Unit Four

Population Growth and Economic Development

4.1 World Population Growth through History

What is population?

The term population refers to the total human inhabitants of a specified area, such
as a city, country, or continent, at a given time. Population study as a discipline is
known as demography. It is concerned with the size, composition, and distribution
of populations; their patterns of change over time through births, deaths, and
migration; and the determinants and consequences of such changes. Population
studies yield knowledge important for planning, particularly by governments, in
fields such as health, education, housing, social security, employment, and
environmental preservation. Such studies also provide information needed to
formulate government population policies, which seek to modify demographic
trends in order to achieve economic and social objectives. Every year, more than
93 million people are being added to the world‘s population of 5.5 billion. More
than 82 million of these additional people per year will be born in Third World
Countries. These increases are unprecedented. But the problem of population
growth is not simply a problem of numbers. It is a problem of human welfare and
of development. Rapid population growth can have serious consequences for the
well-being of humanity worldwide. If development entails the improvement in
people‘s levels of living-their incomes, health, education, and general well-being-
and if it also encompasses their self-esteem, respect, dignity, and freedom to
choose, then the really important question about population growth is this: How
does the contemporary population situation in many Third World countries
contribute to or detract from their chances of realizing the goals of development,
not only for the current generation but also for the future generations? Conversely,
how does development affect population growth?

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Throughout most of the more than 2 million years of human existence on earth,
humanity‘s numbers have been few. When people first started to cultivate food
through agriculture some 12, 000 years ago, the estimated world was no more than
5 million. The reason for the sudden change in overall population trends is that for
almost all of recorded history, the rate of population change, whether up or down,
had been strongly influenced by the combined effects of famine, disease,
malnutrition, plague, and war-conditions that resulted in high and fluctuating death
rates. In the twentieth century, such conditions came increasingly under
technological and economic control. As a result, human mortality (the death rate)
is currently lower than at any other point in human existence. It is this decline in
mortality resulting from rapid technological advances in modern medicine and the
spread of modern sanitation measures throughout the world, particularly within the
past 50 years, that has resulted in the unprecedented increases in world population
growth, especially in Third World countries. For example, death rates in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America have fallen by as much as 50% during the past 30 to 40
years, whereas birthrates have only recently begun to decline.

However, the population growth of developed countries is best explained by what

is known as the demographics transition. The demographic transition attempts to
explain why all contemporary developed nations have more or less passed
through the same three stages of modern population history. Before their
economic modernization, these countries for centuries had stable or very low
growing populations as a result of a combination of high birthrates and almost
equally high birth rates. This was stage 1. Stage 2 began when modernization,
associated with better public-health methods, healthier diets, higher incomes, and
other improvements, led to a marked reduction in mortality that gradually raised
life expectancy from under 40 years to over 60 years. However, the decline in
death rates was not immediately accompanied by a decline in fertility. As a result,
the growing divergence between high birth rates and falling death rates led to
sharp increases in population growth compared to past centuries.

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Stage 2 thus marks the beginning of the demographic transition (the transition
from stable or slow-growing populations first to rapidly increasing numbers and
then to declining rates). Finally, stage 3 was entered when the forces and
influences of modernization and development caused the beginning of a decline in
fertility; eventually, falling birthrates converged with lower death rates, leaving
little or no population growth.

In short, population growth today is primarily the result of a rapid transition from a
long historical era characterized by high birth and death rates to one in which
death rates have fallen sharply but birthrates, especially in developing countries,
are only just beginning to fall from their historical high levels.

4.2 The Causes of High Fertility in Developing Countries

4.2.1 The Malthusian Model

Almost 200 years ago, the British economist Thomas Malthus put forward a
theory about the relationship between population growth and economic
development that survives till today. Robert Malthus raised an alarm about
population growth in the late 18th century.

An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) is arguably one of the most

influential books ever written. Writing in 1798 in his Essay and drawing on the
concept of diminishing returns, Malthus postulated a universal tendency for the
population of a country, unless checked by dwindling food supplies, to grow at a
geometric rate, doubling every 30 or 40 years. At the same time, because of
diminishing returns to the fixed factors, land, food supplies could expand only at a
roughly arithmetic rate. Because the growth in food supplies could not keep
pace with the burgeoning population, per capita incomes (defined in an agrarian
society simply as per capita food production) would have a tendency to fall so low
as to lead to a stable population existing barely at or slightly above the subsistence
level.

