Malthusian Economics
Digg This!On January 27th, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (WSJ) published an opinion piece titled, “Speaker Nancy Malthus.”
It isn’t Speaker Pelosi whose thinking is seriously out-of-date. Inclusion of Medicaid family planning access in the economic stimulus package does not imply a belief that “more people mean less economic growth,” as the WSJ assumes. Equally unsubstantiated and even internally contradictory, is the editorial board’s rather medieval argument that we must produce more children to support us in our retirement (Although, after last year’s stock market crash, maybe children are the only pension plan we have left.) Although the editorial suggests that contraceptives as a part of an economic stimulus plan are ‘loopy,’ the editorial’s assertion that we need to have more children to maintain domestic consumption is clearly the all-out loopiest – tracing its roots, perhaps, to the ‘go shopping’ response to terrorist attacks. “Larger families have more credit cards, so have a larger family.”
Access to contraceptive care enables women to meet their educational goals, to participate fully in society, to time pregnancies for health as well as to achieve career aspirations. Family planning is voluntarily prevention of unintended pregnancies — meaning women and their families are able to determine for themselves whether and when to have children. The human capital connection is that the cost of unintended pregnancy is also borne by employers in the form of higher insurance premiums, more family medical leaves, substitution expenses, rehiring/recruitment costs, retraining costs, and lost productivity.
