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POLICYRESEARCHDIVISION
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Population Policy: A Concise
Summary
Paul Demeny
2003 No. 173
Paul Demeny is Distinguished Scholar, Population Council, New York.
Forthcoming in International Encyclopedia of Population, Paul Demeny and Geoffrey
McNicoll, editors (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2003).
Population Policy: A Concise Summary
Paul Demeny
This material may not be reproduced without written permission from the author. For a
list of Policy Research Division Working Papers, including those available for down-
loading in PDF format, see www.popcouncil.org/publications/wp/prd/rdwplist.html.
Abstract
Population policies are deliberately constructed or modified institutional ar-
rangements and/or specific programs through which governments influence, directly
or indirectly, demographic change. For any given country, the aim of population
policy may be narrowly construed as bringing about quantitative changes in the
membership of the territorially circumscribed population under the government's
jurisdiction. Governments' concern with population matters can also extend beyond
the borders of their own jurisdictions. Thus, international aspects of population policy
have become increasingly salient in the contemporary world. Additions to the popu-
lation are primarily the result of individual decisions concerning childbearing. Within
the constraints of their social milieu, these decisions reflect an implicit calculus by
parents about the private costs and benefits of children. But neither costs nor ben-
efits of fertility are likely to be fully internal to the family: they can also impose
burdens and advantages on others in the society. Such externalities, negative and
positive, represent a legitimate concern for all those affected. The paper briefly
discusses how individual and collective interests were reconciled in traditional soci-
eties, summarizes the population policy approaches adopted by the classic liberal
state, and sketches government responses to the low-fertility demographic regime
that emerged in the West between the two World Wars. In greater detail it considers
international population policies after World War II and contemporary population
policy responses to below-replacement fertility.
Population policy may be defined as deliberately constructed or modified institu-
tional arrangements and/or specific programs through which governments influence,
directly or indirectly, demographic change.
The generality of the definition lends itself to varying interpretations. For any
given country, the aim of population policy may be narrowly construed as bringing
about quantitative changes in the membership of the territorially circumscribed popula-
tion under the government's jurisdiction. Additions to membership are effected only
through births and immigration, losses are caused by emigration and by deaths. Concern
with this last component is usually seen as a matter for health policy, leaving fertility
and migration as the key objects of governmental interest in population policy.
More broadly, policy intent may also aim at modification of qualitative aspects
of these phenomena--fertility and international migration--including the composition
of the population by various demographic characteristics and the population's spatial
distribution.
Furthermore, governments' concern with population matters can also extend be-
yond the borders of their own jurisdictions. International aspects of population policy
have become increasingly salient in the contemporary world.
POPULATION CONTROL IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES
Rulers of any political unit have a stake in the size and composition of the popu-
lation over which they have authority, hence an incentive to try to influence demo-
graphic change in a desired direction. Thus "population policy" may be said to have a
long history, starting at least with the empires of the ancient world. Greater numbers
tended to connote greater wealth and power, at least for those at the apex of the social
pyramid. Measures encouraging marriage and sometimes immigration testify to the pre-
vailing populationist sentiment among rulers throughout history.
But the leverage of the weak premodern state over fertility in traditional societies
was necessarily limited. The dominant influence setting the patterns of reproduction
was located, instead, in a deeper layer of social interaction. Births, the key element
affecting population change, are produced by individual couples--seemingly an intensely
private affair yet one in which the immediate kin group and the surrounding local soci-
4
ety in which that group is embedded have a material stake. All societies, if at varying
degrees, grant a measure of self-sovereignty to their members. An individual has certain
rights over his or her direction in life. But this is always subject to some constraints, not
only biological but also social. Well before rights and obligations are formally codified
in legal terms, they are established through spontaneous social interaction--a self-orga-
nizing process. Restrictions on freedom to act take the form of social expectations and
pressures that individuals can ignore only at considerable personal costs to themselves.
Typically, there is a strong expectation that men and women should marry and have
children. Parental and kin obligations in the matter of bringing up children are well
understood by all adults and informally enforced by the community. In most societies
there is the expectation that children are to be born to married couples only; that a man
can have one wife at a time; that a husband is obligated to support his wife and a father
his children; and that he can expect reciprocal services from them. And informal rules
shaped by community interest tend effectively to regulate the entry of foreigners.
The fabric of such demographically relevant behavioral stances, supported by
internalized personal norms and buttressed by religious injunctions, is a product of so-
cial evolution; how effective such institutions are becomes an important determinant of
societal success. As a classic statement of the British demographer Alexander Carr-
Saunders (1922: 223) put it, persons and groups of persons
are naturally selected on account of the customs they practise, just as they are
selected on account of their mental and physical characters. Those groups prac-
ticing the most advantageous customs will have an advantage in the constant
struggle between adjacent groups over those that practise less advantageous cus-
toms. Few customs can be more advantageous than those which limit the number
of a group to the desirable number....[In the traditional society] there would grow
up an idea that it was the right thing to bring up a certain limited number of
children, and the limitation of the family would be enforced by convention.
