Laura Spinney (Why declining birth rates are good news for life on Earth, 8 July) provides a much-needed deconstruction of the “birth dearth” alarmist angst predicting economic and societal collapse as people across the world choose smaller families – a choice still denied, incidentally, to the 270 million women globally with an unmet need for modern family planning.
The mainstream economists and business interests ringing that alarm are preoccupied by GDP figures and profit, not human wellbeing. They certainly have scant regard for the consequences to our planet. More babies just means more cheap labour and more consumers for their products.
Costa Rica exemplifies the benefits of enabling women to choose smaller families. Sixty years ago, the country had the fastest-growing birth rate in the world, its forest hacked back to just 17% of land cover, its education and healthcare systems overstretched, and with GDP per capita under $400. Following a progressive, non-coercive family planning programme promoting small families, the birth rate has fallen to fewer than two children per woman on average. Any doubts as to the clear benefits of that managed decline in the country’s birth rate should be dispelled by the fact that Costa Rica was rated the happiest country in the global south in the 2019 World Happiness Report.
Robin Maynard
Director, Population Matters
• I was reading Laura Spinney’s article about declining birth rates, thinking that her arguments made sense. But I disagree with the assumption that more people need to work for longer. This surely depends on the type of work, and that doesn’t necessarily pit mental against physical work as both can be exhausting in their own way.
What really stopped me in my tracks was: “When elderly people do finally stop being productive, we need to find new ways and new workers to care for them.” I thought the article was about human beings, not beasts of burden. I find this way of thinking very concerning.
Diane Woodley
Westgate-on-Sea, Kent
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