Close the borders?

In "From Readers" (July/August), Derek Dexheimer commented on an article by Radhika Sarin in the May/June issue. Dexheimer suggested that World Watch prefers to avoid the problem of population growth, and Sarin responded. In the following issue, four more people chimed in--suggesting that this is an issue of some interest.

I agree with Dexheimer, but do not think he went far enough. In recent Worldwatch papers, you hardly find a population control agenda at all, but rather a social agenda and a feminist agenda--put forward with the bold assertion that those agendas will somehow bring about population control as a fortunate byproduct. For example, Sarin, in an editorial in the March/April issue, asserts that the well-being of people, not controlling births, is the key to population stabilization. In Worldwatch Paper 161, Correcting Gender Myopia, Danielle Nierenberg writes (on page 20) that a stable or gradually declining population can be seen as a helpful side benefit of efforts that improve women's lives. I do understand, from reading other Worldwatch papers, that in many countries better educated and more affluent women do have fewer children. To count on increased well-being and women's rights to bring about population control as a helpful side benefit, however, is foolish.

When Worldwatch authors write about improving women's lives in general, and about providing for their reproductive rights in particular, it is clear that they do not mean just their right to have as few children as they want, but rather as few or as many. Nierenberg notes on page 44, with apparent approval, that governments in developing countries are moving away from bureaucratically imposed population control and toward supporting the choices of couples to have children when desired.

I understand (see for example the essay by Eugene Linden in Time, June 24, 1994), that the birth rate of Mexican women living in the United States is higher than the birth rate of women still living in Mexico. That's because there is less well-being here? Less improvement in their lives? Less equality? Less education?

The constructive course is for affluent countries to close their borders, enjoy their affluence, and say to the rest of the world, "Look, if you want to be affluent like we are, limit your populations like we did."

WARNER WILSON

Las Vegas, Nevada

A question for you, from the editor: Would you also recommend that the affluent countries close their borders to the importation of wealth-building raw materials extracted (often without permission) from the lands of less affluent people in other countries, as detailed in the cover stories of this issue? The notion that a country like the United States derives its affluence entirely or even mainly from its own resources, resourcefulness, or national virtue is wishful thinking. Just to focus on one recently prominent case, if U.S. borders were closed, Wal-Mart would not only no longer be able to provide the cheap goods that made it the world's largest and richest corporation (and help U.S. citizens "enjoy their affluence"); it would have a devil of a time even getting its bathrooms cleaned. Population stabilization is a vexingly complex undertaking, but certainly a key truth about it is that it is intimately linked to social and economic conditions that transcend borders.