NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20506
April 24, 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200
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TO: The Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Agriculture
The Director of Central Intelligence
The Deputy Secretary of State
Administrator, Agency for International Development
SUBJECT: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests
The President has directed a study of the impact of world population
growth on U.S. security and overseas interests. The study should look
forward at least until the year 2000, and use several alternative
reasonable projections of population growth.
In terms of each projection, the study should assess:
– the corresponding pace of development, especially in poorer
countries;
– the demand for US exports, especially of food, and the trade
problems the US may face arising from competition for re-
sources; and
– the likelihood that population growth or imbalances will
produce disruptive foreign policies and international
instability.
The study should focus on the international political and economic
implications of population growth rather than its ecological, socio-
logical or other aspects.
The study would then offer possible courses of action for the United
States in dealing with population matters abroad, particularly in
developing countries, with special attention to these questions:
– What, if any, new initiatives by the United States are needed
to focus international attention on the population problem?
– Can technological innovations or development reduce
growth or ameliorate its effects?
– Could the United States improve its assistance in the population
field and if so, in what form and through which agencies –
bilateral, multilateral, private?
The study should take into account the President’s concern that
population policy is a human concern intimately related to the
dignity of the individual and the objective of the United States is to
work closely with others, rather than seek to impose our views on
others.
The President has directed that the study be accomplished by the
NSC Under Secretaries Committee. The Chairman, Under Secretaries
Committee, is requested to forward the study together with the
Committee’s action recommendations no later than May 29,
1974 for consideration by the President.
HENRY A. KISSINGER
cc: Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
NSSM 200:
IMPLICATIONS OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH
FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS
December 10, 1974
CLASSIFIED BY Harry C. Blaney, III
SUBJECT TO GENERAL DECLASSIFICATION SCHEDULE OF
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11652 AUTOMATICALLY DOWN-
GRADED AT TWO YEAR INTERVALS AND DECLASSIFIED
ON DECEMBER 31, 1980.
This document can only be declassified by the White House.
———————————————————-
Declassified/Released on 7/3/89
———–
under provisions of E.O. 12356
by F. Graboske, National Security Council
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
World Demographic Trends
Adequacy of World Food Supplies
Minerals and Fuel
Economic Development and Population Growth
Political Effects of Population Factors
Policy Recommendations
Policy Follow-up and Coordination
CHAPTER I – WORLD DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
FUTURE GROWTH IN MAJOR REGIONS AND COUNTRIES
CHAPTER II. POPULATION AND WORLD FOOD SUPPLIES
CHAPTER III – MINERALS AND FUEL
ANNEX OUTLOOK FOR RAW MATERIALS
II. World Reserves
Chapter IV – Economic Development and Population Growth
Chapter V — Implications of Population Pressures for National Security
CHAPTER VI – WORLD POPULATION CONFERENCE
P A R T T W O Policy Recommendations
1. World Population growth since World War II is quantitatively
and qualitatively different from any previous epoch in human history.
The rapid reduction in death rates, unmatched by corresponding birth
rate reductions, has brought total growth rates close to 2 percent a
year, compared with about 1 percent before World War II, under 0.5
percent in 1750-1900, and far lower rates before 1750. The effect is to
double the world’s population in 35 years instead of 100 years. Almost
80 million are now being added each year, compared with 10 million in
1900.
2. The second new feature of population trends is the sharp
differentiation between rich and poor countries. Since 1950, population
in the former group has been growing at 0 to 1.5 percent per year, and
in the latter at 2.0 to 3.5 percent (doubling in 20 to 35 years). Some
of the highest rates of increase are in areas already densely populated
and with a weak resource base.
3. Because of the momentum of population dynamics, reductions in
birth rates affect total numbers only slowly. High birth rates in the
recent past have resulted in a high proportion in the youngest age
groups, so that there will continue to be substantial population
increases over many years even if a two-child family should become the
norm in the future. Policies to reduce fertility will have their main
effects on total numbers only after several decades. However, if future
numbers are to be kept within reasonable bounds, it is urgent that
measures to reduce fertility be started and made effective in the 1970′s
and 1980′s. Moreover, programs started now to reduce birth rates will
have short run advantages for developing countries in lowered demands on
food, health and educational and other services and in enlarged
capacity to contribute to productive investments, thus accelerating
development.
4. U.N. estimates use the 3.6 billion population of 1970 as a
base (there are nearly 4 billion now) and project from about 6 billion
to 8 billion people for the year 2000 with the U.S. medium estimate at
6.4 billion. The U.S. medium projections show a world population of 12
billion by 2075 which implies a five-fold increase in south and
southeast Asia and in Latin American and a seven-fold increase in
Africa, compared with a doubling in east Asia and a 40% increase in the
presently developed countries (see Table I). Most demographers,
including the U.N. and the U.S. Population Council, regard the range of
10 to 13 billion as the most likely level for world population
stability, even with intensive efforts at fertility control. (These
figures assume, that sufficient food could be produced and distributed
to avoid limitation through famines.)
Adequacy of World Food Supplies
5. Growing populations will have a serious impact on the need for
food especially in the poorest, fastest growing LDCs. While under
normal weather conditions and assuming food production growth in line
with recent trends, total world agricultural production could expand
faster than population, there will nevertheless be serious problems in
food distribution and financing, making shortages, even at today’s poor
nutrition levels, probable in many of the larger more populous LDC
regions. Even today 10 to 20 million people die each year due, directly
or indirectly, to malnutrition. Even more serious is the consequence of
major crop failures which are likely to occur from time to time.
6. The most serious consequence for the short and middle term is
the possibility of massive famines in certain parts of the world,
especially the poorest regions. World needs for food rise by 2-1/2
percent or more per year (making a modest allowance for improved diets
and nutrition) at a time when readily available fertilizer and
well-watered land is already largely being utilized. Therefore,
additions to food production must come mainly from higher yields.
Countries with large population growth cannot afford constantly growing
imports, but for them to raise food output steadily by 2 to 4 percent
over the next generation or two is a formidable challenge. Capital and
foreign exchange requirements for intensive agriculture are heavy, and
are aggravated by energy cost increases and fertilizer scarcities and
price rises. The institutional, technical, and economic problems of
transforming traditional agriculture are also very difficult to
overcome.
7. In addition, in some overpopulated regions, rapid population
growth presses on a fragile environment in ways that threaten
longer-term food production: through cultivation of marginal lands,
overgrazing, desertification, deforestation, and soil erosion, with
consequent destruction of land and pollution of water, rapid siltation
of reservoirs, and impairment of inland and coastal fisheries.
Minerals and Fuel
8. Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in
pressure on depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals),
since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than
on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly
dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid
population frustrates their prospects for economic development and
social progress, the resulting instability may undermine the conditions
for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources.
9. There will be serious problems for some of the poorest LDCs
with rapid population growth. They will increasingly find it difficult
to pay for needed raw materials and energy. Fertilizer, vital for their
own agricultural production, will be difficult to obtain for the next
few years. Imports for fuel and other materials will cause grave
problems which could impinge on the U.S., both through the need to
supply greater financial support and in LDC efforts to obtain better
terms of trade through higher prices for exports.
Economic Development and Population Growth
10. Rapid population growth creates a severe drag on rates of
economic development otherwise attainable, sometimes to the point of
preventing any increase in per capita incomes. In addition to the
overall impact on per capita incomes, rapid population growth seriously
affects a vast range of other aspects of the quality of life important
to social and economic progress in the LDCs.
11. Adverse economic factors which generally result from rapid population growth include:
reduced family savings and domestic investment;
increased need for large amounts of foreign exchange for food imports;
intensification of severe unemployment and underemployment;
the need for large expenditures for services such as dependency support,
education, and health which would be used for more productive
investment;
the concentration of developmental resources on increasing food
production to ensure survival for a larger population, rather than on
improving living conditions for smaller total numbers.
12. While GNP increased per annum at an average rate of 5 percent in
LDCs over the last decade, the population increase of 2.5 percent
reduced the average annual per capita growth rate to only 2.5 percent.
In many heavily populated areas this rate was 2 percent or less. In the
LDCs hardest hit by the oil crisis, with an aggregate population of 800
million, GNP increases may be reduced to less than 1 percent per capita
per year for the remainder of the 1970′s. For the poorest half of the
populations of these countries, with average incomes of less than $100,
the prospect is for no growth or retrogression for this period.
13. If significant progress can be made in slowing population
growth, the positive impact on growth of GNP and per capita income will
be significant. Moreover, economic and social progress will probably
contribute further to the decline in fertility rates.
14. High birth rates appear to stem primarily from:
a. inadequate information about and availability of means of fertility control;
b. inadequate motivation for reduced numbers of children combined
with motivation for many children resulting from still high infant and
child mortality and need for support in old age; and
c. the slowness of change in family preferences in response to changes in environment.
15. The universal objective of increasing the world’s standard of
living dictates that economic growth outpace population growth. In many
high population growth areas of the world, the largest proportion of
GNP is consumed, with only a small amount saved. Thus, a small
proportion of GNP is available for investment — the “engine” of economic
growth. Most experts agree that, with fairly constant costs per
acceptor, expenditures on effective family planning services are
generally one of the most cost effective investments for an LDC country
seeking to improve overall welfare and per capita economic growth. We
cannot wait for overall modernization and development to produce lower
fertility rates naturally since this will undoubtedly take many decades
in most developing countries, during which time rapid population growth
will tend to slow development and widen even more the gap between rich
and poor.
16. The interrelationships between development and population
growth are complex and not wholly understood. Certain aspects of
economic development and modernization appear to be more directly
related to lower birth rates than others. Thus certain development
programs may bring a faster demographic transition to lower fertility
rates than other aspects of development. The World Population Plan of
Action adopted at the World Population Conference recommends that
countries working to affect fertility levels should give priority to
development programs and health and education strategies which have a
decisive effect on fertility. International cooperation should give
priority to assisting such national efforts. These programs include: (a)
improved health care and nutrition to reduce child mortality, (b)
education and improved social status for women; (c) increased female
employment; (d) improved old-age security; and (e) assistance for the
rural poor, who generally have the highest fertility, with actions to
redistribute income and resources including providing privately owned
farms. However, one cannot proceed simply from identification of
relationships to specific large-scale operational programs. For example,
we do not yet know of cost-effective ways to encourage increased female
employment, particularly if we are concerned about not adding to male
unemployment. We do not yet know what specific packages of programs will
be most cost effective in many situations.
17. There is need for more information on cost effectiveness of
different approaches on both the “supply” and the “demand” side of the
picture. On the supply side, intense efforts are required to assure full
availability by 1980 of birth control information and means to all
fertile individuals, especially in rural areas. Improvement is also
needed in methods of birth control most acceptable and useable by the
rural poor. On the demand side, further experimentation and
implementation action projects and programs are needed. In particular,
more research is needed on the motivation of the poorest who often have
the highest fertility rates. Assistance programs must be more precisely
targeted to this group than in the past.
18. It may well be that desired family size will not decline to
near replacement levels until the lot of the LDC rural poor improves to
the extent that the benefits of reducing family size appear to them to
outweigh the costs. For urban people, a rapidly growing element in the
LDCs, the liabilities of having too many children are already becoming
apparent. Aid recipients and donors must also emphasize development and
improvements in the quality of life of the poor, if significant progress
is to be made in controlling population growth. Although it was adopted
primarily for other reasons, the new emphasis of AID’s legislation on
problems of the poor (which is echoed in comparable changes in policy
emphasis by other donors and by an increasing number of LDC’s) is
directly relevant to the conditions required for fertility reduction.
Political Effects of Population Factors
19. The political consequences of current population factors in
the LDCs — rapid growth, internal migration, high percentages of young
people, slow improvement in living standards, urban concentrations, and
pressures for foreign migration — are damaging to the internal stability
and international relations of countries in whose advancement the U.S.
is interested, thus creating political or even national security
problems for the U.S. In a broader sense, there is a major risk of
severe damage to world economic, political, and ecological systems and,
as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values.
20. The pace of internal migration from countryside to
over-swollen cities is greatly intensified by rapid population growth.
Enormous burdens are placed on LDC governments for public
administration, sanitation, education, police, and other services, and
urban slum dwellers (though apparently not recent migrants) may serve as
a volatile, violent force which threatens political stability.
21. Adverse socio-economic conditions generated by these and
related factors may contribute to high and increasing levels of child
abandonment, juvenile delinquency, chronic and growing underemployment
and unemployment, petty thievery, organized brigandry, food riots,
separatist movements, communal massacres, revolutionary actions and
counter-revolutionary coups. Such conditions also detract from the
environment needed to attract the foreign capital vital to increasing
levels of economic growth in these areas. If these conditions result in
expropriation of foreign interests, such action, from an economic
viewpoint, is not in the best interests of either the investing country
or the host government.
22. In international relations, population factors are crucial
in, and often determinants of, violent conflicts in developing areas.
Conflicts that are regarded in primarily political terms often have
demographic roots. Recognition of these relationships appears crucial to
any understanding or prevention of such hostilities.
General Goals and Requirements for Dealing With Rapid Population Growth
23. The central question for world population policy in the year
1974, is whether mankind is to remain on a track toward an ultimate
population of 12 to 15 billion — implying a five to seven-fold increase
in almost all the underdeveloped world outside of China — or whether
(despite the momentum of population growth) it can be switched over to
the course of earliest feasible population stability — implying ultimate
totals of 8 to 9 billions and not more than a three or four-fold
increase in any major region.
24. What are the stakes? We do not know whether technological
developments will make it possible to feed over 8 much less 12 billion
people in the 21st century. We cannot be entirely certain that climatic
changes in the coming decade will not create great difficulties in
feeding a growing population, especially people in the LDCs who live
under increasingly marginal and more vulnerable conditions. There exists
at least the possibility that present developments point toward
Malthusian conditions for many regions of the world.
25. But even if survival for these much larger numbers is
possible, it will in all likelihood be bare survival, with all efforts
going in the good years to provide minimum nutrition and utter
dependence in the bad years on emergency rescue efforts from the less
populated and richer countries of the world. In the shorter run —
between now and the year 2000 — the difference between the two courses
can be some perceptible material gain in the crowded poor regions, and
some improvement in the relative distribution of intra-country per
capita income between rich and poor, as against permanent poverty and
the widening of income gaps. A much more vigorous effort to slow
population growth can also mean a very great difference between enormous
tragedies of malnutrition and starvation as against only serious
chronic conditions.
Policy Recommendations
26. There is no single approach which will “solve” the population
problem. The complex social and economic factors involved call for a
comprehensive strategy with both bilateral and multilateral elements. At
the same time actions and programs must be tailored to specific
countries and groups. Above all, LDCs themselves must play the most
important role to achieve success.
27. Coordination among the bilateral donors and multilateral
organizations is vital to any effort to moderate population growth. Each
kind of effort will be needed for worldwide results.
28. World policy and programs in the population field should incorporate two major objectives:
(a) actions to accommodate continued population growth up to 6
billions by the mid-21st century without massive starvation or total
frustration of developmental hopes; and
(b) actions to keep the ultimate level as close as possible to 8
billions rather than permitting it to reach 10 billions, 13 billions, or
more.
29. While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our
aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of
fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000.
This will require the present 2 percent growth rate to decline to 1.7
percent within a decade and to 1.1 percent by 2000. Compared to the U.N
medium projection, this goal would result in 500 million fewer people in
2000 and about 3 billion fewer in 2050. Attainment of this goal will
require greatly intensified population programs. A basis for developing
national population growth control targets to achieve this world target
is contained in the World Population Plan of Action.
30. The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and
will require vigorous efforts by interested countries, U.N. agencies
and other international bodies to make it effective. U.S. leadership is
essential. The strategy must include the following elements and actions:
(a) Concentration on key countries. Assistance for population
moderation should give primary emphasis to the largest and fastest
growing developing countries where there is special U.S. political and
strategic interest. Those countries are: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt,
Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. Together, they account for 47 percent of
the world’s current population increase. (It should be recognized that
at present AID bilateral assistance to some of these countries may not
be acceptable.) Bilateral assistance, to the extent that funds are
available, will be given to other countries, considering such factors as
population growth, need for external assistance, long-term U.S.
interests and willingness to engage in self-help. Multilateral programs
must necessarily have a wider coverage and the bilateral programs of
other national donors will be shaped to their particular interests. At
the same time, the U.S. will look to the multilateral agencies —
especially the U.N. Fund for Population Activities which already has
projects in over 80 countries — to increase population assistance on a
broader basis with increased U.S. contributions. This is desirable in
terms of U.S. interests and necessary in political terms in the United
Nations. But progress nevertheless, must be made in the key 13 and our
limited resources should give major emphasis to them. (b) Integration of
population factors and population programs into country development
planning. As called for by the world Population Plan of Action,
developing countries and those aiding them should specifically take
population factors into account in national planning and include
population programs in such plans. (c) Increased assistance for family
planning services, information and technology. This is a vital aspect of
any world population program. (1) Family planning information and
materials based on present technology should be made fully available as
rapidly as possible to the 85% of the populations in key LDCs not now
reached, essentially rural poor who have the highest fertility. (2)
Fundamental and developmental research should be expanded, aimed at
simple, low-cost, effective, safe, long-lasting and acceptable methods
of fertility control. Support by all federal agencies for biomedical
research in this field should be increased by $60 million annually. (d)
Creating conditions conducive to fertility decline. For its own merits
and consistent with the recommendations of the World Population Plan of
Action, priority should be given in the general aid program to selective
development policies in sectors offering the greatest promise of
increased motivation for smaller family size. In many cases pilot
programs and experimental research will be needed as guidance for later
efforts on a larger scale. The preferential sectors include:
Providing minimal levels of education, especially for women;
Reducing infant mortality, including through simple low-cost health care networks;
Expanding wage employment, especially for women;
Developing alternatives to children as a source of old age security;
Increasing income of the poorest, especially in rural areas, including providing privately owned farms;
Education of new generations on the desirability of smaller families.
While AID has information on the relative importance of the new major
socio-economic factors that lead to lower birth rates, much more
research and experimentation need to be done to determine what cost
effective programs and policy will lead to lower birth rates.
(e) Food and agricultural assistance is vital for any population
sensitive development strategy. The provision of adequate food stocks
for a growing population in times of shortage is crucial. Without such a
program for the LDCs there is considerable chance that such shortage
will lead to conflict and adversely affect population goals and
developmental efforts. Specific recommendations are included in Section
IV(c) of this study. (f) Development of a worldwide political and
popular commitment to population stabilization is fundamental to any
effective strategy. This requires the support and commitment of key LDC
leaders. This will only take place if they clearly see the negative
impact of unrestricted population growth and believe it is possible to
deal with this question through governmental action. The U.S. should
encourage LDC leaders to take the lead in advancing family planning and
population stabilization both within multilateral organizations and
through bilateral contacts with other LDCs. This will require that the
President and the Secretary of State treat the subject of population
growth control as a matter of paramount importance and address it
specifically in their regular contacts with leaders of other
governments, particularly LDCs.
