With the rate of global population increase and the worsening economy of the world, should the government provide incentives to encourage families to have only a certan number of children? Will this be a good thing for the population? What will be the effects of such a choice in the long run?”
The world has constantly experienced a geometric increase in population, and this has led to an increase in demand for scarce resources. From an economist's point of view, there's always an increase in the demand for goods and services, especially the basic necessities of life, which are, in no particular order, shelter, housing, and food.
You will agree with me that when it comes to population growth, there's little or nothing the government can do about it reason being that the when census is taken, there are some rural communities that are not accessible, so what we get is an estimated population from those places, which also leads to an estimate in general population.
Now everyone who lives in Urbana areas has an origin from one of these rural communities, so government can start by creating an awareness in urban settlements and then looking for people who are from these places who are ready to volunteer themselves in order to educate those in rural communities.
Back in the time of our ancestors, a lot of men took many wives, also resulting in the birth of many children. Some did this because they needed more hands to work their large acres of farmland, but it also resulted in having more mouths to feed when, in reality, that labor could be hired. And with the massive rural-urban migration, most of those farms no longer exist, which also creates another problem because a lot of urban areas rely on food supplies from these rural areas.
I learned some time ago from one of my teachers that some time ago, in order to control population growth, China had to pass a one-child policy for a period of time, which statistically reduced its population by about 400 million, so countries that are faced with the challenge of overpopulation could study the Chinese policy and see how they could implement it in order to control population growth.
Finally, I think families should be given the liberty of having the number of children they could adequately provide for and take care of. Also, without the active participation of the masses, the government policies on the reduction of population growth will not be effective, so the government can also attach some incentives and penalties for defaulters.
One of the long-term implications of this will be a reduction in the workforce of the economy, which will also result in a decline in the gross domestic product in the economy.
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