The Myth of Overcrowding

Are We Really Overcrowded?

FOOD PRODUCTION CONTINUES TO EXCEED population growth, and non-renewable resources seem to become more plentiful each year. Thus we can't use either of these two factors to prove overpopulation. So we must turn instead to other factors.

The weakest basis for defining overpopulation is that of population density. Instead of arguing that we are running out of food or resources, this argument says we are running out of space. And the doomsayers, predictably, have painted graphic pictures of the disasters that await humanity because of overcrowding. In The Doomsday Book Gordon Rattray Taylor discusses a small herd of deer released on James Island in Chesapeake Bay. The herd built up for a number of years, but then mysteriously, almost two thirds of them died off around 1958. His conclusion is that the deer died from stress. While acknowledging that the winter of 1958 was particularly cold, Taylor says this "would not in itself account for such a massive die-off." Taylor, The Doomsday Book, pp. 222-228.Note Taylor believes that the stress was caused, not by a lack of food or other resources, but by crowding--though not extreme crowding.

Taylor then proclaims that "[m]an is in no way exempted from the laws of population growth." Ibid, p. 229.Note He writes that if all humans were to spread themselves as far away from each other as possible, "each man, woman, or child would find him or herself about 150 yards from his nearest neighbour. By the year 2000, the distance will have shrunk to 120 yards and by 2070 to 60 yards. Imagine the plains of the Middle West with dwellings 120 yards apart in every direction and you have the picture. When the deer on James Island began to die of brain haemorrhages they were about 80 yards apart." Ibid, p. 230.Note The implications are clear: a great human die-off is awaiting us when we become overcrowded as a result of overpopulation. But, if this is so, why hasn't the die-off already begun in places like Hong Kong, London, Mexico City and Tokyo?

Certainly Taylor's theory doesn't require that all human beings on the planet be overcrowded before the die-off materialises. After all, it was only the deer on James Island that were crowded, not all the deer in the world. The fact is, the theory that stress caused the death of the James Island deer has yet to be proved. It is simply a hypothesis. And even if it were proved, Taylor shows no correlation between deer and humans. While many mammals are solitary or live in relatively small groups, humans, throughout evolution, have been social creatures. And ever since technology and medicine have allowed it, human groupings have been extremely large with millions of people living, by choice, within a relatively small area. Perhaps humans, unlike deer, require a certain amount of crowding. Jonathan Freedman, a former associate of Ehrlich, writes in his book Crowding and Behavior: "People who live under crowded conditions do not suffer from being crowded. Other things being equal, they are no worse off than other people." Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 255.Note

And just how overcrowded are we anyway? Certainly the world is filled with empty places. A flight almost anywhere in the world reveals vast expanses of unoccupied land. Cities cover only a very small percentage of the earth. When we look at the world's population relative to the land available, we find out just how "underpopulated" the world is.

Just how many people are there on the earth? To say there are around five billion means very little to most people. Instead, that number can be put in perspective by asking what would happen if the world's people were put into the land area of Texas: each person would have an area equal to the floor space of a typical U.S. home. Indeed, some cities in the United States, such as Jacksonville, Florida, contain enough land area to provide standing room for the entire global population. Ben Bloch and Harold Lyons, Apocalypse Not (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1993), pp. 26-27.Note

Click here to view Table: Population density per square mile for some of the major cities of the world

It has been argued that land per se is not an important issue. After all, who will farm in Antarctica or in the Sahara? The real question is that of arable land. But this overlooks the economic benefits of land for purposes other than farming. Certainly much of the land in Kuwait is useless for agricultural purposes, but it does contain petroleum. In a market economy land is allocated to its most useful purpose. If farm land became scarce enough to threaten our survival as a species, its price would increase dramatically and farm land that had been paved over with shopping malls would be converted back to farm land. Malls would be torn down and farms built in their stead. Thomas Sowell notes:

Even if one were to use arable land as the standard, it would change no fundamental conclusions. Japan, for example, compares even more unfavourably to India on the basis of arable land than of land in general, but it is India that [had] famines. Similarly, famine-stricken Ethiopia has many times more acres of arable land per capita than Singapore or Great Britain. As a distinguished specialist in under-developed economies has pointed out, `famines and food shortages occur mostly in sparsely populated subsistence economies with abundant land.' Thomas Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race (William Morrow & Company, New York, 1983) pp. 211-212.Note

It has been alleged that the world is rapidly losing access to all farm land, but this simply isn't true. In fact, the amount of land suitable for agricultural purposes has been increasing. It is believed that the world currently uses only one-third of the agricultural land available. And if there is global warming, which is far from proven, higher temperatures will increase the total land available for agricultural purposes while increased C02 levels will help stimulate plant growth. For further research on the non-threat of global warming, I suggest Patrick Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (Washington DC; Cato Institute, 1992); Robert Balling Jr., The Heated Debate (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992); Fred S. Singer, Global Climate Change (New York: Paragon Press, 1989).Note

Crowded by choice

What many doomsayers forget is that the vast majority of people live in densely populated areas by choice. Indeed, the worldwide trend is for people to move from less populated areas to more populated areas. And the reasons for this are relatively sound. The larger the number of individuals, the greater the number of trade transactions that are possible. The greater the number of possible transactions, the wealthier the community. This is why urban areas tend to be wealthier than rural areas.

Moreover, certain technologies that improve the standard of living are prohibitively expensive in rural areas but relatively cheap in densely populated cities. This is one reason why you never see subway systems in farming communities: the economies of scale don't allow for them. The same is true for highways, hospitals, electricity, sewerage systems, and other services. The rural areas have more than enough land for everyone and we could shut down the densely populated cities. But we don't. To do so would be folly and would make all of us poorer. Professor Nathan Keyfitz says that the concentration of capital in cities allows for healthier lifestyles, in spite of the problems usually associated with crowding: "the concentration of people in cities has much to be said for it. To be sure the air above Mexico City is scarcely breathable--but this is a local effect. In spite of the bad air, city dwellers live longer than their country cousins. Certainly health care, education, and other amenities are more easily provided to urban populations than to rural ones." Nathan Keyfitz, "The Growing Human Population" in Managing the Planet (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1990), p. 63.Note

Environmentalists should actually applaud cities and dense population concentrations since these are more environmentally friendly than if the population were spread out. Individuals in densely populated regions don't need to use as many resources to travel to work: they often walk, or use buses or trains instead of cars. City dwellers use less land per person for living. Not only that, but the amount of natural resources used to build the typical city dwelling is considerably less than the amount used for rural or suburban dwellings. City dwellers tend to live in smaller homes than their rural counterparts. High population densities in the cities leave large tracts of land open for recreational, agricultural, or conservation purposes. Keyfitz puts it this way: "When people are concentrated in cities, they would seem to have less direct effect on the forests, the wildlife, the oceans--on the biosphere in general." Ibid.Note

And, generally speaking, the denser the population, the wealthier the citizens. For instance, Hong Kong has a population density of 247,501 per square mile, Japan 850, Singapore 12,200, Taiwan 1,478 and South Korea 1,134. By contrast, India's population density is 683 per square mile, China's 409 and Pakistan's 378. As we pointed out earlier, many of the wealthier parts of the world have much higher population densities than so-called "overpopulated" poor areas. Jacqueline Kasun writes, "There is no evidence that more densely settled populations tend to have lower levels of per capita income and output. . . . Some of the most densely settled countries in the world . . . have very high levels of per capita income and output." Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 50.Note She also notes:

Within all countries, however, the most densely settled areas--the cities--have the highest levels of per capita output and income. Economists have long explained these relationships on the grounds mentioned above--the more densely settled populations make better use of their transportation and communications systems as well as other parts of their economic infrastructure. They also have more opportunities for face-to-face contacts that encourage innovation and productivity.

