Population Policy: A Concise Summary

PA
woRKING
Population Policy: A Concise
Summary
PE
Paul Demeny
2003 No. 173
RS
POLICY RESEARCH DIVISION

---

Population Policy: A Concise Summary
Paul Demeny
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).

---

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.
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.

---

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-

---

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
4

---

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.
5

---

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: 22–23) 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
6

---

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: 250–251), 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
7

---

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
8

---

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-
9

---