THE ALARMIST MALTHUSIAN VIEW

The Malthusian view is that rapid population growth adversely impacts a country's economy, and globally, hinders development. It is an alarmist view that has not yet been proven. What we do know is that population density (resources ratio to people) does not always equate scarcity and crisis. Western Europe is densely populated and has high rates of urbanization, but is reasonably well  able to provide basic necessities to its population.  But this is probably because Western Europe relies on relatively  cheap imported goods produced by cheap labor in non European countries. Ironically, the masses of people in developing countries , precisely the ones whose labor were producing goods for the West,  were seen as a threat by such as t he World Bank, the UN and  American philanthropic foundations, such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson made aid dependent on population control.I n 1968, the American biologist Paul Ehrlich sounded an alarm with  his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, In 1974, Prime Minister Ghandhi of India imposed a birth control sterilization program. Eight million Indians were sterilized, some say, forcibly or through bribes. In the 1980s, there was a backlash, based on religious grounds in the US. President Reagan Reagan  removed financial support for any programs that involved abortion or sterilization.  In 1994, a UN Population Control Conference in Cairo changed the ideology by declaring that 20-year plan of action, known as the Cairo consensus, which called on countries to recognize that the interests of women  - rather than demographers and politicians - should be at the center of  population strategies.