To the Editor:
Re”Progressives should also care about population decline”, by Victor Kumar (opinion visitor essay, August 6):
Dr Kumar argued that inhabitants decline can be a foul factor for society, largely on the grounds that as the common age of the inhabitants rises, fewer younger individuals stay to take care of the aged and drive financial progress.
However whereas growing old demographics would require considerate responses and coverage options, Professor Kumar’s method – to embrace pronatalism and persuade individuals to have extra kids – shouldn’t be one in all them.
He rejects proof that projected inhabitants progress of greater than two billion individuals this century will pressure pure sources to breaking level. It ignores the worldwide consensus that the suitable to determine if and when to turn into a father or mother, with out coercion, is common.
It additionally ignores the teachings of historical past that illustrate the folly of top-down insurance policies that dictate or affect childbearing decisions. At greatest, they’re uninteresting, costly instruments that not often obtain the specified end result. At worst, they deprive ladies and women of bodily autonomy, trample on our rights and restrict our alternatives.
As an alternative of attempting to persuade progressives to have extra infants, we should always concentrate on caring for all of us already right here and the planetary sources that maintain us. This implies accepting slower inhabitants progress whereas searching for extra equitable and sustainable ranges of consumption.
Kathleen Mogelgaard
Washington
The author is president and CEO of the Inhabitants Institute.
To the editor:
I think about myself a progressive Democrat. I’d by no means vote for a candidate who encourages ladies to have extra kids as a result of we want younger individuals to pay for Social Safety or take care of the aged or to “gas financial progress, technological innovation and cultural progress.”
Is that this actually moral? What about what sort of world these kids will inherit?
I agree with Victor Kumar on one factor concerning the environmental threats we face — that our overconsumption must be addressed. However that is no excuse for rising the inhabitants. Local weather change is the results of overconsumption of fossil fuels. However we devour everybody of our pure sources at an unprecedented fee as a result of there are 8.2 billion of us (p USA the worst offender).
We’re depleting our soils of fertility, our oceans of fish, our rivers of unpolluted water, our land of forests and our land of uncommon earth metals for all these “technological improvements”. And the competitors for these sources will gas increasingly conflicts world wide.
However maybe some would argue that the moral choice is to have extra kids as a result of we are going to want extra troopers for our military.
Catherine Black
Nayak, New York
To the editor:
Victor Kumar’s essay stating that the left should undertake insurance policies aimed toward supporting inhabitants progress fully ignores the truth that Democrats have for a few years sponsored laws to enact paid household depart, create a everlasting tax little one credit score and lengthening childcare subsidies.
These payments are along with quite a few different Democratic proposals that might make it simpler to begin and lift households, resembling guaranteeing paid sick depart, elevating the minimal wage and increasing adoption rights for LGBTQ households.
The place are the Republicans on these points? The Republican Social gathering has no severe proposals to help the variety of kids that oldsters, and extra particularly ladies, anticipate to bear. They usually usually oppose Democratic proposals.
Dr. Kumar ought to rephrase his essay to ask: Why, if insufficient inhabitants progress is such an issue, do Republicans not help insurance policies that might alleviate the issue? Nonetheless, the American individuals already know the reply: company tax cuts and small authorities above all else.
Ron Boehmer
Charlottesville, Virginia
The author is a former aide to 2 progressive members of Congress, Rosa DeLauro and Mark Pocan.
To the editor:
That is an unconvincing article. Declining inhabitants progress charges and shrinking inhabitants sizes aren’t an issue for Earth with greater than eight billion individuals. Present patterns of consumption and the will for ever better consumption are.
Additionally, on the one hand, we fear that machines and AI are making increasingly individuals redundant, whereas on the opposite, we whine that no extra individuals will likely be born.
Beginning charges are falling globally and voluntarily. If ladies (and males) discover smaller (and even childless) households extra accessible and extra enjoyable, that is one thing for them to determine. Households nonetheless want childcare and different help, however this must be supplied to enhance ladies’s lives, not as a way of accelerating their fertility.
As a social demographer, I discover present efforts to manage reproductive habits to extend beginning charges in wealthy nations as problematic as earlier implicit and overt efforts to “management inhabitants” in poor nations.
Directed by M. Basu
Ithaca, New York
The author is a visiting scholar within the Division of Sociology at Cornell College.
To the editor:
Ross Douthat (“Is it weird to care about fertility?”, publication, nytimes.com, August 2) and Victor Kumar wrote in your paper about the necessity to enhance the beginning fee from totally different political views.
Whereas the social and financial disruptions that happen in nations as populations age are actual, the issue shouldn’t be low beginning charges, however outdated financial and immigration insurance policies. The world shouldn’t be working out of younger individuals—we simply have too many younger individuals in some locations, with out enough sources and alternatives, and too few younger individuals elsewhere.
This highlights three interrelated points:
1) An economic system primarily based on fixed progress (of individuals and consumption) is unsustainable.
2) World financial inequality limits our means to make the very best financial use of the individuals we have already got.
3) In case you’re a pronatalist, it is most likely since you’re nervous that folks like you’ll turn into extinct, not that people typically will turn into extinct. Lastly, have not you heard that AI goes to take all our jobs anyway? Who wants extra individuals?
Mark McKenna
San Jose, California