31. The World Population Plan of Action and the resolutions
adopted by consensus by 137 nations at the August 1974 U.N. World
Population Conference, though not ideal, provide an excellent framework
for developing a worldwide system of population/family planning
programs. We should use them to generate U.N. agency and national
leadership for an all-out effort to lower growth rates. Constructive
action by the U.S. will further our objectives. To this end we should:
(a) Strongly support the World Population Plan of Action and the
adoption of its appropriate provisions in national and other programs.
(b) Urge the adoption by national programs of specific population goals
including replacement levels of fertility for DCs and LDCs by 2000. (c)
After suitable preparation in the U.S., announce a U.S. goal to maintain
our present national average fertility no higher than replacement level
and attain near stability by 2000. (d) Initiate an international
cooperative strategy of national research programs on human reproduction
and fertility control covering biomedical and socio-economic factors,
as proposed by the U.S. Delegation at Bucharest. (e) Act on our offer at
Bucharest to collaborate with other interested donors and U.N. agencies
to aid selected countries to develop low cost preventive health and
family planning services. (f) Work directly with donor countries and
through the U.N. Fund for Population Activities and the OECD/DAC to
increase bilateral and multilateral assistance for population programs.
32. As measures to increase understanding of population factors
by LDC leaders and to strengthen population planning in national
development plans, we should carry out the recommendations in Part II,
Section VI, including:
(a) Consideration of population factors and population policies in
all Country Assistance Strategy Papers (CASP) and Development Assistance
Program (DAP) multi-year strategy papers.
(b) Prepare projections of population growth individualized for
countries with analyses of development of each country and discuss them
with national leaders.
(c) Provide for greatly increased training programs for senior officials of LDCs in the elements of demographic economics.
(d) Arrange for familiarization programs at U.N. Headquarters in New
York for ministers of governments, senior policy level officials and
comparably influential leaders from private life.
(e) Assure assistance to LDC leaders in integrating population
factors in national plans, particularly as they relate to health
services, education, agricultural resources and development, employment,
equitable distribution of income and social stability.
(f) Also assure assistance to LDC leaders in relating population
policies and family planning programs to major sectors of development:
health, nutrition, agriculture, education, social services, organized
labor, women’s activities, and community development.
(g) Undertake initiatives to implement the Percy Amendment regarding improvement in the status of women.
(h) Give emphasis in assistance to programs on development of rural areas.
Beyond these activities which are essentially directed at national
interests, we must assure that a broader educational concept is
developed to convey an acute understanding to national leaders of the
interrelation of national interests and world population growth.
33. We must take care that our activities should not give the
appearance to the LDCs of an industrialized country policy directed
against the LDCs. Caution must be taken that in any approaches in this
field we support in the LDCs are ones we can support within this
country. “Third World” leaders should be in the forefront and obtain the
credit for successful programs. In this context it is important to
demonstrate to LDC leaders that such family planning programs have
worked and can work within a reasonable period of time.
34. To help assure others of our intentions we should indicate
our emphasis on the right of individuals and couples to determine freely
and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have
information, education and means to do so, and our continued interest in
improving the overall general welfare. We should use the authority
provided by the World Population Plan of Action to advance the
principles that 1) responsibility in parenthood includes responsibility
to the children and the community and 2) that nations in exercising
their sovereignty to set population policies should take into account
the welfare of their neighbors and the world. To strengthen the
worldwide approach, family planning programs should be supported by
multilateral organizations wherever they can provide the most efficient
means.
35. To support such family planning and related development
assistance efforts there is need to increase public and leadership
information in this field. We recommend increased emphasis on mass
media, newer communications technology and other population education
and motivation programs by the UN and USIA. Higher priority should be
given to these information programs in this field worldwide.
36. In order to provide the necessary resources and leadership,
support by the U.S. public and Congress will be necessary. A significant
amount of funds will be required for a number of years. High level
personal contact by the Secretary of State and other officials on the
subject at an early date with Congressional counterparts is needed. A
program for this purpose should be developed by OES with H and AID.
37. There is an alternate view which holds that a growing number
of experts believe that the population situation is already more serious
and less amenable to solution through voluntary measures than is
generally accepted. It holds that, to prevent even more widespread food
shortage and other demographic catastrophes than are generally
anticipated, even stronger measures are required and some fundamental,
very difficult moral issues need to be addressed. These include, for
example, our own consumption patterns, mandatory programs, tight control
of our food resources. In view of the seriousness of these issues,
explicit consideration of them should begin in the Executive Branch, the
Congress and the U.N. soon. (See the end of Section I for this
viewpoint.)
38. Implementing the actions discussed above (in paragraphs
1-36), will require a significant expansion in AID funds for
population/family planning. A number of major actions in the area of
creating conditions for fertility decline can be funded from resources
available to the sectors in question (e.g., education, agriculture).
Other actions, including family planning services, research and
experimental activities on factors affecting fertility, come under
population funds. We recommend increases in AID budget requests to the
Congress on the order of $35-50 million annually through FY 1980 (above
the $137.5 million requested for FY 1975). This funding would cover both
bilateral programs and contributions to multilateral organizations.
However, the level of funds needed in the future could change
significantly, depending on such factors as major breakthroughs in
fertility control technologies and LDC receptivities to population
assistance. To help develop, monitor, and evaluate the expanded actions
discussed above, AID is likely to need additional direct hire personnel
in the population/family planning area. As a corollary to expanded AID
funding levels for population, efforts must be made to encourage
increased contributions by other donors and recipient countries to help
reduce rapid population growth.
Policy Follow-up and Coordination
39. This world wide population strategy involves very complex and
difficult questions. Its implementation will require very careful
coordination and specific application in individual circumstances.
Further work is greatly needed in examining the mix of our assistance
strategy and its most efficient application. A number of agencies are
interested and involved. Given this, there appears to be a need for a
better and higher level mechanism to refine and develop policy in this
field and to coordinate its implementation beyond this NSSM. The
following options are suggested for consideration: (a) That the NSC
Under Secretaries Committee be given responsibility for policy and
executive review of this subject:
Pros:
Because of the major foreign policy implications of the recommended
population strategy a high level focus on policy is required for the
success of such a major effort.
With the very wide agency interests in this topic there is need for an
accepted and normal interagency process for effective analysis and
disinterested policy development and implementation within the N.S.C.
system.
Staffing support for implementation of the NSSM-200 follow-on exists
within the USC framework including utilization of the Office of
Population of the Department of State as well as other.
USC has provided coordination and follow-up in major foreign policy
areas involving a number of agencies as is the case in this study.
Cons:
The USC would not be within the normal policy-making framework for development policy as would be in the case with the DCC.
The USC is further removed from the process of budget development and review of the AID Population Assistance program.
(b) That when its establishment is authorized by the President, the
Development Coordination Committee, headed by the AID Administrator be
given overall responsibility:*
Pros: (Provided by AID)
It is precisely for coordination of this type of development issue
involving a variety of U.S. policies toward LDCs that the Congress
directed the establishment of the DCC.
The DCC is also the body best able to relate population issues to other
development issues, with which they are intimately related.
The DCC has the advantage of stressing technical and financial aspects
of U.S. population policies, thereby minimizing political complications
frequently inherent in population programs.
It is, in AID’s view, the coordinating body best located to take an
overview of all the population activities now taking place under
bilateral and multilateral auspices.
Cons:
While the DCC will doubtless have substantial technical competence,
the entire range of political and other factors bearing on our global
population strategy might be more effectively considered by a group
having a broader focus than the DCC.
The DCC is not within the N.S.C. system which provides a more direct
access to both the President and the principal foreign policy
decision-making mechanism.
The DCC might overly emphasize purely developmental aspects of population and under emphasize other important elements.
(c) That the NSC/CIEP be asked to lead an Interdepartmental Group for
this subject to insure follow-up interagency coordination, and further
policy development. (No participating Agency supports this option,
therefore it is only included to present a full range of possibilities).
Option (a) is supported by State, Treasury,
Defense (ISA and JCS), Agriculture, HEW,
Commerce NSC and CIA.**
Option (b) is supported by AID.
Under any of the above options, there should be an annual review of
our population policy to examine progress, insure our programs are in
keeping with the latest information in this field, identify possible
deficiencies, and recommend additional action at the appropriate
level.***
* NOTE: AID expects the DCC will have the following composition: The
Administrator of AID as Chairman; the Under Secretary of State for
Economic Affairs; the Under Secretary of Treasury for Monetary Affairs;
the Under Secretaries of Commerce, Agriculture and Labor; an Associate
Director of OMB; the Executive Director of CIEP, STR; a representative
of the NSC; the Presidents of the EX-IM Bank and OPIC; and any other
agency when items of interest to them are under discussion.)
** Department of Commerce supports the option of placing the
population policy formulation mechanism under the auspices of the USC
but believes that any detailed economic questions resulting from
proposed population policies be explored through existing domestic and
international economic policy channels.
*** AID believes these reviews undertaken only periodically might
look at selected areas or at the entire range of population policy
depending on problems and needs which arise.
CHAPTER I – WORLD DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
Introduction
The present world population growth is unique. Rates of increase
are much higher than in earlier centuries, they are more widespread,
and have a greater effect on economic life, social justice, and — quite
likely — on public order and political stability. The significance of
population growth is enhanced because it comes at a time when the
absolute size and rate of increase of the global economy, need for
agricultural land, demand for and consumption of resources including
water, production of wastes and pollution have also escalated to
historically unique levels. Factors that only a short time ago were
considered separately now have interlocking relationships,
inter-dependence in a literal sense. The changes are not only
quantitatively greater than in the past but qualitatively different. The
growing burden is not only on resources but on administrative and
social institutions as well.
Population growth is, of course, only one of the important
factors in this new, highly integrated tangle of relationships. However,
it differs from the others because it is a determinant of the demand
sector while others relate to output and supply. (Population growth also
contributes to supply through provision of manpower; in most developing
countries, however, the problem is not a lack of but a surfeit of
hands.) It is, therefore, most pervasive, affecting what needs to be
done in regard to other factors. Whether other problems can be solved
depends, in varying degrees, on the extent to which rapid population
growth and other population variables can be brought under control.
Highlights of Current Demographic Trends Since 1950, world
population has been undergoing unprecedented growth. This growth has
four prominent features:
1. It is unique, far more rapid than ever in history.
2. It is much more rapid in less developed than in developed regions.
3. Concentration in towns and cities is increasing much more
rapidly than overall population growth and is far more rapid in LDCs
than in developed countries. 4. It has a tremendous built-in
momentum that will inexorably double populations of most less developed
countries by 2000 and will treble or quadruple their populations before
leveling off — unless far greater efforts at fertility control are made
than are being made.
Therefore, if a country wants to influence its total numbers
through population policy, it must act in the immediate future in order
to make a substantial difference in the long run.
For most of man’s history, world population grew very slowly. At
the rate of growth estimated for the first 18 centuries A.D., it
required more than 1,000 years for world population to double in size.
With the beginnings of the industrial revolution and of modern medicine
and sanitation over two hundred years ago, population growth rates began
to accelerate. At the current growth rate (1.9 percent) world
population will double in 37 years.
By about 1830, world population reached 1 billion. The second billion
was added in about 100 years by 1930. The third billion in 30 years by
1960. The fourth will be reached in 1975.
Between 1750-1800 less than 4 million were being added, on the average,
to the earth’s population each year. Between 1850-1900, it was close to 8
million. By 1950 it had grown to 40 million. By 1975 it will be about
80 million.
In the developed countries of Europe, growth rates in the last
century rarely exceeded 1.0-1.2 percent per year, almost never 1.5
percent. Death rates were much higher than in most LDCs today. In North
America where growth rates were higher, immigration made a significant
contribution. In nearly every country of Europe, growth rates are now
below 1 percent, in many below 0.5 percent. The natural growth rate
(births minus deaths) in the United States is less than 0.6 percent.
Including immigration (the world’s highest) it is less than 0.7 percent.
In less developed countries growth rates average about 2.4
percent. For the People’s Republic of China, with a massive, enforced
birth control program, the growth rate is estimated at under 2 percent.
India’s is variously estimated from 2.2 percent, Brazil at 2.8 percent,
Mexico at 3.4 percent, and Latin America at about 2.9 percent. African
countries, with high birth as well as high death rates, average 2.6
percent; this growth rate will increase as death rates go down.
The world’s population is now about 3.9 billion; 1.1 billion in
the developed countries (30 percent) and 2.8 billion in the less
developed countries (70 percent).
In 1950, only 28 percent of the world’s population or 692
million, lived in urban localities. Between 1950 and 1970, urban
population expanded at a rate twice as rapid as the rate of growth of
total population. In 1970, urban population increased to 36 percent of
world total and numbered 1.3 billion. By 2000, according to the UN’s
medium variant projection, 3.2 billion (about half of the total) of
world inhabitants will live in cities and towns.
In developed countries, the urban population varies from 45 to
85 percent; in LDCs, it varies from close to zero in some African states
to nearly 100 percent in Hong Kong and Singapore.
In LDCs, urban population is projected to more than triple in
the remainder of this century, from 622 million in 1970 to 2,087 in
2000. Its proportion in total LDC population will thus increase from 25
percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000. This implies that by the end of
this century LDCs will reach half the level of urbanization projected
for DCs (82 percent) (See Table I).
The enormous built-in momentum of population growth in the less
developed countries (and to a degree in the developed countries) is, if
possible, even more important and ominous than current population size
and rates of growth. Unlike a conventional explosion, population growth
provides a continuing chain reaction. This momentum springs from (1)
high fertility levels of LDC populations and (2) the very high
percentage of maturing young people in populations. The typical
developed country, Sweden for example, may have 25% of the population
under 15 years of age. The typical developing country has 41% to 45% or
its population under 15. This means that a tremendous number of future
parents, compared to existing parents, are already born. Even if they
have fewer children per family than their parents, the increase in
population will be very great.
Three projections (not predictions), based on three different
assumptions concerning fertility, will illustrate the generative effect
of this building momentum.
a. Present fertility continued: If present fertility rates were
to remain constant, the 1974 population 3.9 billion would increase to
7.8 billion by the hear 2000 and rise to a theoretical 103 billion by
2075.
b. U.N. “Medium Variant”: If present birth rates in the
developing countries, averaging about 38/1000 were further reduced to
29/1000 by 2000, the world’s population in 2000 would be 6.4 billion,
with over 100 million being added each year. At the time stability
(non-growth) is reached in about 2100, world population would exceed
12.0 billion.
c. Replacement Fertility by 2000: If replacement levels of
fertility were reached by 2000, the world’s population in 2000 would be
5.9 billion and at the time of stability, about 2075, would be 8.4
billion. (“Replacement level” of fertility is not zero population
growth. It is the level of fertility when couples are limiting their
families to an average of about two children. For most countries, where
there are high percentages of young people, even the attainment of
replacement levels of fertility means that the population will continue
to grow for additional 50-60 years to much higher numbers before
leveling off.)
It is reasonable to assume that projection (a) is unreal since
significant efforts are already being made to slow population growth and
because even the most extreme pro-natalists do not argue that the earth
could or should support 103 billion people. Famine, pestilence, war, or
birth control will stop population growth far short of this figure.
The U.N. medium variant (projection (b) has been described in a
publication of the U.N. Population Division as “a synthesis of the
results of efforts by demographers of the various countries and the U.N.
Secretariat to formulate realistic assumptions with regard to future
trends, in view of information about present conditions and past
experiences.” Although by no means infallible, these projections provide
plausible working numbers and are used by U.N. agencies (e.g., FAO,
ILO) for their specialized analyses. One major shortcoming of most
projections, however, is that “information about present conditions”
quoted above is not quite up-to-date. Even in the United States, refined
fertility and mortality rates become available only after a delay of
several years.
Thus, it is possible that the rate of world population growth
has actually fallen below (or for that matter increased from) that
assumed under the U.N. medium variant. A number of less developed
countries with rising living levels (particularly with increasing
equality of income) and efficient family planning programs have
experienced marked declines in fertility. Where access to family
planning services has been restricted, fertility levels can be expected
to show little change.
It is certain that fertility rates have already fallen
significantly in Hong King, Singapore, Taiwan, Fiji, South Korea,
Barbados, Chile, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Mauritius (See
Table 1). Moderate declines have also been registered in West Malaysia,
Sri Lanka, and Egypt. Steady increases in the number of acceptors at
family planning facilities indicate a likelihood of some fertility
reduction in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Colombia, and other
countries which have family planning programs. On the other hand, there
is little concrete evidence of significant fertility reduction in the
populous countries of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.1
Projection (c) is attainable if countries recognize the gravity
of their population situation and make a serious effort to do something
about it.
The differences in the size of total population projected under
the three variants become substantial in a relatively short time.
By 1985, the medium variant projects some 342 million fewer
people than the constant fertility variant and the replacement variant
is 75 million lower than the medium variant.
By the year 2000 the difference between constant and medium
fertility variants rises to 1.4 billion and between the medium and
replacement variants, close to 500 million. By the year 2000, the span
between the high and low series — some 1.9 billion — would amount to
almost half the present world population.
Most importantly, perhaps, by 2075 the constant variant would
have swamped the earth and the difference between the medium and
replacement variants would amount to 3.7 billion. (Table 2.) The
significance of the alternative variants is that they reflect the
difference between a manageable situation and potential chaos with
widespread starvation, disease, and disintegration for many countries.
Furthermore, after replacement level fertility is reached,
family size need not remain at an average of two children per family.
Once this level is attained, it is possible that fertility will continue
to decline below replacement level. This would hasten the time when a
stationary population is reached and would increase the difference
between the projection variants. The great momentum of population growth
can be seen even more clearly in the case of a single country — for
example, Mexico. Its 1970 population was 50 million. If its 1965-1970
fertility were to continue, Mexico’s population in 2070 would
theoretically number 2.2 billion. If its present average of 6.1 children
per family could be reduced to an average of about 2 (replacement level
fertility) by 1980-85, its population would continue to grow for about
sixty years to 110 million. If the two-child average could be reached by
1990-95, the population would stabilize in sixty more years at about 22
percent higher — 134 million. If the two-child average cannot be
reached for 30 years (by 2000-05), the population at stabilization would
grow by an additional 24 percent to 167 million.
Similar illustrations for other countries are given below.
As Table 3. indicates, alternative rates of fertility decline
would have significant impact on the size of a country’s population by
2000. They would make enormous differences in the sizes of the
stabilized populations, attained some 60 to 70 years after replacement
level fertility is reached. Therefore, it is of the utmost urgency that
governments now recognize the facts and implications of population
growth determining the ultimate population sizes that make sense for
their countries and start vigorous programs at once to achieve their
desired goals.
FUTURE GROWTH IN MAJOR REGIONS AND COUNTRIES
Throughout the projected period 1970 to 2000, less developed
regions will grow more rapidly than developed regions. The rate of
growth in LDCs will primarily depend upon the rapidity with which family
planning practices are adopted.
