Our young population is our natural resource.

Uneven world
Benjamin G. Defensor
November 06, 2011 01:41

THERE will be seven billion people in the world this year and the usual doomsday scenarios will abound. Mass Media are busy squeezing the last ounce of novelty from the 7th billionth baby and there is bound to be as many 7th million babies as there are countries counting.

In 1999, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Anan had his picture taken Bosnian baby, Adnan Mevic, said to be the Earth’s 6th billionth baby. For all the publicity that the Mevic family had, they continue to struggle in poverty. This time around, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-mon has refrained from naming a symbolic 7th billionth Earthling because of the cruel world the baby will face.

Expect those behind the campaign for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill to ride the doomsday scenario to get their pet piece through the legislative bill. As usual the proponents of the bill will be harping on the growing number of Filipinos, the Philippines is now 12th in the world in terms of population with 95 million people.

The fate of the Mevic family of Bosnia and the stance of the RH bill proponents may have something in common. Both are situations that arise from a strictly material, mathematical and scientific approach to the problem; the prevention of the entry of more people into the world. But let us take a look at the report of Time magazine on the “head count” of the people on Earth.

“The challenges of the expanding human population lie not so much in curbing growth as in addressing inequity around the globe: finding ways to promote sustainability; support aging generations and adapt to migration patterns all while keeping our footprint on the planet in check. ‘Generally speaking, countries do have enough food,’ says Carl Huth, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. ‘It’s just that many people don’t have access to it because of poverty. That is something to work on in the 14 years between now and 8 billion.”

Several Philippine administrations back, we dramatized the plight of Mang Pandoy, a poor man trying to make his way through life. Despite the media hype he received, Mang Pandoy died a poor man.

And unless we learn to help those of us who have not enough in life, the RH bill or the philosophy behind it is not going to get us anywhere. So far, it is our “excess” population who have gone to greener pastures abroad that have helped keep out national heads above water. Today, their brothers are doing the same thing by manning the call centers of developed countries taking advantage of our young people’s skills and their lower wages. These are the people who escaped” the contraceptive and family planning campaigns of international aid agencies.

Our young population is our natural resource. That is granting poor families allowances if they keep their children in school is way by which the potentials of these human resource may be preserved and made productive.

Is the world over populated?

We consider New York City as one of the better places to live in. It is amply supported by food, transport and other amenities of life. Time says, “Now all together if you packed he world’s population in at New York City’s density, we would fit inside he state of Texas.” And we may assume that the other states surrounding it would be able to provide the needs that the population will need to survive. The world has enough resources to sustain a population of 7 billion. The crux of the problem is that the resources “aren’t always where the people are.”

Whatever may be the reason, generally people living in developed areas have lower fertility rates—their population do grow as fast those living in developing areas of the world. And it is an empirical fact that more developed societies have fertility rates lower than those of developing societies. Helping developing countries develop is the best way to moderate their population growth.

Low fertility rates among developed societies, sometimes referred to as the First World, has spawned an ancilliary problem. These societies are finding difficulty in getting the service labor force to help run their economic system. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were some of the earliest of these. In Western Europe today, there is an influx of people from the developing areas of Africa. And this is a cause in some major race riots.

These riots can not all be blamed on the “foreign” workers. Some members of the home labor force resent the newcomers because, often they are more hard working and willing to accept lower pay and in some instances even displace home-grown workers.

There appears to be a similarity in the recent riots that have rocked Paris and London.