Given the harsh biological and economic constraints premodern societies invari-
ably experienced, that "desirable number" presupposed fairly high fertility: high enough
5
to provide a sufficient margin of safety over mortality. Successful societies--societies
that survived to the dawn of the modern era--thus obeyed the biblical injunction to be
fruitful and multiply, even though such multiplication as a matter of historical record
was necessarily very slow. But traditional demographic regimes resulting from sponta-
neous social interaction achieved modest growth rates at varying levels of fertility and
mortality. Early modern Western Europe succeeded in maintaining a relatively low av-
erage level of mortality by means of keeping birth rates low, primarily by means of a
fairly high average age of marriage and substantial proportions that remained perma-
nently single. A contrasting pattern, such as in India, combined early and universal mar-
riage and a consequent high level of fertility with slow population growth by virtue of
death rates that were also high, approximating the level of the birth rate. With respect to
the rate of population growth, these different combinations of birth and death rates in
traditional societies were very similar. The potential for rapid population growth that
might be triggered by a fall of mortality was, however, much higher when the premodern
equilibrium was the result of a combination of high mortality and high fertility.
RATIONALE FOR POPULATION POLICY
Modernity--the rise of democratic state formations reflecting the public interest
and the emergence of rapid economic development--brought about the realistic promise
of realizing age-old human aspirations for a better life. The state increasingly came to be
seen as an institution created by the voluntary association of free individuals to further
their interests. The central function of the state was to produce public goods--goods that
individuals cannot secure for themselves. The US Constitution, promulgated in 1789,
articulated key items in the collective interest concisely and with universal validity. The
aim of the Union formed by the People was, in the words of the Constitution's Preamble,
to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, pro-
mote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Pos-
terity." In pursuing such goals, regulation of immigration into a state's territory is clearly
defined as a public good, thus delineating a particular role for population policy. And
aggregate fertility may also be construed as a public good, if its level as determined by
spontaneous social interaction is too high or too low in terms of the collective interest.
6
The potential role of the state in regulating immigration is straightforward: indi-
viduals wishing to restrict or promote it cannot set up their own border patrols or issue
entry visas. Individual preferences in the matter, however, are likely to differ. It is the
task of the government to weigh and reconcile conflicting individual desires and come
up with a policy deemed the best under the accepted rules of the political process.
To claim a role for the state in the matter of fertility is more problematic. Addi-
tions to the population are the result of a multitude of individual decisions concerning
childbearing. Within the constraints of their social milieu, these decisions reflect an
implicit calculus by parents about the private costs and benefits of children to them. But
neither costs nor benefits of fertility are likely to be fully internal to the family: they can
also impose burdens and advantages on others in the society. Such externalities, nega-
tive and positive, represent a legitimate concern for all those affected. An individual's
influence on the fertility of other families, however, is very limited: there are no private
markets offering preferred patterns of aggregate demographic processes to individual
buyers. Remedying such market failure may then be attempted through intervention by
the state so as to affect individual behavior in order to best serve the common good--the
good of all individuals.
The earliest clear formulation of the population problem as a problem of coordi-
nation among individual preferences, hence establishment of the rationale for potential
state intervention in the matter of fertility, was given by William Foster Lloyd, an Ox-
ford mathematician and economist, in an essay published in 1833. In the spirit of the
Malthusian concerns of his time, Lloyd (1833/1968: 22­23) envisaged the possibility of
overpopulation even under conditions when all families have only the children they
actually want and suggested the direction in which remedy ought to be sought:
The simple fact of a country being overly populous...is not, of itself, sufficient
evidence that the fault lies in the people themselves, or a proof of the absence of
a prudential disposition. The fault may rest, not with them as individuals, but
with the constitution of society, of which they form part.
Population policy should therefore strive toward institutions and incentive systems--a
7
constitution of society--that provide signals to individuals guiding them to behave in
harmony with the collective interest.
POPULATION POLICY IN THE LIBERAL STATE
Technological progress and consequent improvements in the standard of living in
modernizing societies result in a far more effective control of mortality than was pos-
sible in the traditional society. But the fall of the death rate accelerates the rate of popu-
lation growth, which, in turn, could strain the capacity of the economic system to ac-
commodate the increased population numbers. Falling living standards then would once
again increase death rates, reestablishing an approximate balance between births and
deaths at a low standard of living. This was the pessimistic central vision of T. R. Malthus's
1798 Essay. But this outcome, although held to be highly probable, was, according to
Malthus, avoidable. Given sound public policies, there was an alternative to subsis-
tence-level equilibrium, both agreeable and achievable.
