The debate around population growth and its risks has raged for over two centuries. Economist Thomas Malthus was the first to predict that rapid population growth during the Industrial Revolution would bring starvation and death to his native England due to dwindling food resources.

History proved him wrong, but Malthus’ argument is still very much alive now that the world population has surpassed the 7 billion mark and is expected to grow to 9 or 10 billion by 2050, according to United Nations projections.

With climate change finally sinking in as a reality in people’s minds, experts are concerned living conditions will become unsustainable if the world population continues to grow at the current pace.

So what is the right way to go about this? Many say we need to bring the numbers down – halt, or at least slow, population growth.

A new documentary by Oscar-winning director Jessica Yu adopts a different perspective.

In Misconception, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Yu looks at the impact of population growth in different socioeconomic contexts.

In bustling Beijing, there is 29-year-old Bao who is desperately looking for a wife. China’s one child policy has prevented nearly half a million births since it was introduced, the government says, resulting in a deficit of 30 million women.

“It’s not a normal situation,” Bao says in the film. “China has a lot of leftover men. I’m one of them.”

Bao and millions of other young Chinese men are dealing with the consequences of a policy aimed at reducing population growth to protect the nation’s economic development. But in a culture where it’s still preferable to have a male child, the policy has had – perhaps unwanted – repercussions.

Bao is under pressure to get married from his conservative family who lives in rural China. Due to the one child policy, aging parents rely on their children’s family to provide for them once they are too old to work. Their only child is a sort of investment in their own future and an unmarried son means their own livelihood is at risk.

However, modern life has caused a shift in many Chinese women’s priorities. Contrary to their male counterparts, they no longer want to get married at a young age, they want to focus on their careers and postpone childbirth.

As China struggles with this population imbalance, other countries are struggling with explosive growth – like Uganda, where Yu followed Gladys, a Ugandan journalist who reports on lost and abandoned children.

In the east African nation’s capital Kampala, hundreds of children are abandoned by their mothers who can’t afford to take care of them.

Gladys works with social workers and local authorities to rescue the children and raise awareness about family planning and maternal health care among women, in a country where girls are often married off at a very young age and the lack of access to health services contribute to high fertility rates.

“Since 1960, a staggering 4 billion people have been added to the world population,” Swedish health expert Hans Rosling is shown in the documentary as saying. “You don’t need to control population numbers – this is a myth.”

Rosling argued that the only way of curbing population growth is to improve child survival. “We could stop at 9 billion if we do the right things,” he said.

Uganda’s socioeconomic context suggests that extending family planning services so that women are able to plan their pregnancies and provide for their children would help. Fewer newborns would lead to more children surviving, and those children would then live in better conditions, in less poverty and with greater opportunities.

However, there are often moral obstacles to family planning and contraception. Yu follows Denise, a Canadian pro-life activist, on a trip to the U.N. where she tries to garner support for her anti-abortion and anti-contraception views.

Eighty percent of families globally have an average of a little over 2 children and, according to Rosling, this is the trend in countries that have reached a certain degree of prosperity.

This means that population growth would automatically stop, or slow down, as living conditions improve and nations progress economically.

However, more developed, richer societies consume, and pollute, a lot more than developing ones, eating away at the planet’s resources, Rosling argued.

In other words, less populous nations consume much more than the more populous.

Yu’s film by no means provides an answer to the population issue, but it looks at its various underlying causes that suggest different solutions, while challenging misconceptions.

Lifting people out of poverty, granting mothers and families access to health care, and investing in sustainable development in both developed and developing countries is the most comprehensive response to population growth and its challenges.

“The problems of the world aren’t on the shoulders of people having ‘too many kids,’ Yu said in a recent interview. “Everyone has a role in this — whether it’s a smaller, wealthier family that consumes a lot or a larger family that has more kids than can easily be handled by the parents.”

20 Comments on "Is population growth really a bad thing?"

action on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 7:38 am 



Having to live crowded among senseless people unaware that they are controlled by basic functions of nature that we share with all animals makes population size a problem for me. If I wasnt so constantly affected by the senseless inconsideration of others I wouldn’t care. This is a life of a system dependent on being full of animals without regard to the sensibilities that make us human beings.

Davey on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 8:06 am 



It is all about less now both quantity and affluence. Nature is setting up a contraction on both in the near future. Death and poverty will be all of our neighbors soon.

Makati1 on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 9:26 am 



Its not population growth that is killing the planet, it is unnecessary consumption growth.

