The idea of birth control was already present in antiquity. In The Laws, Plato affirms that the population of a city cannot surpass 5,040 heads of families and family residences (cf. V 737 e;740, d). In The Politics (II, 6), population control is also recommended by Aristotle. This idea reappears much later, for example in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and the City of the Sun of Campanella (1623). Beginning in the modern era, this question was taken up more and more frequently, especially in England. With different emphases it is present in Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Swift. This last published in 1729 a sulphurous work entitled A Modest Proposal for Preventing Children of Poor People from being a Burden to their Parents or the Country.

In this context one author stands alone: Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). The popularity of his theses are first due to their apparent simplicity and the forceful way in which they are asserted. Already in 1798 the famous Anglican pastor proclaimed: food production grows by arithmetic progression while population increases geometrically. The poor must delay their ages of marriage. Poor relief disrupts the laws of nature which wants the selection of the fit and the elimination of the others. Already in 1803 Malthus adds that “at the banquet of nature no place is reserved for him; he is really an intruder on the earth. Nature bids him take himself off, and she will not be slow to put this order into execution herself”. [1] 

Many times criticized and proved wrong, the concepts of the pastor are nonetheless implacably presented again and again. We find them either in their original formulation or elaborated on a given subject or, on the contrary, hidden. We will briefly follow these changes up to the present. [2] 

Malthusian ideas are reinforced by the addition of Organicism as notably popularized by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): human society is a body whose members have different worth seen in utilitarian terms or as to their dignity. It is inadmissible that the less endowed should do harm to the whole species. Therefore, it is necessary to help the process of natural selection, the theory developed by Darwin (1809-1882). Galton (1822-1911) would add that this selection had to be artificial. Doctors would have a primary role to play in this program of Eugenics. [3]

NeoMalthusianism came later, and it is best illustrated by Margaret Sanger (1883-1966). This current of thought mixes the Malthusian ideas on population with an individualistic, hedonistic and utilitarian moral doctrine. This morality of individual pleasure disassociates sexual behavior with procreation. In sexual intercourse pleasure is the good, and children are the risk or even the evil to be avoided. Other persons are interesting insofar as they procure me pleasure or profit. Therefore marriage is rejected, “free love” is extolled, Eugenics is advocated, etc.

According to Malthus the arable land area of the earth inexorably limits food production and this limit is the inexorable determining factor in the number of people the earth can support. This theme of the earth leads to the contemporary Environmentalism as well as to concepts such as “living space”, spheres of influence, and “borders”.

The Malthusian can be compared to the tree whose sap nourishes three other ideologies: Organicism, NeoMalthusianism, and Environmentalism. In total we have four components whose interconnections appear already in the XIXth century. We shall show what formulations from these four ideologies just mentioned are taken up and spread today. [4] 

Revival of Malthusiasm

Under what forms has the original Malthusian doctrine appeared in the speeches of governmental organizations like the United Nations or non-governmental organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation?

The increase of population, we are assured, is “exponential”. The production of food is not keeping up, they say and the earth can’t feed everyone. The poor in the Third World have too many children and are therefore responsible for their own misery. Population growth causes poverty and unemployment; it is an obstacle to development. The concentration of the poor in cities is a cause of juvenile delinquency and criminality as well. [5] 

If one accepts these affirmations, no development is possible without population control. From the time of the Second International Conference on Population (Belgrade, 1965) planning births was presented as a form of development aid. Soon the term “monitoring” was used, that is to say, control or limit population growth. The Mexico City Conference (1984) mentioned the necessity of a plan of action. The most elaborate formulation of this plan was the object of the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (1994). Since this conference states are regularly asked to explain what they are doing to implement the “plan of action” created by “consensus” in the Egyptian capital. The Rio Conference (1992) had already announced that the “carrying capacity” of the earth had already been reached or surpassed. In its original definition “sustainable development” required population control. If this control was not realized, the “P” (population) bomb would soon explode.

