Low fertility rate doesn't have to mean any damage for society. For China and India overpopulation is (or at least was) a huge problem, so they introduced policy that should provide reduction of their population. Chinese One Child Policy is specially controversial.
There is still many people who are afraid of overpopulation of the world. This fear is nothing new.
Anyway, in Poland we don't complain on having too many babies born. As you can see on the chart below the number of all the people in our country is rather steady since 1990' and it doesn't show any tendency to grow any more.
Here you can see how does it look in UK ;-) Of course, these rules are similar in Poland too...
Let's get serious. Before our governments will change retiring age to 70 in 1960 as European Commission suggests (gazeta prawna), we may concentrate on another end of this issue. If Polish population is descending and we don't need to be afraid of lack of space for future generation, we may thing about increasing birth rate. At the moment it is 1.39, which doesn't guarantee simple generation renewal. Demographers would be happy if it rises to at least 2. What could we do about it?
Why do people decide to have only 1, 2 or even no children? In the past material conditions weren't better than presently. Income per capita was smaller. That would exclude poverty as a reason to narrow down fertility. Still, people asked about the reason for having less children mention financial reason and say that they can't afford to have kids.
More reasonable cause may be easy access to contraception. In past ages or even decades some people would have limited the number of their babies if they had could.
People in European society have growing problems with their fertility. It's connected with environment's pollution but also with later decision of having family and stressful life.
Another reason can be change of traditional family model. Since women started to work away from home they don't have time for uprising children. They know that if they want to be successful at work they can't afford for a long break for having a baby.
Many people simply don't want to be parents. Dinks ("double income no kids") can afford for more expensive consumer lifestyle and have more time for pleasures or self-development. They don't want to take responsibilities of parenthood as it is an unnecessary burden.
People often don't see any advantages of having big family. In previous decades they believed that their children will take care of them in the future or at least they will support home budget. Now these hopes are not so obvious any more.
On the countryside more kids meant more hands to work. Thus for years we can observe migration from villages to towns, so young people are not supposed to stay in their parents' farms any more.
As it was said in the beginning, problem of ageing nation affects most of the European countries. Will they extinct? Here you can find an answer:
1. What do you think about reasons of lower birth rate in Europe and particularly in Poland?
2. Why One-Child-Policy in China may cause problems? Will it have ant influence on the rest of the world?
3. Do you think that overpopulation of the world is a global problem that we should fix? If so, how? What consequences it may cause?
4. What do you think about rising retirement age in Poland? How will it influence on labor market and social life of common people?
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ReplyDelete1) In my opinion the main cause of decreasing a birth rate in Poland is unstable financial situation of young couples. Many families decided to put the work first (just to make a carrier) then having children. But on the other hand we still have an adverse work conditions for pregnant women. Unfortunately not every company in Poland is fully prepared for hiring them. Of course is forbidden to fire women when they become pregnant, but many of Employers find a workaround. They keep the position just until women return and after one day they kick them off. That’s sick!
ReplyDeleteHopefully we still have an easy access to alcohol, parties and poor sexual education at schools so… there is still a hope of increasing that level soon :-)(just kidding).
2) Few years ago I read an article about people’s situation in China. This is true, they have very restrictive family model. One-Child-Strategy and extremely big fines for breaking that rule.
“If I can have only one child, I will have a son.” According to that it’s nothing strange to see little children (mostly girls) thrown away with the garbage.
3) Of course! Overpopulation is a global problem. More people produce more exhaust gases, fames, garbage, environmental harming, ect, ect. But Nature is not so stupid. Mostly in every cases of overpopulation we can find out an outbreak of epidemic dieses. That events stabilize the amount of population.
4) It’s really dangerous phenomenon. Many young healthy teenagers escaping Poland to find better social and payment conditions. If the number of retirement people dramatically increased, there wouldn’t be any young employees to worked out money for the old-age pension. If there weren’t young employees, the old-age pension would decrease to unbelievable low level. People wouldn’t be able to leave by that money and they certainly die earlier. Everything leads us to population collapse. So that’s the reason why it’s so dangerous.
What is the cure for that?
Just go… go and multiply !!!!! :-)
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ReplyDeleteGreat topic! I'm a big fan of those moments in history when some false beliefs are exposed to public. There is a great number of those and overpopulation seems like one of the biggest.
ReplyDeleteOther thing is that maybe people want more time for themselves than for the others but maybe that's just me.
1.People are busy with each other prbolems, more important for them is a professional career than having children. An important problem is also widespread infertility.
ReplyDelete2. One-Child Policy in China May cause problems, because some people dream of starting a family and rising a large number of children. This may have an impact on the rest of the world, because Chinese people immigrate to other countries and start families there without any problems.
3. I do not think so.
4. There are too many people in the postindustrial age and not many children, so there is nobody to earn money for their retirement.
