Fair Start Movement

Tag: Population Economics & Demographics

  • Population Crisis in India: Time for Child-First Family Planning?

    Population Crisis in India: Time for Child-First Family Planning?

    As India’s population continues to explode and eventually surpass China’s, calls for population control measures are getting louder. But the calls are often framed as attacks between religious groups, blaming each other for the growth, as India’s historic family planning system continues to struggle and impede basic forms of development, human rights, and environmental protection.

    Is there a way out?

    Having Kids recently called out Trump and the United States for violating international law by pushing pronatalist policies, in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “right to found a family” provision, which requires a collective action norm to establish family planning systems that are child-focused, with parents and communities making decisions and structuring resources to bring children into the world only above certain thresholds of wellbeing, like those required by the Children’s Rights Convention.

    Rather than remain mired in religious blame games that exemplify parent-centered thinking, as the population crisis only deepens, India should move towards a child-first family planning system. The solution is about loving the children we will have enough to give them what they need, right fro the start, and cooperating in a way that allows that.

    Having Kids stands prepared to fund a study implementing child-first and human rights-based family planning in India, and will be reaching out to India’s leaders this year to reinforce that offer.

    Want a better world? Let’s move from a family planning system focused on what parents want, to one focused on what kids need – right from the start.

    That’s love – in action.

  • World Population Day: It’s Time to Admit Our Current Approach Isn’t Working

    World Population Day: It’s Time to Admit Our Current Approach Isn’t Working

    Read news about family planning and population – especially stories coming out around today’s World Population Day – and you might notice something: We all seem to recognize that our future depends on getting family planning right, but there is no agreement on what that means.

    Conservative media continue to push women to have more children, arguing that women in the U.S. should have more babies and sooner, despite the fact that the average person in the U.S. is much more environmentally destructive than the average person in other countries. That’s a shocking position for family-loving conservatives to take, given that those children will suffer the most in the degraded environment of the future. These voices are more subtle than some of the blatant racism that underlies the “bigger white families” approach.

    Mainstream and more liberal media continue to parrot the tired message that population problems are all about the developing world and Africa in particular. They claim we must simply educate young girls and provide more access to contraception and reproductive health services to make it all better. That’s also shocking, given the results of this approach, its failure to establish targets based on sustainability, and the way this approach – like the conservatives’ – has pushed the problem of growth onto future generations. This also ignores the needs of nonhumans and thereby ensures their extinction, putting the nonsensical right of people like the Duggar family to have umpteen kids above the right of entire species to survive.

    While commentators debate from opposite sides of the room, those living with the reality of the population explosion are now moving towards direct forms of population control, something no really wants but may see as necessary given the failure of family planning systems.

    This is chaos.

    And chaos, when it comes to the one behavior that most determines our future, is terrifying. What’s an alternative? It may lie in an opinion piece that came out today. The piece was focused on what David Brooks called pediacracy, how birth positioning determines the economic class in which we will spend our lives. Brooks argues that pediacracy is ruining America.

    What does this have to do with population? The entire system of human rights and democracy begins with a narrative from the 17th century and continues through the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights some 400 years later, about free and equal people coming together to make their own rules to live by. What if we took that story literally, so that all would-be parents had to work together to ensure all children of that particular generation and community got a fair start in life, with opportunities equalized between rich and poor? What do you think would happen to fertility rates?

    It’s time to change our approach to family planning.

    Having Kids promotes the Fair Start model. Both liberals and conservatives should embrace this approach. It is one way to address the immediate and universal problem of unsustainable growth.

    At Having Kids:

    We promote and protect every child’s right to a fair start in life by replacing unsustainable, parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-centered Fair Start family planning model. The model suggests a shift in family planning from a subjective focus on just the parents, to an objective focus that considers the interests of the potential child, the parents, and the community.

    It’s all about this: Smaller families working together to give every child a fair start in life.

    Today many families are adopting the Fair Start family planning model. First, they try to give their child a fair start in life by having a smaller family where they can invest more in their child. Often they also foster or adopt one of the many children eagerly waiting for parents rather than creating additional need. Second, they publicly role model their choices. Finally, these families join public advocacy campaigns to shift resources from extractive centers of power like governments, corporations, and wealthy families in order to democratically empower children and future citizens by incentivizing better family planning by all parents. Why? All parents know that the quality of their own child’s life will depend on how other parents decide to have and raise their kids.