The Revival of Organicism

In 1946 Julian Huxley was made head of UNESCO. He was known to be in favor of the sterilization of the mentally handicapped and “those society doesn’t know what to do with”. A variant of this Eugenics can be found in Frederick Osborne, who became in 1952 the first president of the influential New York-based Population Council. This private institution deserves mention here because of the role the Rockefellers played up to the present, through this council, in the demographic programs of the United States, the UN and its agencies, as well as numerous NGOs, the most important of whom is the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

One will recall that Galton preferred artificial selection to the natural selection of Malthus. He introduced a Volontarist, that is to say interventionist, element. The poor are those who fail; the rich those who succeed. The first fail and thereby prove their inferiority; the second group succeeds and thus prove their giftedness. For the good of humanity one must prevent the poor from procreating and facilitate the procreation among the gifted. More precisely, one must avoid that the whole of human society’s genetic patrimony is debased by the pressure coming from an uncontrolled population of the poor. At the Bucharest Conference (1974) this Voluntarist and Eugenicist dimension appeared in the form of demographic control requiring systematic action, especially among the poor.

Reprise of Neo-Malthusianism

The first Neomalthusians expanded upon Individualist, Libertarian and Feminist arguments. Neomalthusianism today also insists on the right to pleasure of individuals and on the emancipation of women. Nonetheless, especially since the UNFPA’s 1994 report the education and emancipation of women is viewed as a powerful means to lower the growth of population. This is why the education of women must include an important element regarding sexual education and “reproductive health”. This last is one of the “new rights” that they want to get accepted: the right to contraception in all its forms beginning at adolescence, to Abortion, to Sterilization, to Euthanasia. These “new rights” are supposed to answer “unfulfilled needs”. At the Copenhagen Conference (1995), under pressure from homosexual pressure groups, these “new rights” were to cover “unbehaviors”.

During the Beijing Conference (1995) the family was presented as the prototypical site of class struggle; the wife is oppressed by the husband, who in imposing the “burden” of motherhood prevents her from developing her potential by contributing to production. Women’s liberation therefore involves the destruction of the family. A classic theme of Neomalthusianism, the destruction of the family, appears now as “new models of the family”: next to the traditional heterosexual and monogamous family appear the so-called single parent, homosexual, reconstituted, etc. “families”.  

In the course of this same conference all these themes were grouped under the label “gender”: the different roles attributed to men and women in society have no natural foundation, they are the product of culture and, as such, can and should be abolished. Each person is free to choose their own sex or to change it. We are in a full-blown cultural revolution.

Reprise of Environmentalism

Malthus feared the disparity between arable land and food resources on the one hand and the number of mouths to be fed. Despite the scientific studies that contradict this Malthusian position, this belief of the Anglican pastor is now extrapolated to cover the relationship of the Earth to men. There are several visible stages in the enlarging upon Malthus’ demographic growth (geometric that is “exponential”) and the increase of food production (arithmetic).

We are aboard the Raft of the Medusa, the famous painting by Géricault, or on the Titanic as it sinks. The ship Earth has six billion passengers and would be on the verge of sinking. Unfortunately the lifeboats can only carry a third to a fourth of the passengers. We therefore need to cut off without pity those who want to climb into the lifeboats or else all will perish.

In full conformity with the Malthusian tradition, those to be principally targeted are the poor. Their demographic growth is the cause of the degradation of the environment: deforestation, waste of resources, global warming, the shrinking of the Ozone layer, etc. Man is the great “predator”. The Rio Conference (1992) was totally devoted to these themes. Maurice King even recommends the creation of “reservations” in “parks” guarded by “rangers”, a kind of demographic police. Their job would be to “contain” poor populations within the limits of quotas. It would be the same for men as it is for elephants: they are a menace to the environment; the “natural” balance must be protected at all costs. If it proved impossible to contain the population growth of the poor, they would have to be allowed to die: a sort of self-selection. So modern relief and development aid would be judged following Malthus’ view of the “poor laws”. The message of Malthus is always current: helping the poor is to violate nature’s morality; if Mother Nature is violent, society should be as well.

The exaltation of the environment has led to a radicalization of the environmental movement. Already at the Bucharest Conference (1974) population growth was judged to affect the environment and had become an international problem. “Aid” with this end in mind must be reinforced.

