Consequences of depopulation

It was intriguing to read the Philippine Daily Inquirer column of Dr. Bernado Villegas on the Reproductive Health bill last Oct. 14. He said despite the inclusion of the RH bill in the priority list of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, it seems there is very little probability that it will be passed even in the House of Representatives and that he was afraid President Benigno Aquino III will lose many political capital for endorsing it. He said he thought the President made his conclusion after consulting many of the expert economic advisers in and outside his administration but that the vast majority of them are neo-Malthusians in orientation. To Villegas, neo-Malthusians are convinced that rapid population growth is a major reason for the high incidence of poverty in the Philippines.

Villegas said he had written numerous articles about the very positive dimensions of population growth and mentioned that he just came out with a book titled “The Positive Dimensions of Population Growth.” He wanted to tell the President that he is taking a short-term view of the problem known in the Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016 as “inclusive growth” and that even assuming, without granting, that population control can help in the important task of eradicating poverty in the Philippines, the President is ignoring the long-term consequences of distributing artificial contraceptives for free to the poor.

He said there is enough hard evidence in countries that followed the path of population control to show that a contraception mentality inevitably leads to a significant rise in abortion, divorce, single mothers and mentally unbalanced adolescents. He cited economist and Nobel laureate George Akerlof for demonstrating scientifically what anecdotal evidence already revealed to any objective student of human behavior: That in countries where artificial contraceptives are as accessible as candies in the corner store, the rate of abortions has risen by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years to 30 years, especially in North America and Europe. With regard to divorce and out-of-wedlock births, Dr. Akerlof’s empirical conclusions have been confirmed by a recent study conducted by a multinational team of social scientists in a project titled “The Empty Cradle,” which found out that accompanying the global mega-trend of falling birth rates is a radical change in the circumstances in which many children are raised, as country after country has seen divorce and/or out-of-wedlock births surge and a sharp drop in the percentage of children living with both of their married parents.

He said that in much of Europe and the Americas, from the United Kingdom to the United States, from Mexico to Sweden, out-of-wedlock births are the “new normal,” with 40 percent or more of all children born without married parents and that though many of these births are to cohabiting couples, families headed by cohabiting couples are significantly less stable than couples headed by married families. Meaning that children born outside of marriage are markedly more likely to be exposed to a revolving cast of caretakers and to spells of single parenthood compared to children born to married couples.

Villegas said it took only generation of 20 years for artificial contraceptives to wreak havoc on society in countries like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—the scourge of the demographic winter. Now they are frantically looking for ways and means to increase their fertility rates. He also cited Thailand as the first country in the developing world to age before becoming rich and said thanks to their aggressive condom campaigns in the last century, Thailand has the highest incidence of HIV-AIDS in the whole of East Asia.

Villegas concluded that even if the President’s advisers are right that controlling population now can help fight poverty, it is not right for him to follow their advice because they are completely ignoring the long-term impact of implanting the contraception mentality on the poor, adding that no solution to today’s problem should be used if, in solving problems of the present generation, the welfare of future generations is harmed. For that is what sustainable development is all about: solving today’s problem without prejudicing future generations, Villegas said.

Villegas also said that even if population control can contribute to solving poverty today, there are more direct solutions that will not harm future generations of Filipinos. He mentioned agricultural and rural development, nurturing of small and medium-scale enterprises, authentic agrarian reform backed by efficient infrastructures in the countryside, microcredit and microenterprise development, improving the quality of basic education for the poor, providing technical skills to the out-of-school youth, partnering with the private sector in implementing corporate social responsibility and many others that expert advisers can think of. There should be no problem with money to do all these, he warned, or the President is giving up on his campaign against corruption. He reminded the President that World Bank and ADB findings in the past indicated that some P400 billion annually is lost through private sector and government corruption, which is greater than the projected annual deficit of the Aquino government. He then concluded that he found no reason the Aquino administration should use a solution that may have a short-term anti-poverty impact but would lead to social and moral decay.

The response will come next.