Larger populations not only inspire more ideas but more exchanges, or improvements, of ideas among people, in a ratio that is necessarily more than proportional to the number of additional people. (For example, if one person joins an existing couple, the possible number of exchanges does not increase by one-third, but triples.) One of the advantages of cities, as well as of large universities, is that they are mentally stimulating, that they foster creativity. Ibid. pp. 52, 56.Note

The point about increased trade is important, since the greater the number of choices, the greater the likelihood that an individual will find an exchange that will increase his personal well-being.

Ester Boserup, in Population and Technological Change, reflects on the historical relationship between population density and technological advancement. She concludes:

before the industrial revolution one densely populated area after another became the technological leader. During the whole of this part of human history, the main advantage of a dense population, i.e., the better possibilities to create infrastructure, seems to have outbalanced the disadvantages of a less favourable ratio between population and natural resources. Europe succeeded Asia as the technological leader, but only after it arrived at relatively high population densities... [T]he inhabitants of large sparsely populated continents were doomed to be illiterate subsistence producers. Ester Boserup, Population and Technological Change (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), p. 129.Note

Of course there are disadvantages to living in densely populated regions, but clearly the benefits must outweigh the costs. Economically speaking, we can determine the values of people, not by their assertions, but by their actions. The fact that so many of us choose to live in cities is sufficient proof that we find them beneficial.

And things are only getting better

We all know that the world's population is increasing each day. And for the forseeable future it will continue to increase, but a trend is clearly emerging. This trend seems to indicate that the world population will begin to level off and then fall.

Herman Kahn believes there are three stages of population growth. The first was the early period of man's existence when both birth rates and death rates were high. This led to a long period of population stability. Then, "as the process of economic and technological development gathered momentum, following the onset of industrialisation, productivity increased and food distribution was regularized--reducing famines and famine-induced disease--and more resources were devoted to improvements in public health and safety. The consequent decline in death rates--with birth rates remaining high--caused a rapidly increasing population." Kahn, The Next 200 Years, p. 33.Note Eventually a third stage was reached where "parents began to have fewer and fewer children, prompted by the reduced value of children as economic assets combined with the increased cost of rearing them and the erosion of traditional religious and social pressures for large families." Ibid.Note

This, he believes, will continue until the birth rate slows sufficiently to bring about a static population, and eventually a decline. Thus, while there is a massive blip on the chart showing the rapid increase of the world's population over the last 200 years, Kahn believes that population will decline just as rapidly over the next 200 years.

Certain demographic trends seem to support this theory, for in much of the world we have already reached the stage of stable or diminishing populations. Certainly the peak in population growth appears to have occurred around 1970 when the world's population was growing at a rate of 2.09 percent per year. By 1980, that growth rate was down to 1.73 percent, and by 1990 to 1.7 percent. Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 106.Note In the last five years, the drop in population growth has been even more dramatic. According to the Institute for Demographic Studies, the growth in world population has now declined to 1.5 percent. "World Population Growth Slows Down," The Citizen, Johannesburg, August 7, 1995, p. 17.Note

Thomas Merrick, president of the Population Reference Bureau, believes that within the next hundred years the world will reach the zero population growth rate. He says, "World population is on the path toward stabilization." Ibid, pp. 108-109.Note

Click here to view Table: Does Population Density Decrease Wealth?

If we look at the Total Fertility Rate for the various regions of the world, we see a massive decline everywhere except in Africa. The world rate during 1950-55 was five children per woman, but for the period of 1980-85 this had declined to 3.6. With 2.1 being needed for zero population growth, the world has moved almost halfway toward this goal in just 30 years. Ben Wattenberg notes, "As recently as 1970, women in the less-developed world were bearing a lifetime average of 6.1 children. Today it is 4.1." Ben Wattenberg and Karl Zinsmeister, eds., Are Population Trends a Problem? (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1986), pp. 1-2.Note The more developed countries have already achieved a TFR of 2.0, below the replacement level. East Asia has declined from 5.5 to 2.3, Asia, as a whole, has dropped from 6.0 to 3.9, and Central America has fallen from 6.8 to 4.8. Ibid, p. 109.Note The more developed countries have already achieved a TFR of 2.0, below the replacement level. East Asia has declined from 5.5 to 2.3, Asia, as a whole, has dropped from 6.0 to 3.9, and Central America has fallen from 6.8 to 4.8. "World Population Growth Slows Down," The Citizen, Johannesburg, August 7, 1995, p. 17.Note

People have grown used to referring to the impoverished nations of the world as the "Third World," but the Third World is now almost exclusively Africa. Poverty is diminishing at a rapid pace in Asia, and South and Central America are also experiencing general levels of increased prosperity. With few exceptions, almost all the nations reporting negative or stagnant growth are in Africa. And it is in Africa where the TFR has remained almost stagnant as well. But this is not unusual. Economists have long understood the relationship between economics and birth rates.

So not only is world food production growing faster than the world's population, but it is continuing to increase while world population rates are declining. Contrary to what people assume, the world isn't becoming more overpopulated. In fact, it is becoming less overpopulated every year. Unless there is a wholesale adoption of socialist economics, there is no reason to believe that this situation will change any time in the near future. Each day that goes by, there is more food per person than the day before. The "good old days" are still ahead of us. D. Gale Johnson, an agricultural expert with the University of Chicago, sums up the current state of affairs: "Except where civil wars exist or despotic governments prevail, there has never been a time during the last two centuries when the people in the developing world were better fed or when their food supply was more secure. . . . The scourge of famine due to natural causes has been almost conquered and could be entirely eliminated by the end of the century." D. Gale Johnson, "Population, Food and Wellbeing," Paper No. 90:12, University of Chicago Office of Agriculture Economics Research (July 9, 1990), p. 24.Note

It pays to have babies--lots of them

In poor countries, children are often seen as a retirement plan. Parents need someone to provide for them in their old age and children are the means to this end. However, with relatively high death rates plaguing the society, the only way to ensure that your retirement plan will still exist when you grow old is to have as many children as possible. Osterfeld notes:

High fertility rates were necessary to offset the high mortality rates. In both preindustrial societies of historical times and nonindustrial societies of today, nearly all the incentives are to have large families. First, the cost of rearing children is minimal, and by the time they are 5 or 6 years old they are working in the fields or doing other odd jobs and more than `paying their way.' The man with many children controls much wealth. In terms of economic production, more children mean an increased supply of food and perhaps the production of surpluses for trade. In such societies children also provide the only support for parents in their old age. . . . Many children, especially where mortality rates are high, provide an important hedge against the uncertainties of the future; it is a rational way both to minimize risks and to maximize the possibility of wealth. `The very poor even in industrial societies,' wrote Benedict, `can often see no advantage in limiting their children. At the lowest levels, 10 children are no more of a handicap than 9. The child as yet unborn may be the very one who will help his parents.' Ibid, pp. 113-114.Note

An example of this logic comes from India, where a Punjabi water carrier told an anthropologist whom he mistook for a family planner that had visited him many years earlier: "You were trying to convince me . . . that I shouldn't have any more sons. Now, you see, I have six sons and two daughters and I sit at home in leisure. They are grown up and they bring me money. One even works outside the village as a labourer. You told me I was a poor man and couldn't support a large family. Now you see, because of my large family, I am a rich man." Quoted in Peter Bauer, The Development Frontier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 23.Note