This radicalization was reflected again at the Istanbul Conference (1996) which reaffirmed-in a more prudently fashion it is true-the link between urban and rural planning and family planning. 

Convergences

Malthusianism, Organicsim, Neomalthusianism, Environmentalism: all these ideologies converge on a central theme of supporting population control. They are presented in different ways and with different emphases capable of being reactivated and absorbed. In different guises the Malthusian chant about the excessive number of people being the main cause of humanity’s ills reappears. It is therefore necessary to “increase the aid”  that is spent on birth control programs and strengthen the power and resources of international organizations, especially the UN, its agencies and some trustworthy NGOs, with this goal in mind.

Malthusian ideas intertwine and give birth to a scientific ideology characterized by monocausality. The demographic parameter is so exalted as to be invoked both to shed light on the past and to legitimize programs of action which are more and more voluntarist, that is to say, imposed on individuals and States.

We have called this ideology the ideology of demographic security in an analogous way to the “National Security” doctrines which was invoked by most Latin American military regimes in the 1960s. [6] They considered, following the arguments of North American and European theoreticians, that the struggle of the time was between the liberal and democratic West and the totalitarian and communist East. It was necessary to contain, that is to say block, the expansion coming from the East. This antagonism translated into a total war “justifying” support for unsavory regimes. This fascinating ideology used fear to impose sacrifices and even repression and violence on populations that wanted development and freedom.

The four mentioned ideologies we analyzed form part of the demographic security ideology. This last reinterprets the dominant antagonism as being the North-South relations, rich vs. poor. According to this ideology, the greatest menace is threatening the aging and even shrinking North comes from the poor but much more populous South. This leads to the imperious necessity to contain, that is to say keep in check, the demographic growth of the South using all possible means. The most cynical formulation of this doctrine is found in the Kissinger Report (1974). [7] 

A bouquet of axioms

Most of the elements just raised are taken up in the UN produced texts on population policies. The emphasis will vary from one agency to the next and in the different international conferences, but all the main ideas are taken up. They are placed at the service of a bouquet of axioms: without birth control there can be no food security, no health for all, no sustained development, no international peace, and not enough resources.

This bouquet of axioms, however, is not supported by any scientific conclusion. They are at the service of the ideology of demographic security. This last considers that the dominant conflict is now between the South and the North. The developing South where the median age is under 30 is opposed to the North where the median age of 40 will become over 50 by 2050. René Dumont was a counselor to both Mitterand and Mao. He used a phrase of Margaret Sanger, affirming without blinking that the populations of rich countries must practice birth control in order that their example might be followed by the populations in poor countries. [8] 

The demographic crash 

Demographers have brought to light the pattern of the demographic transition, that Gérard François Dumont explains in detail in this work (see pp. Of the present work). This expression designates the passage from a demographic situation characterized by both high mortality and high fertility to a demographic regime characterized by both low mortality and low fertility. This passage or this transition has taken place or is taking place much more quickly in the developing world. Very generally accepted by the scientific community, this pattern shows the natural and spontaneous mechanisms which regulate population. A discussion took place among demographers about the impact of this observation. [9] The most radical position considers that population control has only a small impact on fertility. Without having any doubts about the demographic transition pattern, no one any longer denies the efficiency of population control campaigns. This is reflected in a series of frequently alarming empirical observations which we will enumerate. [10] 

1. Generalized aging of populations. The number of persons over 60 years of age should triple between 2001 and 2050 going from 606 million to 2 billion. A question then arises: how many women will be in fertile ages and what will be the level of their fertility? According to the UN Population Division’s projections for 2000-2005, for the 187 countries treated, 64 will have a fertility level of 2.1 less. But we are amazed to note that for the period 2040-2050 170 out of the 187 countries are equal to or lower than the replacement fertility rate of 2.1. Let us recall that the replacement of a population requires that each women have an average of at least 2.1 children in countries that have the best living conditions.

2. Population decrease is striking more and more countries. In 2050, according to the median projection, 39 countries will have decreasing populations. This is the case for 30 European countries and also for Cuba, Guyana, Barbados. Germany, for example, would lose 14% of its population and Italy 25%.