A salient element in the 1798 Essay, and in subsequent writings influenced by it,
was disapproval of the schemes for poor relief prevailing in Britain and elsewhere in
Europe--on the grounds that they were likely to encourage irresponsible reproduction.
Efforts of the paternalistic state to reduce poverty were held to be misguided; by stimu-
lating fertility, hence population growth, such efforts would generate only more misery.
Malthusians argued that the state's correct stance in demographic matters, as in the
economy at large, was laissez faire. This would foster the prudential habits among the
general population similar to those that already existed among the propertied classes. It
would do so by assuring that the costs of childbearing were not shared by society at
large but were primarily borne by the individual couples having children.
Heeding such a prescription did not imply that the state was to play a passive role
in demographic matters. Malthus's own writings, most clearly his 1820 tract Principles
of Political Economy (1989: 250­251), spell out a broad agenda which expresses the
philosophy that came to be dominant in the liberal states of the West in the nineteenth
century. Material improvements, such as higher wages for labor, could indeed be de-
feated if they would be "chiefly spent in the maintenance of large and frequent fami-
lies." But Malthus also envisaged a different, happier possible outcome: "a decided
8
improvement in the modes of subsistence, and the conveniences and comforts enjoyed,
without a proportionate acceleration of the rate of [population] increase."
The possibility of such diametrically different responses to the stimulus of higher
wages suggests a large element of indeterminacy in fertility behavior. To Malthus, the
causes of these divergent responses were to be found in the circumstances, social and
political, in which people lived--in particular, whether those circumstances hindered or
rewarded planning for the future. From his analysis he derived a prescription for a popu-
lation policy that would yield the hoped-for demographic outcome:
Of all the causes which tend to generate prudential habits among the lower classes
of society, the most essential is unquestionably civil liberty. No people can be
much accustomed to form plans for the future, who do not feel assured that their
industrious exertions, while fair and honourable, will be allowed to have free
scope; and that the property which they either posses, or may acquire, will be
secured to them by a known code of just laws impartially administered. But it has
been found by experience, that civil liberty cannot be secured without political
liberty. Consequently, political liberty becomes almost equally essential. (ibid.)
During the long nineteenth century--which may be thought of as stretching to
the outbreak of the First World War--the politics in Europe and in its overseas off-
shoots favored, even if imperfectly, the development of institutional and legal frame-
works in harmony with such principles. This, in interaction with economic and cultural
changes shaped by the industrial revolution, created a milieu that fostered the pruden-
tial habits of parents, rendering the micro-level calculus of the costs and benefits of
children increasingly salient. Rising demand for labor, including greater use of child
labor, and rising income levels tended to sustain high fertility or even to stimulate it.
But rising material expectations, broadening opportunities for social mobility, and the
patterns and circumstances of urban living pulled in the opposite direction. This was
powerfully reinforced by some programmatic activities that were consistent with the
limited role the liberal state claimed in managing the economy. These included public
health programs and projects aimed at improving basic infrastructure for transport and
9
communication. And most importantly, the state, or local government, assumed a key
role in fostering, organizing, and financing public education. At basic levels school
attendance was made mandatory and enforced and, in parallel, labor laws curtailed the
employment of children.
Reflecting long-standing cultural values and religious injunctions, and contrary
to laissez-faire principles, the liberal state generally banned the spreading of contracep-
tive information and the sale of contraceptive devices and made abortion illegal. Such
restrictions typically remained in effect well into the twentieth century. But by all evi-
dence, any upward pressure on fertility from these restrictions was swamped by the
downward pressure on parental demand for children resulting from the state policies
and programs just mentioned. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century birth rates
were falling rapidly in the countries of the West. In many cases, rates of population
growth fell also, despite continuing improvements in mortality. In Europe this trend was
facilitated by emigration, which both sending and receiving countries--notably the United
States, Canada, and Australia--either positively encouraged or at least permitted.
The stance of the liberal state on population policy thus brought about the pros-
pect of a new demographic equilibrium in the West that could be consistent with con-
tinuing material progress: achievement of a stationary population at low levels of fertil-
ity and mortality and allowing freedom of movement internationally.