Differences in the growth rates of DCs and LDCs will further
aggravate the striking demographic imbalances between developed and less
developed countries. Under the U.N. medium projection variant, by the
year 2000 the population of less developed countries would double,
rising from 2.5 billion in 1970 to 5.0 billion (Table 4). In contrast,
the overall growth of the population of the developed world during the
same period would amount to about 26 percent, increasing from 1.08 to
1.37 billion. Thus, by the year 2000 almost 80 percent of world
population would reside in regions now considered less developed and
over 90 percent of the annual increment to world population would occur
there.
The paucity of reliable information on all Asian communist
countries and the highly optimistic assumptions concerning China’s
fertility trends implicit in U.N. medium projections2 argue for
disaggregating the less developed countries into centrally planned
economies and countries with market economies. Such disaggregation
reflects more accurately the burden of rapidly growing populations in
most LDCs.
As Table 4. shows, the population of countries with centrally
planned economies, comprising about 1/3 of the 1970 LDC total, is
projected to grow between 1970 and 2000 at a rate well below the LDC
average of 2.3 percent. Over the entire thirty-year period, their growth
rate averages 1.4 percent, in comparison with 2.7 percent for other
LDCs. Between 1970 and 1985, the annual rate of growth in Asian
communist LDCs is expected to average 1.6 percent and subsequently to
decline to an average of 1.2 percent between 1985 and 2000. The growth
rate of LDCs with market economies, on the other hand, remains
practically the same, at 2.7 and 2.6 percent, respectively. Thus,
barring both large-scale birth control efforts (greater than implied by
the medium variant) or economic or political upheavals, the next
twenty-five years offer non-communist LDCs little respite from the
burdens of rapidly increasing humanity. Of course, some LDCs will be
able to accommodate this increase with less difficulty than others.
Moreover, short of Draconian measures there is no possibility
that any LDC can stabilize its population at less than double its
present size. For many, stabilization will not be short of three times
their present size.
NATO and Eastern Europe. In the west, only France and Greece
have a policy of increasing population growth — which the people are
successfully disregarding. (In a recent and significant change from
traditional positions, however, the French Assembly overwhelmingly
endorsed a law not only authorizing general availability of
contraceptives but also providing that their cost be borne by the social
security system.) Other western NATO members have no policies.3 Most
provide some or substantial family planning services. All appear headed
toward lower growth rates. In two NATO member countries (West Germany
and Luxembourg), annual numbers of deaths already exceed births,
yielding a negative natural growth rate.
Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia have active
policies to increase their population growth rates — despite the
reluctance of their people to have larger families. Within the USSR,
fertility rates in RSFSR and the republics of Ukraine, Latvia, and
Estonia are below replacement level. This situation has prevailed at
least since 1969-1970 and, if continued, will eventually lead to
negative population growth in these republics. In the United States,
average fertility also fell below replacement level in the past two
years (1972 and 1973). There is a striking difference, however, in the
attitudes toward this demographic development in the two countries.
While in the United States the possibility of a stabilized (non-growing)
population is generally viewed with favor, in the USSR there is
perceptible concern over the low fertility of Slavs and Balts (mostly by
Slavs and Balts). The Soviet government, by all indications, is
studying the feasibility of increasing their sagging birth rates. The
entire matter of fertility-bolstering policies is circumscribed by the
relatively high costs of increasing fertility (mainly through increased
outlays for consumption goods and services) and the need to avoid the
appearance of ethnic discrimination between rapidly and slowly growing
nationalities.
U.N. medium projections to the year 2000 show no significant
changes in the relative demographic position of the western alliance
countries as against eastern Europe and the USSR. The population of the
Warsaw Pact countries will remain at 65 percent of the populations of
NATO member states. If Turkey is excluded, the Warsaw Pact proportion
rises somewhat from 70 percent in 1970 to 73 percent by 2000. This
change is not of an order of magnitude that in itself will have
important implications for east-west power relations. (Future growth of
manpower in NATO and Warsaw Pact nations has not been examined in this
Memorandum.)
Of greater potential political and strategic significance are
prospective changes in the populations of less developed regions both
among themselves and in relation to developed countries.
Africa. Assessment of future demographic trends in Africa is
severely impeded by lack of reliable base data on the size, composition,
fertility and mortality, and migration of much of the continent’s
population. With this important limitation in mind, the population of
Africa is projected to increase from 352 million in 1970 to 834 million
in 2000, an increase of almost 2.5 times. In most African countries,
population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they
begin to decline. Rapid population expansion may be particularly
burdensome to the “least developed” among Africa’s LDCs including —
according to the U.N. classification — Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania,
Uganda, Upper Volta, Mali, Malawi, Niger, Burundi, Guinea, Chad, Rwanda,
Somalia, Dahomey, Lesotho, and Botswana. As a group, they numbered 104
million in 1970 and are projected to grow at an average rate of 3.0
percent a year, to some 250 million in 2000. This rate of growth is
based on the assumption of significant reductions in mortality. It is
questionable, however, whether economic and social conditions in the
foreseeable future will permit reductions in mortality required to
produce a 3 percent growth rate. Consequently, the population of the
“least developed” of Africa’s LDCs may fall short of the 250 million
figure in 2000.
African countries endowed with rich oil and other natural
resources may be in a better economic position to cope with population
expansion. Nigeria falls into this category. Already the most populous
country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970
(see footnote to Table 4), Nigeria’s population by the end of this
century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing
political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa south of
the Sahara.
In North Africa, Egypt’s population of 33 million in 1970 is
projected to double by 2000. The large and increasing size of Egypt’s
population is, and will remain for many years, an important
consideration in the formulation of many foreign and domestic policies
not only of Egypt but also of neighboring countries.
Latin America. Rapid population growth is projected for tropical
South American which includes Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Bolivia. Brazil, with a current population of over 100
million, clearly dominates the continent demographically; by the end of
this century, its population is projected to reach the 1974 U.S. level
of about 212 million people. Rapid economic growth prospects — if they
are not diminished by demographic overgrowth — portend a growing power
status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene over the next
25 years.
The Caribbean which includes a number of countries with
promising family planning programs (Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba,
Barbados and also Puerto Rico) is projected to grow at 2.2 percent a
year between 1970 and 2000, a rate below the Latin American average of
2.8 percent.
Perhaps the most significant population trend from the viewpoint
of the United States is the prospect that Mexico’s population will
increase from 50 million in 1970 to over 130 million by the year 2000.
Even under most optimistic conditions, in which the country’s average
fertility falls to replacement level by 2000, Mexico’s population is
likely to exceed 100 million by the end of this century.
South Asia. Somewhat slower rates are expected for Eastern and
Middle South Asia whose combined population of 1.03 billion in 1970 is
projected to more than double by 2000 to 2.20 billion. In the face of
continued rapid population growth (2.5 percent), the prospects for the
populous Indian subregion, which already faces staggering economic
problems, are particularly bleak. South and Southeast Asia’s population
will substantially increase relative to mainland China; it appears
doubtful, however, that this will do much to enhance their relative
power position and political influence in Asia. On the contrary,
preoccupation with the growing internal economic and social problems
resulting from huge population increases may progressively reduce the
ability of the region, especially India, to play an effective regional
and world power role.
Western South Asia, demographically dominated by Turkey and
seven oil-rich states (including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait) is
projected to be one of the fastest growing LDC regions, with an annual
average growth rate of 2.9 percent between 1970 and 2000. Part of this
growth will be due to immigration, as for example, into Kuwait.
The relatively low growth rate of 1.8 percent projected for East
Asian LDCs with market economics reflects highly successful family
planning programs in Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC). The People’s Republic of
China has by far the world’s largest population and, potentially, severe
problems of population pressure, given its low standard of living and
quite intensive utilization of available farm land resources. Its last
census in 1953 recorded a population of 583 million, and PRC officials
have cited a figure as high as 830 million for 1970. The Commerce
Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis projects a slightly higher
population, reaching 920 million by 1974. The present population growth
rate is about two percent. Conclusion Rapid population growth
in less developed countries has been mounting in a social milieu of
poverty, unemployment and underemployment, low educational attainment,
widespread malnutrition, and increasing costs of food production. These
countries have accumulated a formidable “backlog” of unfinished tasks.
They include economic assimilation of some 40 percent of their people
who are pressing at, but largely remain outside the periphery of the
developing economy; the amelioration of generally low levels of living;
and in addition, accommodation of annually larger increments to the
population. The accomplishment of these tasks could be intolerably slow
if the average annual growth rate in the remainder of this century does
not slow down to well below the 2.7 percent projected, under the medium
variant, for LDCs with market economics. How rapid population growth
impedes social and economic progress is discussed in subsequent
chapters.
CHAPTER II. POPULATION AND WORLD FOOD SUPPLIES
Rapid population growth and lagging food production in
developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the
global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns
about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next
quarter century and beyond.
As a result of population growth, and to some extent also of
increasing affluence, world food demand has been growing at
unprecedented rates. In 1900, the annual increase in world demand for
cereals was about 4 million tons. By 1950, it had risen to about 12
million tons per year. By 1970, the annual increase in demand was 30
million tons (on a base of over 1,200 million tons). This is roughly
equivalent to the annual wheat crop of Canada, Australia, and Argentina
combined. This annual increase in food demand is made up of a 2% annual
increase in population and a 0.5% increased demand per capita. Part of
the rising per capita demand reflects improvement in diets of some of
the peoples of the developing countries. In the less developed countries
about 400 pounds of grain is available per person per year and is
mostly eaten as cereal. The average North American, however, uses nearly
a ton of grain a year, only 200 pounds directly and the rest in the
form of meat, milk, and eggs for which several pounds of cereal are
required to produce one pound of the animal product (e.g., five pounds
of grain to produce one pound of beef).
During the past two decades, LDCs have been able to keep food
production ahead of population, notwithstanding the unprecedentedly high
rates of population growth. The basic figures are summarized in the
following table: [calculated from data in USDA, The World Agricultural
Situation, March 1974]:
INDICES OF WORLD POPULATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
(excluding Peoples Republic of China)
1954=100
+——————–+——————–+————————+
| WORLD | DEVELOPED COUNTRIES|LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES|
| Food | Food | Food |
| production | production | production |
| | | |
| Popu- Per | Popu- Per | Popu- Per |
|lation Total Capita|lation Total Capita|lation Total Capita |
+——+——————–+——————–+————————+
| 1954 | 100 100 100 | 100 100 100 | 100 100 100 |
| 1973 | 144 170 119 | 124 170 138 | 159 171 107 |
| | |
| Compound Annual Increase (%): |
| | 1.9 2.8 0.9 | 1.1 2.8 1.7 | 2.5 2.9 0.4 |
+——+——————–+——————–+————————+
It will be noted that the relative gain in LDC total food
production was just as great as for advanced countries, but was far less
on a per capita basis because of the sharp difference in population
growth rates. Moreover, within the LDC group were 24 countries
(including Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Zaire, Algeria, Guyana,
Iraq, and Chile) in which the rate of increase of population growth
exceeded the rate of increase in food production; and a much more
populous group (including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) in which the
rate of increase in production barely exceeded population growth but did
not keep up with the increase in domestic demand. [World Food
Conference, Preliminary Assessment, 8 May 1974; U.N. Document E/CONF.
65/ PREP/6, p. 33.]
General requirements have been projected for the years 1985 and
2000, based on the UN Medium Variant population estimates and allowing
for a very small improvement in diets in the LDCs.
A recent projection made by the Department of Agriculture
indicates a potential productive capacity more than adequate to meet
world cereal requirements (the staple food of the world) of a population
of 6.4 billion in the year 2000 (medium fertility variant) at roughly
current relative prices.
This overall picture offers little cause for complacency when
broken down by geographic regions. To support only a very modest
improvement in current cereal consumption levels (from 177 kilograms per
capita in 1970 to 200-206 kilograms in 2000) the projections show an
alarming increase in LDC dependency on imports. Such imports are
projected to rise from 21.4 million tons in 1970 to 102-122 million tons
by the end of the century. Cereal imports would increase to 13-15
percent of total developing country consumption as against 8 percent in
1970. As a group, the advanced countries cannot only meet their own
needs but will also generate a substantial surplus. For the LDCs,
analyses of food production capacity foresee the physical possibility of
meeting their needs, provided that (a) weather conditions are normal,
(b) yields per unit of area continue to improve at the rates of the last
decade, bringing the average by 1985 close to present yields in the
advanced countries, and (c) a substantially larger annual transfer of
grains can be arranged from the surplus countries (mainly North
America), either through commercial sales or through continuous and
growing food aid. The estimates of production capacity do not rely on
major new technical breakthroughs in food production methods, but they
do require the availability and application of greatly increased
quantities of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation water, and other
inputs to modernized agriculture, together with continued technological
advances at past rates and the institutional and administrative reforms
(including vastly expanded research and extension services) essential to
the successful application of these inputs. They also assume normal
weather conditions. Substantial political will is required in the LDCs
to give the necessary priority to food production.
There is great uncertainty whether the conditions for achieving
food balance in the LDCs can in fact be realized. Climatic changes are
poorly understood, but a persistent atmospheric cooling trend since 1940
has been established. One respectable body of scientific opinion
believes that this portends a period of much wider annual frosts, and
possibly a long-term lowering of rainfall in the monsoon areas of Asia
and Africa. Nitrogen fertilizer will be in world short supply into the
late 1970s, at least; because of higher energy prices, it may also be
more costly in real terms than in the 1960s. Capital investments for
irrigation and infrastructure and the organizational requirements for
securing continuous improvements in agricultural yields may well be
beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some
of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no
prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasing
imports of food.
While it is always unwise to project the recent past into the
long-term future, the experience of 1972-73 is very sobering. The
coincidence of adverse weather in many regions in 1972 brought per
capita production in the LDCs back to the level of the early 1960s. At
the same time, world food reserves (mainly American) were almost
exhausted, and they were not rebuilt during the high production year of
1973. A repetition under these conditions of 1972 weather patterns would
result in large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several
decades — a kind the world thought had been permanently banished.
Even if massive famine can be averted, the most optimistic
forecasts of food production potential in the more populous LDCs show
little improvement in the presently inadequate levels and quality of
nutrition. As long as annual population growth continues at 2 to 3
percent or more, LDCs must make expanded food production the top
development priority, even though it may absorb a large fraction of
available capital and foreign exchange.
Moderation of population growth rates in the LDCs could make
some difference to food requirements by 1985, a substantial difference
by 2000, and a vast difference in the early part of the next century.
From the viewpoint of U.S. interests, such reductions in LDC food needs
would be clearly advantageous. They would not reduce American commercial
markets for food since the reduction in LDC food requirements that
would result from slowing population growth would affect only requests
for concessional or grant food assistance, not commercial sales. They
would improve the prospects for maintaining adequate world food reserves
against climatic emergencies. They would reduce the likelihood of
periodic famines in region after region, accompanied by food riots and
chronic social and political instability. They would improve the
possibilities for long-term development and integration into a peaceful
world order.
Even taking the most optimistic view of the theoretical
possibilities of producing enough foods in the developed countries to
meet the requirements of the developing countries, the problem of
increased costs to the LDCs is already extremely serious and in its
future may be insurmountable. At current prices the anticipated import
requirements of 102-122 million tons by 2000 would raise the cost of
developing countries’ imports of cereals to $16-204 billion by that year
compared with $2.5 billion in 1970. Large as they may seem even these
estimates of import requirements could be on the low side if the
developing countries are unable to achieve the Department of
Agriculture’s assumed increase in the rate of growth of production.
The FAO in its recent “Preliminary Assessment of the World Food
Situation Present and Future” has reached a similar conclusion:
What is certain is the enormity of the food import bill which
might face the developing countries . . . In addition [to cereals] the
developing countries . . . would be importing substantial amounts of
other foodstuffs. clearly the financing of international food trade on
this scale would raise very grave problems.
At least three-quarters of the projected increase in cereal
imports of developing countries would fall in the poorer countries of
South Asia and North and Central Africa. The situation in Latin America
which is projected to shift from a modest surplus to a modest deficit
area is quite different. Most of this deficit will be in Mexico and
Central America, with relatively high income and easily exploitable
transportation links to the U.S.
The problem in Latin America, therefore, appears relatively more manageable.
It seems highly unlikely, however, that the poorer countries of
Asia and Africa will be able to finance nearly like the level of import
requirements projected by the USDA. Few of them have dynamic
export-oriented industrial sectors like Taiwan or South Korea or rich
raw material resources that will generate export earnings fast enough to
keep pace with food import needs. Accordingly, those countries where
large-scale hunger and malnutrition are already present face the bleak
prospect of little, if any, improvement in the food intake in the years
ahead barring a major foreign financial food aid program, more rapid
expansion of domestic food production, reduced population growth or some
combination of all three. Worse yet, a series of crop disasters could
transform some of them into classic Malthusian cases with famines
involving millions of people.
While foreign assistance probably will continue to be
forthcoming to meet short-term emergency situations like the threat of
mass starvation, it is more questionable whether aid donor countries
will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by
the import projections on a long-term continuing basis.
Reduced population growth rates clearly could bring significant
relief over the longer term. Some analysts maintain that for the
post-1985 period a rapid decline in fertility will be crucial to
adequate diets worldwide. If, as noted before, fertility in the
developing countries could be made to decline to the replacement level
by the year 2000, the world’s population in that year would be 5.9
billion or 500 million below the level that would be attained if the UN
medium projection were followed. Nearly all of the decline would be in
the LDCs. With such a reduction the projected import gap of 102-122
million tons per year could be eliminated while still permitting a
modest improvement in per capita consumption. While such a rapid
reduction in fertility rates in the next 30 years is an optimistic
target, it is thought by some experts that it could be obtained by
intensified efforts if its necessity were understood by world and
national leaders. Even more modest reductions could have significant
implications by 2000 and even more over time.
Intensive programs to increase food production in developing
countries beyond the levels assumed in the U.S.D.A. projections probably
offer the best prospect for some reasonably early relief, although this
poses major technical and organizational difficulties and will involve
substantial costs. It must be realized, however, that this will be
difficult in all countries and probably impossible in some — or many.
Even with the introduction of new inputs and techniques it has not been
possible to increase agricultural output by as much as 3 percent per
annum in many of the poorer developing countries. Population growth in a
number of these countries exceeds that rate.
Such a program of increased food production would require the
widespread use of improved seed varieties, increased applications of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides over vast areas and better farm
management along with bringing new land under cultivation. It has been
estimated, for example, that with better varieties, pest control, and
the application of fertilizer on the Japanese scale, Indian rice yields
could theoretically at least, be raised two and one-half times current
levels. Here again very substantial foreign assistance for imported
materials may be required for at least the early years before the
program begins to take hold.
The problem is clear. The solutions, or at least the directions
we must travel to reach them are also generally agreed. What will be
required is a genuine commitment to a set of policies that will lead the
international community, both developed and developing countries, to
the achievement of the objectives spelled out above.
CHAPTER III – MINERALS AND FUEL
Population growth per se is not likely to impose serious
constraints on the global physical availability of fuel and non-fuel
minerals to the end of the century and beyond.
This favorable outlook on reserves does not rule out shortage
situations for specific minerals at particular times and places. Careful
planning with continued scientific and technological progress
(including the development of substitutes) should keep the problems of
physical availability within manageable proportions.