3. Increasing proportion of dependent elderly persons. Today in the developed countries senior citizens over 60 years old represent 20% of the population; they could reach 33% in 2050. As this segment of the population lives longer and longer, they require more and more medical care. This care is increasingly expensive and so Euthanasia will be proposed, as it already is, to lessen the burden of the elderly on society.

4. Social security systems will face a crisis. Who will pay for pensions? Who will pay into the retirement funds? And touching the welfare state’s “entitlements” has inevitable political consequences even if they are in part hard to predict.

5. The educational infrastructure, very large in modern societies, will see a drop in its numbers. Hundreds of classes will be eliminated each year. Education will be one of the first victims of the budgetary cuts dictated by the need to cater to the senior citizens, a more numerous and more politically interesting population than dependent children.   

6. Generational conflict will increase as the working population refuses to bear increasing taxes and costs associated with maintaining the increasing inactive population over 60 years old.

7. The decline in fertility leads to unemployment because it is obvious that fewer consumers lead to decreased demand. This phenomenon should be compared to what is said above about the educational infrastructure. The most productive factories tend to be too large for the market’s capacity to absorb goods. This tendency is accentuated by the increase of productivity.

8. Observation reveals violent imbalances in age structures when comparing countries and regions. If the slowing of growth is a general phenomenon, it does not follow the same calendar everywhere. This is why countries experiencing a demographic deficit are particularly exposed to immigration pressures which bring about complex problems and even serious tensions. Without immigration, however, the populations of developed countries will begin to decline already in 2003.

9. Even if the numbers of a country are not enough to insure its respectability on the international scene, it is nonetheless true that it does contribute to the clear sovereignty of a nation.

10. Development requires investments. One cannot invest by borrowing indefinitely. In order to be able to investment the economy must be generating surpluses. The aging of populations comes as a grave danger for mainly, but not exclusively, rich nations. An aging population tends to produce less, invest less and to be less creative. It tends to consume savings and even create debts whose costs are transferred to the following generations.

It would be irresponsible to close ones eyes to the evil effects caused by the worldwide spread of practices aiming at population control. It is high time to thoroughly reexamine the supposed diagnoses and do some house-cleaning regarding the slogans “justifying” population control. Today,  major scientific conclusions solidly establish the lack of foundations for these population control programs of action. Here below are some of these conclusions.

Taking scientific advances into consideration

1. There has never been a scientific demonstration of the existence of a correlation between population and development. All scenarios exist. If there are poor countries which are sparsely populated (i.e. Liberia), there are similarly rich countries with low population density (i.e. Australia). If there are poor countries that are very populous (i.e. Bangladesh), there are also rich countries with high population density (i.e. The Netherlands). Neighboring countries with comparable population densities can display very different levels of development. This is the case with Honduras and Costa Rica. These contrasts highlight the importance of the choice of governments for countries.

2. The alarmist predictions of Malthus concerning food supply are strongly contradicted. The discoveries of the agronomist Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1970, and of a great number of his colleagues have completely changed the perception of the problem of hunger. Outside of natural catastrophes, the famines of today are always caused by the incompetence, corruption, even the malice of men.

3. Natural resources do not exist. This sounds paradoxical, but what transforms a thing into a resource is the genius of man. Sand is transformed into semiconductors, wind into energy, etc. As Julian Simon and others showed, man is the only real resource, and is the one that risks becoming scarce. [11] 

4. This resource which is man is called human capital. Gary Becker, Nobel Economics Prize winner 1992) showed that this capital, which could begin to lack, is formed essentially in the family. [12] 

5. The first main cause of the growth of population is not to be found in birth rates or in fertility rates which are on the decline everywhere. The cause is found in the generalized increase in life-expectancy at birth. In the beginning of the XXth century, for example, Mexicans lived an average of 27 years. The Mexican of today has a life expectancy of 74 years. He therefore lives on the earth three times longer than his ancestors.

6. As remarked before, a new cleavage is visible. It is not between the rich and poor countries but between the countries with children and those where there are almost none left.

An audit for the UN

It is time to take notice of the scientific advances in the analysis of the world society. A false diagnosis allows problems to get worse while one is busily misidentifying them. Rapid sterilization never brought any women out of poverty, and contraception campaigns never increased the literacy rate. Stressing the marriage bond never helped the education of children. The problems caused by an aging population are not resolved by acting on its consequences but on the causes, the first of which is low fertility.

