Overpopulation

Recent Guardian headline: "Baroness Amos: Population growth could lead to non-stop food crisis . .
Returning from Niger, the UN humanitarian chief says education on family planning must be part of the development agenda."

Overpopulation causes poverty and environmental degradation and it is right to draw attention to this fact; but above all (surely) it's the other way round : poverty causes overpopulation and environmental degradation.

If there is no financial security in old age, children are your 'pension' and your support system in old age. If infant mortality is high, and you don't know know until your child has safely reached ten years old that it will survive into your old age, you have an incentive to keep having children. War and disease increase this pressure.

So although education and empowerment for women is essential, and there are cultural and religious pressures that are no longer appropriate, the most effective way of stabilising population growth is good health care available to all (but especially children), ditto support systems for the elderly.

Isn't this why population growth has slowed significantly in Europe. I believe that Italy - a Roman Catholic country - has a negative indigenous population growth rate.