LETTER: Population growth, famine are not looming disasters

In response to letters criticizing Review-Journal columnist Victor Joecks’ recent piece urging people to have more children:

The rate of world population growth, which is currently at 1 percent, has been decreasing since 1988. Population experts predict that the world growth will be zero by the end of the century, if not sooner. These reductions in growth are faster for the world’s developed countries, with Europe, Russia and China currently near 0 percent and Japan at a negative rate.

An argument can be made in the United States that we need more children. This makes economic sense here because the younger population helps support retirement programs for the elderly, which has grown from 13 percent of the U.S. population to 16 percent in the past decade. Social Security has little reserve and relies on current payments of the working population.

Another argument for more children can be made in the fact that youth would contribute to new ideas and products.

In terms of food, we have ample supplies worldwide to meet the small incremental population growth. But the difficulty is getting it from the producers to the consumers. (This has been exacerbated recently due to supply chain issues.)

I agree that we have been deficient in appropriately conserving our finite natural resources. But that is independent of the population of the world. We must do better here.