My answer: STUPID PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BREED!

But, that would be morally "wrong" wouldn't it.

and then there are different ways to define "stupid"

Rox, Yes, that's the problem. But, I would say: "If you can't support yourself, there's a good chance you will not be able to support offspring". Ergo, to have a child in these circumstances could be called "imprudent" at best.

The best way to induce population control is to enrich the population. People with money for options in their lives don't have as many children - excluding families with men whose egos need to be reinforced by their babymaking proclivities because they have nothing else going for them and they won't spend any time raising them anyway!

This is a generalization but it is true in a large enough % of instances that it works. Look at Western Europe: their individual wealth has risen in the past 50 years and their populations have fallen to below the replacement line. Of course, in my humble opinion, there are a number of European countries that I would love to see disappear altogether.

As China leaps into a higher % of middle class, and more citified than countrified, their need to prevent population growth in those regions has diminished.

The biggest populators are the poorest nations in the world and nations where children are the only asset a family might have.

My own feeling is that it doesn't matter what we do. Nature has its own devious ways of leveling the playing field eventually. When there are too many children, nature will provide more guns so they can kill each other ... either one at a time in cities or by the hundreds a day in wars.

The best population control in some of the neighborhoods I've lived in was small houses that you couldn't stuff many people in. Those that wanted large families moved elsewhere ... where I didn't have to deal with them.

What makes you think we need world population control?

There are only 6,634,570,959 (12/01/07) of us.

BTW Milt T is correct about improved economic conditions leading to reduced reproduction.

setting aside the fact that this has been well documented, it simply makes sense, people that are busy making money have less time to make babies--ever been caught in a prolonged snowstorm? Nine months later--baby boom.

Population control where?

Is anyone here aware of the birthrates in Russia, Europe, Japan? All well below replacement rate. Russia's running about .7 per woman. (Replacement's 2.1 per woman) Think through the implications of what I just wrote. By the end of this century, this planet will be a very different place, culturally. The Europe we have known, languages, culture, will exist only in remnants. Higher learning? Science? Forget it.

I could go on, but I thought I'd throw out this to see how folk respond, if at all.

I find that a lot of people my age absorbed the ideas from Paul Ehrlich's books, haven't learned anything since and haven't noticed that nothing the man wrote has any connection with reality.