“…If we take a look at who is actually pushing the environment to collapse according to their consumption levels, it becomes clear by the numbers that the real planet destroyers are not the teeming masses of the Third World, but industrial civilization’s energy gluttons driving their SUV’s, checking their stock portfolios on the internet, and wagging their finger at the huddled masses who have been corralled into megacities because globalization wiped out their indigenous means of subsistence:…”

http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2014/04/20/overpopulated-by-homo-colossus/

Nuff said.

Kenz300 on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 9:42 am 



If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child……. yet too many people that can not provide for themselves are having children trapping them in a cycle of poverty and despair.

Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.

John D on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 10:19 am 



Regarding China’s one child policy, I don’t think you can blame the concept and effectiveness because many people made the horrible decision, not condoned by the government, to abort female fetuses until they produced a male.

dubya on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 11:21 am 



“Rosling argued that the only way of curbing population growth is to improve child survival. “We could stop at 9 billion if we do the right things,” he said.

…
This means that population growth would automatically stop, or slow down, as living conditions improve and nations progress economically.”

Huh? Population growth is good, because it is stopping anyway?

bobinget on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 11:30 am 



I agree w/ John D. However, the practice of aborting or killing newborn females is still practiced worldwide.
In the case of emerging economies it would appear plural marriages will become commonplace.

In two Central American nations familiar to me, Costa Rica and Nicaragua abortions are illegal. Surrounding every major hospital are storefront sonogram “sex detection” offices.

To equal out a normal 49/51 female to male birth ratio
women need to be valued as much as men.

Northwest Resident on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 12:52 pm 



Makat1 — “Its not population growth that is killing the planet…”.

Look around you in the Philippines, Makati1. There are excessive numbers of people, far more than the land mass and surrounding oceans can sustain. It *IS* overpopulation that is the problem because overpopulation ultimately leads to over-consumption.

Yeti on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 7:21 pm 



Northwest, fortunately they finally overcame the power of the Catholic church and got that contraception law passed!
Have to really wonder at the church’s motivation in being against contraception. I mean surely they must think the good of the people, via increased ability to plan their families, should come before what’s “best” for the church, i.e. more membership?

HARM on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 7:39 pm 



“Its not population growth that is killing the planet, it is unnecessary consumption growth.”

Ridiculous statement. If everyone aspired to live like a Masai bushman, then I might (partially) buy this argument. But not when 5 billion Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners and South Americans are all aspiring to be “rich” and live lives of high technology and creature comforts like Americans.

It’s in our nature to want to live comfortable lives with the greatest number of material comforts. No argument is ever going to convince the vast majority of the population otherwise. As a result, the “sustainable maximum” population of the earth –given how most people WANT to live– is probably half a billion.

Makati1 on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 7:59 pm 



HARM & Northwest, look around at the waste in your neighborhood. Then consider that the 90 million Filipinos consume 1/20th the energy per capita that Americans do. They consume small fraction of the worlds resources as compared to ANY Wes5tern country.

The 1 billion Westerners and wannabees consume more than the other 6 Billion. So, if the 1B were gone, the other 6 billion would ALL have much better lives and still consume less.

You just don’t want to consider a life without all of your toys and waste. But it is coming because you like to blame someone else for your problems and won’t face up to reality.

Makati1 on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 8:07 pm 



Consumption is not wired in to humans. It is programed in. As in “now back to your regularly scheduled PROGRAM”. You were taught to consume. It is the disease of capitalism, not genes.

If you look at countries, those that have more TVs have more desire for things they do not need or really want but think they need to be: popular, famous, successful, happy, etc.. The largest consumer in the world is the country where the TVs outnumber the people. Then there is movies full of subliminal ads, newspapers are all ads with a few articles stuck in, magazines, ditto, billboards, and even the clothes you wear with logos on them. You are bombarded with “PROGRAMING” 24/7/365.

So, don’t blame the people who are not exposed to the programing, blame the ones who are and capitalism that created the world that is now dying.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 8:12 pm 



We don’t care Mak about per capita that does not mean a thing in overshoot. All it is good for is for people like you to blame and complain. You can cry all you want about the west over consuming but the facts are the Philippines are in overshoot to the ecological carrying capacity and the social carrying capacity. The Island is full of slums and degraded land. There are plenty of nice areas for sure but with that many people in such a constrained area the environment is suffering. It is all about less with consumption and quantity of population. There is no excuse at this point for either.

