.html> November 20, 2007.\r\nMartin, Steve P. â€Å"Diverging Fertility among U.S. Women Who Delay vaginal birth Past Age 30” human ecology , Vol. 37, No. 4 (Nov., 2000), pp. 523-533 <Stable URL:http://li nks.jstor.org/sici?sici=0070370%28200011%2937%3A4%3C523%3ADFAUWW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X> November 20,2007.\r\nNagdeve, Dewaram. â€Å"Environment and Health in India” presented to Asiatic Context at Bangkok, Thailand, June 10, 2002. < http://www.iussp.org/Bangkok2002/S09Nagdeve.pdf> November 20, 2007.\r\nâ€Å"Overcrowding Fuel Boom” CNN.com < http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/06/02/classsize.portables.ap/index.html> November 20, 2007.\r\nReid, Walter H. â€Å"Will Declining Birt Rates creates a Crisis?” Journal of Extension (Summer 1988), Vol. 26, No. 2 <http://www.joe.org/joe/1988summer/rb3.html>, November 20, 2007.\r\n \r\n'