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Population is rising in developing countries while it is stable or falling in developed countries, although because of immigration many developed countries' populations are growing, such as the U.S., U.K. and France. In the U.S., the birth rate is approximately replacement level -- 2 children per woman -- meaning that if we continue at this rate, and receive no immigrants and no people leave the country, our population will be stable. Because of immigration, our population will grow; but if immigrants from Mexico, for example, acculturate thoroughly, they may begin having fewer children than those in developing countries tend to have (3 or more children per woman). In developing countries where children work in factories or fields instead of going to school, it is economically beneficial for families to have many children; in developed countries, it's more costly to have more children because we can't make them work all day. I think that's the main reason that developed countries produce fewer native-born children.
posted by
Dyl_Pickle
on January 29, 2005 at 11:18 AM
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Great Post!!!!
We definitely need to make breakthroughs in scientific and technological discovery -- and apply them to increase productive capacity. My criticism of technologies such as television and the Internet is that, while they are good for transmission of information and for entertainment, they did not stimulate real economic growth in terms of improvement in the capacity to produce. Actually I go into this in much greater detail in my posts titled "While you were sleeping" in my
American Journal blog. In short, what the Internet created was a financial bubble, not expanded production capacity. For that, we would need to apply breakthroughs in freight transportation and electric power generation (like nuclear fusion), to name two examples. I like your post, however. And I agree that manned space exploration would do wonders to drive scientific discoveries that we could apply here on the ground.
posted by
writersjourney
on January 27, 2005 at 10:14 PM
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