POPULATION POLICY BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS
The massive losses of life resulting from World War I and from the influenza
pandemic in its immediate aftermath, and the sharp drop in the number of births during
the war years, were temporary disruptions in the steadily declining trends of fertility and
mortality characterizing the prewar decades in the West. Those trends soon made it
evident that there is no built-in guarantee that the sum total of individual fertility deci-
sions will eventually settle at a point at which, in the aggregate, the rate of population
growth will be exactly zero or fluctuate tightly around a zero rate. Although, owing to
relatively youthful age distributions, the rate of natural increase remained positive, by
the late 1920s demographers realized that fertility rates in several Western countries had
fallen to such a low level that, in the longer term, natural increase would become nega-
10
tive. This trend became more accentuated and more general under the impact of the
Great Depression. Some observers foresaw a "twilight of parenthood."
Just as excessive reproduction called for corrective public policies, there were
calls for corrective action achieving the opposite result: enhancing fertility so as to as-
sure at least the simple maintenance of the population. In some countries the ban on
contraceptives was tightened and the penalties on abortion were increased. These mea-
sures had little effect. Neither did, predictably, governmental exhortation appealing to
families to have more children.
The most promising avenue for population policy seemed to be to use the instru-
ments available to the state for redistributing income so as to reward demographic be-
havior considered socially desirable (and to discourage contrary behavior). By the 1930s
such pronatalist policies came to be fairly widely if rather tight-fistedly applied in a
number of countries. Among Europe's emerging democratic welfare states, Sweden and
France were pioneers in providing financial rewards and services in kind to families
with children, especially to larger families. (Sweden, however, also allowed liberal ac-
cess to contraception.) Similar policies were applied with equal or greater vigor in fas-
cist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Invariably, the proponents of such policies claimed some results in terms of birth
rates somewhat higher than would have been expected in their absence. But the latter
quantity is a hypothetical one, which introduces a necessary caution to such claims.
More pertinently, when average fertility is low, the birth rate in any given year is an
unreliable measure of long-run fertility. Couples have considerable latitude to time the
birth of their children earlier or later, without affecting the number of children they
ultimately wish to have. Logically, pronatalist policies seek to affect that lifetime total
rather than aiming at temporary increases in the birth rate.
INTERNATIONAL POPULATION POLICY
AFTER WORLD WAR II
In the countries that the United Nations categorizes as less developed, population
policy issues attracted little attention until the middle of the twentieth century. Fertility
remained high, more or less at its premodern level. Population growth was slowly in-
11
creasing, however, as a result of improvements in mortality. Following the end of World
War II, mortality decline accelerated greatly and as a result so did population growth. In
1950, the world population was 2.5 billion. Some 1.7 billion of that total was in coun-
tries classified as less developed, with an average annual birth rate of 44 per 1000 popu-
lation--twice as high as in the more developed group. Unless a decline of the birth rate
got underway fairly rapidly, an unprecedentedly large expansion of human numbers was
inevitable.
Although the trigger of such population growth was a welcome development--
falling death rates--growth rates that would double or even treble a population within a
generation seemed a major obstacle to development. And the large and widening differ-
ential between the more developed and the less developed countries in terms of popula-
tion size and average income levels was seen as holding out the prospect of major dislo-
cations and long-term instabilities within the international system. As a result, in the
1950s an intense debate started on what policies could reduce fertility in the less devel-
oped world. This policy debate was primarily Western, much of it American, just as the
diagnosis of the problem itself had been. The proposals that emerged were to be applied
in countries representing a large and growing share of the global population. Population
policy became international.
The West of course already had relatively low fertility, and with it much histori-
cal experience on why birth rates fell. Social science analysis was virtually unanimous
in interpreting this experience. The explanation centered on the role of changing struc-
tural conditions of the economy, conditions to which micro-level units of the population
tended to respond, in demographic as well as in other matters. Demand for smaller fami-
lies was seen as the primary force determining birth rates; the means by which couples
regulated their fertility was not unimportant, but seen as a distinctly secondary factor. If
the demand was strong enough, fertility would be low, even if birth control technology
was primitive. A transition to low fertility presupposed changing preferences, and such
preferences were responses to market signals. If policy was to have an explicit role, it
would be through reinforcing those signals.
In the experience of past fertility transitions, four components of the incentive
structure seemed especially pertinent: (1) the direct costs parents must incur in bringing
12
up children; (2) the opportunity costs of children to parents, that is, the earnings a couple
must forgo because of children; (3) the contribution of children to family income through
labor services; and (4) the contributions of children to parents' economic security in old
age, in comparison to alternative sources of security.
Fertility declines when shifts in these components make family limitation advan-
tageous to couples, overcoming cultural resistance supporting traditional behavior. Pat-
terns of development generate that effect when at least some, but especially when all of
the following conditions are fulfilled: (1) social expectations and formal institutional
arrangements place on parents the major financial responsibility for raising their own
children, including much of the cost of education and health care; (2) women have ac-
cess to income-earning opportunities in the labor market, including jobs not easily com-
patible with childbearing and childrearing; (3) social institutions make formal education
(primary and early secondary) compulsory and effectively enforce school attendance;
(4) child labor is made illegal; (5) effective legal guarantees of property rights, legal
enforcement of private contracts, and the development of public and private insurance
and pension schemes provide attractive and comparatively secure alternatives to chil-
dren as a source of old-age security.