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Modern economists have given a name to the Malthusian idea of a population
inevitably forced to live at subsistence levels of income. They have called it the
low-level equilibrium population trap or more simply, the Malthusian population-
trap.

According to the neo-Malthusians, poor nations will never be able to rise much
above their subsistence levels of per capita income unless they initiate preventive
checks (birth control) on their population growth. In the absence of such
preventive checks, Malthusian positive checks (starvation, disease, wars) on
population growth will inevitably provide the restraining force.

Malthus therefore contended that the only way to avoid this condition of chronic
low levels of living or absolute poverty was for people to engage in ‗moral
restraint‘ and limit the number of their children. Hence, we might regard Malthus,
indirectly and inadvertently, as the father of the modern birth control movement.

Malthus' theory of population is his best-known contribution: Passion between the

sexes, unless checked by human misery, leads to a continual growth in population.
Positive checks to population growth include "... war, disease, hunger, and
whatever ... contributes to shorten the duration of human life." Preventative checks
include abstinence from sexual relations, continence within marriage, and/or delay
of marriage.

4.2.2 Criticism of the Malthusian Model

The Malthusian population trap provides a simple and in many ways appealing
theory of the relationship between population growth and economic development.
Unfortunately, it is based on a number of simplistic assumptions and hypotheses
that do not stand the test of empirical verification. We can criticize the population
trap on two grounds. First, and most important, the model assumes away or
ignores the enormous impact of technological progress in offsetting the growth-
inhibiting forces of rapid population increases.

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The history of modern economic growth has been closely associated with rapid
technological progress in the form of a continuous series of scientific,
technological, and social inventions and innovations. While Malthus was basically
correct in assuming a limited supply of land, he did not-and in fairness could not at
that time-anticipate the manner in which technological progress could augment the
availability of land by raising its quality (its productivity) even though its quantity
might remain roughly the same.

The second basic criticism of the trap focuses on its assumption that national rates
of population increase are directly (positively) related to the level of national per
capita income. According to this assumption, at relatively low levels of per capita
income, we should expect to find population growth rates increasing with
increasing per capita income. But research on Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
indicates that there appears to be no clear correlation between population growth
rates and levels of per capita income among Third World nations. As a result of
modern medicine and public health programs, death rates have fallen rapidly and
have become less dependent on the level of per capita income. Moreover, birth
rates seem to show no definable relationship with per capita income levels.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that it is not so much the aggregate level of per capita
that matters for population growth but rather how that income is distributed. It is
the level of household income, not the level of per capita income that seems to
matter most. The social and economic institutions of a nation and its philosophy of
development are probably greater determinants of population growth rates than
aggregate economic variables and simple models of macroeconomic growth.

The Malthusian and neo-Malthusian theories is therefore rejected as applied to

contemporary Third World nations on the following grounds

 They do not take adequate account of the role and impact of technological
progress

 They are based on a hypothesis about a macro relationship

between population growth and levels of per capita income
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 that does not stand up to empirical testing

 They focus on the wrong variable, per capita income, as the

principal determinants of population growth rates. A much
better and more valid approach to the question of
population and development centers on the macroeconomics
of family-size decision making in which individual, and not
aggregate, levels of living become the principal determinant
of a family‘s decision to have more or fewer children.

4.3 The Consequences of High Fertility: Some Conflicting

Opinions

What are the Consequences of rapid population growth?

For many years, there has been an ongoing and lively debate among development
economists and other social scientists about the seriousness of the consequences
of rapid population growth. The following summarizes some of the main
arguments for and against the idea that the consequences of rapid population
growth lead to serious development problems. It then informs the basis for
considering whether some consensus can be reached so that specific policy goals
and objectives can be postulated.