1. I think you article consists the comprehensive response to this question. To summarize the answer Poland is the part of Europe so there are the same demographic trends. The most important problem is that nowadays people in Poland decide to have children after completing 30 years old, so it is more difficult for them to have more than 2 babies. The second very important reason for decreasing population in our country is that young couple don't have enough money and time to bring up more than 1 child. The third thing that you have mentioned in your post is that more and more young people decided not to have any babies.
ReplyDelete2. Chinese prefer to have one boy-child than a girl. In this case One-Child-Policy will lead to double the number of male rather than female in China in next few decades. I am very sorry about this guys..;). Seriously, we are force to travel to find a better job and Chinese men will be forced to leave their country to find a wife or even a girlfriend...
3. There is nothing to do... All of us should respect our planet and try to live ecologically in harmony with nature, not to produce so much rubbish, not to waste food. Such an attitude may help...
4. The moral of this story is - "don't believe the governmental pension policy - think about saving on your own!"
1. What do you think about reasons of lower birth rate in Europe and particularly in Poland?
ReplyDeleteThere are many reasons:
First you need to earn some extra money for living conditions to be able to think about the baby.
One child is enough to experience motherhood and fatherhood.
Marriages are less likely to have second and third child, since they do not allow financial conditions.
Most marriages modeled on the pattern of family 2 + 1, which is taken from the rich
western countries.
To find work you need to get an education.
More important is personal development and careers than raising children.
Currently, the process of raising a child is very long, it takes twenty years-
consumes much energy
Owning and raising children, many fears and stress because the child is exposed to a variety of escalating danger, such as drug abuse, harassment, abduction, accidents, illness.
On the phenomenon is also influenced by fear of contracting AIDS
2. Why One-Child-Policy in China may cause problems? Will it have ant influence on the rest of the world?
It the future there will be not enaugh manpower to produce all goods and needs.
3. Do you think that overpopulation of the world is a global problem that we should fix? If so, how? What consequences it may cause?
I don;t think it is a problem. There is plenty of places where people can live but they do not. I don;t think people can solve such problems.
1. In my opinion the main cause of lower birth rate in Poland, so as in Europe are changes in lifestyle. Nowadays is new family model, 2+1 (parents+ one child). People are getting married not when they are 18-20 like in old times, now they are focused on they're work career, making money. They don't have time to have childrens.
ReplyDelete2. I don't know if it may cause problems, or not. It will have cosequence, but I have no knowledge about effects of China policy for the world.
3. I think that overpopulation isn't a global problem needed to fix.
1. What do you think about reasons of lower birth rate in Europe and particularly in
ReplyDeletePoland?
IN my opinion mainly reasons of lower birth rate in EUROPE and in Poland are trying to get
more and more money by young people which are focus on their carrer instead of to create
own family,besides in Poland there isnt good conditional for young families which plan to
have children.
2. Why One-Child-Policy in China may cause problems? Will it have ant influence on the rest
of the world?
I have heard about One -Chil -Policy in China and I think that regard on China populations it
is good solutions, Compare with another country there is much more people there so their
populations will be emigrate to find another place to life which are also limited.
3. Do you think that overpopulation of the world is a global problem that we should fix? If
so, how? What consequences it may cause?
I think that overpopulations in the world can be dangerous regard on limited place for life and
some limited product which our earth can propose to us as populations.
Mainly consequencos of overpopulations can be lack of for example work of main product to
life.
I think that China have very good idea on limit their populations it can be effective regard on
overpopulations.
4. What do you think about rising retirement age in Poland? How will it influence on labor
market and social life of common people?
In my opinion The rising retirement age in Poland is conected with lower birth rate. If level of
birth wont be low, in the future there wont be any Young people which will be work for our
retirement.
Lower birth rate depends on style of life. Many young poeople resign from having children so that they can develop their careers. China has some cruel, but I think efficient way to manage with overpopulation. It is a big problem there, many country should introduce such politics. On the other hand, here in Poland we need more babies to be born to work for retired people in the future. Otherwise, our retiring would be exteremely low.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to happy with it. On the other hand womens changed their lifestyle and don't have enough of time to have as any children as before.
ReplyDeleteOne-Child-Policy policy isn't a good thing becouse of lack of girls there - in their culture they will always choose a baby boy, I don't even want to think what happens with the girls.
I think that we don't have any other choice and work longer.
1. Due to change of family model (2+1) and the higher cost of living.
ReplyDelete2. It causes a big demand for abortions and killing girls. China is doing a lot of international adoption programs.
3. Overpopulation puts a serious pressure on the environment. In my opinion, we can not intentionally do anything about it, the only hope is in self-regulation of the natural system.
4. It will make difficult to access employment for young people, as well as greater stress among older people associated with the need to work longer, especially because thy will have to catch up all new technology.