The major factor influencing the demand for non-agricultural raw
materials is the level of industrial activity, regional and global. For
example, the U.S., with 6% of the world’s population, consumes about a
third of its resources. The demand for raw materials, unlike food, is
not a direct function of population growth. The current scarcities and
high prices for most such materials result mainly from the boom
conditions in all industrialized regions in the years 1972-73.
The important potential linkage between rapid population growth
and minerals availability is indirect rather than direct. It flows from
the negative effects of excessive population growth in economic
development and social progress, and therefore on internal stability, in
overcrowded under-developed countries. The United States has become
increasingly dependent on mineral imports from developing countries in
recent decades, and this trend is likely to continue. The location of
known reserves of higher-grade ores of most minerals favors increasing
dependence of all industrialized regions on imports from less developed
countries. The real problems of mineral supplies lie, not in basic
physical sufficiency, but in the politico-economic issues of access,
terms for exploration and exploitation, and division of the benefits
among producers, consumers, and host country governments.
In the extreme cases where population pressures lead to endemic
famine, food riots, and breakdown of social order, those conditions are
scarcely conducive to systematic exploration for mineral deposits or the
long-term investments required for their exploitation. Short of famine,
unless some minimum of popular aspirations for material improvement can
be satisfied, and unless the terms of access and exploitation persuade
governments and peoples that this aspect of the international economic
order has “something in it for them,” concessions to foreign companies
are likely to be expropriated or subjected to arbitrary intervention.
Whether through government action, labor conflicts, sabotage, or civil
disturbance, the smooth flow of needed materials will be jeopardized.
Although population pressure is obviously not the only factor involved,
these types of frustrations are much less likely under conditions of
slow or zero population growth.
Reserves.
Projections made by the Department of Interior through the year
2000 for those fuel and non-fuel minerals on which the U.S. depends
heavily for imports5 support these conclusions on physical resources
(see Annex). Proven reserves of many of these minerals appear to be more
than adequate to meet the estimated accumulated world demand at 1972
relative prices at least to the end of the century. While petroleum
(including natural gas), copper, zinc, and tin are probable exceptions,
the extension of economically exploitable reserves as a result of higher
prices, as well as substitution and secondary recovery for metals,
should avoid long-term supply restrictions. In many cases, the price
increases that have taken place since 1972 should be more than
sufficient to bring about the necessary extension of reserves.
These conclusions are consistent with a much more extensive
study made in 1972 for the Commission on Population Growth and the
American Future.6
As regards fossil fuels, that study foresees adequate world
reserves for at least the next quarter to half century even without
major technological breakthroughs. U.S. reserves of coal and oil shale
are adequate well into the next century, although their full
exploitation may be limited by environmental and water supply factors.
Estimates of the U.S. Geological Survey suggest recoverable oil and gas
reserves (assuming sufficiently high prices) to meet domestic demand for
another two or three decades, but there is also respectable expert
opinion supporting much lower estimates; present oil production is below
the peak of 1970 and meets only 70 percent of current demands.7
Nevertheless, the U.S. is in a relatively strong position on fossil
fuels compared with the rest of the industrialized world, provided that
it takes the time and makes the heavy investments needed to develop
domestic alternatives to foreign sources.
In the case of the 19 non-fuel minerals studied by the
Commission it was concluded there were sufficient proven reserves of
nine to meet cumulative world needs at current relative prices through
the year 2020.8 For the ten others9 world proven reserves were
considered inadequate. However, it was judged that moderate price
increases, recycling and substitution could bridge the estimated gap
between supply and requirements.
The above projections probably understate the estimates of
global resources. “Proved Reserves,” that is known supplies that will be
available at present or slightly higher relative costs 10 to 25 years
from now, rarely exceed 25 years’ cumulative requirements, because
industry generally is reluctant to undertake costly exploration to meet
demands which may or may not materialize in the more distant future.
Experience has shown that additional reserves are discovered as
required, at least in the case of non-fuel minerals, and “proved
reserves” have generally remained constant in relation to consumption.
The adequacy of reserves does not of course assure that supplies
will be forthcoming in a steady stream as required. Intermediate
problems may develop as a result of business miscalculations regarding
the timing of expansion to meet requirements. With the considerable lead
time required for expanding capacity, this can result in periods of
serious shortage for certain materials and rising prices as in the
recent past. Similarly, from time to time there will be periods of
overcapacity and falling prices. Necessary technical adjustments
required for the shift to substitutes or increased recycling also may be
delayed by the required lead time or by lack of information.
An early warning system designed to flag impending surpluses and
shortages, could be very helpful in anticipating these problems. Such a
mechanism might take the form of groups of experts working with the UN
Division of Resources. Alternatively, intergovernmental commodity study
groups might be set up for the purpose of monitoring those commodities
identified as potential problem areas.
Adequate global availability of fuel and non-fuel minerals is
not of much benefit to countries who cannot afford to pay for them. Oil
supplies currently are adequate to cover world needs, but the
quadrupling of prices in the past year has created grave financial and
payment problems for developed and developing countries alike. If
similar action to raise prices were undertaken by supplies of other
important minerals, an already bad situation would be intensified.
Success in such efforts is questionable, however; there is no case in
which the quantities involved are remotely comparable to the cases of
energy; and the scope for successful price-gouging or cartel tactics is
much smaller.
Although the U.S. is relatively well off in this regard, it
nonetheless depends heavily on mineral imports from a number of sources
which are not completely safe or stable. It may therefore be necessary,
especially in the light of our recent oil experience, to keep this
dependence within bounds, in some cases by developing additional
domestic resources and more generally by acquiring stock-piles for
economic as well as national defense emergencies. There are also
possible dangers of unreasonable prices promoted by producer cartels and
broader policy questions of U.S. support for commodity agreements
involving both producers and consumers. Such matters, however, are in
the domain of commodity policy rather than population policy.
At least through the end of this century, changes in population
growth trends will make little difference to total levels of
requirements for fuel and other minerals. Those requirements are related
much more closely to levels of income and industrial output, leaving
the demand for minerals substantially unaffected. In the longer run, a
lower ultimate world population (say 8 to 9 billion rather than 12 to 16
billion) would require a lower annual input of depletable resources
directly affected by population size as well as a much lower volume of
food, forest products, textiles, and other renewable resources.
Whatever may be done to guard against interruptions of supply
and to develop domestic alternatives, the U.S. economy will require
large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from
less developed countries.10 That fact gives the U.S. enhanced interest
in the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying
countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced
birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population
policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic
interests of the United States.
ANNEX
OUTLOOK FOR RAW MATERIALS
I. Factors Affecting Raw Material Demand and Supply
Some of the key factors that must be considered in evaluating
the future raw materials situation are the stage of a country’s economic
development and the responsiveness of the market to changes in the
relative prices of the raw materials.
Economic theory indicates that the pattern of consumption of raw
materials varies with the level of economic activity. Examination of
the intensity-of-use of raw materials (incremental quantity of raw
material needed to support an additional unit of GNP) show that after a
particular level of GNP is reached, the intensity of use of raw
materials starts to decline. Possible explanations for this decline are:
1. In industrialized countries, the services component of GNP
expands relative to the non-services components as economic growth
occurs.
2. Technological progress, on the whole, tends to lower the
intensity-of-use through greater efficiency in the use of raw materials
and development of alloys.
3. Economic growth continues to be characterized by substitution
of one material by another and substitution of synthetics for natural
materials.11
Most developed countries have reached this point of declining
intensity-of-use.12 For other countries that have not reached this stage
of economic development, their population usually goes through a stage
of rapid growth prior to industrialization. This is due to the relative
ease in the application of improved health care policies and the
resulting decline in their death rates, while birth rates remain high.
Then the country’s economy does begin to industrialize and grow more
rapidly, the initial rapid rise in industrial production results in an
increasing intensity-of-use of raw materials, until industrial
production reached the level where the intensity-of-use begins to
decline.
As was discussed above, changes in the relative prices of raw
materials change the amount of economically recoverable reserves. Thus,
the relative price level, smoothness of the adjustment process, and
availability of capital for needed investment can also be expected to
significantly influence raw materials’ market conditions. In addition,
technological improvement in mining and metallurgy permits lower grade
ores to be exploited without corresponding increases in costs.
The following table presents the 1972 net imports and the ratio
of imports to total demand for nine commodities. The net imports of
these nine commodities represented 99 percent of the total trade deficit
in minerals.
+————————–+————–+——————+
| | 1972 | Ratio of Imports |
| Commodity | Net Imports | to Total Demand |
| | ($Millions)* | |
+————————–+————–+——————+
| Aluminum | 48.38 | .286 |
| Copper | 206.4 | .160 |
| Iron | 424.5 | .049 |
| Lead | 102.9 | .239 |
| Nickel | 477.1 | .704 |
| Tin | 220.2 | .943 |
| Titanium | 256.5 | .469 |
| Zinc | 294.8 | .517 |
| Petroleum | 5,494.5 | .246 |
| (including natural gas) | | |
+————————–+————–+——————+
The primary sources of these US imports during the period 1969-1972 were:
+————————————————————-+
| Commodity Source & % |
+————————————————————-+
| Aluminum – Canada 76% |
| Copper – Canada 31%, Peru 27%, Chile 22% |
| Iron – Canada 50%, Venezuela 31% |
| Lead – Canada 29%, Peru 21%, Australia 21% |
| Nickel – Canada 82%, Norway 8% |
| Tin – Malaysia 64%, Thailand 27% |
| Titanium – Japan 73%, USSR 19% |
| Zinc (Ore) – Canada 60%, Mexico 24% |
| Zinc (Metal) – Canada 48%, Australia 10% |
| Pertroleum (crude) – Canada 42% |
| Petroleum (crude) – Venezuela 17% |
+————————————————————-+
II. World Reserves
The following table shows estimates of the world reserve
position for these commodities. As mentioned earlier, the quantity of
economically recoverable reserves increases with higher prices. The
following tables, based on Bureau of Mines information, provide
estimates of reserves at various prices. (All prices are in constant
1972 dollars.)
Aluminum (Bauxite)
Price (per pound primary aluminum)
Price A Price B Price C Price D
.23 .29 .33 .36
Reserves (billion short tons, aluminum content)
World 3.58 3.76 4.15 5.21
U.S. .01 .02 .04 .09
Copper
Price (per pound refined copper)
.51 .60 .75
Reserves (million short tons)
World 370 418 507
U.S. 83 93 115
Gold
Price (per troy ounce)
58.60 90 100 150
Reserves (million troy ounce)
World 1,000 1,221 1,588 1,850
U.S. 82 120 200 240
Iron
Price (per short ton of primary iron contained in ore)
17.80 20.80 23.80
Reserves (billion short tons iron content)
World 96.7 129.0 206.0
U.S. 2.0 2.7 18.0
Lead
Price (per pound primary lead metal)
.15 .18 .20
Reserves (million short tons, lead content)
World 96.0 129.0 144.0
U.S. 36.0 51.0 56.0
Nickel
Price (per pound of primary metal)
1.53 1.75 2.00 2.25
Reserves (millions short tons)
World 46.2 60.5 78.0 99.5
U.S. .2 .2 .5 .5
Tin
Price (per pound primary tin metal)
1.77 2.00 2.50 3.00
Reserves (thousands of long tons – tin content)
World 4,180 5,500 7,530 9,290
U.S. 5 9 100 200
Titanium
Price (per pound titanium in pigment)
.45 .55 .60
Reserves (thousands short tons titanium content)
World 158,000 222,000 327,000
U.S. 32,400 45,000 60,000
Zinc
Price (per pound, prime western zinc delivered)
.18 .25 .30
Reserves (million short tons, zinc content)
World 131 193 260
U.S. 30 40 50
Petroleum:
Data necessary to quantify reserve-price relationships are not
available. For planning purposes, however, the Bureau of Mines used the
rough assumption that a 100% increase in price would increase reserves
by 10%. The average 1972 U.S. price was $3.39/bbl. with proven world
reserves of 666.9 billion bbls. and U.S. reserves of 36.3 billion
barrels. Using the Bureau of Mines assumption, therefore, a doubling in
world price (a U.S. price of $6.78/bbl.) would imply world reserves of
733.5 billion bbls. and U.S. reserves of 39.9 billion barrels.
Natural Gas:
Price (wellhead price per thousand cubic feet)
.186 .34 .44 .55
Reserves (trillion cubic feet)
World 1,156 6,130 10,240 15,599
U.S. 266 580 900 2,349
It should be noted that these statistics represent a shift in 1972
relative prices and assume constant 1972 technology. The development of
new technology or a more dramatic shift in relative prices can have a
significant impact on the supply of economically recoverable reserves.
Aluminum is a case in point. It is the most abundant metallic element in
the earth’s crust and the supply of this resource is almost entirely
determined by the price. Current demand and technology limit
economically recoverable reserves to bauxite sources. Alternate sources
of aluminum exist (e.g., alunite) and if improved technology is
developed making these alternate sources commercially viable, supply
constraints will not likely be encountered.
The above estimated reserve figures, while representing approximate
orders of magnitude, are adequate to meet projected accumulated world
demand (also very rough orders of magnitude) through the year 2000. In
some cases, modest price increases above the 1972 level may be required
to attract the necessary capital investment.
Chapter IV – Economic Development and Population Growth
Rapid population growth adversely affects every aspect of
economic and social progress in developing countries. It absorbs large
amounts of resources needed for more productive investment in
development. It requires greater expenditures for health, education and
other social services, particularly in urban areas. It increases the
dependency load per worker so that a high fraction of the output of the
productive age group is needed to support dependents. It reduces family
savings and domestic investment. It increases existing severe pressures
on limited agricultural land in countries where the world’s “poverty
problem” is concentrated. It creates a need for use of large amounts of
scarce foreign exchange for food imports (or the loss of food surpluses
for export). Finally, it intensifies the already severe unemployment and
underemployment problems of many developing countries where not enough
productive jobs are created to absorb the annual increments to the labor
force.
Even in countries with good resource/population ratios, rapid
population growth causes problems for several reasons: First, large
capital investments generally are required to exploit unused resources.
Second, some countries already have high and growing unemployment and
lack the means to train new entrants to their labor force. Third, there
are long delays between starting effective family planning programs and
reducing fertility, and even longer delays between reductions in
fertility and population stabilization. Hence there is substantial
danger of vastly overshooting population targets if population growth is
not moderated in the near future.
During the past decade, the developing countries have raised
their GNP at a rate of 5 percent per annum as against 4.8 percent in
developed countries. But at the same time the LDCs experienced an
average annual population growth rate of 2.5 percent. Thus their per
capita income growth rate was only 2.5 percent and in some of the more
highly populated areas the increase in per capita incomes was less than 2
percent. This stands in stark contrast to 3.6 percent in the rich
countries. Moreover, the low rate means that there is very little change
in those countries whose per capita incomes are $200 or less per annum.
The problem has been further exacerbated in recent months by the
dramatic increases in oil and fertilizer prices. The World Bank has
estimated that the incomes of the 800 million inhabitants of the
countries hardest hit by the oil crisis will grow at less than 1% per
capita per year of the remainder of the 1970s. Taking account of
inequalities in income distribution, there will be well over 500 million
people, with average incomes of less than $100 per capita, who will
experience either no growth or negative growth in that period.
Moderation of population growth offers benefits in terms of
resources saved for investment and/or higher per capita consumption. If
resource requirements to support fewer children are reduced and the
funds now allocated for construction of schools, houses, hospitals and
other essential facilities are invested in productive activities, the
impact on the growth of GNP and per capita income may be significant. In
addition, economic and social progress resulting from population
control will further contribute to the decline in fertility rates. The
relationship is reciprocal, and can take the form of either a vicious or
a virtuous circle.
This raises the question of how much more efficient expenditures
for population control might be than in raising production through
direct investments in additional irrigation and power projects and
factories. While most economists today do not agree with the assumptions
that went into early overly optimistic estimates of returns to
population expenditures, there is general agreement that up to the point
when cost per acceptor rises rapidly, family planning expenditures are
generally considered the best investment a country can make in its own
future.
II. Impact of Population Growth on Economic Development
In most, if not all, developing countries high fertility rates
impose substantial economic costs and restrain economic growth. The main
adverse macroeconomic effects may be analyzed in three general
categories: (1) the saving effect, (2) “child quality” versus “child
quantity”, and (3) “capital deepening” versus “capital widening.” These
three categories are not mutually exclusive, but they highlight
different familial and social perspectives. In addition, there are often
longer-run adverse effects on agricultural output and the balance of
payments.
(1) The saving effect. A high fertility economy has perforce a
larger “burden of dependency” than a low fertility economy, because a
larger proportion of the population consists of children too young to
work. There are more non-working people to feed, house and rear, and
there is a smaller surplus above minimum consumption available for
savings and investment. It follows that a lower fertility rate can free
resources from consumption; if saved and invested, these resources could
contribute to economic growth. (There is much controversy on this;
empirical studies of the savings effect have produced varying results.)
(2) Child quality versus quantity. Parents make investment
decisions, in a sense, about their children. Healthier and
better-educated children tend to be economically more productive, both
as children and later as adults. In addition to the more-or-less
conscious trade-offs parents can make about more education and better
health per child, there are certain biologic adverse effects suffered by
high birth order children such as higher mortality and limited brain
growth due to higher incidence of malnutrition. It must be emphasized,
however, that discussion of trade-offs between child quality and child
quantity will probably remain academic with regard to countries where
child mortality remains high. When parents cannot expect most children
to survive to old age, they probably will continue to “over-compensate”,
using high fertility as a form of hedge to insure that they will have
some living offspring able to support the parents in the distant future.
(3) Capital deepening versus widening. From the family’s
viewpoint high fertility is likely to reduce welfare per child; for the
economy one may view high fertility as too rapid a growth in labor force
relative to capital stock. Society’s capital stock includes facilities
such as schools and other educational inputs in addition to capital
investments that raise workers’ outputs in agriculture and
manufacturing. For any given rate of capital accumulation, a lower
population growth rate can help increase the amount of capital and
education per worker, helping thereby to increase output and income per
capita. The problem of migration to cities and the derived demand for
urban infrastructure can also be analyzed as problems of capital
widening, which draw resources away from growth-generating investments.
In a number of the more populous countries a fourth aspect of
rapid growth in numbers has emerged in recent years which has profound
long-run consequences. Agricultural output was able to keep pace or
exceed population growth over the many decades of population rise prior
to the middle of this century, primarily through steady expansion of
acreage under cultivation. More recently, only marginal unused land has
been available in India, Thailand, Java, Bangladesh, and other areas. As
a result (a) land holdings have declined in size, and (b) land shortage
has led to deforestation and overgrazing, with consequent soil erosion
and severe water pollution and increased urban migration. Areas that
once earned foreign exchange through the export of food surpluses are
now in deficit or face early transition to dependence on food imports.
