Is Globalization the Cause for Overpopulation?

Globalization is said to be positive for helping to develop economies around the world, and, as a result, achieving a better life standard for the population. However, not everyone around the world appreciates it in this way. Many people, specially the ones belonging to developing countries, suffer negative consequences from globalization. One of these major problems is overpopulation.

To explain this phenomenon of overpopulation, some factors should be considered, especially economy. Something that tends to happen with globalization is that the gap between the rich and the poor grows: the rich become richer and the poor turn to be much poorer. Countries with high poverty rates and that much of overpopulation, such as India, suffer in an extremely hard way. Some people can’t explain if overpopulation is the reason of poverty or if the lack of a stable economy is overpopulation, they refer to this as the theory of the “chicken and the egg”. No matter who was first, it is a fact that this is happening and it is even increasing. In very poor families, the incomes’ insurance is the children: as more offspring they have, the children work and obtain more incomes. This fact not only affects the amount of population and the economy of the country, but also the dignity of the people and turns to be a social problem too.

Nowadays, capitalism is a dominative force in international economy and every time is “invading” countries all around the world in a bigger way. Some are benefited for this system, due to the new employments the foreign companies give. But not all employments guarantee a good life standard. Many of these, abuse from the people in the developing countries who can’t deny this job because they need it to survive. Besides, many companies that establish in developing countries take advantage of the natural resources that these countries have, sacrificing the environment for the sake of its profits, hurting the country in an economic way when it was supposed to help.
But even if globalization contributes with more incomes for the families, it might turn out to be a problem if these new incomes allow families to have more children. Or another problem could be migration from developing countries, to the ones that have become richer with the effects of globalization, looking for employments. There are "forgotten" countries -like Mexico- that lack of many opportunities that countries such as the USA offers them, however at a high price: a sacrificed life standard, as previously said.

These are just some of the examples that overpopulation involves, there are many more reasons and consequences for this to happen. And as some experts say, some reasons become consequences and the other way around. Anyhow, some governments have established birth control policies to face overpopulation and look for improvements in their economy. These include: the one-child-policy, abortion, contraception, sterilization, among others. I agree that overpopulation is a problem, but worse is not allowing people the right of establishing a family as they desire. I believe that birth controlling is not the solution nor it would never be. No one has the right to decide who should be born or who should not. Each country can and should find its own way of having a balance between the economy and the population, without considering birth control. I believe that a successful population declination together with a stable economy can be possible with the help of globalization: foreign economies that aid these countries but with no control of them.

Mexican Migration to the USA

Along the years millions of people had migrated from Mexico to USA to have a better life, work and education for their family and for a place with more developed for life. That process of migration happens because the people of the developing countries are looking for better life opportunities in the developed world. At the same time, that causes two main problems: concentration of people and overpopulation and illegality, due to the fact that this people move with no legal visa or permission and the type of job they find is not so well considered. But they need of the Mexican people for a better life quality. By the other hand is the globalization that is focus in that the rich countries became more rich and the poorer more poor and that is why people migrated from the developing countries to the developed world .

The time pass and the situation of Usa began to change ,they enter in the American Economic crisis , so all the immigrants decided to return to their homes ,and this is really bad for Mexico and for the developing countries because they are not prepared for that amount of people they cannot provided so much jobs space for life.

China overpopulated

Overpopulation in China has become a global issue as China is one of the most, if not the most populated country in the world. The People’s Republic of China has had this problem for many years and still the government hasn’t come up with an effective solution.

China’s population started to increase dramatically after World War II. In 1949 the People's Republic of China lead by Mao encouraged Chinese families to have as many children as possible, this was because the government thought the population increase would bring money to the country and help China produce more food, build a better army, develop water control, and establish communication systems. The problem was the population didn't stop growing after that and by 1953 it had grown to about 583 million people, meaning millions per year.

