IN HIS Sept. 30 column titled “All population statistics wrong, except mine,” Rigoberto Tiglao wrote: “The 2004 study [of Mapa and Balisacan, ‘Quantifying the Impact of Population on Economic Growth and Poverty’] dramatically demonstrated that if the Philippines had a lower population growth rate at the level of Thailand from 1975-2000, the average income per capita in 2000 would have been $4,839 or four times more than the actual $1,030, and 3.6 million Filipinos would have been brought out of poverty.”
The reasoning behind this statement is simplistic and fallacious. It goes like this: if the country earns $1,000 per capita per year and you slice the population by half, then the remaining population will earn twice as much. Less people means you can get more of the pie. Will a poor family get out of poverty once there are less people around? Will a poor family earn more if there were less people around?
Statistics can be misleading. Numbers can deceive even if they are factual and correct. Having fewer people does not necessarily mean you can get more of the pie. Having fewer people really means less economic activity. A poor family in the countryside selling lumpia would want as many people to come and buy the lumpia it produces. If you decimate the population, fewer people would buy its lumpia. Will the family be richer?
The causes of poverty lie elsewhere and not in the size of a country’s population. Look at the richest countries in the world: the United States and China. They have big populations. Numbers count.
—FR. CECILIO L. MAGSINO,
Lauan Study Center,
111 B. Gonzales St.,
Loyola Heights, Quezon City
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