Quote:As a socialist I have to admit that we probably should completely change our way of dealing with 3rd world countries. No more food and money, and no more taking in refugees. I know, it sound really harsh but it is the only way to prevent even bigger disasters. Of course this has to go hand to hand with technical support to raise the prosperity of these countries.....but still....it is not easy to convince people to have only 1 child instead of 5.The big issue is women's rights.
The demographic transition from high-mortality large families to low-mortality small families doesn't seem to be precisely correlated with wealth. You don't need a prosperous country, you need one that educates its people and *especially its women*. Access to contraception, effective health care, family planning facilities, and so on play a major assisting role, but if the status of women remains poor, then there is no helping it along. Advice will be ignored or subverted, contraception will go unused, and the population will continue to grow. This is one of the reasons why even relatively rich Islamic nations have surprisingly late demographic transitions, but many Asian countries have surprisingly fast ones. There might be various reasons why educating women helps so much. It might be raising the value of women's time, thereby increasing the opportunity cost of more children. It may be decreasing infant mortality, as women learn more modern ways to keep their kids healthy. But whatever it is, it seems to work.
Propaganda is useless. Shouting at someone (even very politely, with pamphlets and videos) to do something they have no interest in doing will get us nowhere. Shutting down borders will only exacerbate the problems by impoverishing everyone, and restricting the flow of culture and information.
-Jester