Lesson 9 Is It a Good Idea to Control Population Growth in the World？
　　Text What Overpopulation Feels Like We moved slowly through the city in a taxi and entered a crowded slum¹ district. The temperature was well over 100°and the air was thick with dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting each other, arguing and screaming. People pushing their hands through the taxi windows, begging. People relieving themselves. People holding on to the sides of buses. People leading animals. People, people, people, people. As we drove slowly through the crowd, sounding the taxi' s horn, the dust, heat, noise and cooking fires made it like a scene from Hell. Would we ever get to our hotel？ All three of us were, I admit, frightened. Since that night, I've known what overpopulation feels like.
　　Statistics² show that rapid population growth creates problems for developing countries. So why don't people have fewer children？ Statistics from the developed countries suggest that it is only when people' s living standards begin to rise that birth rates begin to fa11. There are good reasons for this. Poor countries cannot afford social services and old age pensions, and people's incomes are so low they have nothing tospare for savings³.
　　As a result, people look to their children to provide them with security in their old age. Having a large family can be a form of insurance. And even while they are still quite young, children can do a lot of useful jobs on a small farm . So poor people in a developing country will need to see clear signs of much better conditions ahead before they will think of having smaller families. But their conditions cannot be improved unless there is a reduction in the rate at which population is increasing. This will depend on a very much wider acceptance of family planning and this, in turn,will mean basic changes in attitudes.
　　II. Read Read the following passages. Underlirie the important viewpoints while reading. 1. Childless - and Happy That Way In a country where most people believe that a family is not a family without children, some young couples, especially those with a higher education, have chosen to keep their families to two members -husband and wife.“I can't afford to have a child,” said Wang, a promising⁴ research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
　　Wang has been busy travelling abroad and has received scholarship offers from a number of American universities that would enable him to complete his PhD.“He is a free bird who may leave the nest any day and I've never cared much about a child,” said Xiao Wei, Wang's wife, business representative of a French company in Beijing. Unlike the Wangs, Zhang and his wife have argued over whether they should have a baby.
　　“When we were married six years ago, we decided⁵ to adopt a waitand-see attitude on the issue. And after a couple of years, my wife said she wanted to have a baby while I insisted we were just fine without one. We have been arguing about the matter ever since, and now that we are over 30, I think we' re likely to end up in accordance with my wishes,” said Zhang.
　　“There are many marriages that should have long been broken. People just hold on because a divorce would hurt the children most and the parents hate to face that prospect⁶. So the couple sticks together and winds up torturing each other.”A real happy family is a family that, without children, is still a happy family, ？said Zhang. Ma Jiang, who has opened a trading company and was instantly nicknamed⁷ Money Bags by his friends, said he would hate to be bothered with a child.
　　“To me, being without a child, I am less bound by household chores and can concentrate on my business. My lovely wife is all I need, no third person,” he said. Ma' s wife, Xiao Lu, working for a government unit, could have quit her job and become dependent on her “rich” husband. But she decided against it.“I can' t imagine what I would be like if I stayed at home, doing household chores and breast-feeding a child. I' d rather keep my independence at all costs,” she said.
　　“Whatever people say, I believe that to have a child means a lot of sacrifice. We're just not ready for that, fun or misery,” Ma's wife said. Hou Mingkun and his wife Luo Qian said theyi weren't against having a child, boy or girl, if only the baby was physically⁸ well developed. “One takes a risk when having a baby. I've heard too many stories about children born with physical defects. Since-t-here's no guarantee that the same won't happen to my baby, I think I'd better not get myself involved. People say `no pain, no gain,' but for me it's no gain, no pain,” Luo said.
　　The couple were classmates in high school and went to the same university in Shanghai. Now, they are working for a computer company in Beijing. Those who choose not to have children have to overcome some unexpected   difficulties in defending their stance. Influenced by the traditional view that one's worst sin is having no descendants⁹, most people still accept that a wife is not a good wife if she doesn't have a child. Though few Chinese believe in an after-life, they do care a lot about growing old. For centuries, one of the purposes of having children, sons especially, was to have someone take care of the parents when they were old.
　　“Now, since both husband and wife are working, they will have a pension when they retire. What happens now is that the retired¹⁰ parents are supporting their adult children,” Wang said.“We're normal people, just like everyone else, We,ve just chosen to live our own way which harms no one. I hope people understand us,” Wang said.
　　2. Three Babies Are Born Every Second
　　There are over 3, 800 million people in the world today, and the total is increasing at the rate of .more than 76 million a year. United Nations experts have calculated that it could be more than 7, 000 million by thc end of this century. The population is growing more quickly in some parts of the world than others. The continents with the fastest growth rates are Latin America （2.9 per cent） and Africa （2.6 per cent）。 Asia comes third （2.1 per cent） but because its present population is so large it is there that by far the greatest number of people will be added before the end of the century.

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