Demographic Analyses V

According to the authors of your text, what is a population policy and what is the purpose of such a policy?

A policy is a formalized set of procedures to guide behavior. The purpose of policy could be either to alter or maintain consistency of behavior to achieve a specific goal. Population policy is a strategy for achieving a particular pattern of population change. Population policy may be single purpose like reducing crude birth rate by 20 per 1000 or it could be multifaceted like rationalizing the reproductive behavior (Putnam & David: 63).

For population policy it is necessary to assess the future population trends and its implications. One has to look into the population projection (like in how many years population will double?) What will be the expected socioeconomic consequences of the demographic trends? Should we let these demographic trends continue? If the (future) demographic trends are not in the expected directions then one has to look into its causes? What interventions could be introduced to reach the desired demographic results with the desired socioeconomic consequences? Future oriented people need policy (Herring: 208). Population policies may be for retarding growth, or promoting growth or it could be for maintaining population growth. No country can ignore the issue of population policy

India was one of the first countries to offer incentives to influence childbearing. In what ways did they offer incentives and to whom? How may this have influenced India's fertility rate?

Incentives to influence childbearing decisions have been offered for thousands of years. The Romans, through the Lex Poppei and Lex Julia, gave monetary rewards to couples having large families. Currently, most European countries reward childbearing through family allowances, maternity benefits, and special privileges for children. These incentives, whether explicitly pronatalist or not, engender little criticism - perhaps because they are viewed as promoting family welfare (Greeley & Michael: 150).

The European incentives stand in marked contrast to the incentives and disincentives (1) used in developing countries that have provoked great criticism. The governments of almost all Asian countries use or have used incentives or disincentives as part of their population strategy. In the 1960s, the Indian government offered money or gifts such as radios to "acceptors" at mass sterilizations camps. The excesses of the government's 1976 population policy, which authorized state and local governments to provide incentives for sterilizations and penalized officials who did not reach their assigned quota of acceptors, created a backlash that was largely responsible for the defeat of Indira ...