Education, health and alleviation of poverty.
Changes are coordinated by;
- Policy and laws
- Spending
- Tax programmes – disincentives
Policy and Laws
- Marriage age
- Breastfeeding
- Women’s status
- Children’s education and work
Spending
- Education
- Primary health care to reduce infant mortality
- Family planning
- Incentives for fertility control
- Old age security
Tax Programmes
- Family allowance
- Penalties for larger families
These tools control birth rates by indirectly clarifying social goals within the socio-economic environment including
- Educational opportunities
- Availability of family planning programmes and health services including free contraception
- Women’s status in society
- Financial and labour markets
The socio-economic environment in turn effects peoples decisions about marriage children and education.
Many of the signals sent out by governments affect fertility by altering the following decisions;
- Timing of marriage
- No of children
- Childrens education
- Saving and consumption
- Work and employment
All three routes that governments have to limiting population size are deeply interrelated and have a huge mass of information on..
For each one, I’ve picked out policy prescriptions that specific countries have followed to limit population size. It must be remembered that every country’s prescription Is not the same and the government of every respective country should know the cultural, religious and economic profile of its population and administer a suitable control method.
Policy and laws
The government can lay a legal foundation to limit population growth which act as incentives for having fewer children. One of the best examples of this sort of policy can be found in china where the authorities have attempted to enforce a strict maximum of one child per family.
As well as giving priority in public services, such as housing, to those that conform to this policy, large fines can be levied to those who do not.
Singapore has also adopted similar measures by giving priority in housing to those with small families and limiting income tax reliefs to the first three children as well as restricting paid maternity leave and subsidised health care.
Poverty also encourages people to have lots of children
- Potential source of labour
- Insurance for old age
This leads to further poverty. An optimal solution here is seen as being the provision of the right conditions for economic development so that people would be more motivated to have smaller families, and to provide family planning services in order to give parents the knowledge and means to do so.
This shifts us onto
Spending
It is a fact that generally, women who complete primary educationhave fewer children than those with none. This may relate to contraceptive use.
In Kenya for example 22% of women who have had 9 or more years of education use contraception compared to 7% with 5 years or less education.
This provides the impetus for educating women in developing countries given that better-educated women experience better reproductive health, marry later, and have fewer children; and the children they have are more likely to survive childhood.
project in Kenya assesses school quality and its influence on
- enrollment
- dropout rates
- exam results
- early sexual activity
- premarital pregnancy
gender training of school staff and more gender-equitable staffing in senior positions.
The persistence of marriage at early ages for girls constitutes a major policy challenge in Bangladesh. The country introduced three innovative educational programs nationwide, each compensating parents for the costs of sending their children to school. These programs rapidly increased enrollment, reduced school dropout, raised proportions of children reaching educational milestones, and contributed to increasing age at marriage
As mentioned before, education also lends itself to effective contraception use. The major account for fertility decline over the years has been the increased use of contraception as shown by figure 2. Currently, Many women in developing parts of the world want to prevent pregnancy but either
- Lack knowledge
- Fear side effects
- Encounter social and familial disapproval
- Lack access to services
In Bangladesh government spending has been directed towards family planning programs consisting largely of workers who bring contraceptive services to women in their homes. Research has found that such visits significantly increase contraceptive adoption and continuation, especially among women having no education and living in less-developed regions.
