Effect of economy on population growth

By BART SAUCELO, M.D.

“…the low economic level of the Philippines is the major cause of an

I enjoyed reading the article - “Poverty of Filipinos” by Plutarco Benedictos of May 29,
2004 in the Insight page of samarnews.com.  He is calling our attention to this major problem
in our homeland. The subject makes us ask some questions about ourselves and analyze our
attitudes, culture, idiosyncrasies, creativity and our competitiveness.

Sometimes when we look at a problem we confuse the effect from the cause or vice versa. This is
exemplified by the recent “Wallace Report” under the title of “ECONOMIES GROW FASTER IF POPULATION
GROWS SLOWER” when the fact is - POPULATION GROWS SLOWER IF ECONOMIES GROW FASTER.

I believe poverty is just a symptom of a disease with multiple causes although poverty in turn causes other
problems as crime, breakdown of families and physical illness like malnutrition, depression, etc. We cannot cure a
disease by just getting rid of the symptoms because the symptoms will just keep coming back and the disease will
just keep getting worse. So, to alleviate poverty we have first to find its causes.

I believe that the major cause of poverty in the Philippines is corruption. Foreign business do not want to
establish factories and other business enterprises in a country plagued with corruption like the Philippines because
the cost of doing business becomes exceedingly high and unpredictable.  It also causes an unstable political and
social environment not conducive to business.  Despite the fact that the Philippines has highly educated labor force
that are hard working and  English-speaking and willing to work with comparatively much lower wages foreign
businessmen do not want to locate in the Philippines and those that are already in the Philippines are moving out to
other countries.  Even Americans who have some historical, cultural and ideological ties with us now prefer to go to
other countries as South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, China and India.

In South Bend, Indiana where I have been living for the past 36 years, representatives are sent to Japan to
encourage Japanese businessmen to locate their factories to this city by offering them a number of incentives.  They
have been successful most of the time adding more employment to local residents and progress to the city. Yet,
America is already rich with so many industries.

In his speech at the last Republican Convention, President Bush said - “To create jobs we will make
America the best place to do business“.  Yet, America is already highly industrialized and the richest country in the
world.  It is clear that the Philippines must do the same and make it a priority project of the government in order to
attract foreign and local business and create jobs.

But the Philippines does just the opposite.  We build barriers and disincentives with corrupt practices, red
tape and arbitrary requirements to foreign business.  So, we have massive unemployment making the government so
poor that it cannot give decent salaries to its employees or improve the infrastructure and social services while the
people are wallowing in the mud of poverty. Thus, we remain the “sick man” of Asia.

It is true that population explosion in the Philippines aggravates the problem of poverty.  However, contrary
to what some people believe, I do not think that the Catholic Church is to blame for this.  It is a well known fact that
population growth is highest in the third world countries and much lower in industrialized countries. In fact, in the
Wallace Report I mentioned above, countries with high percentage of Catholics like France (90%), Ireland (92%), and
Poland (95%) have growth rate of only 0.5% while the Philippines with 83% Catholics has 2.5 % growth rate. Italy
with 100% Catholic has a growth rate of only 0.2%.

The Executive Intelligence Review of Sept. 11, l998 found that 30 of 150 countries have falling or decreasing
population and 16 countries had zero growth and all of them are industrialized progressive countries. In the U.S.A.
the growth rate is 0.6%.  Perhaps this could even be much lower if not for the high rate of immigration.  The
Philippines growth rate was reported as 2.04% in this study.

In underdeveloped countries the average growth rate is 2% while in developed countries it is only 0.4% to
0.7%.  This seems to collaborate with the common observation that the poor people we know have the tendency to
have so many children while the rich oftentimes have only two or three children.

What conclusion could we draw from these statistics and observation?  My nephew who was a rural doctor
in Samar participated in a government project promoting the use of contraceptives in an attempt to help cut down
population growth.  It was a failure and he jokingly told me that instead of giving them contraceptives, we would be
more effective if we give each family a television set.  He said that when people are poor they have no other pleasure
except in the bedroom.  Most are unemployed so they stay home most of the time.  They have no sports, news,
movies and programs to watch since they have no TV to occupy their minds and they cannot afford to do much
socializing.  Perhaps this is a better explanation why underdeveloped countries have higher growth rate and the
richer countries have decreasing or zero population growth regardless of religious orientation.

Therefore, population growth is inversely affected by the economy of the nation or of a family. The low
economic level of the Philippines is the major cause of an accelerated growth of population rather than the population
explosion as a major cause of poverty of the country.

Therefore, contrary to the conclusion of the Wallace Report that ECONOMIES GROW FASTER IF
POPULATION GROWS SLOWER which blames population growth as cause of sluggish economy I maintain that
POPULATION GROWS SLOWER WHEN ECONOMIES GROWS FASTER. I blame the poor economy as the major
cause of population explosion rather than the population explosion as the cause of the poor economy.  But I have to
admit that our accelerated population growth is not helping our economy.

Improving the economic level of the people is therefore a much more effective way of birth control than any
other method. Statistics also show that the Catholic Church is not the cause of accelerated population growth in the
Philippines.

Since we already have this vast manpower the logical thing to do is to utilize it by providing innovative
projects and ways of producing wealth. This way we would then be solving both problems of poverty and population
explosion.

With this in mind, GLOBAL FILIPINOS FOR PROGRESS is developing programs utilizing our most valuable
asset: people.  Click on PROGRAMS in our website - http://www.globalfilipinosforprogress.org and read about our
GFP UNITED LENDING PROGRAM (GFPULP).  I also invite you to read Part I and II of “BULLDOZERS AND
PEOPLE” under ARTICLES which serve as background of GFPULP.