  • The Pope’s Voice of Reason Amid the Chaos of an Exploding World Population

    The Pope’s Voice of Reason Amid the Chaos of an Exploding World Population

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    The world population is on target to skyrocket from the current 7.4 billion people to almost 10 billion by 2050. Meanwhile, our environment continues to degrade around us, with a mass extinction of other species.  Nevertheless, some countries are pushing for higher population growth rates. China, with the world’s largest population, is considering paying couples to have a second child. Other high-consuming, high-polluting countries are also paying women to have more children, using a replacement rate for their current population levels as a baseline, despite the fact that current levels are completely unsustainable.Subtle cultural forces are also pushing women to have children. Celebrities are role modeling larger families, and in some places, those without children are judged harshly by those around them. One study confirmed that many parents feel moral outrage against childless couples, despite the positive future environmental benefits that childless couples convey on all children.

    Amid all of this, Pope Francis has emerged as a voice of reason. He acknowledges the need for smaller families to achieve sustainability and combat humans’ impact on the environment. Even his critics admit that “the Pontifical Academy of Sciences now holds that the world is overpopulated and that couples should have fewer children since that is purportedly the only way to protect the natural environment.” More importantly, the Pope made these comments in the context of a larger call for social justice, reiterating the previous papal position that couples should never have more children than they can bring up properly and calling for distribution of resources based on compassion and love.

    Sound familiar? An easy way to create a happier, more sustainable, and more equitable world would be for families to shift resources, through a variety of public and private channels, that would have been put into having an additional child instead toward incentivizing other families to give their first child a better start in life.

    It’s the Having Kids model, and it’s the most effective model to further all of our basic values at the same time.

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  • On World Population Day, Let’s Talk about Parenting

    On World Population Day, Let’s Talk about Parenting

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    Today, on World Population Day, the news will be filled with talk of the world’s population, projected growth rates, growth economics, and more — all focused on numbers.

    Numbers are an easy way to quantify population changes. The world is on course to reach roughly 11 billion people in 2100, 4 billion more than there are today. However, numbers cannot describe or explain why a child in one part of a community does not have the same access to healthcare, education, and a safe and clean environment as another child in the same community. Numbers do not explain why the United States, which makes up 5% of the global population, uses more than 20% of the world’s energy resources. And numbers do not illustrate the current challenges families face in planning for their children with little to no support from the communities around them.

    When we think about population, most of us are concerned about how increasing global population is hurting our environment, how we are not able to provide a lifestyle of luxury to all, and, generally, how there are too many people for very few resources. Having Kids wants you to think differently about population. We want you to think about parenting as a shared task, where individuals and a community come together to help future and current generations by thinking about resource distribution, redefining standards for a high quality of life, and supporting parents who are planning for their families. It’s about smaller families working together to plan a better future for every child. It’s the Having Kids Model.

    Throughout history, and today, major human institutions around the world have used an old and outdated one-sided parenting model focused on parents rather than a three-sided model that includes parents, children, and the community.

    There’s a big difference between the two.

    The old model:

    • Parents plan their families alone, without working with others and with whatever limited resources they have.
    • There is no minimum standard of well-being for future children.
    • There is no standard of fairness for future children — some are born poor and some are born rich.
    • There is no thought given to how our family planning impacts the community or the environment.

    The new model:

    • Families work together to plan for and invest in the children they will have.
    • Family plans include minimum standards of well-being for future children, pegged in part to the idea of a fair start in life relative to other children.
    • Family plans include considerations of how to build the communities we want, and how to protect and even improve the natural environment around us.

    In the months to come, Having Kids will be urging both the United States and the United Nations to abandon the old model of parenting in favor of the Having Kids model. Please join us.

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  • Global Population Speak Out

    Global Population Speak Out

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    When you have a few moments, check out this important and beautiful video: Global Speak Out, by the Population Media Center. Then come back and take a look at this chart.

    World-Population-1800-2100; global population growth
    World Population, 1800-2100, image from the UN

    This chart represents U.N. global population growth projections, with larger families (red) and smaller families (green), relative to current projected family size (orange).

    Let’s go green.

    If smaller families work together to plan for and invest more in each child, people will enjoy a higher level of well-being and equality, our democracies can begin to truly work, and our communities can come into balance with nature.

    The choice is clear.

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  • Food Insecurity & Population Growth Go Hand in Hand

    Food Insecurity & Population Growth Go Hand in Hand

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    In the LA Times, Ann Simmons sounds a long-ignored alarm about the perils of overcrowded cities filled with undernourished people. But is there an ideal solution? Simmons focuses on supply-side solutions, but what about demand? Food insecurity is one of dozens of problems, like climate change and extreme poverty, caused by growth and the lack of family planning that causes it. Rather than short-term reactions, like increasing supply, it’s time to move toward a universal norm of smaller families working together to plan for and invest more in each child. It’s a norm the U.S. and U.N. should promote, thought leaders and popular figures should model, and corporations should support, for the long-term benefit of all.

