Countries want to control population growth, because it has got a big impact on the economy and also influences the quality of healthcare, education and other helps the country provides its inhabitants.First of all, I want to underline some factors affecting the ineffectiveness of government attempts to control population growth.
One way – and also the most common way – is to influence the population growth through affecting the birthrates. Therefore, for example the UK tried to increase the decreasing birthrate by giving financial help to families, who want to have children. This money is given by “Child maintenance” which is paid monthly and also by lower taxes for those families. Furthermore, the time a mother is allowed to be out of work for having a baby is expanded to 1 year and also the father is allowed to be out of job during this time.These policies have just a minor effect on the population growth of the UK. In reality, there are some factors which are much more affecting the current birthrate, such as the financial crisis.
This crisis is affecting the birthrate, because families cannot spend their money on children anymore, because the financial situation is insecure. In addition, the situation of the population growth may be effected by the cultural differences immigrants have to suffer from, when the come to the UK. They cannot afford having a baby in the few years.India tried to decrease its increasing population using family planning services, healthcare in rural areas and education. This way of trying to control population growth did not have a big effect, because many people ignored the advices the government made and lived as many hundred year ago.
In India, it is useful to have a big family, because the socio-economic system is different from the European one: The parents do not save much money for the elder years, that’s why the children have to finance their parents later on. So, for parents with many children is it easier to get money in the elder.Another aspect effecting population growth is migration. For example, the USA tried to limitate the number of immigrants but it has limited success because of massive illegal immigration via the border to Mexico.
The situation in Europe is similar, as the EU tries to tighten its borders – with limited success.On the other hand, some methods of effecting the population growth are effective.Strict implementation of the regulations, such as Chinas one-child policy, is a good example. Chinas methods by making it a law and having massive finance penalties for families breaking the law have a big success. Anyway, there are a lot of criticisms about the one-child policy, who say it is against the international right of freedom.Another good example showing that there are effective ways of controlling population growth is Dubai.
The boom in Dubai, including building a new airport, many hotels and malls and also a big island in the ocean needed a lot of workers. Therefore, many immigrants from India and Pakistan came to support this booming industry for little money.As a conclusion I have to say that the effectiveness of methods to control population growth is dependent from how strict these methods are implemented by the government. Countries, which control their population rules extremely strict, such as China, have got much more success in controlling their population than countries, which do not have that strict rules, such as the UK.