Social and institutional conditions that make such changes potent generators of
fertility decline include the following: (1) emphasis on personal economic contribution
(rather than, for example, class status or political loyalty) as the primary factor deter-
mining a person's earnings, thus providing an incentive for increased investment in
human capital; (2) systems of promotion that provide opportunities for upward social
mobility according to merit and tolerate downward social mobility; (3) openness to out-
side influences that create rising expectations with respect to material standards of liv-
ing; and (4) emphasis not only on the rights but also on the social and economic respon-
sibilities of the individual.
Some of the factors that prompted the fall of fertility in the West also became
potent in the less developed countries as concomitants of successful economic and so-
cial progress. International conferences, for example the 1974 Bucharest conference on
population, spelled out many of the essential socioeconomic changes necessary for fer-
tility to shift from high to low levels. But assembling the instruments so identified into
13
a coherent development strategy of institutional-structural reforms, reforms justified
also by demographic objectives, remained an elusive task. In promoting development
governments came to see their roles not in supporting institutions harnessing the mar-
ket, but replacing the market in key developmental tasks through specific goal-oriented
categorical programs. In the matter of population policy, the rapid postwar progress in
the technology of birth control provided an appealing apparent short-cut for achieving
fertility decline through programmatic means. Markets, it was held, could not be relied
on to bring that technology to those wishing to practice birth control. Governments
could, instead, organize free delivery of birth control information, and provide effective
means for preventing births to all those, primarily (it was assumed) women, who wished
to plan their families. Surveys indicated that there existed a substantial latent demand
for such services. Satisfied customers, in turn, would serve as role models, bringing new
clients to the program.
By the mid-1960s, in programmatic terms the international population policy
debate on the relative importance of demand versus supply was essentially decided in
favor of the latter. For the next quarter-century, population policy in the developing
world became essentially synonymous with family planning programs.
Financial and administrative limitations within developing countries necessitated
the heavy involvement of foreign assistance in launching and sustaining family plan-
ning programs. Although donor countries' own domestic experience in this area was
practically nonexistent, such aid, justified by the seriousness of the "population prob-
lem" (a problem whose cause was defined in terms of aggregate indexes of population
growth), was readily forthcoming, partly in the form of bilateral assistance and partly
through international aid institutions.
The cost of birth control technology was, in itself, relatively modest. But sustain-
ing an effective delivery service did represent significant claims on scarce human and
material resources. Declared demand for birth control does not necessarily translate into
effective willingness to practice it: conflicting desires may interfere. Weakness of mea-
sures of latent demand, or "unmet need," is reflected in the requirements that programs
are supposed to satisfy if they are to be successful. These typically included such items
as "doorstep accessibility of quality services," "broad choice of contraceptive meth-
14
ods," "forceful IEC [information, education, and communication] programs," "sound
financing strategies," "sound management with proper logistics," "evaluation systems,"
"a continuous process of strategic thinking, planning and management, " and "staff lead-
ership for program parameters" (Mahler 1992: 5).
The effectiveness of family planning programs in reducing fertility remains a
matter of controversy. According to international guidelines, programs recruit their cli-
ents on a strictly voluntary basis. By accepting the service voluntarily, the individual
acceptor demonstrates that she values that service. But some of the more successful
programs, notably in Asia, tended to increase acceptance by often heavy-handed meth-
ods of persuasion, and, in the especially important case of China, by coercion backed by
legal sanctions. Where fertility fell in less developed countries with active family plan-
ning programs, it is typically found that program-provided free services account for a
large percentage of those practicing contraception. This non-surprising result is then
often taken as an indicator of success in reducing aggregate fertility. But what would
have happened in the absence of the program is conjectural, hence routinely ignored.
Some less developed countries that lacked government programs also experienced ma-
jor falls of fertility: Brazil is a conspicuous example. Similarly, if programs have seem-
ingly only minor success in reducing fertility, this can be taken as evidence that the
program is inadequately financed, organized, and managed: greater efforts would have
led to better results.
Family planning programs as they were commonly conceived had a strong resem-
blance to health programs. But given the special priority accorded to family planning
services in foreign assistance, typically they were organized as a separate "vertical" pro-
gram, or kept administratively distinct within the broad health program. The justification
for such treatment was that while acceptors of family planning services are recruited be-
cause the program satisfies their individual need, the program also serves a national devel-
opmental need by helping to reduce aggregate population growth, hence deserves priority.
