While NPR may be incorrect as to the economics of China's policy, I can't imagine why you would support such a draconian policy, one that may leave many elderly Chinese at the mercy of the extremely weak social security system there.

One need only look to Cuba to see how to reduce population growth without such policies:

1. jobs for women
2. compulsory education for children
3. a health care system that reduces infant mortality (birth rate and infant mortality decline together)
4. a social security system that eliminates dependence on children for support in old age.

Added to that, of course, was an agricultural system that wasn't dependent on child labor, but that was more because of the plantation system than the actions of the Cuban government--Cuba didn't have a substantial peasantry.

Dean - I, too, was astounded by the heavy editorializing of the piece. For daring to take up a topic that raises myriad complex issues, but dispenses with them inside of a few minutes, it's pretty damn audacious to feel confident enough to come down so unambiguously on the policy. As the previous commenter notes, there are potentially are other options for attempting to achieve the goal of reduced population growth, but the reporter never got close to touching any of them, having already concluded that such a goal is misguided, from a Chinese perspective.

NPR would not be likely to suggest those kinds of options. That costs money, lots of money, and most of it goes to people who don't have much of it.

What's most amazing is that this idea (let's have more kids to make the world a more productive place) seems to be popping up everywhere. It's much more sensible to make the workers we have more productive (and better paid) than to overpopulate the planet with children, most of whom will die before they're 14 years old. I get the feeling that the powers what be are afraid that we'll run out of the reserve army of the unemployed.

The reason the Post has this point of view is that otherwise it has to question why US politicians insist on increasing the US population through mass immigration. The Post views immigration as a morally unqualified good. You can deduce many Post editorial positions simply by deduction from this premise.

Sorry, I meant NPR, not the Post. But the same is true of the Post.

Like Dean I think there is more to Chinese population policy than whether it is imposed. Like Dean I couldn't believe NPR was using the same elderly dependency ratio argument in the context of an economy growing at China's rate. It's a problem of pension provision not population policy.

This brings me to the new natalism. In industrial countries it maintains that the ratio of old people to working people is increasing and this is a terrible thing so we need to have more kids. The fundamental problem with this is: if population size stabilizes (and at some point it has to), it will be characterized by one of two regimes. One is a low fertility-low mortality regime (the Europeans). The other is the high fertility-high mortality regime (natalists, Catholics). Perhaps Pope Ratzinger can provide the definitive moral justification for the latter.

there has also been a spate of articles touting increasing the retirement age.

it seems that the rich cannot live as well if the population of workers decreases.

We are all in denial. Un-predated, Uncontrolled population in any species on this planet makes a disaster of some form or another.

If "Peak Oil" really was 2005, Olduvai Theory says 4 billion of us are not going to make it past the first half of this century.

Forget the merits of Chinese or Cuban population control or US stupidity at importing "needed" labour and tax payers.

We probably have a problem way in excess of any solution we are capable of implementing.

Live for Today, because Tomorrow we die.

re: "We are all in denial. Un-predated, Uncontrolled population in any species on this planet makes a disaster of some form or another."

Alas Malthus will always be with us even if he was wrong when he first pondered the issue of human population. The classical economist David Ricardo tore Malthus' theses apart. And history has proven neo-Malthusians to be as wrong as their original theorist.

There is no species on the planet that is more obsessed with its own fertility than the human species. Indeed the entire natural history of sapiens-sapiens (and some ancestors) can be seen through the lens of fertility control. So population increases beyond the technical modifications of carrying capacity point to collapse of controlling mechanisms-- deculturation and the lack of education for women. While little can be done about the former, the latter can and is addressed through literacy programs in the developing world. Fertility rate decreases take place in countries where girls are encouraged to go to school up to the high school age.

The problem of surplus population is typically corrected with migration. From the very first exodus from the East African grasslands, humans migrate. Successful migration is marked by long-term occupation or habitation of new lands. Today migrants in the US economy (those who are not here legally) pay into systems like social security (see NYT editorial April 2 2008) from which they cannot hope to collect.

Present day demographic change is taking place in the context of extremely rapid growth that is tempered with a global decline in total fertility rates. So the always desired "demographic transition" from hi birth/death rates to low is actually taking place faster than anticipated by experts 30 yrs ago.

Prediction: human population growth stabilizes in the next 20 yrs with demographic imbalances addressed through more internationally ordered migration policies and increasingly based on goals for sustainable economies.

