Poverty and Population Issues: Clarifying the Connections.

• Author: Catley-Carlson, Margaret

Slums and shantytowns crowded with children, large families in desperate circumstances--these typical media images from the developing world reinforce the popular belief that poverty and population growth are linked in a direct and obvious way. Most social scientists would agree that these phenomena are related--but some do not, and many more disagree as to how they interact. Clarifying what we do and do not know about the linkages between poverty and population issues is essential if we want public discourse and policies concerning these issues to be grounded in empirical reality, rather than imagined truths.

This paper synopsizes scholarly debates and dispels misconceptions about the links between poverty and population issues. It presents our current understanding of population/ poverty dynamics at the macro- and micro-levels, and identifies the gaps in our knowledge. It takes the position that we need not--and should not--wait until these gaps are filled before we take action. We know of measures that can help to alleviate these problems; they are outlined in the last section of this paper. It is manifestly in our interest to offer this help, so that those living in poverty can improve their lives.

DISPELLING MISCONCEPTIONS

Public perceptions of poverty and population issues have been skewed by several misconceptions. One is that both population growth and poverty are hopelessly intractable problems in developing countries. In actuality, the pace of population growth and/or the proportion of people living in poverty have declined in many of these countries. Although the world's population is still increasing rapidly and poverty is widespread and worsening in some places, these problems can be ameliorated by investments in education, public health and improvements in the conditions of women's lives, among other policy measures.

Another misconception is that population growth is the only (or only important) population issue. In fact, the population field has a broader agenda, which includes the status of people's reproductive health and rights, factors influencing their fertility decisions, the functioning of the health care systems that serve them and the effects of high fertility on women and their families. This broadened agenda reflects an important evolution in thinking within the population community: the growing concern for individual well-being and rights. There is now general acceptance that family planning must be voluntary, centered on the needs of the individual and provided in a context which takes the client's reproductive health into account. This does not mean that numbers no longer matter--they do--but it is widely recognized that individual welfare must not be sacrificed for the sake of slowing population growth.

Like population issues, poverty is often construed too narrowly in the public mind. The common conception is that poverty equals lack of income. A broader and more accurate view of poverty is that it reflects an absence of not only material resources, but also of "choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life."(1)

When we understand poverty and population issues in their widest sense, we can see that many problems related to people's reproductive lives constitute forms of impoverishment in and of themselves. Many negative reproductive outcomes--ranging from unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion to maternal death--can be traced to women's lack of resources and rights to prevent these outcomes. These problems are pervasive in developing countries and are concentrated in--but not restricted to--the poorer sectors of societies. And they undermine the well-being of women and children in particular, as the following statistics show:

* at least 120 million women who wish to postpone or limit childbearing have an unmet need for contraception;(2)

* tens of millions of women endure unintended pregnancies every year;(3)

* nearly 100,000 women die from unsafe abortions every year;(4)

* one in four children are born unwanted in developing countries outside China;(5)

* nearly 600,000 women die annually of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth;(6) and

* hundreds of millions of women lack the option to delay, space or limit childbearing, having been deprived of education, economic opportunity and security, quality health and family planning services (or any such services), freedom to make their own reproductive decisions, societal roles apart from motherhood and equality with men in virtually every societal domain.

From this perspective, we can see that many population issues are not only linked to poverty issues, they are poverty issues. When we view poverty and population issues through too narrow a lens, we are bound to overlook the problems highlighted above and the women and children who suffer from them. When, on the other hand, we view these issues broadly, we pave the way for solving these serious problems. We must realize not only that they can be solved but that they will be solved most effectively when we dissolve the artificial boundaries between poverty and population issues and between the population and development sectors.

SCHOLARLY DEBATES ON THE LINKS BETWEEN POVERTY AND POPULATION ISSUES

"Few development issues have aroused as much dissension--politically and academically--as the relations among population growth, economic growth, and human welfare," observes development economist Robert Cassen.(7) After decades of scholarly debate and reversals of government policy, the current consensus among researchers and policymakers is that population growth and poverty are closely related. This viewpoint prevailed at the recent series of international meetings on human development sponsored by the United Nations, notably the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994. The ICPD Programme of Action declares that poverty significantly influences, and is influenced by, population growth; thus, "efforts to slow down population growth, to reduce poverty, [and] to achieve economic progress ... are mutually reinforcing."(8) The United Nations 1997 Human Development Report lists "speeding the demographic transition" (in which societies move from high to low levels of mortality and fertility) as one of the key priorities in its agenda for poverty eradication: "Poverty reduction is closely linked with slower population growth," it states.(9)

However, not all researchers agree that there is a link between poverty and population growth. World Bank economist Lant Pritchett has declared that there is no solid evidence that population growth is "a cause or even an exacerbating condition of poverty."(10) The Consultative Meeting of Economists hosted by the U.N. Population Fund in 1992 concluded that "research has not established a strong causal link running from high fertility to poverty."(11) A 1986 report on population and economic growth by the U.S. National Research Council has been summarized as finding that "population growth has little or no negative effect on economic development."(12)

Other analysts have gone so far as to suggest that population growth is a non-issue. Ben Wattenberg, author of The Birth Dearth, proclaims that "the population explosion is over." Soon, he suggests, our world will be inhabited by "lots of people without brothers or sisters, uncles, aunts or cousins, children or grandchildren--lonelier people."(13) This assertion is based on a misreading of fertility trends (as shown below). If this claim were true, however, the policy implications would be unambiguous: governments ought not waste their foreign-aid funds on population assistance. This conclusion happens to support a conservative political agenda, which not only holds that population issues are not (and never were) a problem, but also opposes family planning programs that offer contraceptive and abortion services. For these reasons, the U.S. Congress voted to cut funding for family planning/population assistance by 35 percent in 1996. As a result of these cuts, an estimated seven million more couples in developing countries who wished to use contraceptives lost access to these methods, increasing the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and pregnancy-related deaths in these countries.(14)

Those who foresee a "population implosion" offer as evidence the ostensible "free-fall in fertility"(15) (average births per woman) occurring throughout the world. Global fertility rates are, indeed, declining. In the 1950s, women averaged five children; today they average fewer than three.(16) In Europe, Japan and North America, fertility rates are below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, the level at which population growth would eventually come to a halt.(17) In the developing world, fertility has declined 40 percent in the past 25 years.(18)

These are promising trends, but they hardly promise a future of "lonelier people." Consider that our current world population of almost six billion will increase by another billion in little more than a decade.(19) Nearly all of this increase will be in developing regions, where 80 percent of world population is already concentrated.(20) Despite the decline in average fertility in these regions, rates remain high: women in developing countries (outside China) average four children; in the least developed countries they average 5.6 children; in sub-Saharan Africa, 6.2. By the year 2050, the population of the developing world could reach as...