In an industrialized economy, raising a child is expensive, and the higher the income of the family, the greater the costs. If the woman works, she will have to forego her usual income during the later stages of pregnancy and often during the first few years of the child's life. At the same time, with retirement plans, pensions, and so on, few people in developed countries look to their children for support in their old age. But in poor, undeveloped countries, the opposite is true. With minimal employment available, the woman doesn't sacrifice much to have a child, and each child soon becomes a net benefactor to the parents. Kasun notes:

In societies where children begin to work at a young age, where their mothers do not work, and where they do not receive long, expensive educations, big families cost relatively little. Large families even add to the welfare of the whole. Economies of scale, familiar enough in industry, apply equally to families. . . . But in developed, urbanized, industrial society all this changes. . . . The costs of children rise disproportionately to the increases in income that development brings; and the average family size falls. Unsurprisingly, in the industrialized countries population growth rates are now below replacement levels and population is declining in several of them. Kasun, The War Against Population, pp. 63-64.Note

Barbara Klugman, a social anthropologist at the Centre for Health Policy Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, makes the same point:

In an extended family situation, children usually contribute to the family income. Thus in the present situation of widespread unemployment, the more children one has, the greater the chance that at least some will gain employment.

Both as a cultural pattern and because of the lack of adequate social security benefits, poor people rely on children to support and look after them in their old age. . . .

Having only one or two children is no guarantee that a rural African person will see any children live into their adulthood, as a result of the higher infant mortality rate. And until such time as those factors which cause high infant mortality change, people will continue to have many children. To date no country has achieved a low birthrate as long as it has had a high infant mortality rate. Barbara Klugman, "Victims or Villains?" in Going Green (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 76.Note

Click here to view Table: If Everyone in the World Moved...

What is clear is that as a country develops economically, birth rates decline. Thus, if we want to reduce population growth we must promote economic growth, and that means that we must promote a free economy. State central economic planning doesn't work. More importantly, as Mises and Hayek have proved, it cannot work. For a more thorough look at the reasons why socialism was not able to function economically see: F.A. Hayek, (ed), Collectivist Economic Planning (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1935); Ludwig von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1990); F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); David Ramsey Steele, From Marx to Mises (La Salle: Open Court, 1993); Elisabeth Tamedly, Socialism and International Economic Order (Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1969) and Trygve Hoff, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society (London: William Hodge and Company, 1949).Note The only economic system that has successfully raised the standard of living of a vast number of people for an extended period of time is market capitalism. This isn't even a debatable point any more--even well-known socialist Robert Heilbroner has admitted: "Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. The Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism: that however inequitably or irresponsibly the marketplace may distribute goods, it does so better than the queues of a planned economy." Robert Heilbroner, "The Triumph of Capitalism," The New Yorker (January 23, 1989), p. 98.Note

Economic development, more than family planning programs, free birth control, or anything else, will bring about a population decline in the less developed countries. Ironically, the pressure groups concerned about population growth are promoting policies that discourage growth. Bolch and Lyons note:

Paradoxically, one way to cause the growth rate of a population to slow in the long run (but not in the short) may be to follow economic policies that are associated with a reduction in the mortality rate: the creation of institutions that will allow sustained economic growth, something that is almost always accompanied by improvements in both private health care and public health facilities. Two principal reasons why population rates have slowed toward zero or even negative levels in much of the industrialized world are first, the relative security that higher levels of income and wealth provide, and second, the increased freedom for women that generally accompanies economic growth. By promoting ecologically-driven policies that seek to limit economic growth, the environmental movement may be ensuring the defeat of one of its basic aspirations. Bolch and Lyons, Apocalypse Not, p. 28.Note

Population Politics

IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. AND THE IDEA THAT the world is overpopulated leads to certain inescapable conclusions. If there are too many people in the world, then each newborn is a threat to every other human being. If these babies are threats, then it would be acceptable to eradicate the threat. Now, this may sound harsh and unrealistic. After all, most population control groups don't actually advocate the eradication of children.

But many of these groups come very close to this view when they argue that unless people "voluntarily" restrict their family size it should be done "coercively." In his book Population, Resources, Environment, Ehrlich acknowledges that "compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea to many, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying." Quoted in John Maddox, The Doomsday Syndrome, p. 47.Note On another occasion, Ehrlich compares children to cancer: "We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out." Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine, 1968), p. xi.Note Another advocate of population control, Kingsley Davis, says, "Over-reproduction--that is, the bearing of more than four children--is a worse crime than most and should be outlawed." Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 311.Note Biologist Paul Silverman told one university audience, "If voluntary restraints on population growth are not forthcoming we will be faced with a need to consider coercive measures." Ibid, p. 315.Note

Myths affect public policy. An interesting example of this is Adolph Hitler's policy of Lebensraum. Hitler wanted to expand the territory under German control because he believed that Germany was becoming overpopulated and soon would not be able to feed its people. On January 21, 1938 Hitler told his generals:

A good harvest provides just enough food for our present population for one year. If the harvest is only mediocre, we lose several months' food supplies. If the harvest is poor--and this will certainly happen one day--the German people will only get enough food for quarter or half a year-on the basis of the present population, that is. But Germany's population growth is 600,000 new heads every year. That's six million in ten years. How can Germany continue to feed her people? That is only possible if we acquire new territory--and we must get that by brute force. David Irving, The War Path: Hitler's Germany 1933-1939 (London: Papermac, 1985) p. 67.Note

The flaw in Hitler's reasoning was that he assumed that agricultural output couldn't be increased more rapidly than population growth without territorial conquest. This same logic is behind the entire overpopulation hysteria. The proof of his error is that Germany today has a much larger population than it had in 1938, and yet it is one of the richest countries in the world. The two projections that Hitler made--that population would continue to grow and that agricultural output would be stagnant--were both wrong. Food production grew faster than did the population, and today the German birth rate is well below the replacement level.

Ehrlich begins with the same premises as Hitler, but he tackles the issue from the opposite direction; in other words, whereas Hitler's solution was to forcibly expand agricultural output, Ehrlich's solution is to forcibly limit population growth.

Coercive methods of birth control have been used in a number of Third World countries. Anthropologist Steven Mosher, who lived in rural China when the "one child" policy of the government was implemented, describes what happened there:

. . . there were eighteen women, all from five- to nine-months pregnant, and many red-eyed from lack of sleep and crying. They sat listlessly on short plank benches in a semicircle about the front of the room, where He Kaifeng [a top cadre and party member] explained the purpose of the meeting in no uncertain terms. "You are here because you have yet to `think clear' about birth control, and you will remain here until you do." . . . Looking coldly around the room, he said slowly and deliberately, "None of you has any choice in this matter. . . . " Then, visually calculating how far along the women in the room were, he went on to add, "The two of you who are eight or nine months pregnant will have a Caesarean; the rest of you will have a shot which will cause you to abort." Quoted in Nick Eberstadt, The Poverty of Communism, p. 117.Note

The New York Times reported in 1982 that Chinese women were "rounded up and forced to have abortions." The article by Christopher Wren said that "vigilantes abducted pregnant women on the streets and hauled them off, sometimes handcuffed or trussed, to abortion clinics." Christopher Wren, "Chinese Region Showing Resistance to National Goals for Birth Control", New York Times, May 16, 1982.Note

Mosher describes the pain of one woman whose pregnancy was discovered at the last minute. She pleaded to be allowed to have one more child. "In the village there is no way to survive if you don't have a son," she cried. In the rural areas of China as in many other parts of the underdeveloped world, children were regarded as a means of support for parents in their old age. Since a son was more likely than a daughter to be able to provide for his parents, many families wanted to have at least one son. But if they were allowed only one child and that child was a girl, they were faced with a problem. Many rural families solved this problem by simply allowing female babies to die. In an article for the Wall Street Journal Mosher wrote that the People's Republic Press openly spoke of the "butchering, drowning, and leaving to die of female infants and the maltreating of women who have given birth to girls." Steven Mosher, "Why Are Baby Girls Being Killed in China?" Wall Street Journal, July 25, 1983.Note A policy to "limit" population growth actually resulted in the genocide of female children.