Although the scope for raising agricultural productivity is very great
in many of these areas, the available technologies for doing so require
much higher capital costs per acre and much larger foreign exchange
outlays for “modern” inputs (chemical fertilizer, pesticides, petroleum
fuels, etc.) than was the case with the traditional technologies. Thus
the population growth problem can be seen as an important long-run, or
structural, contributor to current LDC balance of payments problems and
to deterioration of their basic ecological infrastructure.
Finally, high fertility appears to exacerbate the
maldistribution of income which is a fundamental economic and social
problem in much of the developing world. Higher income families tend to
have fewer children, spend more on the health and education of these
children, have more wealth to pass on to these children in contrast to
the several disadvantages that face the children of the poor. The latter
tend to be more numerous, receiving less of an investment per child in
their “human capital”, leaving the children with economic, educational
and social constraints similar to those which restrict the opportunities
of the parents. In short, high fertility contributes to the
intergenerational continuity of maldistributions of income and related
social and political problems.
III. The Effect of Development on Population Growth
The determinants of population growth are not well understood,
especially for low income societies. Historical data show that declining
fertility in Europe and North America has been associated with
declining mortality and increasing urbanization, and generally with
“modernization.” Fertility declined substantially in the West without
the benefit of sophisticated contraceptives. This movement from high
fertility and high mortality to low fertility and low mortality is known
as the “demographic transition”. In many low income countries mortality
has declined markedly since World War II (in large part from reduction
in epidemic illness and famine), but fertility has remained high. Apart
from a few pockets of low fertility in East Asia and the Caribbean, a
significant demographic transition has not occurred in the third world.
(The Chinese, however, make remarkable claims about their success in
reducing birth rates, and qualified observers are persuaded that they
have had unusual success even though specific demographic information is
lacking.)
There is considerable, incontestable evidence in many developing
countries that a larger (though not fully known) number of couples
would like to have fewer children than possible generally there — and
that there is a large unsatisfied demand by these couples for family
planning services. It is also now widely believed that something more
that family planning services will be needed to motivate other couples
to want smaller families and all couples to want replacement levels
essential to the progress and growth of their countries.
There is also evidence, although it is not conclusive, that
certain aspects of economic development and modernization are more
directly related to lowered birth rates than others, and that selective
developmental policies may bring about a demographic transition at
substantially lower per capita income levels than in Europe, North
America, and Japan.13 Such selective policies would focus on improved
health care and nutrition directed toward reduced infant and child
mortality; universal schooling and adult literacy, especially for women;
increasing the legal age of marriage; greater opportunities for female
employment in the money economy; improved old-age social security
arrangements; and agricultural modernization focussed on small farmers.
It is important that this focus be made in development programs because,
given today’s high population densities, high birth rates, and low
income levels in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, if the
demographic transition has to await overall development and
modernization, the vicious circle of poverty, people, and unemployment
may never be broken.
The causes of high birth rates in low income societies are generally explained in terms of three factors:
a. Inadequacy of information and means. Actual family size in
many societies is higher than desired family size owing to ignorance of
acceptable birth control methods or unavailability of birth control
devices and services. The importance of this factor is evidenced by many
sociological investigations on “desired family size” versus actual
size, and by the substantial rates of acceptance for contraceptives when
systematic family planning services are introduced. This factor has
been a basic assumption in the family planning programs of official
bilateral and multilateral programs in many countries over the past
decade. Whatever the actual weight of this factor, which clearly varies
from country to country and which shifts with changes in economic and
social conditions, there remains without question a significant demand
for family planning services.
b. Inadequacy of motivation for reduced numbers of children.
Especially in the rural areas of underdeveloped countries, which account
for the major share of today’s population growth, parents often want
large numbers of children (especially boys) (i) to ensure that some will
survive against the odds of high child mortality, (ii) to provide
support for the parents in their old age, and (iii) to provide low cost
farm labor. While these elements are present among rural populace,
continued urbanization may reduce the need for sons in the longer term.
The absence of educational and employment opportunities for young women
intensifies these same motivations by encouraging early marriage and
early and frequent maternity. This factor suggests the crucial
importance of selective development policies as a means of accelerating
the reduction of fertility.
c. The “time lag”. Family preferences and social institutions
that favor high fertility change slowly. Even though mortality and
economic conditions have improved significantly since World War II in
LDCs, family expectations, social norms, and parental practice are slow
to respond to these altered conditions. This factor leads to the need
for large scale programs of information, education, and persuasion
directed at lower fertility.
The three elements are undoubtedly intermixed in varying
proportions in all underdeveloped countries with high birth rates. In
most LDCs, many couples would reduce their completed family size if
appropriate birth control methods were more easily available. The extent
of this reduction, however, may still leave their completed family size
at higher than mere replacement levels — i.e., at levels implying
continued but less rapid population growth. Many other couples would not
reduce their desired family size merely if better contraceptives were
available, either because they see large families as economically
beneficial, or because of cultural factors, or because they misread
their own economic interests.
Therefore, family planning supply (contraceptive technology and
delivery systems) and demand (the motivation for reduced fertility)
would not be viewed as mutually exclusive alternatives; they are
complementary and may be mutually reinforcing. The selected point of
focus mentioned earlier — old age security programs, maternal and child
health programs, increased female education, increasing the legal age of
marriage, financial incentives to “acceptors”, personnel, — are
important, yet better information is required as to which measures are
most cost-effective and feasible in a given situation and how their
cost-effectiveness compares to supply programs.
One additional interesting area is receiving increasing
attention: the distribution of the benefits of development. Experience
in several countries suggests that the extent to which the poor, with
the highest fertility rates, reduce their fertility will depend on the
extent to which they participate in development. In this view the
average level of economic development and the average amount of
modernization are less important determinants of population growth than
is the specific structure of development. This line of investigation
suggests that social development activities need to be more precisely
targeted than in the past to reach the lowest income people, to
counteract their desire for high fertility as a means of alleviating
certain adverse conditions.
IV. Employment and Social Problems
Employment, aside from its role in production of goods and
services, is an important source of income and of status or recognition
to workers and their families. The inability of large segments of the
economically active population in developing countries to find jobs
offering a minimum acceptable standard of living is reflected in a
widening of income disparities and a deepening sense of economic,
political and social frustration.
The most economically significant employment problems in LDCs
contributed to by excessive population growth are low worker
productivity in production of traditional goods and services produced,
the changing aspirations of the work force, the existing distribution of
income, wealth and power, and the natural resource endowment of a
country.
The political and social problems of urban overcrowding are
directly related to population growth. In addition to the still-high
fertility in urban areas of many LDC’s, population pressures on the
land, which increases migration to the cities, adds to the pressures on
urban job markets and political stability, and strains, the capacity to
provide schools, health facilities, and water supplies.
It should be recognized that lower fertility will relieve only a
portion of these strains and that its most beneficial effects will be
felt only over a period of decades. Most of the potential migrants from
countryside to city over the coming 15 to 20 years have already been
born. Lower birth rates do provide some immediate relief to health and
sanitation and welfare services, and medium-term relief to pressures on
educational systems. The largest effects on employment, migration, and
living standards, however, will be felt only after 25 or 30 years. The
time lags inherent in all aspects of population dynamics only reinforce
the urgency of adopting effective policies in the years immediately
ahead if the formidable problems of the present decade are not to become
utterly unmanageable in the 1990s and beyond the year 2000.
Chapter V — Implications of Population Pressures for National Security
It seems well understood that the impact of population factors
on the subjects already considered — development, food requirements,
resources, environment — adversely affects the welfare and progress of
countries in which we have a friendly interest and thus indirectly
adversely affects broad U.S. interests as well.
The effects of population factors on the political stability of
these countries and their implications for internal and international
order or disorder, destructive social unrest, violence and disruptive
foreign activities are less well understood and need more analysis.
Nevertheless, some strategists and experts believe that these effects
may ultimately be the most important of those arising from population
factors, most harmful to the countries where they occur and seriously
affecting U.S. interests. Other experts within the U.S. Government
disagree with this conclusion.
A recent study14 of forty-five local conflicts involving Third
World countries examined the ways in which population factors affect the
initiation and course of a conflict in different situations. The study
reached two major conclusions:
1. “. . . population factors are indeed critical in, and often
determinants of, violent conflict in developing areas. Segmental
(religious, social, racial) differences, migration, rapid population
growth, differential levels of knowledge and skills, rural/urban
differences, population pressure and the spacial location of population
in relation to resources — in this rough order of importance — all
appear to be important contributions to conflict and violence…
2. Clearly, conflicts which are regarded in primarily political
terms often have demographic roots: Recognition of these relationships
appears crucial to any understanding or prevention of such hostilities.”
It does not appear that the population factors act alone or,
often, directly to cause the disruptive effects. They act through
intervening elements — variables. They also add to other causative
factors turning what might have been only a difficult situation into one
with disruptive results.
This action is seldom simple. Professor Philip Hauser of the
University of Chicago has suggested the concept of “population
complosion” to describe the situation in many developing countries when
(a) more and more people are born into or move into and are compressed
in the same living space under (b) conditions and irritations of
different races, colors, religions, languages, or cultural backgrounds,
often with differential rates of population growth among these groups,
and (c) with the frustrations of failure to achieve their aspirations
for better standards of living for themselves or their children. To
these may be added pressures for and actual international migration.
These population factors appear to have a multiplying effect on other
factors involved in situations of incipient violence. Population
density, the “overpopulation” most often thought of in this connection,
is much less important.
These population factors contribute to socio-economic variables
including breakdowns in social structures, underemployment and
unemployment, poverty, deprived people in city slums, lowered
opportunities for education for the masses, few job opportunities for
those who do obtain education, interracial, religious, and regional
rivalries, and sharply increased financial, planning, and administrative
burdens on governmental systems at all levels.
These adverse conditions appear to contribute frequently to
harmful developments of a political nature: Juvenile delinquency,
thievery and other crimes, organized brigandry, kidnapping and
terrorism, food riots, other outbreaks of violence; guerilla warfare,
communal violence, separatist movements, revolutionary movements and
counter-revolutionary coups. All of these bear upon the weakening or
collapse of local, state, or national government functions.
Beyond national boundaries, population factors appear to have
had operative roles in some past politically disturbing legal or illegal
mass migrations, border incidents, and wars. If current increased
population pressures continue they may have greater potential for future
disruption in foreign relations.
Perhaps most important, in the last decade population factors
have impacted more severely than before on availabilities of
agricultural land and resources, industrialization, pollution and the
environment. All this is occurring at a time when international
communications have created rising expectations which are being
frustrated by slow development and inequalities of distribution.
Since population factors work with other factors and act through
intervening linkages, research as to their effects of a political
nature is difficult and “proof” even more so. This does not mean,
however, that the causality does not exist. It means only that U.S.
policy decisions must take into account the less precise and
programmatic character of our knowledge of these linkages.
Although general hypotheses are hard to draw, some seem reasonably sustainable:
1. Population growth and inadequate resources. Where population
size is greater than available resources, or is expanding more rapidly
than the available resources, there is a tendency toward internal
disorders and violence and, sometimes, disruptive international policies
or violence. The higher the rate of growth, the more salient a factor
population increase appears to be. A sense of increasing crowding, real
or perceived, seems to generate such tendencies, especially if it seems
to thwart obtaining desired personal or national goals.
2. Populations with a high proportion of growth. The young
people, who are in much higher proportions in many LDCs, are likely to
be more volatile, unstable, prone to extremes, alienation and violence
than an older population. These young people can more readily be
persuaded to attack the legal institutions of the government or real
property of the “establishment,” “imperialists,” multinational
corporations, or other — often foreign — influences blamed for their
troubles.
3. Population factors with social cleavages. When adverse
population factors of growth, movement, density, excess, or pressure
coincide with racial, religious, color, linguistic, cultural, or other
social cleavages, there will develop the most potentially explosive
situations for internal disorder, perhaps with external effects. When
such factors exist together with the reality or sense of relative
deprivation among different groups within the same country or in
relation to other countries or peoples, the probability of violence
increases significantly.
4. Population movements and international migrations. Population
movements within countries appear to have a large role in disorders.
Migrations into neighboring countries (especially those richer or more
sparsely settled), whether legal or illegal, can provoke negative
political reactions or force.
There may be increased propensities for violence arising simply
from technological developments making it easier — e.g., international
proliferation and more ready accessibility to sub-national groups of
nuclear and other lethal weaponry. These possibilities make the
disruptive population factors discussed above even more dangerous.
Some Effects of Current Population Pressures
In the 1960s and 1970s, there have been a series of episodes in
which population factors have apparently had a role — directly or
indirectly — affecting countries in which we have an interest.
El Salvador-Honduras War. An example was the 1969 war between El
Salvador and Honduras. Dubbed the “Soccer War”, it was sparked by a
riot during a soccer match, its underlying cause was tension resulting
from the large scale migration of Salvadorans from their rapidly
growing, densely populated country to relatively uninhabited areas of
Honduras. The Hondurans resented the presence of migrants and in 1969
began to enforce an already extant land tenancy law to expel them. El
Salvador was angered by the treatment given its citizens. Flaring
tempers on both sides over this issue created a situation which
ultimately led to a military clash.
Nigeria. The Nigerian civil war seriously retarded the progress
of Africa’s most populous nations and caused political repercussions and
pressures in the United States. It was fundamentally a matter of tribal
relationships. Irritations among the tribes caused in part by rapidly
increasing numbers of people, in a situation of inadequate opportunity
for most of them, magnified the tribal issues and may have helped
precipitate the war. The migration of the Ibos from Eastern Nigeria,
looking for employment, led to competition with local peoples of other
tribes and contributed to tribal rioting. This unstable situation was
intensified by the fact that in the 1963 population census returns were
falsified to inflate the Western region’s population and hence its
representation in the Federal Government. The Ibos of the Eastern
region, with the oil resources of the country, felt their resources
would be unjustly drawn on and attempted to establish their
independence.
Pakistan-India-Bangladesh 1970-71. This religious and
nationalistic conflict contains several points where a population factor
at a crucial time may have had a causal effect in turning events away
from peaceful solutions to violence. The Central Government in West
Pakistan resorted to military suppression of the East Wing after the
election in which the Awami League had an overwhelming victory in East
Pakistan. This election had followed two sets of circumstances. The
first was a growing discontent in East Pakistan at the slow rate of
economic and social progress being made and the Bengali feeling that
West Pakistan was dealing unequally and unfairly with East Pakistan in
the distribution of national revenues. The first population factor was
the 75 million Bengalis whom the 45 million West Pakistanis sought to
continue to dominate. Some observers believe that as a recent population
factor the rapid rate of population growth in East Pakistan seriously
diminished the per capita improvement from the revenues made available
and contributed significantly to the discontent. A special aspect of the
population explosion in East Pakistan (second population factor) was
the fact that the dense occupation of all good agricultural land forced
hundreds of thousands of people to move into the obviously unsafe
lowlands along the southern coast. They became victims of the hurricane
in 1970. An estimated 300,000 died. The Government was unable to deal
with a disaster affecting so many people. The leaders and people of East
Pakistan reacted vigorously to this failure of the Government to bring
help.
It seems quite likely that these situations in which population
factors played an important role led to the overwhelming victory of the
Awami League that led the Government to resort to force in East Pakistan
with the massacres and rapes that followed. Other experts believe the
effects of the latter two factors were of marginal influence in the
Awami League’s victory.
It further seems possible that much of the violence was
stimulated or magnified by population pressures. Two groups of Moslems
had been competing for jobs and land in East Bengal since the 1947
partition. “Biharis” are a small minority of non-Bengali Moslems who
chose to resettle in East Pakistan at that time. Their integration into
Bengali society was undoubtedly inhibited by the deteriorating living
conditions of the majority Bengalis. With the Pakistan army crackdown in
March, 1971, the Biharis cooperated with the authorities, and
reportedly were able thereby to improve their economic conditions at the
expense of the persecuted Bengalis. When the tables were turned after
independence, it was the Biharis who were persecuted and whose property
and jobs were seized. It seems likely that both these outbursts of
violence were induced or enlarged by the population “complosion” factor.
The violence in East Pakistan against the Bengalis and
particularly the Hindu minority who bore the brunt of Army repression
led to the next population factor, the mass migration during one year of
nine or ten million refugees into West Bengal in India. This placed a
tremendous burden on the already weak Indian economy. As one Indian
leader in the India Family Planning Program said, “The influx of nine
million people wiped out the savings of some nine million births which
had been averted over a period of eight years of the family planning
program.”
There were other factors in India’s invasion of East Bengal, but
it is possible that the necessity of returning these nine or ten
million refugees to east Bengal — getting them out of India — may have
played a part in the Indian decision to invade. Certainly, in a broader
sense, the threat posed by this serious, spreading instability on
India’s eastern frontier — an instability in which population factors
were a major underlying cause — a key reason for the Indian decision.
The political arrangements in the Subcontinent have changed, but
all of the underlying population factors which influenced the dramatic
acts of violence that took place in 1970-71 still exist, in worsening
dimensions, to influence future events.
Additional illustrations. Population factors also appear to have
had indirect causal relations, in varying degrees, on the killings in
Indonesia in 1965-6, the communal slaughter in Rwanda in 1961-2 and
1963-4 and in Burundi in 1972, the coup in Uganda in 1972, and the
insurrection in Sri Lanka in 1971.
Some Potential Effects of Future Population Pressures
Between the end of World War II and 1975 the world’s population
will have increased about one and a half billion — nearly one billion of
that from 1960 to the present. The rate of growth is increasing and
between two and a half and three and a half billion will be added by the
year 2000, depending partly on the effectiveness of population growth
control programs. This increase of the next 25 years will, of course,
pyramid on the great number added with such rapidity in the last 25. The
population factors which contributed to the political pressures and
instabilities of the last decades will be multiplied.
PRC – The demographic factors of the PRC are referred to on page
79 above. The Government of the PRC has made a major effort to feed its
growing population.
Cultivated farm land, at 107 million hectares, has not increased
significantly over the past 25 years, although farm output has
substantially kept pace with population growth through improved yields
secured by land improvement, irrigation extension, intensified cropping,
and rapid expansion in the supply of fertilizers.
In 1973 the PRC adopted new, forceful population control
measures. In the urban areas Peking claimed its birth control measures
had secured a two-child family and a one percent annual population
growth, and it proposes to extend this development throughout the rural
areas by 1980.
The political implications of China’s future population growth are obviously important but are not dealt with here.
Israel and the Arab States. If a peace settlement can be
reached, the central issue will be how to make it last. Egypt with about
37 million today is growing at 2.8% per year. It will approximate 48
million by 1985, 75 million by 1995, and more than 85 million by 2000.
It is doubtful that Egypt’s economic progress can greatly exceed its
population growth. With Israel starting at today’s population of 3.3
million, the disparity between its population and those of the Arab
States will rapidly increase. Inside Israel, unless Jewish immigration
continues, the gap between the size of the Arab and Jewish populations
will diminish. Together with the traditional animosities — which will
remain the prime determinants of Arab-Israeli conflict — these
population factors make the potential for peace and for U.S. interests
in the area ominous.