4.3.1 Population Growth Is Not a Real Problem

We can identify three general lines of argument on the part of people who assert
that population growth is not a cause for concern

 The problem is not population growth but rather other issues

 Population growth is a false issue deliberately created by

dominant rich country agencies and institutions to keep LDCs
in their underdeveloped, dependent condition

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  For many developing countries and regions, population growth is in fact
desirable
A. Some Other Issues

Many knowledgeable people from both rich and poor nations argue that the real
problem is not population growth per se but one or all of the following four issues:
i. Underdevelopment

If correct strategies are pursued and lead to higher levels of living, greater esteem,
and expanded freedom, population will take care of itself. Eventually, it will
disappear as a problem, as it has in all of the present economically advanced
nations. According to this argument, underdevelopment is the real problem, and
development should be the only goal. With it will come economic progress and
social mechanisms that will more or less automatically regulated population
growth and distribution. As long as the vast majority of people in Third World
countries remain impoverished, uneducated and physically and psychologically
weak, the large family will constitute the only real source of social security (i.e
parents will constitute to be denied the freedom to choose a small family if they so
desired). Proponents of the underdevelopment argument then conclude that birth
control programs will surely fail, as they have in the past, when there is no
motivation on the part of poor families to limit their size.
ii. World Resource Depletion and Environmental Destruction

Population can only be an economic problem in relation to the availability and

utilization of scarce natural and material resources. The fact is that developed
countries with less than one- quarter of the world‘s population, consume almost
80% of the world‘s resources. For example, the average North American or
European consumer uses up, directly and indirectly, almost 16 times as much of
the world‘s food, energy, and material resources as his or her counterpart in Third
World countries. In terms of the depletion of the world‘s limited resources,
therefore, the addition of another child in the developed countries is as significant
as the birth of 16 additional children in the underdeveloped countries.

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According to this argument, developed nations should curtail their excessively
high consumption standards instead of asking less developed nations to restrict
their population growth. The latter‘s high fertility is really due to their low levels
of the
―over consumption‖ of the world‘s scarce resources by rich nations. This
combination of rising affluence and extravagant consumption habits in rich
countries and among rich people in poor countries should be the major world
concern, not population growth.
iii. Population Distribution

According to this third argument it is not the number of people per se that is
causing population problems, but their distribution in space. Many regions of the
world (e.g. parts of Sub-Saharan Africa) and many regions within countries (e.g.
the northeast and Amazon regions of Brazil) are in fact under-populated in terms
of available or potential resources. Others simply have too many people
concentrated in too small an area (e.g. central Java or most urban concentrations in
LDCs). Governments should therefore strive not to moderate the rate of
population growth but rather to reduce rural-urban migration and to bring about a
more natural spatial distribution of the population in terms of available land and
other productive resources.
iv. Subordination of Women

Women often bear the disproportionate burdens of poverty, poor education, lack of
jobs, and limited social mobility. In many cases, their inferior roles, low status,
and restricted access to birth control is manifested in their high fertility. According
to this argument, population growth is a natural outcome of women‘s lack of
economic opportunity,

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 B. Deliberately Contrived False Issue

The second main line of argument denying the significance of population growth
as a major development problem is closely allied to the neocolonial dependence
theory of underdevelopment. Basically, it is argued that the frenetic over-concern
in the rich nations with the population growth of poor nations is really an attempt
by the former to hold down the development of the latter in order to maintain an
international status quo that is favorable to their self-interests. Rich nations are
pressuring poor nations to adopt aggressive population control programs even
though they themselves went through a period of sizable population increase that
accelerated their own development processes.

A radical neo-Marxist version of this argument views population control efforts by

rich countries and their allied international agencies as racist or genocidal attempts
to reduce the relative or absolute size of the poor, largely nonwhite populations of
the world who may someday pose a serious threat to the welfare of the rich,
predominantly white societies. Worldwide birth control campaigns are seen as
manifestations of the fears of the developed world in the face of a possible radical
challenge to the international order by the people who are its first victim.
C. Population Growth is Desirable

A more conventional economic argument is that of population growth as an

essential ingredient to stimulate economic development. Larger populations
provide the needed consumer demand to generate favorable economies of scale in
production, to lower production costs, and to provide a sufficient and low cost
labor supply to achieve higher output levels. Population ―revisionist‖ economists
of the 1980s neoclassical counterrevolution school like Julian Simon and Nicholas
Eberstadt argue, for example, that free markets will always adjust to any
scarcities created by population pressures. Such scarcities will drive up prices and
signal the need for new cost-saving production technologies.

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In the end, free markets and human ingenuity (Simon‘s ―genius‖ as the
―ultimate resource‖) will solve any and all problems arising from population
growth. This revisionist view point was clearly in contrast with the traditional
―orthodox‖ argument of the 1950s to 1970s that rapid population growth had
serious economic consequences that, if left uncorrected, would slow economic
development.

