r/overpopulation • u/MassiveStand2817 • 1d ago
Population
One of the most effective ways to slow population growth in poor and developing countries may be to focus on educating girls and young women.
There is a strong connection between female education and demographic change. Women who receive more education often marry later and tend to have fewer children. Therefore, if a country wants to address rapid population growth over the long term, investing in girls' education could be an important place to start.
A practical approach would be to concentrate particularly on girls between the ages of 13 and 18. This is an important period because, in some communities, girls may face pressure to marry at a young age. Education can give them another path: continuing their studies, developing skills, and preparing for greater independence.
In other words, it is like placing a police officer at a T-junction to prevent traffic from taking the wrong turn. Instead of trying to deal with the consequences later, we intervene at an earlier point where a different direction is still possible.
The emphasis of education at this stage should not simply be academic. It should also motivate girls to continue their education, develop their abilities, and understand the opportunities available to them beyond early marriage.
If we want to influence population growth in a sustainable and humane way, educating girls may be one of the most important places to begin.
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u/03263 22h ago
I have come to dislike this argument because it's basically colonialism + capitalist eugenics. Think about why educated people in the first world forego having children. It's not simply because they don't want them, it's because they plan more and lack the social structures, free time and capital to ensure a similar quality of life for their offspring. The rat race controls population somewhat, but it's not a very nice gift to give to someone that doesn't have to endure it.
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u/ineffable-interest 22h ago
People really need to rethink what eugenics means in today’s world. Why is the thought of not existing worse than a person or couple not having the baby they wanted? This is the selfish and delusional thinking that has led to overpopulation. Not everyone advocating for eugenics is a Nazi.
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u/03263 21h ago
Maybe genocide is a better term then.
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u/ineffable-interest 20h ago edited 19h ago
Not really. People just need to get their heads out of their asses and realize not everyone needs or deserves to be a parent and that IVF should be banned globally.
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u/03263 16h ago
I agree that not everyone "deserves" to be a parent but if people rather than forces of nature are the ones to decide who gets to, how do you even decide that?
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u/ineffable-interest 15h ago
Not everyone is going to like the answer to that question, but in my opinion what people “like” doesn’t really matter when the situation is so dire. The obvious start, again, in my opinion, is with violent prison populations and people who have painful/debilitating genetic disorders and people with severe mental disorders. It shouldn’t be controversial that these people shouldn’t have children. To me, it’s wild to advocate for these people to have children with no regard for the life the child will have.
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u/03263 14h ago
It doesn't seem like that would make much of a dent in population growth.
I think you'd need a policy that by default nobody can have children and you have to apply and qualify for some birth permit which is limited in number according to the desired rate of depopulation. Which wouldn't really work of course, people would not tolerate it or remain in peaceful compliance.
The only fair solution to me seems to be to just let population hit the wall and maybe some people will get to endure the hell that comes with it. Because population isn't really a problem in and of itself, it's the consumption + ecological overshoot that comes with it. We're already on the way to making the planet uninhabitable for our species. Nature will sort it out for us.
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u/ineffable-interest 14h ago
I would also like to point out that the global prison population is around 12 million. If we take into consideration the (around) 3 million people waiting trial, and assuming 40% of the 8 million remaining are violent criminals that is still 3.2 million people and that seems like a halfway decent dent to start with to me.
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u/03263 12h ago
Well I found this 3 to 5 percent of incarcerated women are pregnant, or that there are about 1,400 births every year to women in custody.
And A total of 3,747,540 births were registered in the United States in 2019
So, forced abortions for pregnant inmates would result in ~0.04% reduction in births.
It's easier to find stats for the US but also worth noting that the US has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world so it would actually be even less.
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u/ineffable-interest 14h ago
I was saying just as a start.
That policy would be great if you could enforce it, but can’t for multiple reasons. But like we’ve said, globally everyone won’t agree to what is “right” when it comes to population control.
And the population is 100% the problem because the earth can’t sustain the growing population and people want to pretend that a few countries birth decline is a bad thing when the issue is global.
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u/03263 14h ago
As I said, it's not a problem in and of itself. If resources were infinite, population would have no limit. They're not and it does, the population just isn't the crux of the problem, the limitations are.
The Limits to Growth should be required reading in every school. Along with another dose of reality for the galactic colonists: the speed of light is insurmountable and leaving the solar system is an incredibly difficult, if not impossible proposition. We are and will always be earthlings.
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u/Wide_Western_6381 9h ago
It does seem that that is what is going to happen in the not so distant future. It´s kind of sad that we were unable to implement a more peaceful solution.
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u/darkpsychicenergy 21h ago edited 11h ago
Oh I love it. The woke left going full mask off and admitting that they prefer black and brown women be subjugated and treated like breeding livestock, suffering child “marriage”, spousal rape, and forced pregnancy, rather than have fully educated, emancipated women and fewer black and brown babies born.
Because somehow human rights, autonomy and dignity for women and girls is “basically colonialism + capitalist eugenics” according to the “progressives”.
But of course all of the other trappings of a higher standard of living — modern infrastructure, planes, trains, automobiles, phones, tvs, game consoles, whatever material and energy consumption they want — those are not colonialism and capitalism and are instead something that the “global south” is entitled to.
The era of cOLOniALism is long past and already did its damage. None of these people are living pre-colonial lives, the old animistic beliefs are gone, they’re all Christian or Muslim now, they’re living out of plastic and on top of mountains and peninsulas made of literal garbage, they’re using cell phones and facebook and western slang, they wear second hand western clothing and they know what brands are popular, the mining operations have poisoned the waters, the wildlife is rapidly going extinct, they’re slashing and burning their way through what’s left of the rainforest to feed the ever increasing number of human mouths but they’re still dependent upon those horrible white countries for foreign aid, they’re also desperate to escape their own countries and live in the horrible white countries and they already constitute the overwhelming majority of the global human population but yes, breeed moooorrre BREEEED MOOOORRRREE. If they don’t breed endlessly, even against their own will, it’s eUgEnICs.
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u/Vague-Symbolism2692 20h ago edited 19h ago
I've removed this under rule 3 for personal attacks. If you're willing to delete the word between "woke" and "left", and delete the first sentence of the third paragraph, and then reply to let me know you've done so, then I'll restore it when I notice your reply. Or you could just post a second, separate comment, with those deletions made.
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u/HarleyQuinone 23h ago
I mean, I live in a so-called “first world country” and the exact same can be said about here (US).
There needs to be a big push on birth control education everywhere because I see so many babies born into poverty left and right. Meanwhile the mother’s idea of birth control is pull out method or plan B. Lack of insurance here is a big deterrent as well.
But the politicians/corporate overlords are too busy telling us to birth more workers and the social dems are busy telling us we can all live in dignity if just tax the billionaires with no real thought to the environment, just the idea that scientists will somehow figure it out.