India-Bangladesh. The Subcontinent will be for years the major
focus of world concern over population growth. India’s population is now
approximately 580 million, adding a million by each full moon. Embassy
New Delhi (New Delhi 2115, June 17, 1974) reports:
“There seems no way of turning off the faucet this side of 1 billion
Indians, which means India must continue to court economic and social
disaster. It is not clear how the shaky and slow-growing Indian economy
can bear the enormous expenditures on health, housing, employment, and
education, which must be made if the society is even to maintain its
current low levels.”
Death rates have recently increased in parts of India and
episodes like the recent smallpox epidemic have led Embassy New Delhi to
add:
“A future failure of the India food crop could cause widespread death
and suffering which could not be overcome by the GOI or foreign
assistance. The rise in the death rate in several rural areas suggests
that Malthusian pressures are already being felt.”
And further:
“Increasing political disturbances should be expected in the future,
fed by the pressures of rising population in urban areas, food
shortages, and growing scarcities in household commodities. The GOI has
not been very successful in alleviating unemployment in the cities. The
recent disturbances in Gujarat and Bihar seem to be only the beginning
of chronic and serious political disorders occurring throughout India.”
There will probably be a weakening, possibly a breakdown, of the
control of the central government over some of the states and local
areas. The democratic system will be taxed and may be in danger of
giving way to a form of dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise. The
existence of India as a democratic buttress in Asia will be threatened.
Bangladesh, with appalling population density, rapid population
growth, and extensive poverty will suffer even more. Its population has
increased 40% since the census 13 years ago and is growing at least 3%
per year. The present 75 million, or so, unless slowed by famine,
disease, or massive birth control, will double in 23 years and exceed
170 million by 2000.
Requirements for food and other basic necessities of life are
growing at a faster rate than existing resources and administrative
systems are providing them. In the rural areas, the size of the average
farm is being reduced and there is increasing landlessness. More and
more people are migrating to urban areas. The government admits a 30%
rate of unemployment and underemployment. Already, Embassy Dacca reports
(Dacca 3424, June 19, 1974) there are important economic-population
causes for the landlessness that is rapidly increasing and contributing
to violent crimes of murder and armed robbery that terrorize the
ordinary citizen.
“Some of the vast army of unemployed and landless, and those strapped
by the escalating cost of basic commodities, have doubtless turned to
crime.”
Three paragraphs of Embassy Dacca’s report sharply outline the
effect on U.S. political interests we may anticipate from population
factors in Bangladesh and other countries that, if present trends are
not changed, will be in conditions similar to Bangladesh in only a few
years.
“Of concern to the U.S. are several probable outcomes as the basic
political, economic and social situation worsens over the coming
decades. Already afflicted with a crisis mentality by which they look to
wealthy foreign countries to shore up their faltering economy, the BDG
will continue to escalate its demands on the U.S. both bilaterally and
internationally to enlarge its assistance, both of commodities and
financing. Bangladesh is now a fairly solid supporter of third world
positions, advocating better distribution of the world’s wealth and
extensive trade concessions to poor nations. As its problems grow and
its ability to gain assistance fails to keep pace, Bangladesh’s
positions on international issues likely will become radicalized,
inevitably in opposition to U.S. interests on major issues as it seeks
to align itself with others to force adequate aid.
“U.S. interests in Bangladesh center on the development of an
economically and politically stable country which will not threaten the
stability of its neighbors in the Subcontinent nor invite the intrusion
of outside powers. Surrounded on three sides by India and sharing a
short border with Burma, Bangladesh, if it descends into chaos, will
threaten the stability of these nations as well. Already Bengalis are
illegally migrating into the frontier provinces of Assam and Tripura,
politically sensitive areas of India, and into adjacent Burma. Should
expanded out-migration and socio-political collapse in Bangladesh
threaten its own stability, India may be forced to consider
intervention, although it is difficult to see in what way the Indians
could cope with the situation.
“Bangladesh is a case study of the effects of few resources and
burgeoning population not only on national and regional stability but
also on the future world order. In a sense, if we and other richer
elements of the world community do not meet the test of formulating a
policy to help Bangladesh awaken from its economic and demographic
nightmare, we will not be prepared in future decades to deal with the
consequences of similar problems in other countries which have far more
political and economic consequences to U.S. interests.”
Africa — Sahel Countries. The current tragedy of the Sahel
countries, to which U.S. aid in past years has been minimal, has
suddenly cost us an immense effort in food supplies at a time when we
are already hard pressed to supply other countries, and domestic food
prices are causing strong political repercussions in the U.S. The costs
to us and other donor countries for aid to help restore the devastated
land will run into hundreds of millions. Yet little attention is given
to the fact that even before the adverse effect of the continued
drought, it was population growth and added migration of herdsmen to the
edge of the desert that led to cutting the trees and cropping the
grass, inviting the desert to sweep forward. Control of population
growth and migration must be a part of any program for improvement of
lasting value.
Panama. The troublesome problem of jurisdiction over the Canal
Zone is primarily due to Panamanian feelings of national pride and a
desire to achieve sovereignty over its entire territory. One Panamanian
agreement in pursuing its treaty goals is that U.S. control over the
Canal Zone prevents the natural expansion of Panama City, an expansion
needed as a result of demographic pressures. In 1908, at the time of the
construction of the Canal, the population of the Zone was about 40,000.
Today it is close to the same figure, 45,000. On the other hand, Panama
City, which had some 20,000 people in 1908, has received growing
migration from rural areas and now has over 500,000. A new treaty which
would give Panama jurisdiction over land now in the Zone would help
alleviate the problems caused by this growth of Panama City.
Mexico and the U.S. Closest to home, the combined population
growth of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest presages major difficulties for
the future. Mexico’s population is growing at some 3.5% per year and
will double in 20 years with concomitant increases in demands for food,
housing, education, and employment. By 1995, the present 57 million will
have increased to some 115 million and, unless their recently
established family planning program has great success, by 2000 will
exceed 130 million. More important, the numbers of young people entering
the job market each year will expand even more quickly. These growing
numbers will increase the pressure of illegal emigration to the U.S.,
and make the issue an even more serious source of friction in our
political relations with Mexico.
On our side, the Bureau of the Census estimates that as more and
more Americans move to the Southwestern States the present 40,000,000
population may approximate 61,000,000 by 1995. The domestic use of
Colorado River water may again have increased the salinity level in
Mexico and reopened that political issue.
Amembassy Mexico City (Mexico 4953, June 14, 1974) summarized
the influences of population factors on U.S. interests as follows:
“An indefinite continuation of Mexico’s high population growth rate
would increasingly act as a brake on economic (and social) improvement.
The consequences would be noted in various ways. Mexico could well take
more radical positions in the international scene. Illegal migration to
the U.S. would increase. In a country where unemployment and
under-employment is already high, the entry of increasing numbers into
the work force would only intensify the pressure to seek employment in
the U.S. by whatever means. Yet another consequence would be increased
demand for food imports from the U.S., especially if the rate of growth
of agricultural production continues to lag behind the population growth
rate. Finally, one cannot dismiss the spectre of future domestic
instability as a long term consequence, should the economy, now strong,
falter.”
UNCTAD, the Special UNGA, and the UN. The developing countries,
after several years of unorganized maneuvering and erratic attacks have
now formed tight groupings in the Special Committee for Latin American
Coordination, the Organization of African States, and the Seventy-Seven.
As illustrated in the Declaration of Santiago and the recent Special
General Assembly, these groupings at times appear to reflect a common
desire to launch economic attacks against the United States and, to a
lesser degree, the European developed countries. A factor which is
common to all of them, which retards their development, burdens their
foreign exchange, subjects them to world prices for food, fertilizer,
and necessities of life and pushes them into disadvantageous trade
relations is their excessively rapid population growth. Until they are
able to overcome this problem, it is likely that their manifestations of
antagonism toward the United States in international bodies will
increase. Global Factors
In industrial nations, population growth increases demand for
industrial output. This over time tends to deplete national raw
materials resources and calls increasingly on sources of marginal
profitability and foreign supplies. To obtain raw materials, industrial
nations seek to locate and develop external sources of supply. The
potential for collisions of interest among the developing countries is
obvious and has already begun. It is visible and vexing in claims for
territorial waters and national sovereignty over mineral resources. It
may become intense in rivalries over exploring and exploiting the
resources of the ocean floor.
In developing countries, the burden of population factors, added
to others, will weaken unstable governments, often only marginally
effective in good times, and open the way for extremist regimes.
Countries suffering under such burdens will be more susceptible to
radicalization. Their vulnerability also might invite foreign
intervention by stronger nations bent on acquiring political and
economic advantage. The tensions within the Have-not nations are likely
to intensify, and the conflicts between them and the Haves may escalate.
Past experience gives little assistance to predicting the course
of these developments because the speed of today’s population growth,
migrations, and urbanization far exceeds anything the world has seen
before. Moreover, the consequences of such population factors can no
longer be evaded by moving to new hunting or grazing lands, by
conquering new territory, by discovering or colonizing new continents,
or by emigration in large numbers.
The world has ample warning that we all must make more rapid
efforts at social and economic development to avoid or mitigate these
gloomy prospects. We should be warned also that we all must move as
rapidly as possible toward stabilizing national and world population
growth.
CHAPTER VI – WORLD POPULATION CONFERENCE
From the standpoint of policy and program, the focal point of
the World Population Conference (WPC) at Bucharest, Romania, in August
1974, was the World Population Plan of Action (WPPA). The U.S. had
contributed many substantive points to the draft Plan. We had
particularly emphasized the incorporation of population factors in
national planning of developing countries’ population programs for
assuring the availability of means of family planning to persons of
reproductive age, voluntary but specific goals for the reduction of
population growth and time frames for action.
As the WPPA reached the WPC it was organized as a demographic
document. It also related population factors to family welfare, social
and economic development, and fertility reduction. Population policies
and programs were recognized as an essential element, but only one
element of economic and social development programs. The sovereignty of
nations in determining their own population policies and programs was
repeatedly recognized. The general impression after five regional
consultative meetings on the Plan was that it had general support.
There was general consternation, therefore, when at the
beginning of the conference the Plan was subjected to a slashing,
five-pronged attack led by Algeria, with the backing of several African
countries; Argentina, supported by Uruguay, Brazil, Peru and, more
limitedly, some other Latin American countries; the Eastern European
group (less Romania); the PRC and the Holy See. Although the attacks
were not identical, they embraced three central elements relevant to
U.S. policy and action in this field:
1.Repeated references to the importance (or as some said, the
pre-condition) of economic and social development for the reduction of
high fertility. Led by Algeria and Argentina, many emphasized the “new
international economic order” as central to economic and social
development.
2.Efforts to reduce the references to population programs,
minimize their importance and delete all references to quantitative or
time goals.
3.Additional references to national sovereignty in setting population policies and programs.
The Plan of Action
Despite the initial attack and continuing efforts to change the
conceptual basis of the world Population Plan of Action, the Conference
adopted by acclamation (only the Holy See stating a general reservation)
a complete World Population Plan of Action. It is less urgent in tone
than the draft submitted by the U.N. Secretariat but in several ways
more complete and with greater potential than that draft. The final
action followed a vigorous debate with hotly contested positions and
forty-seven votes. Nevertheless, there was general satisfaction among
the participants at the success of their efforts.
a. Principles and Aims
The Plan of Action lays down several important principles, some for the first time in a U.N. document.
1. Among the first-time statements is the assertion that the
sovereign right of each nation to set its own population policies is “to
be exercised … taking into account universal solidarity in order to
improve the quality of life of the peoples of the world.” (Para 13) This
new provision opens the way toward increasing responsibility by nations
toward other nations in establishing their national population
policies.
2. The conceptual relationship between population and development is stated in Para 13(c):
Population and development are interrelated: population variables
influence development variables and are also influenced by them; the
formulation of a World Population Plan of Action reflects the
international community’s awareness of the importance of population
trends for socio-economic development, and the socio-economic nature of
the recommendations contained in this Plan of Action reflects its
awareness of the crucial role that development plays in affecting
population trends.
3. A basic right of couples and individuals is recognized by
Para 13(f), for the first time in a single declarative sentence:
All couples and individuals have the basic human right to decide
freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to
have the information, education and means to do so;
4. Also for the first time, a U.N. document links the
responsibility of child-bearers to the community [Para 13(f) continued]:
The responsibility of couples and individuals in the exercise of this
right takes into account the needs of their living and future children,
and their responsibilities towards the community.
It is now possible to build on this newly-stated principle as the
right of couples first recognized in the Tehran Human Rights Declaration
of 1968 has been built on.
5. A flat declaration of the right of women is included in Para 13(h):
Women have the right to complete integration in the development
process particularly by means of an equal participation in educational,
social, economic, cultural and political life. In addition, the
necessary measures should be taken to facilitate this integration with
family responsibilities which should be fully shared by both partners.
6. The need for international action is accepted in Para 13(k):
The growing interdependence of countries makes the adoption of
measures at the international level increasingly important for the
solution of problems of development and population problems.
7. The “primary aim” of the Plan of Action is asserted to be “to
expand and deepen the capacities of countries to deal effectively with
their national and subnational population problems and to promote an
appropriate international response to their needs by increasing
international activity in research, the exchange of information, and the
provision of assistance on request.”
b. Recommendations
The Plan of Action includes recommendations for: population
goals and policies; population growth; mortality and morbidity;
reproduction; family formation and the status of women; population
distribution and internal migration; international migration; population
structure; socio-economic policies; data collection and analysis;
research; development and evolution of population policies; the role of
national governments and of international cooperation; and monitoring,
review and appraisal.
A score of these recommendations are the most important:
1. Governments should integrate population measures and programs
into comprehensive social and economic plans and programs and their
integration should be reflected in the goals, instrumentalities and
organizations for planning within the countries. A unit dealing with
population aspects should be created and placed at a high level of the
national administrative structure. (Para 94)
2. Countries which consider their population growth hampers
attainment of their goals should consider adopting population policies —
through a low level of birth and death rates. (Para 17, 18)
3. Highest priority should be given to reduction in mortality
and morbidity and increase of life expectancy and programs for this
purpose should reach rural areas and underprivileged groups. (Para
20-25)
4. Countries are urged to encourage appropriate education
concerning responsible parenthood and make available to persons who so
desire advice and means of achieving it. [Para 29(b)]
5. Family planning and related services should aim at prevention
of unwanted pregnancies and also at elimination of involuntary
sterility or subfecundity to enable couples to achieve their desired
number of children. [Para 29 (c)]
6. Adequately trained auxiliary personnel, social workers and
non-government channels should be used to help provide family planning
services. [Para 29(e)]
7. Governments with family planning programs should consider
coordinating them with health and other services designed to raise the
quality of life.
8. Countries wishing to affect fertility levels should give
priority to development programs and health and education strategies
which have a decisive effect upon demographic trends, including
fertility. [Para 31] International cooperation should give priority to
assisting such national efforts. Such programs may include reduction in
infant and child mortality, increased education, particularly for
females, improvement in the status of women, land reform and support in
old age. [Para 32]
9. Countries which consider their birth rates detrimental to
their national purposes are invited to set quantitative goals and
implement policies to achieve them by 1985. [Para 37]
10. Developed countries are urged to develop appropriate
policies in population, consumption and investment, bearing in mind the
need for fundamental improvement in international equity.
11. Because the family is the basic unit of society, governments
should assist families as far as possible through legislation and
services. [Para 39]
12. Governments should ensure full participation of women in the
educational, economic, social and political life of their countries on
an equal basis with men. [Para 40] (A new provision, added at
Bucharest.)
13. A series of recommendations are made to stabilize migration
within countries, particularly policies to reduce the undesirable
consequences of excessively rapid urbanization and to develop
opportunities in rural areas and small towns, recognizing the right of
individuals to move freely within their national boundaries. [Para
44-50]
14. Agreements should be concluded to regulate the international
migration of workers and to assure non-discriminatory treatment and
social services for these workers and their families; also other
measures to decrease the brain drain from developing countries. [Para
51-62]
15. To assure needed information concerning population trends,
population censuses should be taken at regular intervals and information
concerning births and deaths be made available at least annually. [Para
72-77]
16. Research should be intensified to develop knowledge
concerning the social, economic and political interrelationships with
population trends; effective means of reducing infant and childhood
mortality; methods for integrating population goals into national plans,
means of improving the motivation of people, analysis of population
policies in relation to socio-economic development, laws and
institution; methods of fertility regulation to meet the varied
requirement of individuals and communities, including methods requiring
no medical supervision; the interrelations of health, nutrition and
reproductive biology; and utilization of social services, including
family planning services. [Para 78-80]
17. Training of management on population dynamics and
administration, on an interdisciplinary basis, should be provided for
medical, paramedical, traditional health personnel, program
administrators, senior government officials, labor, community and social
leaders. Education and information programs should be undertaken to
bring population information to all areas of countries. [Paras 81-92]
18. An important role of governments is to determine and assess
the population problems and needs of their countries in the light of
their political, social, cultural, religious and economic conditions;
such an undertaking should be carried out systematically and
periodically so as to provide informed, rational and dynamic
decision-making in matters of population and development. [Para 97]
20. The Plan of Action should be closely coordinated with the
International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations
Development Decade, reviewed in depth at five year intervals, and
modified as appropriate. [Paras 106-108]
The Plan of Action hedges in presenting specific statements of
quantitative goals or a time frame for the reduction of fertility. These
concepts are included, however, in the combination of Paras 16 and 36,
together with goals [Para 37] and the review [Para 106]. Para 16 states
that, according to the U.N low variant projections, it is estimated that
as a result of social and economic development and population policies
as reported by countries in the Second United Nations Inquiry on
Population and Development, population growth rates in the developing
countries as a whole may decline from the present level of 2.4% per
annum to about 2% by 1985; and below 0.7% per annum in the developed
countries. In this case the worldwide rate of population growth would
decline from 2% to about 1.7%. Para 36 says that these projections and
those for mortality decline are consistent with declines in the birth
rate of the developing countries as a whole from the present level of 38
per thousand to 30 per thousand by 1985. Para 36 goes on to say that
“To achieve by 1985 these levels of fertility would require substantial
national efforts, by those countries concerned, in the field of
socio-economic development and population policies, supported, upon
request, by adequate international assistance.” Para 37 then follows
with the statement that countries which consider their birth rates
detrimental to their national purposes are invited to consider setting
quantitative goals and implementing policies that may lead to the
attainment of such goals by 1985. Para 106 recommends a comprehensive
review and appraisal of population trends and policies discussed in the
Plan of Action should be undertaken every five years and modified,
wherever needed, by ECOSOC.
Usefulness of the Plan of Action
The World Population Plan of Action, despite its wordiness and
often hesitant tone, contains all the necessary provisions for effective
population growth control programs at national and international
levels. It lacks only plain statements of quantitative goals with time
frames for their accomplishment. These will have to be added by
individual national action and development as rapidly as possible in
further U.N. documents. The basis for suitable goals exists in
paragraphs 16, 36, 37, and 106, referred to above. The U.N. low variant
projection used in these paragraphs is close to the goals proposed by
the United States and other ECAFE nations:
For developed countries -
replacement levels of fertility by 1985;
stationary populations as soon as practicable.
