Population Controls

In an excellent, comprehensive column “A World Divided on Population” (Opinion, March 19), writer Donella Meadows states that poverty creates overpopulation which creates poverty.

What we must educate people to know is that as we improve the health of the poor and there are less deaths, there will be an eventual drop in the birth rates. Proof of this is in the low death/birth rates now found in China, Sri Lanka, the Republic of Korea, Costa Rica, and Singapore. That defies the logic which leads us to think that improved conditions for the poorest of the poor mean more people on the planet. Reasons given and validated are that parents are more likely to restrict their families if they have reasonable assurance of the healthy survival of two children.

Vital to this occurring is in raising female literacy which is now considered the one most important factor in controlling birthrates and improving child rearing.

So improving the conditions of the very poor, far from exacerbating the problem of population growth, could contribute to fertility decline. That’s a far cry from those who think we need wars and disease to control planet population.

BARBARA URSCHEL

South Pasadena