Once a family planning program is organized, its managerial and professional cadres form
a natural advocacy group strongly interested in the program's sustenance. Invoking the
public interest in lowered fertility, as distinct from simply serving the needs of the clients
of the program, has long served as a key supporting argument in that endeavor.
15
Over time, this developmental prop has eroded. This was in part a result of criti-
cisms of the intrinsic scientific merit of the argument but most of all a reflection of the
extensive decline of fertility that has occurred, a decline often attributed to the success
of the family planning programs themselves. On the eve of the 1994 International Con-
ference on Population and Development, a review, considered highly respectful of the
importance of fertility decline for successful development, reached the guarded conclu-
sion that the data on the subject "mostly support the view that rapid population growth
in poor countries under conditions of high fertility is inimical to many development
goals"--with stress on the qualifying words "mostly," "high fertility," "many develop-
ment goals," and "rapid," and with the last-mentioned term defined as "in excess of 2
percent annually" (Cassen 1994: 13). By that time, among world regions, only Africa
and West Asia had a population growth rate meeting that criterion.
Accordingly, the development rationale of family planning programs was gradu-
ally dropped and was replaced by the argument that the programs satisfy important health
needs and help people exercise a fundamental human right. The Cairo conference for-
malized this shift: even though the name of the conference for the first time included a
reference to development, scant attention was paid to that concept. Family planning
programs were redefined, instead, as reproductive health programs, responding to a
broader range of women's health needs, such as prevention of unsafe abortions and
sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. But beyond this, new emphasis was
put on some requirements that would contribute to women's empowerment: reduction
of infant and maternal mortality and improvement in girls' education and women's op-
portunities for employment and political participation.Although the connection was not
highlighted, these are conditions that are likely to help reduce the birth rate through
stimulating the demand for smaller family size. The Cairo conference, in effect, reverted
to some key elements of a demand strategy for reducing birth rates.
The future of family planning service programs is thus left in a somewhat tenu-
ous status. Without invoking a collective interest in a wider practice of birth control, it is
not clear what level of priority should be accorded to such programs as just one part of
publicly financed health programs, or indeed relative to many other social welfare pro-
grams that also serve demonstrable human needs. Not surprisingly, there are increasing
16
efforts in national programs to rely on the market in enhancing access to contraceptives
and to provide program services on a fee-for-service basis.
POPULATION POLICY IN RESPONSE TO
BELOW-REPLACEMENT FERTILITY
During the second half of the twentieth century debates about population policy,
and consequent programmatic action, were centered on the issue of rapid population
growth in the less developed world. Toward the end of this period, however, a quite
different demographic phenomenon has begun to attract increasing attention: aggregate
fertility levels that are inadequate for the long-run maintenance of the population. Ana-
lytically, the potential population policy issue raised by low fertility is identical to the
problem inherent in rapid population growth: it is caused by the disjunction between the
sum total of individual reproductive decisions and the collective interest in a long-run
demographic equilibrium. But this time individual aspirations generate a deficit rather
than an excess in population growth. The syndrome, as was noted above, is not entirely
novel: it was detectable in fertility trends in the West, especially in Europe, in the 1920s
and 1930s, and in some instances, notably in France, even earlier. But in the decades
immediately following World War II, the baby boom seemed to make the issue of low
fertility moot. Indeed, by any historical standard, population growth was rapid during
the second half of the twentieth century even in the developed world. Europe's popula-
tion, for example, grew during that period from 550 million to about 730 million.
The baby boom was, however, a temporary interruption of the secular downward
trend in fertility. By the 1970s, the net reproduction rate was at or below unity in most
countries in Europe and also in the United States. In the US fertility stabilized at or very
close to that rate, but in Europe fertility continued to decline. By the beginning of the
twenty-first century, the average total fertility rate in Europe was 1.4. Such a level, if
maintained indefinitely, would result in a population loss of one-third from generation
to generation, that is, roughly, over each period of some 30 years. In some countries,
notably in Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, period fertility rates were at low lev-
els without historical precedent for large populations. If continued, in the absence of
large compensatory immigration this would not only lead to rapid population decline
17
but also result in very high proportions of the population at old ages. It might be ex-
pected that in the affected countries such prospects would generate not only concern,
but also vigorous remedial policy action.
By and large, however, this response has not been evident. Most governments as
well as the general public tend to view below-replacement fertility with an equanimity
quite unlike the alarmed reaction that the same phenomenon elicited when it first emerged
between the two World Wars. And explicit pronatalist policies, common in the 1930s, are
conspicuous by their absence. There are a variety of reasons explaining this indifference.
