... is saying that draconian measures do not help stabilize population and increase the quality of life in the long term, as much as development-related actions do. So if the freepers were really worried about trying to bring in zero population growth, they have a blind spot about the fact that liberals are actually better at creating those conditions!
More equitable social policies -- universal public education, encouraging women to develop skills and work outside of the home, a secure medicare and public health system, anti-poverty programs -- those things the right wing screams about as "socialist", "anti-family", "wastefully expensive", and "coddling the poor" -- seem to play a major role in decreasing fertility. The very ethnic groups which proto-freepers claimed were "breeding like rabbits" -- southern Europeans, Irish, Hispanics, Asians -- given economic security, everybody is showing declining fertility rates. So it seems to work across the board.
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-25575-201-1-DO_TOPIC.htmlhttp://www.interacademies.net/?id=3547The fertility rate (number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime) is now below 3, in developing countries. By comparison, during the mid-20th C baby boom (and also a century ago), the US fertility rate was well over 3 (it subsided during the Depression and the early war years). (Recently it's been hanging in there at barely 2 in the US, and is well below that in Canada and many European nations.) Demographers consider 2.1 to be the "replacement level".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/27/health/main669744.shtmlhttp://www.prb.org/AmeristatTemplate.cfm?Section=Fertility&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=7963
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