Why The World Needs Children

Today as you begin to read I want you to ponder on these question(s) for the next few minutes or so. Do you believe or have you heard that the world is overpopulated? And where did you hear that we are overpopulated ? So, this begs the questions of, is the world overpopulated or are we overpopulating the world? The answer may surprise you. Before we answer this question we need to give some backstory on why this is a common belief.  

The story begins when Paul Ehrlich wrote a book entitled "The Population Bomb" that was published in 1968. In this book he predicted that the world was going to be overpopulated and that resources like food, clothing, water, and other necessities would run scarce. This fear came from a belief that there were so many kids being born from what is commonly referred to as the 'baby boom' and this trend would continue to have a huge negative impact. The reason that Paul Ehrlich believed that went on to a trip to India with his wife and while they were there Paul saw a lot of starvation and a lot of disease and then began to believe that this was the fate for the rest of the world so he wrote his prediction and entitled it as the "Population Bomb".  This book has had a huge impact on the world and the beliefs of the general population. This is because in the book " The Population Bomb" Mr. Ehrlich stated that 

 "The battle to feed all of humanity is over.  In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."  

A year or so later he clarified and said that the acceptable population rate for the world would be somewhere around  1.5 Billion people. Over the years this has caused many generations to believe that they should have less kids and that it is best just to have two or occasionally three children at most, in fact Paul Ehrlich even stated that it is your responsibility and duty to not have kids so that future generations wouldn't starve and that you were being selfish and stealing from our children and their children in you had more kids.

Well, we know that there are way more people currently in the world that 1.5 Billion that he said would be the optimal population. Currently right now it is estimated that the world will reach around 10 Billion in mid-November 2022. So we have for sure gone way over what Mr. Ehrlich's original prediction was. And while we have seen starvation and some places that are really crowded and overpopulated, it is not close at all to the scale that was predicted. The scare that came about from his book has affected the world in a way that there are even places in the world such as Japan and many places in Europe such as Italy and France (and many more), that are now trying to encourage their populations to have children. Those governments are even trying to incentivize population growth with using money benefits and tax reductions per child. 

There are many problems with not having enough children to at least keep the world population at an consistent rate. One of these problems would be what is called human capital. Human capital defined simply would be, the total knowledge, experience, skills, and health that one accumulates in their life. you can increase this by either increasing the educational levels of people or the total population. Now as many Baby Boomers are passing away  and will continue to do so, without increasing the amount of children that families are having the worlds human capital will decrease. As people continue to have less or no children it provides a bigger gap. 

Another problem that could occur if we have less and less children is that the price to live will continue to go up and up. This is because as there will be more and more older people then there will be younger and to help pay for things like social security and taxes. This is because the system was built that there would be more people helping to pay for social security than those that who are receiving that help. With more people on social security than those who are still in the workforce it will cause people to pay more and more as time goes by to help support others. 

The way to bring about an end isn't going to be a hard solution. There just need to be an increase of about .5 births per woman on average and there will be a steady increase overtime. Now the danger is if we stay on this trend of not having more children then there will be definite consequences that could be really devastating. 

I understand that this is a personal decision that should be taken by you and your spouse/partner. My stance and belief is that we need to be aware of the potential and current problems and take measures to educate people and if you can have more children then you should consider it! Of course be smart and don't take unnecessary risks that could be unnecessarily dangerous. I believe that God should be included in the process of decision making, but if you don't believe in God then just use your best judgment to make your decision! 

Thank you for reading! if you have any questions or things you would like to share or talk with me about then just comment below! I will get to it as fast as I can!