At the other end of the political spectrum, it has been argued by some Third World
neo-Marxist pronatalists that many rural regions in developing countries are in
reality under-populated in the sense that much unused but arable land could yield
large increases in agricultural output if only more people were available to
cultivate it. Many regions of tropical Africa and Latin America and even parts of
Asia are said to be in this situation. With respect to Africa, for example, some
observers have noted that many regions had larger populations in the remote past
than exist today. Their rural depopulation resulted not only from the slave trade
but also from compulsory military service, confinement to reservations, and the
forced-labor policies of former colonial governments. For example, the sixteenth-
century Congo Kingdom is said to have had a population of approximately 2
million. But by the time of the colonial conquest, which followed 300 years of
slave trade, the population of the region had fallen to less than one third of that
figure. Today‘s Zaire has barely caught up to the Sixteen-century numbers. Other
regions of Western and eastern Africa provide similar examples- at least in the
eyes of advocates of rapid population growth in Africa.

In terms of ratios of population to arable land (land under cultivation, fallow land,
pastures, and forests), Africa south of the Sahara is said by these supporters of
population expansion to have a total of 1.4 billion arable hectares. Land, actually
being cultivated amounts to only 170 million hectares, or about 1 hectare per rural
inhabitant.

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Thus only 12% of all potential arable land is under cultivation, and this very low
rural population density is viewed as a serious drawback to raising agricultural
output. Similar arguments have been expounded with regard to such Latin
American countries as Brazil and Argentina. Three other non-economic
arguments, each found to some degree in a wide range of developing countries,
complete the ―population growth is desirable‖ viewpoints. First, many countries
claim a need for population growth to protect currently under-populated border
regions against the expansionist intentions of neighboring nations. Second, there
are many ethnic, racial, and religious groups within less developed countries
whose attitudes favoring large family size have to be protected for both moral and
political reasons. Finally, military and political powers are often seen as dependent
on a large and youthful population.

Many of these arguments have certain realism about them-if not in fact, then at
least in the perceptions of vocal and influential individuals in both the developed
and the developing worlds. Clearly, some of the arguments have greater validity
for some Third World countries than others. The important point is that they
represent a considerable range of opinions and viewpoints and therefore need to be
seriously weighed against the counterarguments of theorists who believe that
rapid population growth in indeed a real and important problem for
underdeveloped countries. Dear students, let us now look at some of these
counterarguments.

4.3.2 Population Growth is A Real Problem

Positions supporting the need to curtail population growth because of the negative
economic, social and environmental consequences are typically based on one or
the other of the following arguments.
A. The population “Hawk” Argument

The extreme version of the population-as-a-serious-problem position attempts to

attribute almost all of the world‘s economic and social evils to excessive
population growth.
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Unrestrained population increase is seen as the major crisis facing humankind
today. It is regarded as the principal cause of poverty, low levels of living,
malnutrition, ill health, environmental degradation and a wide array of other social
problems. Value-laden and provocative terms such as ―population bomb‖ or
―population explosion‖ are tossed around at will. Indeed, dire predictions of
world food catastrophes and ecological disaster are attributed almost entirely to
the growth in world numbers. Such an extreme position leads some of its
advocates to assert that
―world‖ (i.e. LDC) population stabilization or even decline is the most urgent
contemporary task even if it requires severe and coercive measures such as
compulsory sterilization to control family size in some of the most populated
Third World countries like India and Bangladesh.

B. The Population-Poverty Cycle Argument and the

Need for Family Planning Programs

The population-poverty cycle argument is the main stance among people who hold
that too rapid population growth yields negative economic consequences and thus
should be a real concern of Third World countries. Advocates start from the basic
proposition that population growth intensifies and exacerbates the economic,
social and psychological problems associated with the condition of
underdevelopment. Population growth retards the prospect for a better life for the
already born. It also severely draws down limited government revenues simply to
provide the most rudimentary economic, health, and social services to the
additional people. This in turn further reduces the prospects for any improvement
in the levels of living of the existing generation.

