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Planned parenthood is considered as a basic human right. Population economist Gunnar Myrdal perceived snags in the theory that a lower dependency burden gives rise to a higher rate of physical investment in economic growth. A better case for population control can be made by speaking about the rising pressure of human wants on limited resources and a struggle for these resources. Planned parenthood becomes meaningless when most parents cannot plan their own lives or that of their children. Demographic transition in the West was a product of social change which reduced the capacity or willingness of people to raise large families. The family acts as a saving and a capital forming unit, a role which it is compelled to adopt in the absence of cheap institutional credit. China seems to have created the social basis for population control. Two lessons that can be learnt from Chinese experience is about the demand to limit fertility which should come from a caring and disciplining social whole and secondly that presenting population control as a cure for poverty carries no conviction. Planned parenthood can find social acceptance as a rearguard action against poverty.

The article presents information on a handbook on the technology of sheep-herding. This handbook reverses the traditional moral and political hierarchy that elevated literary amateurism above the pursuit of technical skill. The author remarks that for four generations, his ancestors herded sheep for landlords, and each generation was so poor that there was not a single tile to cover the roof and not a single plot of land to stand on. His grandfather used to be a husky fellow, but because he herded sheep for a landlord, his back became hunched, and he was afflicted with many ailments. He coughed a good deal and would spit up half a bowl of saliva mixed with blood. The author's father herded sheep for landlord Chiang Kuei-sheng, but after a year of hardships, he could no longer support his aged and bed-ridden grandfather. The author's family had to beg from relatives and friends and borrow from here and there in order to raise forty strings of cash to give to the landlord Chiang Kuei-sheng.

The article focuses on the condition of poor miners in China. When miner Wang Man-hsi, who had just reached the age of sixty, returned to his home, the young people vied with each other to greet him, and surrounded him in the house. The newly painted parlor had been redecorated by the young people. Pointing to a side lantern used by miners in the old society that was hanging on the wall, a mischievous youth jokingly commented to his mother. Everybody laughed after hearing the comment. Old man Man-hsi, who was then sitting in his chair, jumped up, and taking the side lantern in his hands, said that in the old society, when miners went down into the shaft, they used two kinds of lanterns. The haulers used a lantern which was put on the head, and it was called a head lantern, the coal cutters used the lantern hung on the colliery wall, and it was called a side lantern. These lanterns burned vegetable oil, and rags were used as wicks. After his parents' death, his brother became dependent on him. Some of the uncles who used to work in the mine with his father would sometimes give them some money and grain.

This article focuses on the poor people's cave, in China. This cave is five to six feet high, seven to eight feet wide, and twenty to thirty feet long, had been shared for many generations by several poor families. The occupants of the cave were those who had been reduced to abject poverty because of the exploitation by landlords and rich peasants. Since the liberation, the poor people's cave has been preserved as historical evidence of the exploitation of peasants by the landlord class. It has been completely restored and preserved by the Hsiao-sung Production Brigade of the Kao-ho Commune in Chtang-ch'ih hsien as a tool for the class education of young people. Early on the morning of May 5, 1943, a man of medium stature was helping an old woman along on her way from the temple of the local deity to the poor people's cave in northwestern Hsiao-sung Village. A little over thirty, with an emaciated face, the man carried a broken earthen vessel in his hand and shabby quilt on his shoulder.