First, the preeminent population issue confronting policymakers in the post­World
War II period was rapid global population growth. Programs aimed at moderating fertil-
ity in the developing world received assistance or at least encouragement from the rich,
low-fertility countries. Although the rationale was modified over time, such assistance
and encouragement have continued, as indeed substantial further population increase in
the less developed countries is still anticipated in the early decades of the twenty-first
century. Even though population issues tend to be sui generis, reflecting differences in
demographic behavior country-by-country, there was, and remains, a perceived disso-
nance between fertility-lowering assistance to other countries and engaging in action at
home serving the opposite aims. Faulty logic notwithstanding, the international terrain
has not been favorable for domestic pronatalism.
Second, the natural rate of increase--the difference between the number of births
and the number of deaths--is still positive in many of the countries with fertility well
below replacement. This is the result of age distributions--reflecting past fertility and
mortality and notably the effects of the postwar baby boom--that still favor population
growth. While this momentum effect is temporary, the longer-term implications for popu-
lation decline and population aging are only dimly perceived by the general public and
provide an excuse for inaction on the part of policymakers.
Third, when those longer-term demographic effects are understood, a calmer at-
titude still prevails. There is an inclination, reinforced by increasing concern with the
quality of the natural environment, to regard a degree of demographic "decompression"
as a not necessarily unwelcome prospect, especially in countries with an already dense
population. And it is assumed that the economic and social disadvantages that might be
18
imposed by a declining population can be effectively dealt with through institutional
adjustments and social policy measures other than measures aiming for a higher birth
rate.A demographic policy often regarded as potentially helpful in this regard is encour-
agement of immigration. That willing immigrants are available to compensate for low
birth rates is taken for granted--a realistic assumption in high-income countries.
Fourth, there is a vague expectation that the population decline, impending or
already begun, will in due course trigger corrective homeostatic mechanisms, leading to
a spontaneous rebound in the level of fertility. Another baby boom may not be in the
offing, but fertility may rise sufficiently to once again reach or at least approximate
replacement level. Governments, it is assumed, would be ill-advised to interfere with
this natural process by trying to increase birth rates and then seeking to fine-tune them at
the desirable steady-state level. According to this view, a laisser-faire fertility policy is
justified since, apart from broad upper and lower limits, governments are not competent
to determine what constitutes an optimal fertility rate, or growth rate, or population size
in any given year, decade, or even longer time interval.
Finally, even if the will were there, there is a paucity of effective pronatalist
policy instruments. Exhortation from governments is not promising, and in any case
unlikely to be tried in a democratic polity. Restrictions imposed on access to modern
contraceptive technology are not politically acceptable; they would be also certain to
prove a failure. This leaves the traditional levers of social policy: dispensing material
incentives and disincentives so as to increase the willingness of couples to have chil-
dren. Such incentives can be engineered by the government through fiscal measures,
such as differential taxation, and/or through provision of services in kind. This approach
was tried in the interwar years, but, as noted above, with at best limited success. After
World War II many similar measures continued to be applied; in fact, with the steadily
expanding welfare state, they were often upgraded and their scope, too, was extended.
However, they were no longer considered "pronatalist" but were absorbed within the
more encompassing frames of family and general welfare policy. The new label partly
reflected a political-ideological preference, but in part also the fact that some distinctive
features of pronatalism--such as differential rewards that favored large families, and
non-means-tested or even regressive allocation of family and child benefits--were gen-
erally no longer acceptable.
19
Although the redistributive policies of the contemporary welfare state are biased in
favor of the elderly and the poor, government-organized transfers to parents of children, or
to children directly (such as through publicly financed day-care services and free or subsi-
dized education often beyond the secondary school level, which lessen the cost of children
to parents), are substantial in all low-fertility countries. Indeed, it is typically assumed that
existing family and welfare policies sustain fertility above a level that would ensue in their
absence. Accordingly, making these policies more generous--socializing an even larger
share of child costs--is often seen as a means toward increasing fertility, whether as an
outright policy objective or, more in the prevailing spirit of the time, as an unintended but
welcome byproduct. Such extension, however, is difficult, given the fiscal constraints of
already overcommitted welfare states. And more to the point, the net effect of family-
friendly redistribution of incomes and provision of services is uncertain. It is notable that
in the US, where such schemes are distinctly less well funded than, for example, in West-
ern Europe, fertility is, nevertheless, relatively high.
