The first thing that comes to our mind when discussing the government intervention on population growth is always the controversial one-child policy of the People’s Republic of China, a policy imposed in the 1980s, aimed to stabilize the supply of food and water and improve individual prosperity (Moore, 2014). Nowadays, the focus of the world on population growth shifts from birth control to immigration control, as a surprising report showed that 80% of U.S. population growth comes from immigrants (Bedard, 2014), and how the governments respond to the issues has become a new talking point.
As far as the population growth is concerned, Hong Kong and Japan are the two extreme cases that should be addressed, as Hong Kong accepted too many Chinese …show more content…
Under the current policy, about 150 Chinese immigrants are allowed to move into Hong Kong, which is about 54,000 people per year (Lai, 2012). According to the survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (2012), over half of the interviewees said that the new immigrants depended on the welfare benefits rather than making contributions to society and would like to see a reduction in the number of Chinese immigrants (ibid). These may not be seen as serious problem for other countries. However, the immigrants almost doubled Hong Kong’s natural growth of population and they exacerbated the overcrowding issues, as Hong Kong was already the 4th in the world in terms of population density. And most importantly, the vast majority of the immigrants were less educated workers, with only 16% of them were with a college degree or above according to the Hong Kong government statistics in 2014. Furthermore, they are entitled to the social assistance without any residency requirements (Luk, 2013), which is seen as unfair for the hard-working Hongkongers. In order to stabilize the society, the government should intervene on the population growth by restricting the number of immigrants from …show more content…
However, many people consider reproduction as a basic human right and “the government intervention in family decision-making will have a high cost to human rights and well-being” (Harris, p.129, 2001). In terms of intervention on birth control, instead of setting up a restriction to limit the number of babies, governments of developing countries should provide education on contraception and improve the income prospects of women to reduce desired fertility, as the one-child policy in China has proven to be a failure with family killing their children, especially girls, since Chinese think that boys are likely to find a higher-paid job, and that led to gender
As far as the population growth is concerned, Hong Kong and Japan are the two extreme cases that should be addressed, as Hong Kong accepted too many Chinese …show more content…
Under the current policy, about 150 Chinese immigrants are allowed to move into Hong Kong, which is about 54,000 people per year (Lai, 2012). According to the survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (2012), over half of the interviewees said that the new immigrants depended on the welfare benefits rather than making contributions to society and would like to see a reduction in the number of Chinese immigrants (ibid). These may not be seen as serious problem for other countries. However, the immigrants almost doubled Hong Kong’s natural growth of population and they exacerbated the overcrowding issues, as Hong Kong was already the 4th in the world in terms of population density. And most importantly, the vast majority of the immigrants were less educated workers, with only 16% of them were with a college degree or above according to the Hong Kong government statistics in 2014. Furthermore, they are entitled to the social assistance without any residency requirements (Luk, 2013), which is seen as unfair for the hard-working Hongkongers. In order to stabilize the society, the government should intervene on the population growth by restricting the number of immigrants from …show more content…
However, many people consider reproduction as a basic human right and “the government intervention in family decision-making will have a high cost to human rights and well-being” (Harris, p.129, 2001). In terms of intervention on birth control, instead of setting up a restriction to limit the number of babies, governments of developing countries should provide education on contraception and improve the income prospects of women to reduce desired fertility, as the one-child policy in China has proven to be a failure with family killing their children, especially girls, since Chinese think that boys are likely to find a higher-paid job, and that led to gender