Yeti, I am really down on the Christians and Muslims for their contraceptive and family planning policies. Basically they want more with more and that is not a safe policy in overshoot and limits of growth. In fact is a recipe for species suicide. If these religions are about life and love then they need to realize these policies will lead to pain, suffering, violence, and death.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 8:19 pm 



Mak, Harm is right by me. Mak, TV is only marginally effective at selling goods. Mostly car are drug commercials these days anyhow. I think you are exaggerating the tv thing.

Makati1 on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 11:14 pm 



Per capita is everything…so you are saying to ignore it? If a field can support one American or 5 Mexicans, that is not important? Ask a Mexican what he thinks…lol. THAT is the problem with the Amerocentric US. WE deserve our 30% of the world’s resources even if we are less than 5% of its population. Per capita is everything today.

BS! TV sells everything, usually using sex in one form or another. They’re masters of brainwashing. You don’t even know you are being manipulated … lol.
Corporations would not pay to have their products in shows and movies if it wasn’t effective.

HARM on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 11:20 pm 



Makati1 said: “Consumption is not wired in to humans. It is programed in… You were taught to consume. It is the disease of capitalism, not genes.”

Care to back up that very bold statement with some facts?

Good grief, greed and the desire for pleasure and comfort has been a very “natural” and constant companion of human existence –long before Western capitalism appeared. Read some Tacitus or the Bible/Koran/Torah/Gitas if you don’t believe me.

Yes, capitalism and the barrage of modern advertising/propaganda makes those tendencies even worse, but… they are HARD WIRED into us. A result of millions of years of evolution, during most of which we were semi-evolved chimpanzees violently competing for scarce resources in a (mostly) hostile world.

As Davy said, any way you slice it, the Philippines are far into overshoot. Most of their inhabitants are not exactly living an idyllic life of the noble savage, which is why so many want to escape to the U.S., Japan or Europe (those horrible lands of over consumers).

HARM on Wed, 23rd Apr 2014 11:27 pm 



Sometimes the West-hate and Luddite tendencies of some posters here really goes off the rails. Idealizing primitivism and demonizing technology can be just as misguided as blindly worshiping technology and growth like a cornucopian.

Makati1 on Thu, 24th Apr 2014 4:03 am 



HARM, how about common sense? When did the commercials take off? When the corporations realized that they could sell more if they advertized/brainwashed the sheep to buy more of the stuff they didn’t need with money they didn’t have. If you think you are not brainwashed, go to a country where advertising is scarce. So is consumption. Do you really NEED that second TV? Do you really NEED that McMansion? Do you really NEED that second or third car? Do you really NEED all the stuff you can see in the room you are in? NO, I would bet you do not NEED 90% of the ‘stuff’ you have. But you were programmed to want it and you feel you ‘need’ it to show your desired status in life.

No, you are so well programmed that you argue that you are not when the evidence is all around you.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 24th Apr 2014 6:52 am 



Mak said – Per capita is everything…so you are saying to ignore it? If a field can support one American or 5 Mexicans, that is not important?

Mak, we are at limits to growth and a population in overshoot. It does not matter “objectively” if you have 1 American or 5 Mexicans. Your per capita argument is useful strictly statistically as a tool for many different approaches. Your approach is to use it to demonize the US so it is subjective not objective. In a nut shell over population is a duality of too many and too much. If 5 Mexicans are degrading their environment and consuming as much as 1 American the net result is the same. We could argue all day who is a better world citizen and what is a fair percentage. What if the one American is a good individual but the 5 Mexicans are drug and people running killers. IMA if you look at the American population much of it is lower middle class or poor. What about them Mak? They are not consuming that much compared to the global wealthy.

Mak, give the TV thing a rest. Sure TV has been responsible for the explosion of consumerism since the 50’s but anymore only marginally. I imagine many people are like me and hit mute when the commercials come on. TV is a dying technology. If you are so worried about advertisement get off the computer because it is on the computer technology is used to target your tastes through cookies.

Harm said – Sometimes the West-hate and Luddite tendencies of some posters here really goes off the rails. Idealizing primitivism and demonizing technology can be just as misguided as blindly worshiping technology and growth like a cornucopian.

Mak, Harm is making a good point. You are distorting the facts to promote your policy of demonization of the west and in particular the US. In effect what is does is throw any of your post into a position of being suspect and no better than the MSM you complain about. You have a marketing aim just like the TV you demonize. IMA, you and some others here who practice (PPI’s) political propagandist ideologue tendencies.

action on Thu, 24th Apr 2014 7:59 am 



Just look at the world population graph for the last 2000 years and if you can still say population growth isn’t a problem then you’re a moron and part of said problem.