In recent decades, in modern industrial economies, participation of women in the
formal labor force expanded rapidly. This tendency, reflecting market forces but also
encouraged by government policy (partly as an antidote for deteriorating dependency
ratios as the population becomes older), is likely to continue. Among the factors ex-
plaining the low level of fertility despite general material affluence, many observers
point to the double burden on women of both raising children and working outside the
home. To the extent that higher birth rates are seen to be socially desirable, the derived
policy prescription is to adopt measures that make motherhood and women's labor force
participation more compatible. The higher fertility in countries (notably in Scandinavia)
where such measures are strongly applied, compared to countries (especially those in
Southern Europe) where they are largely absent, suggests that enhanced compatibility
(through day-care services, flexible work-hours, liberal sick-leave allowances, and the
like) is an effective pronatalist policy even if motivated by other considerations. But it is
far from clear whether the fertility differential so generated is high enough to bring the
total fertility rate back to replacement level. Steady labor force participation of women
during the childbearing years can certainly be made compatible with having one child or
even two. It is likely to be far less compatible with sustaining, or even increasing, the
proportion of women who have more than two children. Many career-oriented women
20
voluntarily remain childless; many others prefer a single child. It follows that, to achieve
average replacement-level fertility, the proportions of such women need to be counter-
balanced by high enough proportions of women who have chosen third-, fourth-, or
even higher-order births. There is little indication at present that policies directed at
enhanced compatibility achieve that result.
When fertility is high, as it still is in most developing countries, it is a safe predic-
tion that with economic development it will eventually decline, at least to replacement
level. Since population growth cannot be sustained indefinitely, in the longer term, apart
from outmigration, the only alternative is higher mortality. The record of the high-in-
come countries indicates, however, that replacement-level fertility is not a necessary
resting point. Once fertility is lower than that, predictions become highly hazardous.
European and also East Asian experience suggests that fertility has a tendency to settle
below an average of two children per woman, hence a tendency toward sustained popu-
lation decline. The question, to which no good answers exist at the dawn of the twenty-
first century, is "how far below?" "Scandinavian"-style family policies may stabilize
fertility only modestly below replacement--such as around a total fertility rate of 1.8.
That would imply a fairly moderate relative shortfall of births compared to deaths, and
population stability in rich countries with such vital rates could be fully or nearly com-
pensated with a modest level of controlled immigration. Population aging would be then
kept within relatively narrow limits, which postindustrial economies could readily ad-
just to. The demographic weight of such countries within the global total in the foresee-
able future would continue to shrink, raising possible problems of a shifting geopolitical
balance. Still, such demographic configurations would be likely to push the day of de-
mographic reckoning beyond the policy horizons that governments feel an obligation to
be actively concerned with. Pronatalist interventions would find at best a marginal place
on governments' policy agendas.
On the other hand, fertility levels in the lowest-fertility countries--countries with
a total fertility rate of 1.3 or below around the turn of the century--might stabilize at
that level, or even shrink further, reflecting the decentralized and uncoordinated deci-
sions of individuals and individual couples. Such an outcome might also foreshadow
future reproductive behavior in countries in which fertility is still fairly close to replace-
21
ment level. This would create a qualitatively different demographic situation for which
there are few precedents in modern history. It would represent a clear threat to the con-
tinuing viability of the countries affected. Compensatory immigration flows would have
to be so large as to be inconsistent with any reasonable degree of cultural and ethnic
continuity. Alternatively, population aging in the absence of immigration would create
virtually unsolvable challenges, and there would be a likely drastic loss of relative geo-
political status. Spontaneous homeostatic mechanisms may not come into play to save
the day, or may do so too sluggishly to matter. A radical rethinking of fertility policy
would then become a necessity for social--and national--survival.
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145 John B. Casterline, Zeba A. Sathar,
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146 Zachary Zimmer, Albert I. Herma-
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147 Philomena Nyarko, Brian Pence,
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149 Markos Ezra, "Ecological degrada-
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150 Cynthia B. Lloyd, Sahar El Tawila,
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151 Barbara S. Mensch, Paul C. Hew-
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152 John Bongaarts, "The end of the fer-
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153 Mark R. Montgomery, Gebre-
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*154 Paul C. Hewett and Mark R. Mont-
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POLICY RESEARCH DIVISION WORKING PAPERS
Recent Back Issues
* No longer available
2002
155 Zachary Zimmer, Linda G. Martin,
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in functional limitations and sur-
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156 John Bongaarts and Griffith Feeney,
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157 Zachary Zimmer and Sovan Kiry
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158 Geoffrey McNicoll, "Demographic
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159 Carol E. Kaufman, Shelley Clark,
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161 John Bongaarts, "The end of the
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162 Naomi Rutenberg, Carol E. Kauf-
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163 Barbara S. Mensch, Wesley H.
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164 Cynthia B. Lloyd, Cem Mete, and
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165 Kelly Hallman, Agnes R. Quisum-
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168 Paul C. Hewett,Annabel S. Erulkar,
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169 Zachary Zimmer and Julia Dayton,
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170 Ravai Marindo, Steve Pearson, and
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171 Sajeda Amin and Nagah H. Al-
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172 Zachary Zimmer, Napaporn
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