The constancy with which certain UN agencies continue to beg for money to finance campaigns inspired by the ideology of demographic security must be radically called into question. Not only are they based on erroneous presuppositions, but they tend to consolidate obstacles to development. One must unplug the automatic responses which freeze the thinking of some technocrats who are disinclined to the salutary questioning of their actions, even when dictated by the facts themselves. The UN itself should be the first to call into question these ideas. This kind of self-audit would be all the more profitable since there exist within the UN different ideas according to the departments and agencies concerned.

Redefining goals and priorities

Taking into consideration the new facts, we will sketch here a reflection on the goals that should replace those that are sought by the current population control programs. This reflection will have to extend to the priorities dictated by these same goals. Since the major current problem is the menace of a lack of  human capital, we must defend man and promote him. This is the fundamental point whose facets we will examine.

Defending Man

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights tends to be supplanted by numerous documents like the Earth Charter from UN agencies like the UNFPA. [13] Man is seen as the product of material evolution and should accept to submit to the great All, the imperatives of Mother Earth; he should worship Gaia. This would be the price of “sustainable development”. Inspired by the New Age, this vision denies man’s central place in the world that is in the 1948 declaration. It is nonetheless back to this anthropocentrism, inspired by the Roman, Jewish and Christian traditions, and brilliantly reaffirmed in the Renaissance, that we must return if we want to save and protect human capital.

Therefore a reversal must take place in the scale of values of the population control campaigns. The highest value is not the environment, it is man, whose physical and psychological integrity must be respected. Without men properly prepared to become responsible stewards of Nature, this same Nature can only degrade and man disappear.

More specifically, one has to challenge the classical vision of wealth as converge in the Liberal and Marxist traditions. For both these currents of thought wealth always has a material basis on which value is added. Implicitly or explicitly, all commercial, economic or industrial activity presupposes that wealth depends on matter dominated by man. Development would thus be quantifiable since it measures wealth. This perpetuates the ultra-liberal Malthusian vision of development. Some categories of men are useless to or even hinder development. They must be subjects of population control.

In this case Amartya Sen’s reflections can lead to the calling into question that we wish to see happen. [14] Once poverty is no longer first seen as a lack of material goods, but rather as a privation of elementary human capacities, development appears as the increasing of real opportunities and choices to individuals. Here the freedom of individuals is not ordained in view of something else.  In the Liberal and Marxist traditions liberty is in view of production and or consumption. Freedom is itself the goal of development. This can be evaluated according to the increase in the level of freedom that men can attain.

This complete change in the view of development is evidently something which check mates the “justifications” that are invoked today for birth control. From now on what is important is that men are the least subject to the so-called determinisms so dear to the two sister ideologies.

This new vision of development calls for a general rereading of population control policies. It also calls for a revision of policies relating to women and for families.

 Women and the freedom to choose

Birth control programs are frequently presented as “liberating” for women. They are part of the “new human rights”. In this context, the expression “reproductive health” often hides the “right of women to abortion”. We will consider this example and ask ourselves if it constitutes for women an increase in their freedom of choice.

 The experience of countries that legalized abortion should have the effect of causing reflection among all those who are attentive to the rights of the most vulnerable.  One observes that the legality of abortion makes it an unbeatable weapon in the hands of those who refuse children: husbands, partners, employers, bosses, bureaucrats, etc. This weapon is almost invincible not only against the unborn child but also against the body and heart of women. “Abort and go away!…” “Abort or I will divorce you!…” “Abort or lose your job!..” “What is the problem? Abortion is legal. It is even reimbursed by the state!” But where is the freedom for women who are told these things?  It is, however, in the name of women’s freedom that abortion was legalized in some countries.

One has to note that it was in the name of a reductionist idea of women’s freedom that abortion was legalized: the freedom to produce and to consume. Now if liberty itself is the goal of development, at a strict minimum, all the entities working for development should try to increase the level of freedom can achieve. Also, they should work to offer women real opportunities so that they can achieve their preferences.  What choices? The choice to have a job, for example, certainly, but also the choice to consecrate themselves to motherhood or to reconcile the two options should be offered. This brings us to touch on the family question.