In the Dongpu district of Canton, birth control regulations that came into effect in 1987 stated that any unmarried pregnant woman "should be ordered to have an abortion." A woman was required to have an IUD inserted within four months of having her first child. Any woman "who has had one child [who] fails at birth control" would be forced to have an abortion and undergo sterilization. According to China Spring, the regulations further stated, "If any unauthorized baby dies within three months of birth, the penalty will be only 300 yuan." This penalty is less than a mother would have to pay for having an "unauthorised" child and it is therefore a blatant attempt to encourage infanticide. Quoted in Julian Simon, Population Matters, p. 231.Note

In another case, the Chinese government tried to force a Chinese woman, studying with her husband in the United States, to have an abortion. The woman, who was pregnant with her second child, received a letter from the Population Control Office of the Manchurian factory where she had previously worked. The letter said:

The punishment for this kind of violation is very severe, and we strongly advise you not to risk it.

If you cannot have this abortion done abroad, then the factory director orders you to return to China immediately. Any further delays, and you will be punished according to the law.

There is nothing ambiguous about our order! Make up your mind immediately. Washington Post, April 10, 1988, p. B1.Note

The U.S. government, through the Agency for International Development, was involved in this "birth control" program. AID "disclaimed direct involvement in the program, although it was a major contributor to the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), both of which supplied funds to the Chinese program." Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 90.Note

Forced abortion and the murder of babies in Communist China, like Hitler's Lebensraum policy, were direct results of accepting the overpopulation myth. Nick Eberstadt writes that the Chinese policy was implemented because the government "had decided that its modernization program was being threatened by `excessive' childbearing in the provinces (the role of the government in depressing the production of food or restricting the expansion of consumer industries was not a subject for public discussion)." Nick Eberstadt, The Poverty of Communism, p. 117.Note The Chinese saw coercive birth control as just another form of socialism. According to a member of China's Family Planning Commission,

social production is composed of material production and human reproduction. . . . The socialist system in China [emphasizes both] material production and human reproduction, and [must] regulate population growth in a planned way, as we regulate material production following plans. Quoted in Julian Simon, Population Matters, p. 235.Note

The Chinese program was not condemned by the population control movement. On the contrary, many groups applauded the use of raw coercion. UNFPA gave an award to China for its attempts to control population growth. Another group, Californians for Population Stabilization, held an "Award Dinner in Honour of The People's Republic of China" to honour the Communist Chinese "for acknowledging overpopulation and encouraging family planning." The main speaker at the award dinner was the president of the Population Institute.

When a number of individuals within the American government became disturbed that taxpayers' money was being channelled through private groups to help finance coercive "population control" in China and attempted to stop these grants, Planned Parenthood, which receives millions in taxpayer funding, launched a vigorous lobbying effort to counter the proposal. The campaign scrupulously avoided all mention of the Chinese connection, implying instead that right-wing fanatics were trying to destroy birth control around the world. One ad, which ran in The Washington Post, was headed "The Right-Wing Coup in Family Planning." It claimed:

For two decades, poverty-stricken Third World countries have turned to the United States for help with their vital family planning efforts.

The aid has only cost you about a dollar a year, but the impact has been tremendous. Rapid population growth has slowed in some countries. In others, even the poorest families have been given the means to plan their own futures.

Millions of children have been spared the ravages of hunger. Thousands of women are alive today who would have died in their ninth or tenth or sixteenth pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood is proud to have played a leading role in helping the people in more than fifty nations help themselves. Where there was only desperation, we have brought hope.

Incredibly, however, everything we have achieved is now in jeopardy. In hot pursuit of an ideological victory, a handful of extremists at the White House and the Agency for International Development (A.I.D.) aim to destroy America's international family planning program--and Planned Parenthood in particular.

Their motive? Unable to impose their fanatical anti-family planning agenda on the American people they have decided to victimize people who can't fight back.

It looks like an easy win to them. And the fact is, unless we fight back, hardship and suffering will come to those who rely on us for help.

The very survival of women and children is at stake in this battle. So are the long-term prospects for dozens of developing countries. The Washington Post, March 12, 1987, p. A17.Note

The ad is a masterpiece. It totally ignores the main issue of the debate, which is whether American taxpayers should subsidize coercive programs of birth control. Readers are led to believe that Third World women beat a path to Planned Parent-hood's door begging for assistance, whereas in fact, PP and other organizations put enormous pressure on these women to accept programs they don't want. And when persuasion doesn't work, they applaud coercive measures such as those in China. Food aid is given in such a manner as to force individuals into family planning programs. The ad claims, "Millions of children have been spared the ravages of hunger," but doesn't say how: they were never allowed to be born. It implies that low birth rates promote economic development, whereas it is economic development that reduces birth rates. The ad also ignored a question that many taxpayers would have liked answered: should a tax-funded organization be directly involved in a lobbying campaign to affect legislation?Note

In 1966, India was suffering from massive starvation. Advisers to President Lyndon Johnson suggested that the U.S. ship wheat to India. Johnson "demanded that the Indian government first agree to mount a massive birth control program. The Indians finally moved and Johnson released the wheat over a sufficiently extended period to make certain the birth control program was off the ground." Joseph Califano, Governing America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), p. 52.Note

Through AID and other groups, the U.S. government continued to promote this agenda. Some programs achieved their goals through the cynical manipulation of greed and peer pressure. Entire villages, for example, were promised food or money in exchange for "persuading" child-bearing couples to stop having children.

In one case, villagers in India were offered cash payments on condition that 75 percent of all men in the village submit to vasectomy; and in another Indian village, `100 percent of the eligible couples' accepted family planning, mostly vasectomy, in exchange for a new village well. Though the next step, the compulsory sterilization campaign, gave Indian family planning a rather bad press, with 3 million sterilized within six months in 1976 over the protests of numerous killed or wounded, the principle of `motivation' stands unchallenged in foreign aid circles. Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 85.Note

In Indonesia, AID programs gave bonuses to individuals for "recruiting" clients for contraceptive services. Villages were assigned quotas, and if these quotas were met, the entire village was rewarded with food, health services, or other benefits. Ibid, p. 84.Note Kasun says that the "foreign aid establishment" prefers this system of group incentives "because they avoid the appearance of paying individuals to use birth control or to have themselves sterilized." She writes, "The woman who volunteers for IUD insertion in Indonesia will not only enjoy the village's food bonus but will earn her neighbours' gratitude for their share of the booty. Conversely, those who refuse this `service' will be depriving their neighbours as well as themselves of food." Ibid.Note

In some cases, the methods used in Indonesia were less subtle. Harvard Professor Donald P. Warwick says, "In the presence of civilian, military, and police leaders, women were taken to a house in which IUDs were being inserted. They were asked to go in one door and put under very strong pressure to accept an IUD before they could leave by another door. Whether this was coercion or heavy persuasion, it denied voluntary choice to acceptors." Simon, Population Matters, p. 226.Note

But what is behind all this preoccupation with "overpopulation"? Is it really concern for the welfare of the world's people? We have already seen that the population fear-mongers point to India, China, Africa, and Pakistan while ignoring New Jersey and England. In a fund-raising letter Planned Parenthood said:

Thai women and millions of other women like them in India, China, Africa, and throughout the developing nations control our destiny. Their decisions--decisions of hundreds of millions of young women--about their family's size--control your future more securely, more relentlessly than the oil crisis or the nuclear arms race.

