Debate: Is it better to have a large population or a small population?

Dialogue between Population and Family Planning —— Is a country with a large population better or a country with a small population better?

yafu he

A: I think the smaller the population density of a country, the easier it is to get rich. For example, Canada and Australia are both sparsely populated countries, and they are both very rich; China and India are both relatively poor countries with high population density.

B: You cite the examples of Canada and Australia, and I can also cite the examples of Japan and Germany to refute you. As can be seen from the ranking of GDP per capita in various countries, there are both countries with vast land and sparsely populated areas and countries with narrow land and dense population. In fact, whether a country is rich or not depends mainly on population quality and economic system, and the population is only a secondary factor.

A: Other things being equal, a small population is definitely easier to get rich than a large population. For example, if Japan's population is halved, then Japan will definitely be richer than it is now.

B: If you say so, why should Japan encourage childbearing now? Is it easier to get rich with a small population than with a large population? It can only be established under one condition-that is, a country's economic income mainly depends on the sale of natural resources. Such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But for most countries in the world, if the economic policy is correct, then a large population is more conducive to the country's economic development than a small population.

A: China and India have large populations. Why didn't these two countries get rich?

B: The reason for poverty in China and India is not overpopulation. Other things being equal, if the population of China and India were reduced to 500 million, these two countries would still be as poor as they are now. Unless these two countries reduce their population to10 million and live by selling natural resources, this is obviously unrealistic. To take a step back, even assuming that the population of these two countries can be reduced to10 million, I am afraid that even national security cannot be guaranteed by then.

A: I think, other things being equal, a small population is definitely easier to get rich than a large population. The reason is simple: if one person plants an acre of land, the per capita income will definitely be higher than that of two people.

B: If a country's main industry is agriculture, then your view may be correct. However, for most countries in the world, agriculture accounts for less than half of GDP. For industrial countries, a well-educated population is the most precious human resource, because wealth is created by people. How much wealth you create depends on the products and services you create and their popularity. The more people there are, the more demand there will be for your products, and the more competitors there will be, thus promoting technological progress. The higher the population density, the lower the cost of promoting your products and services. With a large population and a large market, large-scale production will benefit and large enterprises will appear. It can be said that with the increase of population, its economy can only be more developed and its per capita income will be higher.

A: In my opinion, poor land and overpopulation are the main reasons for a country's poverty, because with a large population, there are fewer natural resources per capita.

B: If so, the large-scale migration from poor countries to rich countries will obviously narrow the income gap between the two countries. However, although Ireland has immigrated a lot in the past 100 years, the population density has dropped from higher than that of Britain to only 1/5, and the per capita income is still lower than that of Britain. Argentina's per capita income was among the highest in the world at the beginning of the last century, but it has been declining since then and is currently at the level of developing countries. During this period, the population density of Argentina has been very low, only 1 1 person per square kilometer.

A: For a family, having only one child is definitely easier to get rich than having two children. Because there are more children when parents' income is fixed, parents will invest less in each child's education. The less education children receive, the worse their ability to create wealth.

B: Compulsory education should be invested by the state; University education also depends on loans. From an economic point of view, once you are trained as an adult, the wealth you create must be far greater than the investment in you, so the money given by the state can be slowly recovered through tax collection after you work, and then used to train your next generation. From a national perspective, this business is very cost-effective. At present, China's compulsory education is not worthy of the name, which is the responsibility of the state and cannot be the reason for "having only one good child".

A: Anyway, China is overpopulated, so family planning must be implemented.

B: Whether there is "overpopulation" in a country has nothing to do with its population. The so-called "overpopulation" is actually caused by economic policy mistakes. It is precisely those countries with slow economic development that cannot provide full employment opportunities that have "overpopulation"; However, those countries and regions with rapid economic development can provide sufficient employment opportunities and successfully realize population urbanization. Even though the population density was high at first and the per capita resources were few, when the economy developed to a certain extent, they felt that the labor force was very scarce. After World War II, only a few developing countries or regions, such as the Asian Four Little Dragons, really caught up with or greatly narrowed the gap with developed countries. The population density in these areas is very high, even much higher than that in Chinese mainland. For example, the population density of South Korea is 470 people /km2, and that of China is 135 people /km2.

A: Korea is a small country, which is of course easy to develop; China is a big country with a large population base, so it is certainly not easy to develop.

B: According to you, if every province in China becomes an independent country, the population will be less, so will each provincial capital develop better? The answer is obviously no, in fact, big countries have more development advantages than small countries. For example, a country with a large population is bound to print more banknotes, and a large number of banknotes are in the hands of a large number of people, which is conducive to the stability of the currency and has the advantage of becoming a world currency; However, the currency issued by small countries is only a little bit. If it is fired by speculators several times, it may collapse. For another example, in a country with a large population, the proportion of soldiers in the population can be relatively small, and the proportion of defense expenditure in GDP is relatively small.

So, do you think the more people a country has, the better?

B: I don't think the larger the population, the better. I don't think the smaller the population, the better. I think the most important thing is a reasonable population structure. The reasonable population structure is to keep the total fertility rate near the replacement level of 2. 1, preferably between 2.0 and 2.5. If the fertility rate is much higher than the replacement level, then the child dependency ratio will be too high; If the fertility rate is far below the replacement level, it will lead to serious population aging. At present, the total fertility rate in China is extremely low (the fifth census data is only 1.22), so it is time to stop the current family planning.