    The Having Kids model supports these large-scale changes alongside smaller decisions that parents and their communities can make together.

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  • Japan and GDP: Rethinking Population Decline

    Japan and GDP: Rethinking Population Decline

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    Panicked articles about the correlation between decreasing fertility rates and stalling GDP are a dime a dozen. Yet one economist recently took it a step further by ringing these familiar alarm bells while acknowledging in the very same breath that GDP is a poor metric for national prosperity.

    On the one hand, the author laments that Japan’s aggregate economy will inevitably shrink due to population decline, thereby jeopardizing “Japan’s place in the world” as a “trailblazer.” On the other hand, he writes that “[t]he primary objective of Japanese economic policy should be to maintain living standards and increase per capita incomes, not grow the aggregate economy.”

    Indeed, as the author points out, the quality of life enjoyed by Japan’s citizens has been consistently high since the early 1990s, notwithstanding Japan’s stagnant GDP throughout that time. Nor does a continuation of that negative GDP growth pose a threat to future living standards, as the author readily admits:

    “Many countries are fixated on achieving GDP growth and the target for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Abenomics reform package is 1 per cent GDP growth a year. Japan’s GDP growth has been closer to zero in recent times. What does negative GDP growth — a technical recession if it continues for six months or more — mean when the population is shrinking? Perhaps not as much as we thought. If GDP does not grow, per capita incomes may rise as the population falls.”

    So how does the author justify his characterization of population decline as “Japan’s greatest challenge?” when Japan is likely to remain “safe, clean, comfortable and modern” despite said decline? The author’s argument is a bit muddled, but if you read between the lines, it seems to come down to a matter of values, where being “number one” in terms of aggregate growth is as important, or even more important, than the wellbeing of the individuals within that economy.

    In stark contrast with GDP-obsessed public policy, the Having Kids model seeks to achieve genuine economic prosperity, by contemplating (1) household incomes rather than national economies, (2) level of access to public services such as health, education, transportation, and (3) air quality, biodiversity, animal welfare etc. In this way, Japan’s population decline is far from “the greatest challenge,” but rather an outcome that other nations should seek to emulate through policies rooted in compassion for all rather than profit for a few.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Family Planning in Indonesia: A Model for the World

    Family Planning in Indonesia: A Model for the World

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    Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) announced that he will revive Indonesia’s family planning program, which previous presidents have not prioritized. President Jokowi sees this as a strategic investment that will:

    • Help families save more overall
    • Provide parents access to higher incomes
    • Reduce maternal and child mortality
    • Reduce poverty
    • Provide more opportunities, such as education and employment, for the children who are born under these policies

    Having Kids believes that policies like these should be implemented around the world. In doing so, we could ensure that children being born into this world are given a high quality of life and are born into conditions in which they can thrive. If families cannot plan when they have kids, society and families alike to often find it challenging to devote the amount of resources necessary to each child to ensure their success. Addressing these issues now can provide a sound future for children who have not yet been born. The Having Kids model can ensure this sound future by helping families invest more resources in each child.

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  • How Can We Follow in Iran’s Footsteps?

    How Can We Follow in Iran’s Footsteps?

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    How do you bring a country’s total fertility rate from 6 to 2.1 children in 20 years? Iran had the answer, and it included education, free contraception, and accessible healthcare clinics for rural and urban areas. In 1970, Iran launched a family planning initiative that had three goals:

    1. Delay a family’s first pregnancy.
    2. Allow more space between births.
    3. Promote smaller families.

    Using these tactics, Iran knew could it reduce maternal and child mortality and ensure that families planned for children that they could support. Overall, the program was incredibly successful because sex education was provided broadly to youth, a variety of contraceptives were offered for free, health clinics were established, and there was a cultural shift to accept these family planning tools. In the end, families could plan for the children they wanted to have, and they could ensure that they would have the resources to support those children fully.

    However, a few years ago Iran cut their family program, outlawed vasectomies, and created public ad campaigns encouraging couples to have large families. Many groups and individuals are concerned that this will result in a significant increase in unplanned pregnancies, an increase in sexually transmitted infections, a decrease in girls and women pursuing higher education, and fewer families having the means to fully support their offspring. Having Kids believes that this is a turn in the wrong direction and will make it harder for families and the country to support the children who will be born under this policy.

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