. . . unless population growth is harnessed and slowed to meet the limited resources and human services of these nations, development of nations will be shattered. Chaos, mass famine and war will continue to increase. We will be affected for better or worse. Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 327.Note

Notice the fear-mongering of this letter. It tells its predominantly white readers that women in India, China, and Africa control their destinies, and that these women cause "chaos, mass famine, and war." There is no reference to the child-bearing women or high population density of any white country. It appears that overpopulation is a term used to describe countries inhabited by non-whites only. Thomas Sowell notes the selective use of the "overpopulation" accusation as well. He points out, "It should be noted, first of all, that rich people are never called `teeming masses,' no matter how many of them there are per square mile. Wealthy Park Avenue neighbourhoods have concentrations of people that will compare with slums around the world." Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race, pp. 209-210.Note Perhaps "overpopulation" is the chic form that racism takes amongst white liberals. In the guise of concern, and in the name of environmentalism, white leftists can advocate coercive population control of blacks in Africa or of Asians in Thailand.

This is not a coincidence. In the early 1900s, a movement spread across the world to promote "scientific" breeding of people. Called eugenics, this movement was influential in all the major Western nations. Much concern was voiced about how the "unfit" over-reproduce. And, of course, the "unfit" were usually non-white (though some whites were deemed "unfit," usually Catholics in a Protestant country, or the poor).

In 1912 the movement held the First International Congress of Eugenics. The purpose of the meeting was "the prevention of the propagation of the unfit." Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 159.Note Vice-presidents of the conference included Winston Churchill; the president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan; and the president emeritus of Harvard University, Charles Elliot. The major debate in the eugenics movement was not whether people should be sterilized, but who should be sterilized. Eugenicists in the U.S. persuaded many state governments to pass laws forcing "unfit" individuals to be sterilized. The state of Indiana passed a law allowing the sterilization of the mentally handicapped in 1907. Within six years, ten other states followed suit. Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17.Note By 1924 these laws had lead to the sterilization of almost 6,000 people. Ibid, p. 24.Note Almost all of them were poor or black. Compulsory sterilization was on statute books across the United States before it was introduced by the Nazis in Germany.

The American eugenics movement attracted a great deal of attention in Germany and helped legitimize Hitler's theories. Hitler himself praised the efforts of these advocates of "racial" purity. In Mein Kampf he lamented that individuals could be full citizens of a country without passing the necessary racial qualifications. The only bright spot that Hitler could find was the United States. He said:

At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in the U.S.A. that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to group the People's State. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Hurst and Blackett Ltd., 1939) p. 367.Note

In 1935, an International Congress for Population Science was held in Berlin. The senior American delegate, Clarence G. Campbell, declared that Hitler had built his race policies on the ideas of eugenicists from around the world. The Nazi program, he said, was "a comprehensive race policy of population development and improvement that promises to be epochal in racial history." These policies set "the pattern which other nations and other racial groups must follow, if they do not wish to fall behind in their racial quality, in their racial accomplishment, and in their prospect of survival." Kühl, The Nazi Connection, p. 34.Note

Eugenic News, a major American publication of the population control movement, said in 1934:

One may condemn the Nazi policy generally, but specifically it remained for Germany in 1933 to lead the great nations of the world in the recognition of the biological foundations for national character. It is probable that the sterilization statutes of the several American states and the national sterilization statute of Germany will, in legal history, constitute a milestone which marks the control by the most advanced nations of the world of a major aspect of controlling human reproduction, comparable in importance only with the states' legal control of marriage. Ibid, p. 46.Note

In 1935, Leon F. Whitney, secretary of the American Eugenics Society, expressed his support for the race policies of Hitler. "Many far-sighted men and women in both England and America have long been working earnestly toward something very like what Hitler has now made compulsory." Ibid, p. 36.Note Eugenicist William W. Peter, secretary for the American Public Health Association, argued that Germany needed to follow radical measures to control the racial purity of the nation. Peter argued that the Germans were forced to "depend more than ever upon their own resources" but that "these resources are much depleted." The conclusion was "the present load of social irresponsibles are liabilities which represent a great deal of waste." Ibid, p. 55.Note

Harry Laughlin, another prominent eugenicist, was so impressed with Nazi efforts that he purchased an English version of a Nazi propaganda film on sterilization. The film, produced by the Racial Political Office of the Nazi Party, was bought for a screening at the Carnegie Institution but later Laughlin raised money to have it edited for wider distribution. The film was retitled Eugenics in Germany, and was widely promoted by the Eugenics Research Association and the Pioneer Fund. Ibid, p. 49.Note The latter group continues to this day spending millions of dollars to promote eugenics and population control.

American support for Hitler and his population policies was not limited to verbal praise. "The Rockefeller Foundation played a central role in establishing and sponsoring major eugenic institutes in Germany, including the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity." Ibid, p. 20.Note

Support continued even after the German eugenics movements and these institutions were controlled by the Nazis. The Rockefeller Foundation to this day is a major funder of efforts to control population growth in Third World countries. The rhetoric, of course, has changed somewhat since the 1930s: it wouldn't be acceptable in "liberal" societies today to refer to non-whites as unfit. Instead, the literature focuses on environmental issues. But there is a direct connection between the population control movement of today and the eugenics movement of yesterday. In fact, it was within the eugenics movement that the modern population control organizations were born. Some of the most prominent advocates of birth control, like the sainted Margaret Sanger, were also very active in promoting eugenics. In her magazine, Birth Control Review, Sanger wrote in 1919, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit--that is the child issue of birth control." Kasun, The War Against Population, p. 160.Note Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which became the Birth Control Federation, which is the parent of Planned Parenthood. Sanger opened the pages of her publication to prominent Nazis like Ernst Rüdin who helped formulate German racial policies. His article in Birth Control Review called for state action to "prevent the multiplication of bad stocks" and "increase the birth-rate of the sound average population." Ibid.Note Others, like the Population Reference Bureau of Guy Irving Burch, continue to operate today. Burch, in 1945, called for the compulsory sterilization of "all persons who are inadequate, either biologically or socially." Guy Irving Burch and Elmer Pendell, Population Roads to Peace or War (Washington: Population Reference Bureau, 1945), p. 103.Note It is the PRB that takes credit for inventing the term "population bomb."

