Fertility Rate and Food Insecurity

  *  The Birth-Control Gag Rule is back.  Beginning with Reagan, Republican administrations have courted faith communities by withholding support from NGOs and agencies that provided abortion information.  I wonder whether the gag rule would survive widespread knowledge of the geographic relation between fertility rate and food insecurity.

The fertility-rate map can be found at http://globalfertilitymap.com/#4.3,20,3

The food-insecurity map can be found at http://www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Food-Security-A-2011-map-007.jpg

* The food-insecurity map corresponds exactly to the fertility-rate map. There are 42 countries with fertility rates above 4 children/woman, rates that would double or triple the population every 25 years.  Those same 42 countries experience the worst food insecurity.  No other countries experience severe food insecurity and no other countries have fertility rates above 4 children/woman.

* This relationship cries out for objective, rational, practical, ethical discussion.  I believe that fertility rate is the independent variable, that excessive population relative to agricultural output and/or extraction and manufacturing revenues results in food shortage.  That is, high birth rate causes food insecurity.
* The primary cause of high fertility rate is probably cultural, a social structure where high fertility is celebrated, perhaps formerly needed.

* Nevertheless, one might expect a vicious cycle wherein food insecurity would increase birth rate. Hungry citizens bind to their clans and ignore their society's future.  Fearful leaders of hungry people take refuge in kleptocracy and neglect societal needs.  Demoralized government workers are corruptible.  Thus, societal failure incident to food shortage can hinder rational responses to overpopulation and to food shortage.

* Regardless of the dynamic, NGOs and international agencies should and probably will do more to incentivize reproductive responsibility.  Food-secure countries will eventually despair of feeding exponentially growing food-insecure societies.  That's when the population bomb will explode.  The gag rule will be seen as unkind and dangerous.
  *  The essential problem of exponential population growth with limited resourses has been known for centuries:  Thomas Malthus (1798).
However, modern urbanization might render this concern irrelevant:  Empty Planet