Population Policy Perspectives in Developing Countries.

Abstract

This volume includes papers presented at a conference dealing with population policy perspectives in developing countries and held during December 1981. The conference theme was to incorporate the important aspects of population related matters from the aspect of governmental policy and community participation and to suggest a course of action for the future. The conference focused on population policy perspectives relating to socioeconomic systems and population policy; fertility influencing policies; mortality influencing policies; and migration influencing policies. The papers in the 1st section discuss some of the problems arising from disparities in population trends social structure and policy implications. The common issue is the need for a policy for integrated development with population policy forming a part of such an integrated development policy. The following were among the issues emerging from the social economic and ecological systems analysis: the causal mechanism relating development efforts with motivation to regulate fertility as percevied at the individual level is viewed as a necessary link in the interrelations between development and population policy makers must recognize that in a heterogeneous society this level of motivation is concomitantly and synergistically raised in response to a variety of development policies and it is no longer considered adequate or useful to say that general development reduces fertility. The 2nd group of papers point out that there has been a desire on the part of most governments of the developing countries to reduce the present levels of population growth. Family planning programs are implemented more vigorously and monitored more closely. The 3rd group of papers covered 2 studies based on sample surveys. The paper Fertility Differentials Among Migrants and Nonmigrants in Bombay found that the migrants wives had significantly higher fertility than nonmigrant wives. The other paper examined the impact of social structure on fertility of a small fishing community. The following were among the common issues arising from the papers on mortality influencing policies: there has been a spectacular reduction in general mortality levels in this region but the levels are still high as reflected in the expectation of life; and progress in the reduction of mortality has slowed down in some populous countries like India in the past few years. The control of human reproduction has become accepted as legitimate for public and private agency policy and programming national and international assistance in controlling fertility has increased. There is comparable awareness of the problems generated by the population explosion urbanization and its attendant growth but there are no comparable policies and programs to deal with the problems stemming from rapid urbanization migration and maldistribution of population.