These are some of the organizations that are used by AID to wage the war on population in the Third World. For political reasons, the U.S. government does not directly finance coercive sterilization or other Third World birth control programs. Instead, it channels funds to population groups in the States, which then transfer the money to the less savory programs in the non-white nations. AID also gives "money to international `private' organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) and UNFPA and has them do the job." Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 294.Note In 1977 an Irish newspaper reported a speech in which a top AID official "has said the U.S. is seeking to provide the means to sterilize a quarter of all Third World women." "Population Control of Third World Planned: Sterilisation Storm in U.S.," Evening Press (Dublin, Ireland) May 12, 1977, p. 9.Note

The process for implementing this plan has been described by Julian Simon:

First, U.S. national policy as executed by AID aims to induce all people in other countries to use contraceptives whether or not they initially wish to. Second, in 1969-70 AID was able to exert pressure on U.S. universities, private U.S. foundations, and international organizations to move "toward greater activism." This move was facilitated by the sudden big-bang join-up of population activists and environmentalists. Third, in order to avoid charges of interfering with foreign governments, AID gives U.S. taxpayers' money to private organizations to persuade foreign governments to alter their population policies. AID was not merely trying to help other countries achieve their own aims, but was (and still is) trying to pressure foreign governments to do what the U.S. population activists want to see done abroad. Simon, The Ultimate Resource, p. 297.Note

Margaret Wolfson of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development discussed how AID would use intermediary organizations to channel money into projects that were politically sensitive:

the relationship that has developed between Pathfinder [a private population control organisation] and AID works well and is to the advantage of both parties. AID, which has always made extensive use of intermediary nongovernmental bodies in all sectors of its development program, finds that in the field of population assistance, Pathfinder, with its close and varied contact in developing countries, offers possibilities for action that it would often be difficult for it to take itself, operation on a direct government-to-government basis. Margaret Wolfson, Profiles in Population Assistance, Development Centre of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1983, p. 173.Note

Even a commission of the U.S. government, the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, admitted that racism motivated many supporters of birth control for the Third World: "Rapid population growth occurs in nonwhite societies, and its continuation represents a threat to values inherent in western civilization as we know it. Nonwhite populations are less desirable because they are less capable and less productive." The Commission said that this type of thinking motivated "key members of the Congress responsible for foreign aid authorization and appropriations, and some of the private citizens who have been associated with activities to curb rapid population growth." Simon, Population Matters, pp. 228-229.Note

Simon contends that the same factors that motivate birth control programs around the world also motivate the policies of the birth control movement in the United States. For example, birth control clinics are disproportionately placed in black residential areas:

We can also learn about mixed motives from domestic experience with birth-control programs. The date of opening state-supported birth-control clinics was closely related to the concentrations of poor black people in various states. As of 1965, 79 percent of the state-supported clinics in the United States were in the ten states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, which have only 19 percent of the country's population. Analysis that allows for per capita income shows that the proportion of blacks in a local population is closely related to the density of family planning clinics.

Can one be surprised that many white people in the United States want there to be fewer black people in the world? In sad truth, it is no more surprising than Hindus in India and Christians in Lebanon fearing a high Moslem birthrate, blacks in Uganda tossing out Indians, and so on throughout the world. But in this age when prejudice is not publicly acceptable, racist acts are justified on the basis of supposed economic, political, sociological, and environmental considerations. Ibid, p. 229.Note

Click here to view Table: Population density per square mile: European versus African Countries

Thomas Littlewood hit the nail on the head when he said that in population politics, "humanitarian and bigot can find room under the same tent." Ibid.Note

The Shambles of Africa

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD LIVING STANDARDS are improving, birth rates are falling, and population growth is steadily coming to a halt--with one exception: Africa. In spite of foreign aid, or perhaps partly because of it, African countries are, in general, forced to make do with less and less food each year while their populations continue to expand. Whereas the Total Fertility Rate in South America dropped from 6.4 to 4.1 from 1950-55 to 1980-85, Africa's TFR remained almost stagnant over the same period, dropping only from 6.5 to 6.4.

But given that birth rates fall as economies grow, this is to be expected. Africa is the last continent on the planet where economic disasters are commonplace. With the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, even those countries are finally experiencing growth, but Africa, as a whole, continues to follow outmoded concepts of socialist planning and state control.

People often argue that countries are poor because they have too many people and not enough resources. But this just doesn't hold for Africa. The fact is that Africa is less densely populated than many of the wealthy countries of the world. With a land mass three times larger than the United States, for example, it has only twice the population.

Lord Bauer, in The Development Frontier, suggests that the lack of people in Africa may be the cause of some of the problems:

population growth can have favourable external effects. It can facilitate the more effective division of labour and thereby increase real incomes. In fact, in much of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, sparseness of population inhibits economic advance. It retards the development of transport facilities and communications, and thus inhibits the movement of people and goods and the spread of new ideas and methods. These obstacles to enterprise and economic advance are particularly difficult to overcome. Bauer, The Development Frontier, p. 26.Note

Bauer isn't alone in making this observation. A growing number of "authorities believe that Africa is actually underpopulated. Africa is now the world's most sparsely populated continent (although it now has the most rapid population growth rate) and many parts of it are so sparsely populated that it is unable to support anything more than very rudimentary communications and transportation networks. The result is that the distribution and diffusion of goods, services, and ideas are severely retarded." Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 128.Note The sparse population of Africa may be contributing to its economic malaise, but as we shall see it is not the main factor.

As for the second part of the argument--that Africa is poor because there are "not enough resources"--we know that some of the most developed countries in the world (e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland) are not blessed with natural resources. And Africa is one of the richest continents in the world. It is abundantly endowed with natural resources which for the most part are misused, unused, or squandered by corrupt governments. David Lamb notes that Africa

has 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power supply; the bulk of the world's gold; 90 percent of its cobalt; 50 percent of its phosphates; 40 percent of its platinum; 7.5 percent of its coal; 8 percent of its known petroleum reserves; 12 percent of its natural gas; 3 percent of its iron ores; and millions upon millions of acres of untilled farmland. There is not another continent blessed with such abundance. David Lamb, The Africans (New York: Vantage, 1983), p. 20.Note

As far as food production is concerned, Africa's potential is staggering. Unfortunately, the reality is depressing. During the 1930s Africa was a food exporter. In the 1950s it was still self-sufficient. But with independence came a major decline in food production. D. Gale Johnson points out:

Africa had a constant average level of per capita food production during the 1950s and 1960s and a shocking decline during the 1970s. In 1980 per capita food production in Africa (excluding South Africa) was 15 percent below 1969-71. Total food production increased 10 percent while population grew by about 25 percent, resulting in an unprecedented decline in per capita food production. The decline in per capita food production was not due to a lack of resources but to many factors that were primarily political in nature--the exploitation of farmers through low prices, civil unrest, military conflict, and the creation of millions of refugees. D. Gale Johnson, "World Food and Agriculture", in Simon and Kahn, The Resourceful Earth, p. 73.Note

The decline in African food production has been astonishing. For instance, Mozambique produced 216,000 tons of cashew nuts in 1972, but only 1,000 in 1985; sugar production fell from 285,581 tons in 1974 to just 120,000 tons in 1982; maize production declined from 400,000 tons in 1972 to 200,000 by 1983; rice dropped from 111,000 tons in 1972 to 30,000 tons in 1983; and bananas fell from 280,000 tons in 1972 to just 73,000 tons in 1983. Don Caldwell, South Africa: The New Revolution (Johannesburg: FMF Books, 1989), p. 219.Note

Ethiopia offers another example of a richly endowed country destroyed by socialist policies and corrupt government. The New York Times once said that Ethiopia "could easily become the breadbasket for much of Europe if her agriculture were better organized." Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 72.Note Agronomist Doreen Warriner wrote, "Ethiopia is one of those rare countries so richly endowed by nature that the agrarian structure, feudal in every sense of the term, does appear to be the only constraint on development." Gene Ellis, "Land Tenancy Reform in Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change (April 1980), p. 526.Note Ethiopia did abandon its feudal system in 1974--not for capitalism, however, but for a radical brand of communism under Marxist Mengistu Haile Mariam. The new government rapidly turned Ethiopia into a basket case, not a breadbasket.

