Week 4

I believe that reducing population growth in developing countries will also reduce the amount of resources used by already developed countries. The following paragraphs explain three ways that population can be reduced.




Research shows that to reduce population growth in developing countries the most effective ways to slow the population rate are family planning, elevating the status of women and reducing poverty (Spoolman & Miller, 2009 p.87).



For people in developing countries, family planning will provide educational and clinical services to help couples to plan how many children they want and when they are going to have those children. This helps to reduce the number of births in populated areas because of the increase of knowledge and the availability of various types of contraceptives (Spoolman & Miller, 2009 p.88).



Educating women and young girls, allowing them to hold jobs and giving them more rights is another way that has proven to reduce how many babies women have. Provided education should also be given about sex education and how to maintain a household for teenage girls and women so that they have more of an understanding of how to care for themselves and their family (Spoolman & Miller, 2009 p98 and USAID, 2009).



Another way is to reduce poverty in developing countries. One of the strategies to reduce poverty is to introduce decision making into households. Research has shown that food is distributed unevenly between families and that man and boys take precedence over women and girls. It is also shown that more food is given to the older people in the household before the younger ones. Another way to reduce poverty is to introduce policies to ensure that women’s income is increased to the same level as men’s. The final part of this strategy is to introduce more rights for women (IDRC, 2010).



If resources are distributed evenly among the planet it will reduce the chance of poverty. Resources can be taken from the already developed societies where there is high resource consumptions and distributed so that there is enough resources for them and their developing nations. As a result of this the resources used by developed countries will become less and hopefully the developing societies will have enough resources to reduce their population using the above strategies.





References

Miller, G & Spoolman, S (2009). Sustaining the Earth 9th Ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Advantage



The International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Fighting Poverty in Developing Countries: Should the Focus Be on Households or Women (2010), Retrieved from: http://www.idrc.ca/cp/ev-25403-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html



USAID. Women in Development. (2009). Retrieved from: http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/wid/ed/