population and inequality

This piece contains a strange line:
"Population *control* has led to magnified global inequality..." ???

This makes no sense, and is certainly not substantiated in any way.

What makes much more sense is that high fertility levels and large numbers
of proletarians lead to magnified inequality -- in other words, population
*growth* has led to magnified inequality, not population control.

Marx coined the term "reserve army of the unemployed," and mainstream
economics relies on a similar concept.  Capitalists don't want a tight
labor market -- it tends to drive up wages.  One way to make sure there
are more workers than jobs is to create an excess number of workers, and
in demographic terms, this points to fertility and/or migration (there
being only 3 parts to demography -- birth/fertility, death/mortality, and
moving around/migration.

I'll reiterate what I've said before -- ruling class population control
may aim to oppress people (although this is certainly not the case when
it comes to the Worldwatch Institute and numerous NGOS, including many
womens' and feminist organizations), but to the extent it succeeds it
is almost certain to improve peoples' lives, not make them more miserable.

Sometimes it is more revealing to look at outcomes than motives, which is
a reason not to focus exclusively on the level of ideological critique.

RH


[Another excellent source on this topic is:

Lindahl Kessling, Kerstin and Hans Landberg.  1994.  Population, Economic
        Development, and the Environment.  Oxford U. Press.

It contains contributions from Amartya Sen, the ecologist C.S. Holling, 
and the anthropologist Carolyn Bledsoe, who explains the quite rational
basis for the high fertility rates of Sub-Saharan Africa.]