Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
providing famine relief, is creating or maintaining the problem rather than
solving it. Providing medical services often starts with improving sanitation, and
the effect is to reduce infant mortality and help the survival of infants under one
year old. This increases population pressure on a limited resource of land and
water. Birth control, a more significant long-term approach, has proved difficult
to enact in Asia and Africa. In Latin America, it has been positively resisted by
people since it is not endorsed by the Catholic Church. Coming as an initiative of
outsiders, it is also seen as an imposition of the rich countries on the poor—the
rich wish the poor to limit their families so that more surplus is available for
export to the rich.
The ideas of balance presented earlier mean that improvements in medical
services of all kinds are best introduced alongside economic improvements;
economic improvement in line with social service improvement means that extra
production can support a larger population and the demand for more services. In
the event this is what tends to happen through the transitions described earlier,
transitions that occur universally and spontaneously, without the need for special
institutions to carry them through. Demographic transition to low birth and death
rates comes with increased urbanization and industrialisation of the country or
region.
