Overpopulation is related to the issue of
birth control; some nations, like the People's Republic of China, use strict measures to reduce birth rates. Religious and ideological opposition to birth control has been cited as a factor contributing to overpopulation and poverty. Some leaders and environmentalists (as well as business magnates such as
Ted Turner) have suggested that there is an urgent need to strictly implement a China-like
one-child policy globally by the United Nations, because this would help control and reduce population gradually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#cite_note-241
Indira Gandhi, late Prime Minister of India, implemented a forced
sterilization programme in the 1970s. Officially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant men were also believed to have been sterilized. This program is still remembered and criticized in India, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to
family planning, which hampered Government programmes for decades.
Urban designer Michael E. Arth has proposed a "choice-based, marketable birth license plan" he calls "
birth credits". Birth credits would allow any woman to have as many children as she wants, as long as she buys a license for any children beyond an average allotment that would result in
zero population growth (ZPG). If that allotment was determined to be one child, for example, then the first child would be free, and the market would determine what the license fee for each additional child would cost. Extra credits would expire after a certain time, so these credits could not be hoarded by speculators. The actual cost of the credits would only be a fraction of the actual
cost of having and raising a child, so the credits would serve more as a wake-up call to women who might otherwise produce children without seriously considering the long term consequences to themselves or society¹