Ch.22Population
1. Some countries, such as Japan, are losing population and are below zero population
growth. What do you feel are the ramifications of a reduction of the population to a
country?
2. What do you feel countries should do to reverse a nationwide population reduction?
3. How could this population reduction have a positive effect?
4. Worldwide, population is increasing. What do you feel are the positive and negative
effects of this?
5. What strategies do you feel countries, such as china, could use to reduce their
expanding population? What are the positive, negative, political, ethical and financial
effects of your suggestions?
6. How could the Demographic Transition Theory be a more hopeful analysis of future
population than the Malthusian theory?
7. Should family size be a couple’s decision or that of the government? Remember, the
government will need to pay for increased services such as education and health care.
8. How do you see the advantages or disadvantages of China’s one child policy?
9. Should the rich, who can afford children, be allowed to have as many as they want; and
the poor be prevented by the government from reproducing, perhaps through forced
sterilization? One person in India said to me, “Procreation is the poor man’s recreation”.