Thousands were killed by the government, including Emperor Haile Selassie and many of his family, and more than 30,000 were jailed. Peasant farmers were uprooted from their land in one of the most massive relocation programs the world has known: an estimated 75 percent of the populace was forcibly moved. One Ethiopian bureaucrat announced, "It is our duty to move the peasants if they are too stupid to move by themselves." Land was nationalized in the name of the people, and food production plummeted. Famine quickly appeared and the capitalist West poured food relief into the country, but Mengistu simply used the food as a political weapon, allowing tens of thousands of people to starve to death. While the country was in the grip of famine, Mengistu spent almost $200 million celebrating the tenth anniversary of socialism in the country. Caviar and champagne, lobster and salmon were imported for the Marxist elite to consume, and $10 million was spent just to refurbish the statues of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that decorated the streets of Addis Ababa. When the people finally had enough and overthrew Mengistu, he fled to Mugabe's Zimbabwe where he was welcomed with open arms. George Ayittey, Africa Betrayed (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 107-108.Note

Tanzania also destroyed free markets in favour of state control and socialism, with similar results. The problems in Tanzania began when president Julius Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration, a plan for turning the country into a socialist paradise. The major industries were socialised and massive resettlement programs were forced on the people. The old villages were destroyed and the peasant farmers forced into collectives. Government regulations required that food be sold to the government. Again, food production plummeted and people could no longer find enough to eat. Ibid, p. 107.Note Swedish economist Sven Rydenfelt tells what happened:

By 1979, five years after the enforced resettlement, domestic agricultural production in Tanzania was already incapable of providing the cities with food. Imports had to be increased to compensate for declining production, and in 1980 no less than half of the food needed by Tanzania was being imported. A decade of socialist agricultural policy had been sufficient to destroy the socio-ecological system. Sven Rydenfelt, A Pattern for Failure (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983), p. 121.Note

Rydenfelt quotes a Norwegian newspaper that reported, "Large sectors of the production system stand still, food lines in the capital city of Dar es Salaam were never longer, and shop shelves never more empty." Ibid.Note According to World Bank statistics, the Tanzanian economy contracted on average 0.5 percent each year between 1965 and 1988, and personal consumption dropped by 43 percent. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed, p. 282.Note A Norwegian radio commentator who visited Tanzania in 1982 reported:

On days when bread was delivered to the stores, people had to line up for hours. Even commodities like soap, toothpaste, salt, flour, cooking oil, batteries and bandages were lacking. People starve, and starving people get desperate. . . . The brutal truth is that the policy of President Nyerere has completely failed. . . . The Tanzanians are unable to manage the many state enterprises, and today production is only 30 percent of its volume a few years ago. Rydenfelt, A Pattern for Failure, pp. 123-124.Note

In Ghana, the same story was repeated. President Nkrumah announced that he would rule the country with "African socialism." Ghana was doing well in 1960, largely because of its cocoa production; that year it produced 439,000 tons of cocoa. The government saw this as a gold mine and decreed that all cocoa must be sold to a government marketing board at prices well below world prices. The results weren't felt immediately--they rarely are. In fact, cocoa production increased to 581,000 tons in 1964, but then the effects of the policies kicked in. By 1970 production was down to 406,000 tons, by 1978 to 270,000 tons and in 1982 to 225,000 tons. In other words, the socialist price controls and marketing board had managed to destroy over half of Ghana's cocoa production in just two decades. Ibid, pp. 110-111.Note

The state farms created by Nkrumah were predictably a failure. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey writes:

In 1965 the state farms barely produced enough food to feed their own workers, let alone the nation. After only three years of operation these government farms had accumulated losses of over $15 million. Between 1960 and 1966 local food prices doubled as a result of these shortages. The reaction of the Nkrumah government to rising food prices was one of paranoia. Instead of acknowledging the shortfalls in food production, Nkrumah blamed neocolonialist agents and economic saboteurs. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed, p. 168.Note

Ayittey notes that instead of learning from Nkrumah's failure "one country after another, with deadly consistency, followed in his footsteps: Guinea, Mali, Congo-Brazzaville, Tanzania, Zambia, and a host of others." Ibid, p. 170.Note The results everywhere were the same: "in each country tyranny followed, economies were ruined, and the nationalists were ousted by the military. Incredibly, 25 years after the failure of Nkrumah's socialist experiment, Zimbabwe was charging obstinately along the same disastrous lines." Ibid.Note

While the governments of Africa have ploughed along the socialist path, the people have seen their incomes deteriorate and their once-productive nations become centres of starvation. Average incomes have been declining: "the countries of sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) have an average per capita income of only $210. And while Africa is the only continent in which incomes have declined, averaging a 0.1 percent decline per year for the last two decades, what is most alarming is that the rate of decline has been accelerating." Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 73.Note

But the failure of Africa is the failure of socialism, not the failure of Africans. The same policies in Russia and China led to similar results. That is why both nations have abandoned socialism and moved toward capitalism. Ecocide, a book exposing the environmental disasters of state socialism, noted that the food crisis that continually dogged the Soviet Union was not caused by bad farmers. "Soviets can farm well. On their private plots--just 1 or 2 percent of all land--they produced `about two-thirds of the potatoes and eggs and about 40 percent of meat, milk and vegetables' consumed in the mid-1960s. On those tiny patches of ground, they worked for themselves--hard and productively. On the huge holdings of the state and collective farms, their performance was miserable, even dangerous." Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr., Ecocide in the USSR (London: Aurum Press, 1992), p. 50.Note

David Osterfeld says that the results of African socialism were predictable:

Not only were they what one would expect from elementary economic theory: they were also what one could observe after a half century of experience with socialism in the Second World. The (former) Soviet Union contains some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world. Prior to the communist revolution in 1917, Russia was the world's largest exporter of grain. Collectivization of agriculture during the 1920s and 1930s was quickly followed by dramatic declines in output. Between 5 and 10 million Russians died of starvation during these years, with 12 to 13 million more saved by food donated by the Western capitalist countries. By the 1980s the Soviet Union employed 25 percent of its labour force and invested in excess of 25 percent of its capital in agriculture, both figures far higher than in any other industrialized country. Despite its tremendous agricultural potential, the Soviet Union became the world's largest food importer. It imported nearly one-third of its food, and this is despite having grudgingly permitted the establishment of private minifarms one-half to one acre in size. These private plots made up only 3 percent of the total cropland, yet produced 27 percent of the nation's food.

. . . . The pattern is repeated with monotonous regularity throughout socialist countries. Most of the Eastern European countries are blessed with fertile agricultural land and, prior to socialism, were food exporters. The adoption of socialist policies in most of these was quickly followed by declining production, food shortages, and bread lines. Zinsmeister notes that "between 1960 and 1980 agricultural productivity declined by one-third in the Soviet Bloc."

Agricultural output in China was virtually stagnant during the 25-year reign of Mao Tse-tung. The Chinese government now acknowledges that during just one three-year period, the so-called Three Difficult Years from 1959-1962, between 25 and 30 million Chinese died from starvation. By the time of Mao's death in the mid 1970s, the average Chinese was less well fed than he was during the 1920s or even during the Japanese occupation of the 1930s. Beginning in 1977, Mao's successors abandoned his "socialist experiment." As a result, says The Economist, "food grain output has increased by 12 percent a year since then, despite bad weather in 1980." Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 82. For a more thorough analysis of how communist economics breeds poverty see Nick Eberstadt, The Poverty of Communism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1990).Note

In 1989, Yury Chernichenko, a member of the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies, told the assembly, "A coercive system of farming will never feed the people." Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, p. 50.Note That is a lesson many countries in Africa have yet to learn.

