--- Richard Haimann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> While a grad student (a while ago), I had the opportunity to attend
> a
> lecture by the director of the United Nations Commission on
> Population and
> Development (Universities are such great places). It was a very
> enlightening lecture regarding the power of choice with respect to
> changes
> in fertility behaviors. The lecturer showed some really nice
> multivariate
> statistical analyses of data from countries around the world. This
> data
> strongly suggested that there was a strong correlation between the
> empowerment of women in a society and the average number of
> children. Based
> on this correlation, it was theorized by the lecturer that official
> empowerment of women led to stabilization of population growth in a
> nation.
> It was a very interesting lecture.
After seeing whay my wife went through, I am not surprised by this.
You know the standard joke. If men got pregnant we'd walk around
asking our friends to punch us in the stomach.
> Current population growth models in use at the U.N. and elsewhere,
> from what
> I understand, project reduction in population growth as development
> of a
> nation increases - development being primarily technological. The
> models
> show the world population maxing at somewhere between 9 and 10
> billion
> persons. These models are based on much of the multivariate
> statistical
> analyses of historical data that the lecturer discussed above.
>
> If these models are not completely off-base, then one could
> conclude that to
> reduce the number of children couples choose to have, we need to
> empower the
> women and develop their economies to be at the technological level
> of
> Europe, U.S.A., Canada, Japan, Australasia.
>
> Thus, in the U.S.A, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australasia - from a
> global
> resource depletion perspective, it is in their best interest to
> provide as
> much development assistance as possible to developing nations,
>
> provide strong incentives for investment in manufacturing
> in those nations,
>
> including removing any tariffs or restrictions on imports
> from those
> nations,
>
> helping those nations with social programs that ultimately
> change the
> status of women in those societies,
>
> helping those nations restructure land use patterns through
> internal
> governmental incentives so that the peasant-farmer becomes the
> large farm
> manager, with most of the peasant farmers migrating to cities to
> work in the
> manufacturing sector.
>
> in essence - export U.S., Canadian, European, and Japanese,
> and Australasia
> economic and societal structures.
Ooops...Richard...how politically incorrect of you! <grin>
Steve
=====
"In a nutshell, he [Steve] is 100% unadulterated evil. I do not believe in a 'Satan', but this man is as close to 'the real McCoy' as they come."
--Jamey Lee West
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