Vesagas: Family Planning Month

AUGUST has been dubbed as the National Family Planning Month, which centers on the attainment of a better quality of life for the mother, the father and the family as a whole.

The two institutions expected to spearhead this health awareness month are the Department of Health (DOH) and the Commission on Population (Popcom).

Legally speaking, Popcom was created by virtue of Republic Act 6365 or the Population Act of 1971 (which was enacted into law on August 15, 1971) amending Presidential Decree 79 the old Law concerning population.

As mentioned in various laws and population theories, population programs are an integral and vital part of social reform and economic development.

To better understand how population affects the economy, one may need to go back to several theorists of population. Although there may be too many to mention, the most notable are Thomas Malthus and Karl Marx.

But what is common among these theorists is the thought that humankind is mortal. As such, we have mortal needs that run through a broad range of spectrum from physiologic to self-actualization as far as Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is concerned. However, the most fundamental of it all is the physiologic aspect: food, water, air, health, etc…

We turn to our environment for food and other sustenance but with so dense a population, there might not enough to feed every hungry stomach. This is the point of Thomas Malthus when he argued in his Principle of Population (1798) that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in earth to produce subsistence for man.”

He furthered that “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometric ratio. [On the other hand], subsistence increases only in arithmetical ratio”.

For Malthus, there are two immutable needs of man: (1) the need for food; (2) the “passion” between the sexes.

He pointed out that these two needs must be regulated for if left unchecked, it can lead to misery and increase of vices among the population.

He then argued that there are two mechanisms, which he called “checks” that regulate population. The first was what he termed “positive checks,” which he refers to the chief destroyer of mankind. Under this includes war and famine that claim lives but inadvertently decrease the population as a consequence. On the other hand, there is what he called, “preventive checks” that operates to reduce birth rate.

Customs and tradition that society places value in delaying marriage and prioritizing education are examples of this or the promotion of marriage first prior sexual contact. Sometimes, this called prudential check.

If left uncheck, Malthus strongly believed that everyone will compete with each other for the scarce resources that nature can provide.

For centuries, this was held as gospel truth until one philosopher-economist emerged - Karl Marx.

Although Marx did not have a theory on population directly, one can deduce it from his theory of communism.

Population growth, according to Marx, is not related to the alleged ignorance or moral inferiority of the poor-(his thought is somehow related to the Philippine mind-set in concluding that rural poor people have more children and thus have higher population than in the cities), but is a consequence of the capitalist economic system.

While it is true that food is not given freely despite the abundance that Mother Nature provides, truth holds that what is served on the table depends on monetary resources. It is society that tells us the manner of distribution of the goods. In sum, this is the economic system.

This system increases the use of technology and curbing the need of manual labor creating a surplus of laborers, that in effect, will have lesser value as far as the law of demand and supply is concerned.

This may well explain why barrio folks have more children because these children are viewed as investments later in life. And this has been the tradition among Filipinos that is further buffered and thus perpetuated by religion.

Malthusian and Marxist theories are just among the many that attempt to explain the role of population to development.

Recent studies focus on demographic processes such as fertility, mortality and migration that speak of the population.

For instance, the National Demographic Health Survey informs that the recent total fertility rate (TFR) in the Philippines is 3.0. It means that in an average there are three children per household.

In the USA, TFR is 2.0. Japan has -2.0 whereas Vietnam has a TFR of 4.0.

It can be then deduced that TFR is an indicator of development.

polo.journalist@gmail.com

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