I enjoyed Amanda Hoover’s article in today’s BG News, but I did want to let you know that there are some population experts right here on campus who maybe could have provided some valuable information and thus allowed her to have avoided making the several factual errors in her article.
Many professors in the Sociology Department could have told her, for example, that two births per fertile female of childbearing age would not result in zero population growth, but rather a population drop, since any number (it would vary from country to country, of course) of those children will not live to have children of their own.
Six to 10 percent of those born would be homosexual, and may or may not have children of their own.
A varying number of people (varying by location, once again) will be infertile. And a varying number of people won’t have kids simply because they don’t want to.
So while her intentions were good, that is, calling attention to this issue, it may be wise to ask around before proposing a plan to solve it.
Beyond that, a typo perhaps, but Africa is a continent, not a country, and the use of the term ‘developing’ implies poverty and a general lack of technology was an original historical condition and not caused by colonization, imperialism, and exploitation over hundreds of years.
Many feel it is more accurate to refer to these countries as being underdeveloped by Western imperialist powers (note the use of underdeveloped as a verb), but others use maldeveloped, which refers to countries that were purposefully badly developed by colonizers to facilitate their economic exploitation.
JASON LAMB
GRADUATE STUDENT
