Will saving poor children lead to overpopulation?

Hans Rosling explains a very common misunderstanding about the world.

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[MixedFruit]

People here in the comments don't seem to understand that he's not making some wild forecast, the process of demographic transition is fairly known and has been watched, by now, in hundreds of countries and societies (that cover, by now, most of the world). There are a few countries in the world that are now in relatively early stages of the transition, and the forecast he's making is rather modest - that the process will continue, in these countries, as it has in all of the countries before them. That's all. Look up the terms demographic transition and TFR, to get the full picture.

[laacisbezgalvas]

Another problem in 3rd world countries is lack of healthcare system. In Bangladesh, one of the most overpopulated countries of the world, having children means that you will be provided when you are old.

[amyh]

education, contraception, as well as social and political reform will help minimize the overpopulation of the planet.

[MarcoDeCarli]

Great video, explained in a simple visual way. Congratulations to the Gapminder Foundation. I read youtube people's comments, looking for some further inspiration. I have read a lot of nonsense, many of them did not understand the video. I doubt there is salvation around the corner, but please continue to show us the way.

[GustavoHCardenasAlegre]

thank you Hans Rosling, we need more people like you around the world.

[phillips]

In Haiti, Save the Children Fund set out to learn if women who had lost children compensated by increasing their total number of births. The exactly opposite effect was found: women who had never lost children had the most births; women who had an infant die were least likely to continue childbearing. Indeed, studies in several continents fail to find that high child mortality leads to more births.

[OliJoGar]

Having the volume on full blast is not a good idea. The moment he opened his mouth, I jumped LOL

[sorenwintherlundbys]

Hans Roslings is setting the next standard for communication - the video lasted 3 minutes and 31 seconds. We are NOT talking about a book with 331 pages.. 

[daedra]

His Ted talks are so worth their time ; trust me, don't let the large minute numbers scare you from watching certain vids, especially if its by Hans Rosling ;)

[rafatejera]

in my country in uruguay, poor people have more childrens than midium and high life quality, and the people says that they want to have childs because they haven't nothing so they want to have that ''something''

sorry about my english im learning 

[CamF]

He says the reason people in poor countries have large families is that they are compensating for high child mortality. This is doubtful. People in poor countries have many children because they often live a subsistence lifestyle and need a large family to rear cattle and raise crops. Better healthcare will not immediately reverse this trend.

[meuk]

A great fine-tuning and condensing of his other talks for those who just want a summery of the situation. Still love his full on stage talks, but this is great for sharing the overall ideas of it. Top man Hans!

[DavidJohnsonPix]

Unfortunately, this argument makes too many assumptions. Not only that, but it doesn't take into account the principle of Exponential Growth.

[Panamenya]

This may or may not be true. But it IS true that many people, no matter their socioeconomic status, will have many kids because their religion, culture, or government compels them to, OR they want to have a large family out of more narcissistic, personal, self-centered reasons. It unfortunately will still happen. So it's not just a "poor" vs. "not-poor" problem.

Also, part of why people continue to suffer in poverty is *because* they choose to reproduce too soon, too many times, with little education, and without any good prospects for making money. The condition of poverty is exacerbated, if not *caused* by reckless, abundant reproduction. If people really understood this, and if they had the ability to prevent it, perhaps they would choose to delay reproduction so that they could have half a chance of escaping poverty altogether and not passing on that misery to the next generation. This would be the ideal way to eliminate poverty: prevention via education.

Instead of outsiders "saving poor kids" (their lives, presumably, but nothing more, not working on getting them OUT of poverty) and patting themselves on the back for enabling the perpetuation of generational poverty, people of reproductive ages who are currently living in poverty could work on self-actualization and bettering themselves BEFORE reproducing (and society could strongly ENCOURAGE this via campaigns, scholarships, etc.), to the point that their kids won't need saving from strangers because they won't automatically be born into poverty from people who hastily, selfishly, and recklessly reproduced, knowing they couldn't support themselves.

Millions of people born into poverty have already done this around the world, improving conditions for themselves AND their subsequent offspring, so it's not like it's impossible or inappropriate for society to work on this goal. Perhaps we could all acknowledge that everyone can improve their own circumstances and not take as inevitable that "the poor" will always remain that way.

[HP-wsvx]

The production style of this video is very nice :)

[opnasd]

So acording to this logic, if saving poor children would cause overpopulation, would we let them starve to death?

[franklyngodwin]

This is wrong precedence leading to wrong conclusion. Saving poor children's lives doesn't end poverty; if poverty is the factor, saving the poor child's life doesn't end poverty. It actually increases the burden on the poor parents.
Education and improvement of the standard of living is the key, not vaccines and drugs.

[belindaelisa]

"Arahat Athersata and the Plejaren repeatedly advise us in particular about our out-of-control overpopulation problem and, as of 1975, recommended a strict, humane plan of world-wide birth control (which we arrogantly and self-destructively ignored, and continue to ignore. Countries like Australia even promote the growth of our population for economic reasons even as our water and other resources are increasingly reduced and contaminated!). Arahat Athersata says, that one of the most important tasks of the realm of material life of the Earthly humanity is to pay attention to the fact that the population must be very severely restricted and the number of human beings must not exceed 500 million. (According to the Plejaren we had 7.5 billion at the end of 2004, which is one billion more that was acknowledged at the same time by the USAmerican Census Bureau!)

According to the Creational laws and directives the correct formula for maintaining the human species is not one of simply increasing, as is wrongly proclaimed by Earthly religions, but is based in the adherence to the natural laws so that there is order, meaning that population growth is overseen and supervised. Through the irrationality and false religious teaching of the Earth human the mass of humanity is driven into boundlessness, whereby problems, which are containable and can be restricted for a small humanity, spread and become uncontrollable to an unspeakable extent. With the breaking and abuse of the law of maintenance of the species humanity has been driven to a mass of overpopulation in only a few hundred years, and with that all problems, need and degeneration climb (and because of this millions are forced to die a degenerate death.) (Please refer to the FIGU overpopulation pamphlets for more on this.)

To follow Creational laws and directives also means the correct raising of children, in which, by adulthood, they are entirely equipped for self-reliance and independence from their parents. Other laws concern respect for all life forms, not killing in degeneration, (which includes not committing suicide), learning from mistakes rather than condemning them, taking responsibility for one's own thoughts, words and deeds, not judging falsely but instead making judgments according to logic, respecting one's spiritual and physical needs, the requirement for leadership in each family, community and population, etc., the obligation of a leader to guide, teach and protect the people, the implementation of correctional measures for wrong behavior instead of torture or the death penalty, which entirely go against the Creational laws and directives, and so on."

[asriver]

Nutella will save the world, just put a Nutella jar in every family, everyone will be happy... and diabetic, but happy.

[ohanna]

the big reason of overpopulation is that we all get older and older