Population Politics: The Choices That Shape Our Future

By Garrett Hardin and Virginia Abernethy

Book Overview

International efforts to regulate fertility rates so that populations do not grow beyond the earth's capacity have included technical assistance and capital; improved health care conditions to lower the risk of infant mortality; increased opportunities to develop literacy; the democratization of governments; and several decades of liberal immigration and refugee policies favoring third world nations. The persistence of high fertility despite international efforts confounds demographers. 'Population Politics' brilliantly dissects the paradigm responsible for the counterproductive efforts of nations and international agencies. Abernethy, a renowned anthropologist, shows why policies hamper the shift to lower fertility. Ireland, Indonesia, Cuba, China, Turkey and Egypt are but a few of the countries Abernethy examines, showing how economic, sociocultural, and agricultural factors that have caused population growth can be harnessed to stabilize population size. 'Population Politics' is a provocative examination of the influence of aid and liberal immigration policies on world population growth, and often counterproductive to the role of the United States as an industrial power. This volume's uniquely interdisciplinary perspective will enlighten the lay reader, as well as demographers and epidemiologists, conservationists, reproduction and family specialists, agricultural economists, and public health personnel. Virginia D. Abernethy is professor emeritus of psychiatry (anthropology) at Vanderbilt Medical School and was for 11 years the editor of the scholarly journal 'Population and Environment. Garrett Hardin is emeritus professor of human ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765806037
• ISBN13: 9780765806031
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Empiric Data Inconsistant with Demographic Transition Model

The essential point of this work is the Demographic Transition Model (DTM) is false and worse is contributing to above reasonable fertility rates in many countries and an over all rate of positive population growth world wide. The author does an excellent job of putting forward both the strong case for the DTM (education and affluence => zero growth) and the weak case for the DTM (education and affluence => some reduction in growth). She then shows that niether contingency is supported by various important sources of empirical data. Even worse, policies based on the DTM may even increase fertility. The arguments put forward are coherent,cogent, and reasonably sound. If the DTM is false then this has very far ranging implications for all sorts of ecconomic and aid policies . But more importantly,if the DTM is false there are extremely dire consequences for the health of humanity and the environment. This will mean that the much vuanted "logistic curve" of the DTM will not come to pass and population may easily over shoot ten billion (e.g. will not level off via birth prevention). The issues and arguments put forward in this work are really the essential bench mark for future discussion.

Family subsidies only cause more poverty

This book supports the arguments economic conservatives have intuitively had against altruistic national and international welfare schemes - they only encourage more irresponsibility, even larger families in already impoverished lands, and only encourage immigration to welfare states such as the United States and Western Europe -- spreading the misery of low wages due to oversupply of farm and blue collar labor and increasingly white collar and even high technology degreed job categories. This is in addition to the fundamentally immoral and monstrous nature of such redistributionist schemes.

Most important book written in my life-time.

Quoting from Abernethy's book: "Americans are too careless in protecting their own heritage and too ready to impose western culture on others." "Organization is one of the linchpins of prosperity, and it depends on stability and security. But maintenance of order within a democratic framework ultimately depends on the consent and consensus of the governed. Without a core of common values, order depends upon coercion and the criminal justice system. Public safety in today's American cities comes at the cost of erosion in treasured liberties such as freedom from unreasonable search and seizure -- the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. And the shift toward state coerciveness will probably be irreversible so long as the numbers outside the law, or in disagreement with fundamental values, keep growing."