For developing countries -
replacement levels in two or three decades.
For the world -
a 1.7% population growth rate by 1985 with 2% average for the developing countries and 0.7% average for developed countries;
replacement level of fertility for all countries by 2000.
The dangerous situation evidenced by the current food situation and
projections for the future make it essential to press for the
realization of these goals. The beliefs, ideologies and misconceptions
displayed by many nations at Bucharest indicate more forcefully than
ever the need for extensive education of the leaders of many
governments, especially in Africa and some in Latin America. Approaches
leaders of individual countries must be designed in the light of their
current beliefs and to meet their special concerns. These might include:
1. Projections of population growth individualized for countries
and with analyses of relations of population factors to social and
economic development of each country.
2. Familiarization programs at U.N. Headquarters in New York for
ministers of governments, senior policy level officials and comparably
influential leaders from private life.
3. Greatly increased training programs for senior officials in the elements of demographic economics.
4. Assistance in integrating population factors in national
plans, particularly as they relate to health services, education,
agricultural resources and development, employment, equitable
distribution of income and social stability.
5. Assistance in relating population policies and family
planning programs to major sectors of development: health, nutrition,
agriculture, education, social services, organized labor, women’s
activities, community development.
6. Initiatives to implement the Percy amendment regarding improvement in the status of women.
7. Emphasis in assistance and development programs on development of rural areas.
All these activities and others particularly productive are consistent with the Plan of Action and may be based upon it.
Beyond these activities, essentially directed at national
interests, a broader educational concept is needed to convey an acute
understanding of the interrelation of national interests and world
population growth.
P A R T T W O Policy Recommendations
I. Introduction – A U.S. Global Population Strategy
There is no simple single approach to the population problem
which will provide a “technological fix.” As the previous analysis makes
clear the problem of population growth has social, economic and
technological aspects all of which must be understood and dealt with for
a world population policy to succeed. With this in mind, the following
broad recommended strategy provides a framework for the development of
specific individual programs which must be tailored to the needs and
particularities of each country and of different sectors of the
population within a country. Essentially all its recommendations made
below are supported by the World Population Plan of action drafted at
the World Population Conference.
A. Basic Global Strategy
The following basic elements are necessary parts of a
comprehensive approach to the population problem which must include both
bilateral and multilateral components to achieve success. Thus, USG
population assistance programs will need to be coordinated with those of
the major multilateral institutions, voluntary organizations, and other
bilateral donors.
The common strategy for dealing with rapid population growth
should encourage constructive actions to lower fertility since
population growth over the years will seriously negate reasonable
prospects for the sound social and economic development of the peoples
involved.
While the time horizon in this NSSM is the year 2000 we must
recognize that in most countries, especially the LDCs, population
stability cannot be achieved until the next century. There are too many
powerful socio-economic factors operating on family size decisions and
too much momentum built into the dynamics of population growth to permit
a quick and dramatic reversal of current trends. There is also even
less cause for optimism on the rapidity of socio-economic progress that
would generate rapid fertility reduction in the poor LDCs than on the
feasibility of extending family planning services to those in their
populations who may wish to take advantage of them. Thus, at this point
we cannot know with certainty when world population can feasibly be
stabilized, nor can we state with assurance the limits of the world’s
ecological “carrying capability”. But we can be certain of the desirable
direction of change and can state as a plausible objective the target
of achieving replacement fertility rates by the year 2000.
Over the past few years, U.S. government-funded population
programs have played a major role in arousing interest in family
planning in many countries, and in launching and accelerating the growth
of national family planning programs. In most countries, there has been
an initial rapid growth in contraceptive “acceptors” up to perhaps 10%
of fertile couples in a few LDCs. The acceleration of previous trends of
fertility decline is attributable, at least in part, to family planning
programs.
However, there is growing appreciation that the problem is more
long term and complex than first appeared and that a short term burst of
activity or moral fervor will not solve it. The danger in this
realization is that the U.S. might abandon its commitment to assisting
in the world’s population problem, rather than facing up to it for the
long-run difficult problem that it is.
From year to year we are learning more about what kind of
fertility reduction is feasible in differing LDC situations. Given the
laws of compound growth, even comparatively small reductions in
fertility over the next decade will make a significant difference in
total numbers by the year 2000, and a far more significant one by the
year 2050.
The proposed strategy calls for a coordinated approach to
respond to the important U.S. foreign policy interest in the influence
of population growth on the world’s political, economic and ecological
systems. What is unusual about population is that this foreign policy
interest must have a time horizon far beyond that of most other
objectives. While there are strong short-run reasons for population
programs, because of such factors as food supply, pressures on social
service budgets, urban migration and social and political instability,
the major impact of the benefits – or avoidance of catastrophe – that
could be accomplished by a strengthened U.S. commitment in the
population area will be felt less by those of us in the U.S. and other
countries today than by our children and grandchildren.
B. Priorities in U.S. and Multilateral Population Assistance
One issue in any global population strategy is the degree of
emphasis in allocation of program resources among countries. The options
available range from heavy concentration on a few vital large countries
to a geographically diverse program essentially involving all countries
willing to accept such assistance. All agencies believe the following
policy provides the proper overall balance.
In order to assist the development of major countries and to
maximize progress toward population stability, primary emphasis would be
placed on the largest and fastest growing developing countries where
the imbalance between growing numbers and development potential most
seriously risks instability, unrest, and international tensions. These
countries are: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia,
Brazil, The Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, and
Colombia. Out of a total 73.3 million worldwide average increase in
population from 1970-75 these countries contributed 34.3 million or 47%.
This group of priority countries includes some with virtually no
government interest in family planning and others with active government
family planning programs which require and would welcome enlarged
technical and financial assistance. These countries should be given the
highest priority within AID’s population program in terms of resource
allocations and/or leadership efforts to encourage action by other
donors and organizations.
However, other countries would not be ignored. AID would provide
population assistance and/or undertake leadership efforts with respect
to other, lower priority countries to the extent that the availability
of funds and staff permits, taking into account of such factors as :
long run U.S. political interests; impact of rapid population growth on
its development potential; the country’s relative contribution to world
population growth; its financial capacity to cope with the problem;
potential impact on domestic unrest and international frictions (which
can apply to small as well as large countries); its significance as a
test or demonstration case; and opportunities for expenditures that
appear particularly cost-effective (e.g. it has been suggested that
there may be particularly cost-effective opportunities for supporting
family planning to reduce the lag between mortality and fertility
declines in countries where death rates are still declining rapidly);
national commitment to an effective program.
For both the high priority countries and the lower priority ones
to which funds and staff permit aid, the form and content of our
assistance or leadership efforts would vary from country to country,
depending on each nation’s particular interests, needs, and receptivity
to various forms of assistance. For example, if these countries are
receptive to U.S. assistance through bilateral or central AID funding,
we should provide such assistance at levels commensurate with the
recipient’s capability to finance needed actions with its own funds, the
contributions of other donors and organizations, and the effectiveness
with which funds can be used.
In countries where U.S. assistance is limited either by the
nature of political or diplomatic relations with those countries or by
lack of strong government desire. In population reduction programs,
external technical and financial assistance (if desired by the
countries) would have to come from other donors and/or from private and
international organizations, many of which receive contributions from
AID. The USG would, however, maintain an interest (e.g. through
Embassies) in such countries’ population problems and programs (if any)
to reduce population growth rates. Moreover, particularly in the case of
high priority countries, we should be alert to opportunities for
expanding our assistance efforts and for demonstrating to their leaders
the consequences of rapid population growth and the benefits of actions
to reduce fertility.
In countries to which other forms of U.S. assistance are
provided but not population assistance, AID will monitor progress toward
achievement of development objectives, taking into account the extent
to which these are hindered by rapid population growth, and will look
for opportunities to encourage initiation of or improvement in
population policies and programs.
In addition, the U.S. strategy should support in these LDC
countries general activities (e.g. bio-medical research or fertility
control methods) capable of achieving major breakthroughs in key
problems which hinder reductions in population growth.
C. Instruments and Modalities for Population Assistance
Bilateral population assistance is the largest and most
invisible “instrument” for carrying out U.S. policy in this area. Other
instruments include: support for and coordination with population
programs of multilateral organizations and voluntary agencies;
encouragement of multilateral country consortia and consultative groups
to emphasize family planning in reviews of overall recipient progress
and aid requests; and formal and informal presentation of views at
international gatherings, such as food and population conferences.
Specific country strategies must be worked out for each of the highest
priority countries, and for the lower priority ones. These strategies
will take account of such factors as: national attitudes and
sensitivities on family planning; which “instruments” will be most
acceptable, opportunities for effective use of assistance; and need of
external capital or operating assistance.
For example, in Mexico our strategy would focus on working
primarily through private agencies and multilateral organizations to
encourage more government attention to the need for control of
population growth; in Bangladesh we might provide large-scale technical
and financial assistance, depending on the soundness of specific program
requests; in Indonesia we would respond to assistance requests but
would seek to have Indonesia meet as much of program costs from its own
resources (i.e. surplus oil earnings) as possible. In general we would
not provide large-scale bilateral assistance in the more developed LDCs,
such as Brazil or Mexico. Although these countries are in the top
priority list our approach must take account of the fact that their
problems relate often to government policies and decisions and not to
larger scale need for concessional assistance.
Within the overall array of U.S. foreign assistance programs,
preferential treatment in allocation of funds and manpower should be
given to cost-effective programs to reduce population growth; including
both family planning activities and supportive activities in other
sectors.
While some have argued for use of explicit “leverage” to “force”
better population programs on LDC governments, there are several
practical constraints on our efforts to achieve program improvements.
Attempts to use “leverage” for far less sensitive issues have generally
caused political frictions and often backfired. Successful family
planning requires strong local dedication and commitment that cannot
over the long run be enforced from the outside. There is also the danger
that some LDC leaders will see developed country pressures for family
planning as a form of economic or racial imperialism; this could well
create a serious backlash.
Short of “leverage”, there are many opportunities, bilaterally
and multilaterally, for U.S. representations to discuss and urge the
need for stronger family planning programs. There is also some
established precedent for taking account of family planning performance
in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID and consultative groups.
Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food
demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of
what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food
production. In these sensitive relationships, however, it is important
in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion.
D. Provision and Development of Family Planning Services, Information and Technology
Past experience suggests that easily available family planning
services are a vital and effective element in reducing fertility rates
in the LDCs.
Two main advances are required for providing safe and effective fertility control techniques in the developing countries:
1. Expansion and further development of efficient low-cost
systems to assure the full availability of existing family planning
services, materials and information to the 85% of LDC populations not
now effectively reached. In developing countries willing to create
special delivery systems for family planning services this may be the
most effective method. In others the most efficient and acceptable
method is to combine family planning with health or nutrition in
multi-purpose delivery systems.
2. Improving the effectiveness of present means of fertility
control, and developing new technologies which are simple, low cost,
effective, safe, long-lasting and acceptable to potential users. This
involves both basic developmental research and operations research to
judge the utility of new or modified approaches under LDC conditions.
Both of these goals should be given very high priority with
necessary additional funding consistent with current or adjusted
divisions of labor among other donors and organizations involved in
these areas of population assistance.
E. Creating Conditions Conducive to Fertility Decline
It is clear that the availability of contraceptive services and
information is not a complete answer to the population problem. In view
of the importance of socio-economic factors in determining desired
family size, overall assistance strategy should increasingly concentrate
on selective policies which will contribute to population decline as
well as other goals. This strategy reflects the complementarity between
population control and other U.S. development objectives, particularly
those relating to AID’s Congressional mandate to focus on problems of
the “poor majority” in LDC’s.
We know that certain kinds of development policies — e.g., those
which provide the poor with a major share in development benefits —
both promote fertility reductions and accomplish other major development
objectives. There are other policies which appear to also promote
fertility reduction but which may conflict with non-population
objectives (e.g., consider the effect of bringing a large number of
women into the labor force in countries and occupations where
unemployment is already high and rising).
However, AID knows only approximately the relative priorities
among the factors that affect fertility and is even further away from
knowing what specific cost-effective steps governments can take to
affect these factors.
Nevertheless, with what limited information we have, the urgency
of moving forward toward lower fertility rates, even without complete
knowledge of the socio-economic forces involved, suggests a
three-pronged strategy:
1. High priority to large-scale implementation of programs
affecting the determinants of fertility in those cases where there is
probable cost-effectiveness, taking account of potential impact on
population growth rates; other development benefits to be gained;
ethical considerations; feasibility in light of LDC bureaucratic and
political concerns and problems; and timeframe for accomplishing
objectives.
2. High priority to experimentation and pilot projects in areas
where there is evidence of a close relationship to fertility reduction
but where there are serious questions about cost-effectiveness relating
either to other development impact (e.g., the female employment example
cited above) or to program design (e.g., what cost-effective steps can
be taken to promote female employment or literacy).
3. High priority to comparative research and evaluation on the
relative impact on desired family size of the socio-economic
determinants of fertility in general and on what policy scope exists for
affecting these determinants.
In all three cases emphasis should be given to moving action as
much as possible to LDC institutions and individuals rather than to
involving U.S. researchers on a large scale.
Activities in all three categories would receive very high
priority in allocation of AID funds. The largest amounts required should
be in the first category and would generally not come from population
funds. However, since such activities (e.g., in rural development and
basic education) coincide with other AID sectoral priorities, sound
project requests from LDC’s will be placed close to the top in AID’s
funding priorities (assuming that they do not conflict with other major
development and other foreign policy objectives).
The following areas appear to contain significant promise in
effecting fertility declines, and are discussed in subsequent sections.
providing minimal levels of education especially for women;
reducing infant and child mortality;
expanding opportunities for wage employment especially for women;
developing alternatives to “social security” support provided by children to aging parents;
pursuing development strategies that skew income growth toward the poor, especially rural development focusing on rural poverty;
concentrating on the education and indoctrination of the rising
generation of children regarding the desirability of smaller family
size.
The World Population Plan of Action includes a provision (paragraph
31) that countries trying for effective fertility levels should give
priority to development programs and health and education strategies
which have a decisive effect upon demographic trends, including
fertility. It calls for international information to give priority to
assisting such national efforts. Programs suggested (paragraph 32) are
essentially the same as those listed above.
Food is another of special concern in any population strategy.
Adequate food stocks need to be created to provide for periods of severe
shortages and LDC food production efforts must be reenforced to meet
increased demand resulting from population and income growth. U.S.
agricultural production goals should take account of the normal import
requirements of LDC’s (as well as developed countries) and of likely
occasional crop failures in major parts of the LDC world. Without
improved food security, there will be pressure leading to possible
conflict and the desire for large families for “insurance” purposes,
thus undermining other development and population control efforts.
F. Development of World-Wide Political and Popular Commitment to
Population Stabilization and Its Associated Improvement of Individual
Quality of Life.
A fundamental element in any overall strategy to deal with the
population problem is obtaining the support and commitment of key
leaders in the developing countries. This is only possible if they can
clearly see the negative impact of unrestricted population growth in
their countries and the benefits of reducing birth rates – and if they
believe it is possible to cope with the population problem through
instruments of public policy. Since most high officials are in office
for relatively short periods, they have to see early benefits or the
value of longer term statesmanship. In each specific case, individual
leaders will have to approach their population problems within the
context of their country’s values, resources, and existing priorities.
Therefore, it is vital that leaders of major LDCs themselves
take the lead in advancing family planning and population stabilization,
not only within the U.N. and other international organizations but also
through bilateral contacts with leaders of other LDCs. Reducing
population growth in LDCs should not be advocated exclusively by the
developed countries. The U.S. should encourage such a role as
opportunities appear in its high level contact with LDC leaders.
The most recent forum for such an effort was the August 1974
U.N. World Population Conference. It was an ideal context to focus
concerted world attention on the problem. The debate views and
highlights of the World Population Plan of action are reviewed in
Chapter VI.
The U.S. strengthened its credibility as an advocate of lower
population growth rates by explaining that, while it did not have a
single written action population policy, it did have legislation,
Executive Branch policies and court decisions that amounted to a
national policy and that our national fertility level was already below
replacement and seemed likely to attain a stable population by 2000.
The U.S. also proposed to join with other developed countries in
an international collaborative effort of research in human reproduction
and fertility control covering bio-medical and socio-economic factors.
The U.S. further offered to collaborate with other interested
donor countries and organizations (e.g., WHO, UNFPA, World Bank, UNICEF)
to encourage further action by LDC governments and other institutions
to provide low-cost, basic preventive health services, including
maternal and child health and family planning services, reaching out
into the remote rural areas.
The U.S. delegation also said the U.S. would request from the
Congress increased U.S. bilateral assistance to population-family
planning programs, and additional amounts for essential functional
activities and our contribution to the UNFPA if countries showed an
interest in such assistance.
Each of these commitments is important and should be pursued by the U.S. Government.
It is vital that the effort to develop and strengthen a
commitment on the part of the LDC leaders not be seen by them as an
industrialized country policy to keep their strength down or to reserve
resources for use by the “rich” countries. Development of such a
perception could create a serious backlash adverse to the cause of
population stability. Thus the U.S. and other “rich” countries should
take care that policies they advocate for the LDC’s would be acceptable
within their own countries. (This may require public debate and
affirmation of our intended policies.) The “political” leadership role
in developing countries should, of course, be taken whenever possible by
their own leaders.
The U.S. can help to minimize charges of an imperialist
motivation behind its support of population activities by repeatedly
asserting that such support derives from a concern with:
(a) the right of the individual couple to determine freely and
responsibly their number and spacing of children and to have
information, education, and 1means to do so; and
(b) the fundamental social and economic development of poor countries
in which rapid population growth is both a contributing cause and a
consequence of widespread poverty.
Furthermore, the U.S. should also take steps to convey the message
that the control of world population growth is in the mutual interest of
the developed and developing countries alike.
Family planning programs should be supported by multilateral
organizations wherever they can provide the most efficient and
acceptable means. Where U.S. bilateral assistance is necessary or
preferred, it should be provided in collaboration with host country
institutions — as is the case now. Credit should go to local leaders for
the success of projects. The success and acceptability of family
planning assistance will depend in large measure on the degree to which
it contributes to the ability of the host government to serve and obtain
the support of its people.
In many countries today, decision-makers are wary of instituting
population programs, not because they are unconcerned about rapid
population growth, but because they lack confidence that such programs
will succeed. By actively working to demonstrate to such leaders that
national population and family planning programs have achieved progress
in a wide variety of poor countries, the U.S. could help persuade the
leaders of many countries that the investment of funds in national
family planning programs is likely to yield high returns even in the
short and medium term. Several examples of success exist already,
although regrettably they tend to come from LDCs that are untypically
well off in terms of income growth and/or social services or are islands
or city states.
We should also appeal to potential leaders among the younger
generations in developing countries, focusing on the implications of
continued rapid population growth for their countries in the next 10-20
years, when they may assume national leadership roles.