The ethics and unintended consequences of population stabilization programs are and should be discussed. But an either/or view of this hugely important issue will not take us to better understanding.

The Chinese case for example was discussed on NPR with the observation that it has lead to to a skewed ratio of male to female births because of cultural preferences for male offspring. The sonogram is now widely used in China to determine the gender of the fetus. Abortion of female fetuses is then the most common outcome, making China unlike the rest of the world where gender ratios are F-51%, M-49%. Prior to the sonogram in China, rural villages saw a return of the baby altar, a pre-revolution practice of female infanticide.

Poor regions and countries of the world have made progress in population growth via land reform for peasants (economic safety net) and literacy for girls.

But the real global warming problem in the world does NOT come from the world's poor people. It comes from the outrageous consumption of the top income earners on the planet (5% to 20% of the population) who consume over 80% of the global trade in resources and whose "ecological footprint" (water, carbon, land acreage) is extremely disproportionate to their numbers. So while we all wonder where that weird NPR story came from, we should really fret over the story NPR hasn't aired at all- "The environmental burden on the earth's resources imposed by rich count

I agree with George; but also with the concerns which Dean raised. George has a point, in that the imbalance of wealth caused by the wages system makes the rich aka the powerful responsible for climate change. They're in the driver's seat when it comes to the foot dragging and they're foot dragging because their system isn't sustainable, if it doesn't grow and it's not going to grow, if it becomes environmentally sustainalble.

I agree with Dean too, in so far as the capitalist system and population explosions in China or anywhere else go. I heard that China now has the dubious distinction of being the world's worst polluter, outstripping even the U.S.A., which has been tops since the 19th Century. That's a national count though. As Chinese critics point out, greenhouse gas emissions should be counted at the per capita level and on that level, they don't pollute nearly as much as the U.S.A. or other industrialized countries. What it is now, two or three new coal fired energy plants going up in China every week in order to meet demand...the demand to live the McLifestyle of their fellow wage-slaves in the developed world?

My Dear Leddy,

You are not cognizant with reality. Malthus merely espoused a theory he thought fitted his observations. We all seem to develop theories which fit closest to our own individual concept of what we observe.

I cannot fault your contemporary theory, except that it does not reflect a finite world being terraformed to the needs of a single species.

"Population Control" is a dirty word. History seems to show that the only effective birth control is "affluence and education"

The argument breaks down when half a billion educated Chinese, half a billion educated Indians and half a billion educated whites all want to drive a Toyota, run an air-conditioner and eat filet steak. It is not going to happen.

The propaganda machine is brainwashing and advertising 24/7/365 to convince Malthus's progeny to consume ever increasing amounts of finite resources.

Malthus was big on "Moral Restraint" but forgot to say that such restraint should be exteded only to things outside the human body.

The Olduvai Theory dooms 4 billion of us for natural termination within the next generation if we do not change our perceptions.

I have personally been present at the tail end of numerous global catastrophes

Millions of small sharks disappeared from the East Coast of Argentina.

The Cod disappeared from the East Coast of Canada.

The Salmon disappeared from the West Coast of Canada.

Most of the non-game-park wild life disappeared from central Africa.

I have participated in the Industries which have taken what was "water beyond measure" in the northern parts of Canada to a now water shortage crisis.

These as just one small part of one little lifetime.

Most finite resources, including oil, seem to have passed their peak.

Again, even Modified Olduvai Theory explains that all bets for anything more than a subsistence life style are canceled after 2050.

Academe seems to have missed a fundamental this time around.

This generation of Professors are all products of a world with Infinite Oil, and a belief that God, or at least Science, will fix all the problems.

Malthus being Church Of England and living in an age when God was still a force, was not capable of real intellectual thought.

By any, and all definitions, "people" are this planet's main problem. (But only for the lifestyle of future people), because the insects will not even skip a beat when we go.

I'm not yet decided on this issue of population growth. I do agree that at some point population needs to stabilise, whether through catastrophe or 'controls'. But I don't believe the actual number of people cause the problem so much as the lifestyle they all aspire to.

The biomass of ants exceeds by far that of mankind, and yet they are not running the earth into the ground, WE are! We need to play by the earth's rules, and not only try to be more efficient. And don't believe for one minute that progress and playing by the earth's rules are mutually exclusive! Just google 'cradle to cradle design' and see for yourself!