By 1964 the Chinese government realized they had a problem on their hands and came out with the “Later Sparcer Fewer Policy”. The problem with this policy was that there were still too many people, that even though families were having fewer children further apart and later in life the population was still growing.
In 1979 the government had to come up with a new plan. A very extreme plan. The “One Child Policy”. This policy says that each couple living in the urban areas should have only one child, unless one or both parents are from an ethnic minority or they are both only children. In most rural areas, a couple may have a second child after a break of several years. But ofcourse that as every policy it has its positive side and negative one.

In the positive side it improves women’s health and gives them a better status, also requires not only wives but also husbands, to bear the responsibility of family planning, reduces the overpopulation problems. But this policy has a bigger negative side than a positive one, because many families are killing their new born babies, if they are not males, having more than one child is seen as a criminal act, between others.

The main trouble facing China today is that their population is “old”. The new generations are too small and the Chinese country is in need of young people with fresh and new ideas, with the fighting spirit a country needs to improve, spirit that is no longer in the old genertions.

Overpopulation in India

India is the second most populated country on this planet and is on it's way to being the first one in the next years. The government is very worried about the size of India's population and has focused a lot into combating India's growth. The government thinks that combating the overpopulation they will combat the high poverty rate (35%).

As India is an agriculturist country, most of the people living in the rural part and they are farmers. These farmers have little or no education at all. They live in large families and have like 4 or 5 children. They think they have to have a son because a family with no sons has no heir.

In contrast there are the cities where most of the people are educated enough to decide how many children they should have. However, thousands of people migrate daily from villages to cities in search of work making these cities overpopulated.

‘We are underdeveloped because of overpopulation’ is a common saying in India. At first I thought the same but then I search about countries overpopulated and if they are developed and I found the example of The Netherlands. It isn’t a so overpopulated country like when we talk about India but it is also. Often poverty is reasoned with overpopulation. That is not true. Poverty or starvation is caused by continuous wars, poor organization, and incompetent and corrupt governments and not by too many people.

Every three seconds, one child dies in India

From The Times of India

NEW DELHI: In India, over 2.1 million children die annually before reaching their fifth birthday, 50% of them not surviving even 28 days.

Globally, the number stands at 9.7 million annually.
The statistics are equally shocking among neonates - children newborn to a maximum age of 28 days old. While around 4 million children die within the first 28 days of life across the planet every year, India records around one million of these cases.
Of the 19 million infants in the developing world who have low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams), 8.3 million are in India. This means that approximately 43% of all the world's infants who are born with a low birth weight are born in India.
Malnutrition continues to affect newborns and young children and has been found to be the underlying cause of up to 50% of under-five deaths.
About 55 million, or one-third of the world's underweight children under age five, live in India with the worst affected states being Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Meghalaya.

These are the findings of UNICEF's latest 'The State of the World's Children-2008' report released on Tuesday.
The report places India at number one spot in children's deaths across the globe - one child dying every three seconds.
According to Gianni Murzi, UNICEF's India representative, India is witnessing a paradoxical moment.

"While the country is experiencing record growth rates and unprecedented wealth, it is faced with an incomparable child survival challenge. India carries the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world," he said.

Murzi said India accounts for over 20% of under-five children's deaths. "What is more shocking is that 25% of children dying worldwide before the 20th day after their birth are from India. India's future lies with these children. Focusing on the survival and development of its children is the best investment that any country can make."

Experts said that in 2006, for the first time in history, the number of annual child deaths worldwide declined to below the 10 million mark.

According to the report, simple and affordable life-saving measures, such as immediate and exclusive breastfeeding, immunization, insecticide-treated bed nets, integrated management of neonatal and child illnesses and vitamin A supplementation, can greatly reduce child deaths.
The report says the under five mortality rate (U5MR) for India was estimated as 76 for 2006. India has shown progress with the average annual rate of reduction in U5 mortality between 1990 and 2006 being around 2.6%.

Experts say: "If India is to reach the Millenium Development Goals by 2015, the average annual rate of reduction over the next nine years will have to be around 7.6%." According to the report, universalisation of early initiation of breastfeeding, within one hour of birth, would reduce neonatal mortality in India by 22%, universalisation of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life would avert nearly 16% of young child deaths in India.