An Evaluation Of The Economic Benefits And Ethical Issues Of Population Control

Population Growth is an issue that exists in today’s world that needs to be confronted before it becomes out of hand. The population itself has reached overwhelming numbers making it a problem that could turn to be dangerous. The amount of humans that the earth can support or the carrying capacity is slowly rising but at a much slower rate than the population growth rate. The increasing growth rate has its negative effects environmentally, agriculturally, socially, and economically and also has its positive effects nationally, and economically. The government is brainstorming and trying to come up with ways to decrease

In 1798 utilitarian Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as an argument against an utopian society based on social and economic equality. Malthus believed that if the human population is left unchecked then the population would outgrow the resources necessary to maintain the population. Malthus’s argued that the population will continue to grow and the burden will unavoidably put on the poor population. However, the inequality of population would be a good thing in terms of controlling the population.

There are more than seven billion people on Earth now, and about one in eight of us don’t have enough food to eat. So, with a projected nine billion people by the year 2050, how many people can the Earth support while maintaining a healthy population? Population changes are due to the relationship between births and deaths. If the number of births equals the number of deaths then the world’s population will remain the same, but if births exceed deaths, population growth will occur. Early in history, population was slowly growing because of high death rates related to wars, famines, and poor medical services. With advances in

This article title reflects information on the past history of eugenics along with some of its current uses and advancements; both restricted and unrestricted are briefly reviewed. Moral, Ethical, Civil and Constitutional debates regarding the topic, along with a broad spectrum variety of court cases are pointedly addressed offering a nice concentrated overview on the topic of eugenics.

Cousin of Charles Darwin and a respected British scholar, Sir Francis Galton, first used the term eugenics, meaning “well-born” or “good genes” around 1883 (Berson & Cruz, 1998). Building off of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, he believed that the human race could positively direct its future by either breeding or sterilizing select individuals who had specific traits. Galton was convinced that an upper class position in society was largely due to good genes. The actual practice of eugenics, the act of involuntary sterilization, began in the United States as a means of population control with the goal to reduce the transmission of undesirable traits. Initially, sterilizations were targeted towards the mentally ill or disabled, criminals,

When parents are seeking alternative ways of becoming pregnant, it is not uncommon to create anywhere from fifteen to twenty embryonic children, and then through a process of selective reduction or the eugenic practice of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, to kill all but one or two of those children.” (Beck 274) This is the beginning of the new wave of eugenics. Since the Supreme Court of the United States have confirmed the parent’s rights to terminate all unwanted embryos, it is only logical that the next step will be new legislation involving more of the population, willing or

Imagine if Earth’s population was so large that all of the world’s resources had to be exhausted to their last limits just to provide food for only half of the population. That is exactly what 17th-century demographer Thomas Malthus envisioned when he predicted how the world’s population would affect the world’s resources. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in the late 18th century, Malthus expressed many controversial predictions in which he argued that the increase of resources was arithmetic while the increase in population was exponential; thus, he concluded that the population would greatly outpace the amount of resource growth on Earth. Being that Malthus made his predictions during the industrial revolution (which was when North America and Europe reached stage two of the demographic transition), many critics of his theory claim that Malthus’ calculations were inaccurate because he did not consider technological advances in relation to food production. Also, Malthus’ critics believe that he overestimated population increase (mainly because of the time period he lived in) and (adverb) underestimated the production rate of resources. Though both sides of the debate are plausible, it is evident that Malthus’ views were incorrect because modern-day statistics regarding population and food production do not support his claims. Therefore, because of Malthus’ uncircumspect approach when he predicted population

Dictionary.com defines eugenics as “the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population.” (dictionary.com) Eugenics is implemented by either forcing the reproduction of organisms with good traits or with denying reproduction to organisms that have less then optimal or defective traits. The history of eugenics has been intertwined with horrible ethnic cleansing and racism, and is no longer the same as it was at its conception.

Many wonder if it is ethical to use genetic information to alter natural processes of procreation to give people the best genes they can get. There are already ways to predict the presence of a genetic disease in a child based on the parents and in vivo testing. Eugenics is “increasing the number of genes in the human population responsible for improving intelligence, beauty, musical ability and other traits we value” (Munson, 2012 272-273) Eugenics is often confused to just be for consideration of the parents and the child. However, the definition of eugenics is reliant on the outcome for the entire human population. The two types of eugenics include positive and negative; positive eugenics is “The aim of increasing the number of

Although Eugenics is seen as a negative and invalid theory for the improvement of the human race, these reproduction requirements are constant factors within sexual selection and the doctors’ recommendation of aborting a baby, proving their relevance in the survival of the human race.

Eugenics in the world today has become an issue because of its many positive uses furthermore its possible consequences. It is believed by many that eugenics does more harm than good, on the other hand there are exceptions; it is not the way of the future.

Eugenics is the science of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristic traits and decrease the occurrence of undesirable characteristic traits or genetical defects (Webster, 1828.) Eugenic sterilization refers to the involuntary sterilization of certain categories of individuals without their need for consent by those subjected to the procedure (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Individuals classified as mentally deficient, feeble minded, epileptic, promiscuous, sexual deviants, or persons classified as habitual criminals were mainly targeted (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Eugenicists argued degenerate traits tainted society through the reproduction of the lowest class and sterilization was to keep the "handicapped" from perpetuating themselves (Kaelber, 2014.) In addition, eugenicists also argued that "feeble-minded" individuals were believed to be financial burdens to society by overcrowding prisons, hospitals and living off welfare (Kaelber, 2014.) Sterilization was seen as a way to prevent the spending of tax dollars on the "feeble- minded" (Kaelber, 2014.) These arguments allowed Eugenics to become an acceptable practice. Advocates believed that getting rid of the "feeble-minded" and mentally deficient would decrease the undesirable characteristic traits within the human gene pool and ultimately improve the human population.

Thomas Robert Malthus is one of the most controversial figures in the history of economics. He achieved fame chiefly from the population doctrine that is now closely linked with his name. Contrary to the late-eighteenth-century views that it was possible to improve people’s living standards, Malthus held that any such improvements would cause the population to grow and thereby reverse these gains. Malthus also sparked controversy with his contemporaries on issues of methodology (by arguing that economics should be an empirical rather than a deductive science), over questions of theory (by holding that economies can experience prolonged bouts of high unemployment), and on policy issues (by arguing against free

This essay deals with Thomas Malthus and the first two chapters of his “Essay on the Principle of Population”. At first I will provide a short biographical note on Malthus and I will also mention his main achievements. Then, a summary of Malthus' main ideas of the first two chapters of mentioned work follows. Afterward, the essay concludes with a personal note.

“Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply is arithmetical at best”(En.wikipedia.org, 2017). It emanated from ideas conveyed by Thomas Malthus' ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. Malthus argued that