Population Control - More Info

It is a certainty that this Earth will eventually run out of resources for us to use. The question then becomes - How pressing an issue is it? Some will argue that humans have always found a way to adapt to our situation and create new technologies that allow us to keep procreating. Link 1 shows a study that accounts for these advances in technology, and indicates that we have still consumed more than we have produced for each year in the last 3+ decades. If we believe this, there is no question that one of two things must be done. Either we reduce consumption per person, or we reduce the number of people consuming. Because humanity does not like to revert to a lower standard of living when it has already had a taste of the higher, I'll focus on the latter option. 

Let's take it as a fact that we need to do something to mitigate the growth rate of the human population. There is a myriad of options and issues that we face. The most obvious policy would be to increase contraceptive (and information on how to use them) distribution to those that want it. The government is already involved in such "passive" population control through their funding of Planned Parenthood. Link 2 below shows a paper that has collected data on unplanned pregnancies and their proportion to total pregnancies. In each region of the world the rate of unexpected pregnancies is above 30%. Increased distribution of contraceptives and information could realistically reduce this value to 10% or even to 5%. The size of this reduction in the birth rate might be large enough to ensure the government would not have to insert itself into "active" population control.

But of course, that is where the interesting conversation is. If we decide that it is beneficial to reduce the growth rate and "passive" efforts aren't doing enough, how do we restrict the births to parents that want to have children. Certainly proposals like forced sterilization and forced abortion cannot be considered because each is a direct violation of one's right to their body. Even more realistic proposals like issuing birth credits (for more info, see Link 3), face issues, albeit with a chance at acceptable modifications. Some may scoff at this idea and suggest that we are implementing the next Chinese one child policy and that's almost exactly what it would be (more of a ~2.3 child policy, but with the same idea of restricting births). The only difference is that, if enacted in the United States, we have the ability to mitigate the problems that were discussed in the Case Study of the presentation. Instead of jailing people under the threat of forced sterilization or forced abortion, we just impose fines on those who exceed their allotment. Instead of the favoring of boys, the increased gender equality in the West would lead to a more balanced gender birth rate (although I think we still have some more work to do with regards to this). 

All in all, I think it's an issue that is coming into the foreground, not only as we have more children, but also as those children live for more extended periods of time. One day - maybe even in our lifetime - the human race will need to create policies on such an issue. By talking about it now, we can ensure that the future generations have thought through the topic and are in the best position to make their decision.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/99/14/9266.full.pdf+html

[2] http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.1728-4465.2014.00393.x.pdf

[3] http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/birth-credits-population-control