Family and Freedom

The family is the privileged place where man is born into freedom. Here again, all public and private entities that are engaged in birth control need to call into question the essence of their work. Turning their backs on the 1948 declaration, which in articles 12, 16, 23, 25 recognizes and protects the family, too many agencies strive to obtain acceptance of  so-called “new models of the family”. These are single parent families or homosexual families for example. All these proposals have the destruction of the family, which is heterosexual and monogamous, as their objective. Destroying the family is an efficient way to lower fertility.

In the light of trustworthy modern studies these anti-family programs are clearly scientifically untenable. They survive thanks to an ideology which goes back to Malthus himself. The famous pastor took no account of the family. Only individuals counted in his eyes. The devastating effects of individualism stemming from neoliberalism, and the violence that follows, are more and more proved and denounced. Studies showing renewed interest in the family tend to exalt it and show its greatness.   

Gary Becker received the 1992 Nobel Prize for Economics for having shown the capital importance of the family and of education in society. [15] It is from the beginning in the family that “human capital” is formed. This is the only kind of capital that matters in the long run and the only one that we are running the risk of losing. It is in the family that a child’s personality is formed. It is there that the child learns the meaning of initiative, of responsibility, of solidarity, etc.: all qualities highly appreciated by society.

In this formation, Becker adds, the role of the mother is essential. She is the one who awakens these qualities and who teaches the child to study, to keep tidy, to be frugal, etc. From this stems the special value of the mother’s activity which should be recognized in and by society. The child is not only a good for his parents; he is also a good for society as a whole. Mothering is not on a “private” good. It is of value to society. This leads to the necessity of offering women a truly free choice to women as mentioned above: either to be consecrated to the family or to have a profession or to reconcile both.

These conclusions are corroborated by a negative example in Claude Martin’s studies of  “after divorce”. Divorce increase the risk of marginalization and even exclusion of the most vulnerable spouse. [16] It creates favorable conditions for scholastic failure and juvenile delinquency.

The decisive role of the family finds complementarity in specialized educational institutions. In this regard, Amartya Sen extends our brief conclusions when he observes that without education men cannot criticize those who govern them. In other words, education is an apprenticeship for freedom. Generalized education is a precondition for democracy.

It is therefore time for public and private organizations to cease contributing to the appearance and multiplication of problems that they cannot solve. By flattering the individual one weakens the institution of the family which would be the first to remedy what is lacking in public structures at all levels. In conclusion, society has a direct interest in supporting the family and to help it educate the children born into it.

In dealing with the demographic crash one has to take into account some truths which were already proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of 1948 and which have been confirmed recently by first rate scientific studies. For example, Norman Borlaug’s studies counter the Malthusian fear of famine and Amartya Sen shows freedom to be the goal of development. Gary Becker shows the decisive role of the family in forming human capital.

Everything leads to the conviction that a new climate in favor of revising several decades old population control policies is arising. No institution can sink into an ideological slumber that would inhibit its capacity to call its priorities into question. In the preceding review we took into account recent scientific work with uncontested authority. In the light of these, it appeared to us that the reasons advanced to “justify” population control were largely without foundation. On the contrary, the examination of the facts shows that the threat we face is rather a shortage of human capital. These are born into and receive formation in the family. This does not mean that man should be viewed from a Utilitarian or Reductionist perspective. This would make him the most useful link in the chain of consumption. Neither the happiness of individuals, nor the development of societies can be defined in terms of the production of wealth. Man should be at the center of government’s concern at all levels because he is born to be free and development should be conceived as a cluster of conditions offered so that men and societies can freely achieve their aspirations.

The interconnection between liberty, family, motherhood, fertility, education, political participation, creativity and hope have never been perceived so clearly. These choices converge towards what John Paul II has called the “culture of life” and need support from all the international community. It allows for the looking towards the future safe from the terrifying specters of  the “culture of death”. The coming international meetings will allow for a test to see if the aspirations expressed here are confirmed by the new options defined by the international community.