On overpopulation

We give long-overdue space for a letter sent by Ching D. Aunario reacting to a letter published in my column last May 6, 2014.

Here’s Aunario’s piece:

“The letter quoted in the article mentioned that because of ‘overpopulation’ there is not much of the budget that is ‘left for infrastructure, manufacturing and agricultural support ....’ He further mentioned that there is an ‘oversupply of labor’ and ‘inadequate job opportunities due to graft and corruption.’

“The billions of pesos of taxpayers’ money allocated  to implement the RH law can be put to better use in, as mentioned, infrastructure, manufacturing and agricultural support.

“As elucidated by Simon Kuznets, Nobel Prize winner in the science of economics, and many later studies confirmed this: there is no correlation, ‘no clear association’ between population growth and economic development.

“Neither is population control one of the ingredients for high economic growth. The five ingredients, or growth factors, found by the 2008 Commission on Growth and Development headed by Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence are: governance, openness to knowledge, stable finances, market allocation, investment and savings.

“The Philippines loses P300 billion to corruption every year, which is more than enough to create job opportunities to answer the alleged “oversupply of labor.””

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