If low incomes induce poor families to have more children as a source of cheap
labor and old age security then we have vicious cycle of cheap in progress. Poor
people have large families partly to compensate for their poverty, but large
families mean greater population growth, higher dependency burdens, lower
savings, less investment, slower economic growth, and ultimately greater poverty.
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Population growth is thus seen as both a cause and a consequence of
underdevelopment. Because widespread absolute poverty and low levels of living
are thus seen as a major cause of large family size, and large families retard
economic growth, it follows that a more egalitarian economic and social
development is a necessary condition for bringing about an eventual slowing or
cessation of population growth at low levels of fertility and mortality. But
according to this argument, it is not a sufficient condition-that is development
provides people with the intensives and motivations to limit their family size, but
family planning programs are needed to provide them with the technological
means to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Even though countries like France, Japan,
the United States, Great Britain, and more recently, Taiwan and South Korea were
able to reduce their population growth rates without widespread family planning
clinics, it is argued that the provision of these services will enable other countries
desiring to control excessive population growth to do so more rapidly than if these
family planning services were not available.

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 4.3.3 The Empirical Argument: Seven Negative
Consequences of Population Growth
According to the latest empirical research, the potential negative consequences of
population growth for economic development can be divided into seven
categories: its impact on economic growth, poverty and inequality, education,
health, food, the environment, and international migration.

Economic Growth: Evidence shows that rapid population growth lowers per
capita income growth in most LDCs, especially those that are already poor,
dependent on agriculture, and experiencing pressures on land and natural
resources.

Poverty and Inequality: Even though aggregate statistical correlations between

measures of poverty and population growth at the national level are often
inconclusive, at the household level the evidence is strong and compelling. The
negative consequences of population growth fall most heavily on the poor because
they are the ones who are made landless, suffer first from cuts in government
health and education programs, bear the brunt of environmental damage, and are
the main victims of job cuts due to the slower growth of the economy. Poor
women once again bear the greatest burden of government austerity programs, and
another vicious cycle is set in motion. To the extent that families perpetuate
poverty, they also exacerbate inequality.

Education: Although the data are sometimes ambiguous on this point, it is

generally agreed that large family size and low incomes restrict the opportunities
of parents to educate all their children. At the national level, rapid population
growth causes given educational expenditures to be spread more thinly, lowering
quality for the sake of quantity. This in turn feeds back on economic growth
because the stock of human capital is reduced by rapid population growth.

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Health: High fertility harms the health of mothers and children. It increases the
health risks of pregnancy, and closely spaced births have been shown to reduced
birth weight and increase child mortality rates.

Food: Feeding the world‘s population is made more difficult by rapid population
growth -over 90% of additional LDC food requirements are caused by population
increases. New technologies of production must be introduced more rapidly, as the
best lands have already been cultivated. International food relief programs become
more widespread.

Environment: Rapid population growth contributes to environmental degradation

in the form of forest encroachment, deforestation, fuel-wood depletion, soil
erosion, declining fish and animal stocks, inadequate and unsafe water, air
pollution, and urban congestion.

International Migration: Many observers consider the rapid increase in

international migration, both legal and illegal, to be one of the major consequences
of developing countries‘ population growth. Though many factors cause
migration, an excess of job seekers (caused by rapid population growth) over job
opportunities in the LDC economy is surely one of them

4.4 Goals, Objectives, and Policy Approaches

4.4.1 Goals and Objectives: Toward a Consensus

In spite of what may appear to be seriously conflicting arguments about the
consequences of population growth, during the 1970s and 1980s there emerged a
common ground that many people on both sides of the debate could agree on. This
position is best characterized by Robert Cassen in Population Policy: A New
Consensus: After decades of controversy over the issue of population policy, there
is a new international consensus among and between industrial and developing
countries that individuals, countries, and the world at large would be better off if
population were to grow more slowly.

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The consequences of rapid population growth should be neither exaggerated nor
minimized. Some past expressions of alarm have been counterproductive,
alienating the very audiences they were intended to persuade: at the same time,
claims that population growth was not all that important have had the effects of
diminishing a proper concern for the subject.

The following four propositions constitute the essential components of this

intermediate or consensus opinion:

 Population growth is not the primary cause of low levels of living, gross
inequalities, or the limited freedom of choices that characterizes much of the Third
World. The fundamental causes of these problems must be sought, rather, in the
―dualistic‖ nature of the domestic and international economic and social order, as
well as in the failures of many development plans to create jobs and incomes for
poor families, especially women.