Apartheid and overpopulation

For 45 years South African politics has been totally dominated by the issue of apartheid. Opponents of apartheid used every means possible to discredit and destroy the system, and that is perfectly understandable. As a result, however, apartheid has been blamed for many social ills that it had nothing to do with creating. For example, Barbara Klugman, an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, oversteps the facts when she attempts to prove that "overpopulation" in South Africa is a result of apartheid. To be fair, she does not argue that apartheid is entirely responsible; she believes some of the blame must be laid at the door of the developed nations of the world. She vigorously defends the people of Africa from the charge that poverty is the result of high birth rates. As noted earlier, this is one area where I agree with her.

To Klugman, the overpopulation issue is one of colonial exploitation and apartheid. Third World countries are poor because First World countries are rich. There is no mutually beneficial trade in her analysis. Trade is exploitation. She says:

the relative wealth of the First World derives directly from its use of Third World resources and Third World markets on terms of trade which have always been advantageous to the First World. It is incorrect to see the wealth of the First World, and the poverty of the Third World, as simple facts which bear no relation to each other. Klugman, in Going Green, p. 76.Note

Lord Bauer has debunked this myth quite thoroughly. He points out that the countries of the developed world were wealthy compared to so-called Third World nations long before they ever had contact with each other. First World wealth did not depend on Third World resources in the past, nor does it do so today. Various studies have shown that colonialism tended to be economically unprofitable for the colonial powers and that they spent more money on the colonies than they earned from them. In fact, contrary to Klugman's theory, the more trade Third World countries have with First World nations, the wealthier they become. If First World wealth is created by taking advantage of Third World nations, then those Third World nations with the least amount of international trade should be the wealthiest: Hong Kong and Singapore should be sinking into poverty whereas Zimbabwe and Cuba should be economic miracles. In the real world, of course, the facts are completely the reverse. Those Third World countries that have high economic growth and prosperity are also those countries that have the greatest amount of trade with the First World.

Klugman is a fervent critic of apartheid and it is a fairly safe bet that she supported trade sanctions against South Africa. Yet, according to her own theory, sanctions should have increased South Africa's wealth. If the First World exploits its Third World trading partners, then the greater the trade South Africa had with the First World the less capable the South African government would have been of implementing apartheid.

Like others on the left, Klugman sees overpopulation as a problem of resource distribution, not of resource production. Typically, the solution they offer is to confiscate the wealth of the First World and redistribute it, not to promote economic policies that would enable Third World countries to become prosperous and self-sufficient. According to their analysis, the crisis in Ethiopia should not be laid at the door of the Ethiopian Marxists who destroyed that nation: the real criminals are the wealthy people in North America and Europe who consume too much. The fact that Africa was once able to feed itself (under the evil colonialists whom Klugman despises) is irrelevant: the poverty/overpopulation problem is not caused by some people having too little, but by others having too much.

Klugman writes: "The argument that the poor of the Third World use proportionately more of the world's resources, while contributing less to the world's GDP, compounds the victim-blaming syndrome. People in the First World consume more resources than those in the Third World." Ibid.Note But that is not the point. The problem that Third World nations face is not how much they consume, but the fact that they are not able to produce a surplus. The First World is wealthy because it produces more than it consumes, thus allowing the accumulation of capital and other resources. The Third World is poor because it produces barely enough to survive, and sometimes not even that. What the wealthy and the poor consume relative to each other is unimportant. What is crucial is what each produces relative to what they, themselves, consume. What role did apartheid play in causing "overpopulation" in South Africa, according to Klugman? She simply asserts that apartheid laws "upset the balance between population and resources, and hence between population and the environment. Not only has it created massive inequalities in the use of resources, but it has also resulted in a high population growth rate." Ibid, p. 71.Note Does this argument make sense? If high population growth rates are caused by apartheid, then why are there high population growth rates in the rest of Africa where there is no apartheid? Why did England experience a soaring population growth rate during the industrial revolution? Why have there been high growth rates in virtually every poverty-stricken nation in the world when they first began to develop economically? The coloureds in South Africa were surely victims of apartheid as well, yet their population growth rate is almost identical to that of South African whites.

Klugman errs in equating high population density with overpopulation. Early in her essay she shows that countries with high population densities are not necessarily overpopulated. But then she says, "There is overcrowding because people have been forced into the `homelands' instead of being allowed to remain on the land on which they were born or move to urban areas." Ibid, p. 73.Note Now, of course, overpopulation and population density are not the same thing. Most African poverty is found in the less densely populated rural areas, not in areas of high population density like Hillbrow in Johannesburg. Africans continue to flood into Hillbrow because they have a better chance of improving their living standards. As I have pointed out earlier, high population density has certain economic advantages and that is true in South Africa as well. Apartheid, in fact, attempted to prevent blacks from moving from the less populated rural areas to the more densely populated cities.

Finally, Klugman attempts to debunk the claim that high population growth rates in South Africa are the result of lower mortality rates: "The other misconception held by the overpopulation theorists is that the population growth rate among Africans is high because the mortality rate has dropped through access to modern medicine." Ibid, p. 74.Note The way Klugman attempts to disprove this theory is to point out that black South Africans don't have the same access to medicine as do white South Africans. Again, she misses the point. What is relevant here is how much access black Africans have to medicine today compared to 20 years ago or 100 years ago. While black South Africans do not have the same access to medical care as whites, they have more access today than they did a hundred years ago, and mortality rates have declined. The average life expectancy in Africa for blacks has increased dramatically over the last 50 years. Africans today have more access to modern medicine than at any time in history, and as a result they are living longer. Since birth rates in Africa have remained steady, the increase in population density should be expected.

In her attempt to blame apartheid for overpopulation and poverty, Klugman distorts reality. "It is not population numbers that threaten South Africa, but the lack of access to resources on the one hand and the overconsumption of resources on the other. It is not the poor themselves who have caused their poverty, by having many children, but the practice of discrimination." Ibid, p. 77.Note

The causes of poverty are complex. Certainly discrimination alone is not sufficient to cause poverty, as the Jews and the Chinese have proved the world over. Moreover, the high population growth rates South Africa is experiencing are not at all unique--they have been experienced all over the world by many different societies, including all the nations currently deemed to be First World.

More importantly, the solution to these problems requires more than the dismantling of apartheid. A more equitable "distribution" of resources (i.e. socialist redistributive policies) is not the way to solve South Africa's, or the world's, remaining "overpopulation" problem. As we have seen, everywhere socialism has been tried, the problem grew worse because food production and resource recovery suffered severely. To solve its problems, South Africa must deregulate its heavily regulated economy and increase its trade with the First World. Instead of simply redistributing the relatively little wealth that already exists, South Africa needs a growing economy that creates new wealth. The only method yet discovered to do that is through the forces of a relatively free market with private property.

Conclusion

This paper has tackled some rather difficult issues--difficult not because the evidence is lacking for the ideas it has presented, but because the ideas run contrary to much modern mythology. It has shown that the world is not overpopulated in any meaningful sense of the word, that food production per capita is increasing, that there is plenty of room for all of us, and more than enough natural resources to meet our needs for thousands of years to come.

Overpopulation is blamed for hunger and famine everywhere, particularly in Africa. But, as this paper has shown, Africa is the least densely populated of all the continents and has the ability to feed the entire world twice over. Yet still Africa is impoverished. A continent blessed with abundant resources and capable of feeding the world is starving. Poverty is so commonplace that it is expected. A scapegoat must be found. The accepted theory is that it is the fault of the Africans themselves. They reproduce too quickly and that is why they are starving. It is a classic case of blaming the victim.

The people of Africa are the victims of inept governments that have attempted to impose socialism and regulated economies on countries that can't afford these wealth-destroying policies. They deserve better than this.

The good news for the people of Africa is that they need not suffer in poverty any longer. The solution is simple: free the people to produce; allow the people to keep what they produce; and the people will produce.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.