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(-- from Sh'ma 12/221, November 13, 1981)

Rethinking the Population Explosion

By Julian L. Simon

It is a mitzvah to have additional children, other considerations aside. But it is also a mitzvah to balance the principle of peru urevu (be fruitful and multiply) with the well-being of the family, especially with the considerations of health and shalom bayit (the peacefulness of the home). This is the traditional Jewish viewpoint as summarized in the penultimate paragraph of Rabbi David Feldman's well-known and interesting book, Marital Relations, Birth Control, and Abortion in Jewish Law.

But then in the very last paragraph of the book, Feldman introduces for the very first time a set of radically different and non-Talmudic considerations, which he offers as qualifications to the book's Talmudic conclusions. These non-Talmudic considerations may be summarized as follows: 1) There is a "population explosion" which is a "world problem." This implies that the human race must restrain its fertility; "it would be just as recklessly self-indulgent to overbreed as to refrain from procreation." That is, peru urevu is not the simple mitzvah stated in Jewish Law. 2) But in contrast to the population "problem of the world at large," the Jewish community need not restrain its fertility, because the Jewish community must "replenish its depleted ranks" after the Holocaust.

These non-Talmudic qualifications are, respectively, factually and morally inappropriate, in my view. If so, it follows--given the basic Jewish value judgments-that the Talmudic view is appropriate for both Jews and non-Jews, without qualifications deriving from present world population conditions. I'll take up these matters in the opposite order than listed above.

The argument is a bit confusing because it seems to change direction. I'll first argue that the Jews have no special claim to have as many children as they wish. But then I will seem to reverse direction when I argue that no special claim is needed.

Actually, there is no contradiction in these two arguments and the matter of special claim might simply be ignored. But it runs the risk of reaching the right conclusion for the wrong reason, which is not helpful, especially when there are excellent grounds for reaching that conclusion.

Jews Have No Special Claims

If world conditions really do imply, "scientifically" and "objectively," that population growth ought to cease or be lower than it is, why should the Jews be less subject to this requirement than any other group? Feldman's answer is that Jews have suffered grave losses in numbers, a) by exile and other social forces, and b) by murder. But if reduction in numbers by social forces gives a group a special warrant to reproduce, then why do the Jews have a better warrant than the Assyrians, the Aztecs, and goodness knows how many other groups? And if being murdered gives a group such a warrant, then what about the Armenians, American Indians, Russians, and others? With the aid of a good lawyer, any group could work up an impressive argument that it has a special right to reproduce.

Feldman's brief for the Jews finds response in my heart because I'm a Jew and I wish that there be many Jews now and forever. But the basis for his brief really is only special pleading.

The matter of a special Jewish claim to reproduction rights is irrelevant, however, because there is no purely "objective" or "scientific" case for reducing or stopping U.S. population growth. Hence no one, neither Jew or non-Jew, needs to justify to others his desire for more children. A brief summary of scientific knowledge of the subject is as follows (the subject is discussed at length in my book, The Economics of Population Growth, Princeton University Press, 1977):

1. In the short run, the average person in a society will have a higher income if the birth rate is lower, just as each child in a family can be given more material goods by the parents if there are fewer children. But most of the short-run costs of an additional child are borne by his or her family rather than by others in the society. So the short-run effect of a child upon the rest of society is small.

2. During the first years that the additional person is in the labor force, he or she may have a moderate negative effect on the average income of others. But this effect is smaller and less certain than is usually thought.

3. After a few years in the labor force, the net impact on others of the additional person is likely to become quite positive, as the person's contributions to the level of productivity and market size begin to be felt. This long-run positive effect is much larger than the shorter-run negative effects. If we give a reasonable weight to the future's importance relative to that of the present, the overall effect of an added person upon the incomes of others is positive.

4. Natural resources also do not constitute a solid reason to limit fertility, according to the best views of the economic profession.

Special Jewish Value

So whether an additional child is good or bad from the viewpoint of society (other than the child's parents) depends upon 1) how you weigh the short-run small negative economic effects versus the long-run large positive economic effects, and 2) how you weigh the human value of there being more rather than less children and life. Hence even if-contrary to the spirit of Judaism-one placed no special value on more people and more life, it would be strictly a matter of taste and values about how to weigh small economic costs in the short-run versus the big economic gains in the long-run.

But Judaism does have a special value about life and people-peru urevu. So Jews as Jews may, and ought to, desire and give life to more children--subject, of course, to such constraints as health and shalom bayit discussed so well by Rabbi Feldman up until just before the very last paragraph of his book.