 The problem of population is not simply one of numbers but involves the
quality of life and material well-being. Thus, LDC population size must be viewed
in conjunction with developed country affluence in relation to the quantity,
distribution, and utilization of world resources, not just in relation to indigenous
resources of the LDCs.

 But rapid population growth does serve to intensify problems of

underdevelopment and make prospects for development that much more remote.
The momentum of population growth (refers to the tendency of the population to
continue even after birthrates have declined substantially) means that, barring
catastrophe, the population of developing countries will increase dramatically over
the coming decades, no matter what fertility control measures are adopted now. It
follows that high population growth rates, though not the principal cause of
underdevelopment are nevertheless important contributing factors in specific
countries and regions of the world.

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 Many of the real problems of population arise not from its overall size but from
its concentration, especially in urban areas as a result of accelerated rural-urban
migration. A more rational and efficient spatial distribution of national populations
thus becomes an alternatives in some countries to the slowdown of overall
population growth. In view of these four propositions, we may conclude that the
following three policy goals and objectives might be included in any realistic
approach to the issues of population growth in developing countries.

 In countries or regions where population size, distribution and growth are

viewed as an existing or potential problem, the primary objective of any strategy
to limit further growth must deal not only with the population variable per se but
also with the underlying social and economic conditions of underdevelopment.
Problems such as absolute poverty, gross inequality, wide spread unemployment
(especially among females), limited female access to education, malnutrition, and
poor health facilities must be given high priority. Their amelioration is both a
necessary concomitant of development and a fundamental motivational basis for
the expanded freedom of the individual to choose an optimal- and, in many cases,
smaller-family size.

 To bring about smaller families through development-induced motivations,

family- planning programs providing both the education and the technological
means to regulate fertility for people who wish to regulate it must be established.

 Developed countries must assist developing countries to achieve their

lowered fertility and mortality objectives not only by providing contraceptives and
funding family-planning clinics but, more important, (a) by curtailing their own
excessive depletion of nonrenewable world resources through programs designed
to cut back on the unnecessary consumption of products that intensively use such
resources, (b) by making genuine commitments to eradicating poverty, illiteracy,
disease, and malnutrition in Third World countries as well as their own; and (c) by
recognizing in both their rhetoric and their international economic and social
dealings that development is the real issue, not simply population control.

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 4.4.2 Some Policy Approaches
In view of these broad goals and objectives, what kind of economic and social
policies might developing and developed country governments and international
assistance agencies consider to bring about long-term reductions in the overall rate
of world population growth? Three areas of policy can have important direct and
indirect influences on the well-being of present and future world populations.

 General and specific policies that developing country governments can initiate
to influence and perhaps even control their population growth and distribution.

 General and specific policies that developed country governments can initiate
in their own countries to lessen their disproportionate consumption of limited
world resources and promote a more equitable distribution of the benefits of global
economic progress

 General and specific policies that developed country governments and

international assistance agencies can initiate to help developing countries achieve
their population objectives.

4.5 What Can the Developing Countries Do?

It is not numbers per se or parental irrationality that is at the root of the LDC
―population problem.‖ Rather, it is the pervasiveness of absolute poverty and low
levels of living that provides the economic rationale for large families and
burgeoning populations.

Developing country governments can attempt to control fertility in six ways:

1. They can, through the media and the educational process, both
formal (school system) and informal (adult education), try to
persuade people to have small families.
2. They can establish family-planning programs to provide health
and contraceptive services to encourage the desired behavior

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3. They can deliberately manipulate economic incentives and
disincentives for having children-for example through the
elimination or reduction of maternity leaves and benefits, the
reduction or elimination of financial incentives, and /or the
imposition of financial penalties for having children beyond a
certain number, the establishment of old –age social security
provisions and minimum age child labor laws, the raising of
school fees and the elimination of heavy public subsidies for
secondary and higher education and the subsidization of smaller
families through direct money payments.
4. Countries can attempt to redirect their populations away from
the rapidly growing urban areas by eliminating the current
imbalance in economic and social opportunities in urban versus
rural areas.
5. Governments can attempt to coerce people into having smaller
families through the power of state legislation and penalties.
6. Finally, no policy measures will be successful in controlling
fertility unless efforts are made to raise the social and economic
status of women and hence, create conditions favorable to
delayed marriage and lower marital fertility. A crucial ingredient
in any program designed to lower fertility rates is the creation of
employment for women outside the home.

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