This is a minor rant.
A couple of weeks ago Manny Villar was asked the question
Your thoughts on the RH Bill? Do you think it’s the solution to our population problem?
Which he answered with:
Villar: Let’s look at this in a different perspective. Instead of trying to control population aggressively by trying to legislate bills that will prevent more birth, let’s use the huge population we have now to our advantage. You know what they say about having a huge population, take China for example, they’ve suddenly become an economic giant because the huge number of people alone can greatly influence the economy. Because we have huge population, the upside is we can be great! Manny Villar’s vision for the Philippines: I want to foster and promote a culture of competitiveness and entrepreneurial revolution.
This was met with derision in places like twitter and Facebook.
I even read a post: “Population is not a problem by villar, like water is not wet”.
The thing is at least on this Villar is more in the right than a lot of people who get their views someplace and never seem to re-evaluate these views. People we have a brain , use it please!
Today’s fall in fertility is both very large and very fast. Poor countries are racing through the same demographic transition as rich ones, starting at an earlier stage of development and moving more quickly. The transition from a rate of five to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain—from 1800 to 1930—took just 20 years—from 1965 to 1985—in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006—and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.
via Demography, growth and the environment: Falling fertility | The Economist.