Wednesday 10 June 2009

Not too many people: synopsis of major paper on population questions

Jim Moreton, who was until recently for many months a volunteer at SPUC HQ, has written an extremely clear synopsis of "Too many people?", a major paper on population questions by Dr Nicholas Eberstadt (pictured), a leading demographer, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.

One of the points made by Dr Eberstadt which struck me that rapid population growth has actually helped increase the availability of resources and this is simply because a larger and healthier population is inevitably a more productive one.

It is therefore very disappointing to read that political and religious authorities in Syria are promoting population control, with the argument that conditions in Syria are too harsh for Syrians to have large families. Perhaps Dr Eberstadt's paper needs to be translated into Arabic. Do read Jim's synopsis of his paper in full here.