What methods can be used to reduce population and population growth.

[hiljaden]

Methods that I understand is to increace education of the population, give woman especially in third world countries more rights, the implementation of family planning programs, to punish those who have more children than a set quota such as china's one child policy that issue fines for having more children. I am intersted in ideas on what can be done to reduce population growth. Lets call it social inovation.

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

Just shooting from the hip here, but I'll say tax penalties and disqualification for social welfare benefits for people who have more than 3 kids, tax breaks for those who have fewer, and increasing the availability of contraceptives (i.e. condoms, "the pill", etc). Sex education and family planning courses could also be a good idea, as you suggest. A nationwide campaign where a political leader actually brings up overpopulation as a real national problem would be a good start. I'm not aware of any country doing that.

[Mike]

Do you think a lot depends upon the specific country or even the specific region in question? Take the forced population-reduction or rather population-slowing policies of communist China, for example. Obviously such draconian (in my view) measures would not succeed in many other areas. Japan by contrast has one of the most highly educated populations in the world, yet as part of Asia (which has the highest percentage of the Earth's population) it is still figuratively bursting at the seams, population-wise. Education has not halted population growth in Japan. Interestingly Japan is NOT a third world nation, is it? The U.S. State of Utah is another interesting example. It has a very high per capita ratio of university graduated men and women but Mormons are recognized worldwide for the propensity to have very large families.