Beyond seeking to reach and influence national leaders, improved
world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought
through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education
and motivation programs by the U.N., USIA, and USAID. We should give
higher priorities in our information programs world-wide for this area
and consider expansion of collaborative arrangements with multilateral
institutions in population education programs.
Another challenge will be in obtaining the further understanding
and support of the U.S. public and Congress for the necessary added
funds for such an effort, given the competing demands for resources. If
an effective program is to be mounted by the U.S., we will need to
contribute significant new amounts of funds. Thus there is need to
reinforce the positive attitudes of those in Congress who presently
support U.S. activity in the population field and to enlist their
support in persuading others. Public debate is needed now.
Personal approaches by the President, the Secretary of State,
other members of the Cabinet, and their principal deputies would be
helpful in this effort. Congress and the public must be clearly informed
that the Executive Branch is seriously worried about the problem and
that it deserves their further attention. Congressional representatives
at the World Population Conference can help.
An Alternative View
The above basic strategy assumes that the current forms of
assistance programs in both population and economic and social
development areas will be able to solve the problem. There is however,
another view, which is shared by a growing number of experts. It
believes that the outlook is much harsher and far less tractable than
commonly perceived. This holds that the severity of the population
problem in this century which is already claiming the lives of more than
10 million people yearly, is such as to make likely continued
widespread food shortage and other demographic catastrophes, and, in the
words of C.P. Snow, we shall be watching people starve on television.
The conclusion of this view is that mandatory programs may be
needed and that we should be considering these possibilities now.
This school of thought believes the following types of questions need to be addressed:
Should the U.S. make an all out commitment to major limitation of
world population with all the financial and international as well as
domestic political costs that would entail?
Should the U.S. set even higher agricultural production goals which
would enable it to provide additional major food resources to other
countries? Should they be nationally or internationally controlled?
On what basis should such food resources then be provided? Would food be
considered an instrument of national power? Will we be forced to make
choices as to whom we can reasonably assist, and if so, should
population efforts be a criterion for such assistance?
Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth?
Should the U.S. seek to change its own food consumption patterns toward more efficient uses of protein?
Are mandatory population control measures appropriate for the U.S. and/or for others?
Should the U.S. initiate a major research effort to address the growing
problems of fresh water supply, ecological damage, and adverse climate?
While definitive answers to those questions are not possible in
this study given its time limitations and its implications for domestic
policy, nevertheless they are needed if one accepts the drastic and
persistent character of the population growth problem. Should the choice
be made that the recommendations and the options given below are not
adequate to meet this problem, consideration should be given to a
further study and additional action in this field as outlined above.
Conclusion
The overall strategy above provides a general approach through
which the difficulties and dangers of population growth and related
problems can be approached in a balanced and comprehensive basis. No
single effort will do the job. Only a concerted and major effort in a
number of carefully selected directions can provide the hope of success
in reducing population growth and its unwanted dangers to world economic
will-being and political stability. There are no “quick-fixes” in this
field.
Below are specific program recommendations which are designed to
implement this strategy. Some will require few new resources; many call
for major efforts and significant new resources. We cannot simply buy
population growth moderation for nearly 4 billion people “on the cheap.”
II. Action to Create Conditions for Fertility Decline: Population and a Development Assistance Strategy
II. A. General Strategy and Resource Allocations for AID Assistance
Discussion:
1. Past Program Actions
Since inception of the program in 1965, AID has obligated nearly
$625 million for population activities. These funds have been used
primarily to (1) draw attention to the population problem, (2) encourage
multilateral and other donor support for the worldwide population
effort, and (3) help create and maintain the means for attacking the
problem, including the development of LDC capabilities to do so.
In pursuing these objectives, AID’s population resources were
focussed on areas of need where action was feasible and likely to be
effective. AID has provided assistance to population programs in some 70
LDCs, on a bilateral basis and/or indirectly through private
organizations and other channels. AID currently provides bilateral
assistance to 36 of these countries. State and AID played an important
role in establishing the United Nations Fund for Population Activities
(UNFPA) to spearhead multilateral effort in population as a complement
to the bilateral actions of AID and other donor countries. Since the
Fund’s establishment, AID has been the largest single contributor.
Moreover, with assistance from AID a number of private family planning
organizations (e.g., Pathfinder Fund, International Planned Parenthood
Foundation, Population Council) have significantly expanded their
worldwide population programs. Such organizations are still the main
supporters of family planning action in many developing countries.
AID actions have been a major catalyst in stimulating the flow
of funds into LDC population programs – from almost nothing ten years
ago, the amounts being spent from all sources in 1974 for programs in
the developing countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia (excluding
China) will total between $400 and $500 million. About half of this will
be contributed by the developed countries bilaterally or through
multilateral agencies, and the balance will come from the budgets of the
developing countries themselves. AID’s contribution is about
one-quarter of the total – AID obligated $112.4 million for population
programs in FY 1974 and plans for FY 1975 program of $137.5 million.
While world resources for population activities will continue to
grow, they are unlikely to expand as rapidly as needed. (One rough
estimate is that five times the current amount, or about $2.5 billion in
constant dollars, will be required annually by 1985 to provide the 2.5
billion people in the developing world, excluding China, with full-scale
family planning programs). In view of these limited resources AID’s
efforts (in both fiscal and manpower terms) and through its leadership
the efforts of others, must be focussed to the extent possible on high
priority needs in countries where the population problem is the most
acute. Accordingly, AID last year began a process of developing
geographic and functional program priorities for use in allocating funds
and staff, and in arranging and adjusting divisions of labor with other
donors and organizations active in the worldwide population effort.
Although this study has not yet been completed, a general outline of a
U.S. population assistance strategy can be developed from the results of
the priorities studied to date. The geographic and functional
parameters of the strategy are discussed under 2. and 3. below. The
implications for population resource allocations are presented under 4.
2. Geographic Priorities in U.S. Population Assistance
The U.S. strategy should be to encourage and support, through
bilateral, multilateral and other channels, constructive actions to
lower fertility rates in selected developing countries. Within this
overall strategy and in view of funding and manpower limitations, the
U.S. should emphasize assistance to those countries where the population
problem is the most serious.
There are three major factors to consider in judging the seriousness of the problem:
The first is the country’s contribution to the world’s population
problem, which is determined by the size of its population, its
population growth rate, and its progress in the “demographic transition”
from high birth and high death rates to low ones.
The second is the extent to which population growth impinges on the
country’s economic development and its financial capacity to cope with
its population problem.
The third factor is the extent to which an imbalance between growing
numbers of people and a country’s capability to handle the problem could
lead to serious instability, international tensions, or conflicts.
Although many countries may experience adverse consequences from such
imbalances, the troublemaking regional or international conditions might
not be as serious in some places as they are in others.
Based on the first two criteria, AID has developed a preliminary
rank ordering of nearly 100 developing countries which, after review and
refinement, will be used as a guide in AID’s own funding and manpower
resource allocations and in encouraging action through AID leadership
efforts on the part of other population assistance instrumentalities.
Applying these three criteria to this rank ordering, there are 13
countries where we currently judge the problem and risks to be the most
serious. They are: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines,
Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, and
Colombia. Out of a total 67 million worldwide increase in population in
1972 these countries contributed about 45%. These countries range from
those with virtually no government interest in family planning to those
with active government family planning programs which require and would
welcome enlarged technical and financial assistance.
These countries should be given the highest priority within
AID’s population program in terms of resource allocations and/or
leadership efforts to encourage action by other donors and
organizations. The form and content of our assistance or leadership
efforts would vary from country-to-country (as discussed in 3. below),
depending on each country’s needs, its receptivity to various forms of
assistance, its capability to finance needed actions, the effectiveness
with which funds can be used, and current or adjusted divisions of labor
among the other donors and organizations providing population
assistance to the country. AID’s population actions would also need to
be consistent with the overall U.S. development policy toward each
country.
While the countries cited above would be given highest priority,
other countries would not be ignored. AID would provide population
assistance and/or undertake leadership efforts with respect to other
countries to the extent that the availability of funds and staff
permits, taking account of such factors as: a country’s placement in
AID’s priority listing of LDCs; its potential impact on domestic unrest
and international frictions (which can apply to small as well as large
countries); its significance as a test or demonstration case; and
opportunities for expenditures that appear particularly cost-effective
(e.g. its has been suggested that there may be particularly
cost-effective opportunities for supporting family planning to reduce
the lag between mortality and fertility declines in countries where
death rates are still declining rapidly).
3. Mode and Content of U.S. Population Assistance
In moving from geographic emphases to strategies for the mode
and functional content of population assistance to both the higher and
lower priority countries which are to be assisted, various factors need
to be considered: (1) the extent of a country’s understanding of its
population problem and interest in responding to it; (2) the specific
actions needed to cope with the problem; (3) the country’s need for
external financial assistance to deal with the problem; and (4) its
receptivity to various forms of assistance.
Some of the countries in the high priority group cited above
(e.g. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand) and some
lower priority countries have recognized that rapid population growth is
a problem, are taking actions of their own to deal with it, and are
receptive to assistance from the U.S. (through bilateral or central AID
funding) and other donors, as well as to multilateral support for their
efforts. In these cases AID should continue to provide such assistance
based on each country’s functional needs, the effectiveness with which
funds can be used in these areas, and current or adjusted divisions of
labor among other donors and organizations providing assistance to the
country. Furthermore, our assistance strategies for these countries
should consider their capabilities to finance needed population actions.
Countries which have relatively large surpluses of export earning and
foreign exchange reserves are unlikely to require large-scale external
financial assistance and should be encouraged to finance their own
commodity imports as well as local costs. In such cases our strategy
should be to concentrate on needed technical assistance and on
attempting to play a catalytic role in encouraging better programs and
additional host country financing for dealing with the population
problem.
In other high and lower priority countries U.S. assistance is
limited either by the nature of political or diplomatic relations with
those countries (e.g. India, Egypt), or by the lack of strong government
interest in population reduction programs (e.g. Nigeria, Ethiopia,
Mexico, Brazil). In such cases, external technical and financial
assistance, if desired by the countries, would have to come from other
donors and/or from private and international organizations (many of
which receive contributions from AID). The USG would, however, maintain
an interest (e.g. through Embassies) in such countries’ population
problems and programs (if any) to reduce population growth rates.
Moreover, particularly in the case of high priority countries to which
U.S. population assistance is now limited for one reason or another, we
should be alert to opportunities for expanding our assistance efforts
and for demonstrating to their leaders the consequences of rapid
population growth and the benefits of actions to reduce fertility.
In countries to which other forms of U.S. assistance are
provided but not population assistance, AID will monitor progress toward
achievement of development objectives, taking into account the extent
to which these are hindered by rapid population growth, and will look
for opportunities to encourage initiation of or improvement in
population policies and programs.
In addition, the U.S. strategy should support general activities
capable of achieving major breakthroughs in key problems which hinder
attainment of fertility control objectives. For example, the development
of more effective, simpler contraceptive methods through bio-medical
research will benefit all countries which face the problem of rapid
population growth; improvements in methods for measuring demographic
changes will assist a number of LDCs in determining current population
growth rates and evaluating the impact over time of population/family
planning activities.
4. Resource Allocations for U.S. Population Assistance
AID funds obligated for population/family planning assistance
rose steadily since inception of the program ($10 million in the FY
1965-67 period) to nearly $125 million in FY 1972. In FY 1973, however,
funds available for population remained at the $125 million level; in FY
1974 they actually declined slightly, to $112.5 million because of a
ceiling on population obligations inserted in the legislation by the
House Appropriations Committee. With this plateau in AID population
obligations, worldwide resources have not been adequate to meet all
identified, sensible funding needs, and we therefore see opportunities
for significant expansion of the program.
Some major actions in the area of creating conditions for
fertility decline, as described in Section IIB, can be funded from AID
resources available for the sectors in question (e.g., education,
agriculture). Other actions come under the purview of population (“Title
X”) funds. In this latter category, increases in projected budget
requests to the Congress on the order of $35-50 million annually through
FY 1980 — above the $137.5 million requested by FY 1975 — appear
appropriate at this time. Such increases must be accompanied by
expanding contributions to the worldwide population effort from other
donors and organizations and from the LDCs themselves, if significant
progress is to be made. The USG should take advantage of appropriate
opportunities to stimulate such contributions from others.
Title X Funding for Population
+—————————————————-+
| Year Amount ($ million) |
+—————————————————-+
| FY 1972 – Actual Obligations 123.3 |
| FY 1973 – Actual Obligations 125.6 |
| FY 1974 – Actual Obligations 112.4 |
| FY 1975 – Request to Congress 137.5 |
| FY 1976 – Projection 170 |
| FY 1977 – Projection 210 |
| FY 1978 – Projection 250 |
| FY 1979 – Projection 300 |
| FY 1980 – Projection 350 |
+—————————————————-+
These Title X funding projections for FY 1976-80 are general
magnitudes based on preliminary estimates of expansion or initiation of
population programs in developing countries and growing requirements for
outside assistance as discussed in greater detail in other sections of
this paper. These estimates contemplated very substantial increases in
self-help and assistance from other donor countries.
Our objective should be to assure that developing countries make
family planning information, educational and means available to all
their peoples by 1980. Our efforts should include:
Increased A.I.D. bilateral and centrally-funded programs, consistent with the geographic priorities cited above.
Expanded contributions to multilateral and private organizations that can work effectively in the population area.
Further research on the relative impact of various socio-economic
factors on desired family size, and experimental efforts to test the
feasibility of larger-scale efforts to affect some of these factors.
Additional bio-medical research to improve the existing means of
fertility control and to develop new ones which are safe, effective,
inexpensive, and attractive to both men and women.
Innovative approaches to providing family planning services, such as the
utilization of commercial channels for distribution of contraceptives,
and the development of low-cost systems for delivering effective health
and family planning services to the 85% of LDC populations not now
reached by such services.
Expanded efforts to increase the awareness of LDC leaders and publics
regarding the consequences of rapid population growth and to stimulate
further LDC commitment to actions to reduce fertility.
We believe expansions in the range of 35-50 million annually over
the next five years are realistic, in light of potential LDC needs and
prospects for increased contributions from other population assistance
instrumentalities, as well as constraints on the speed with which AID
(and other donors) population funds can be expanded and effectively
utilized. These include negative or ambivalent host government attitudes
toward population reduction programs; the need for complementary
financial and manpower inputs by recipient governments, which must come
at the expense of other programs they consider to be high priority; and
the need to assure that new projects involve sensible, effective actions
that are likely to reduce fertility. We must avoid inadequately planned
or implemented programs that lead to extremely high costs per acceptor.
In effect, we are closer to “absorptive capacity” in terms of
year-to-year increases in population programs than we are, for example,
in annual expansions in food, fertilizer or generalized resource
transfers.
It would be premature to make detailed funding recommendations
by countries and functional categories in light of our inability to
predict what changes — such as in host country attitudes to U.S.
population assistance and in fertility control technologies — may occur
which would significantly alter funding needs in particular geographic
or functional areas. For example, AID is currently precluded from
providing bilateral assistance to India and Egypt, two significant
countries in the highest priority group, due to the nature of U.S.
political and diplomatic relations with these countries. However, if
these relationships were to change and bilateral aid could be provided,
we would want to consider providing appropriate population assistance to
these countries. In other cases, changing U.S.-LDC relationships might
preclude further aid to some countries. Factors such as these could both
change the mix and affect overall magnitudes of funds needed for
population assistance. Therefore, proposed program mixes and funding
levels by geographic and functional categories should continue to be
examined on an annual basis during the regular USG program and budget
review processes which lead to the presentation of funding requests to
the Congress.
Recognizing that changing opportunities for action could
substantially affect AID’s resource requirements for population
assistance, we anticipate that, if funds are provided by the Congress at
the levels projected, we would be able to cover necessary actions
related to the highest priority countries and also those related to
lower priority countries, moving reasonably far down the list. At this
point, however, AID believes it would not be desirable to make priority
judgments on which activities would not be funded if Congress did not
provide the levels projected. If cuts were made in these levels we would
have to make judgments based on such factors as the priority rankings
of countries, then-existing LDC needs, and divisions of labor with other
actors in the population assistance area.
If AID’s population assistance program is to expand at the
general magnitudes cited above, additional direct hire staff will likely
be needed. While the expansion in program action would be primarily
through grants and contracts with LDC or U.S. institutions, or through
contributions to international organizations, increases in direct hire
staff would be necessary to review project proposals, monitor their
implementation through such instrumentalities, and evaluate their
progress against pre-established goals. Specific direct hire manpower
requirements should continue to be considered during the annual program
and budget reviews, along with details of program mix and funding levels
by country and functional category, in order to correlate staffing
needs with projected program actions for a particular year.
Recommendations
1. The U.S. strategy should be to encourage and support, through
bilateral, multilateral and other channels, constructive action to
lower fertility rates in selected developing countries. The U.S. should
apply each of the relevant provisions of its World Population Plan of
Action and use it to influence and support actions by developing
countries.
2. Within this overall strategy, the U.S. should give highest
priority, in terms of resource allocation (along with donors) to efforts
to encourage assistance from others to those countries cited above
where the population problem is most serious, and provide assistance to
other countries as funds and staff permit.
3. AID’s further development of population program priorities,
both geographic and functional, should be consistent with the general
strategy discussed above, with the other recommendations of this paper
and with the World Population Plan of Action. The strategies should be
coordinated with the population activities of other donors countries and
agencies using the WPPA as leverage to obtain suitable action.
4. AID’s budget requests over the next five years should include
a major expansion of bilateral population and family planning programs
(as appropriate for each country or region), of functional activities as
necessary, and of contributions through multilateral channels,
consistent with the general funding magnitudes discussed above. The
proposed budgets should emphasize the country and functional priorities
outlined in the recommendations of this study and as detailed in AID’s
geographic and functional strategy papers.
II. B. Functional Assistance Programs to Create Conditions for Fertility Decline
Introduction
Discussion
It is clear that the availability of contraceptive services and
information, important as that is, is not the only element required to
address the population problems of the LDCs. Substantial evidence shows
that many families in LDCs (especially the poor) consciously prefer to
have numerous children for a variety of economic and social reasons. For
example, small children can make economic contributions on family
farms, children can be important sources of support for old parents
where no alternative form of social security exists, and children may be
a source of status for women who have few alternatives in
male-dominated societies.
The desire for large families diminishes as income rises.
Developed countries and the more developed areas in LDCs have lower
fertility than less developed areas. Similarly, family planning programs
produce more acceptors and have a greater impact on fertility in
developed areas than they do in less developed areas. Thus, investments
in development are important in lowering fertility rates. We know that
the major socio-economic determinants of fertility are strongly
interrelated. A change in any one of them is likely to produce a change
in the others as well. Clearly development per se is a powerful
determinant of fertility. However, since it is unlikely that most LDCs
will develop sufficiently during the next 25-30 years, it is crucial to
identify those sectors that most directly and powerfully affect
fertility.
In this context, population should be viewed as a variable which
interacts, to differing degrees, with a wide range of development
programs, and the U.S. strategy should continue to stress the importance
of taking population into account in “non-family planning” activities.
This is particularly important with the increasing focus in the U.S.
development program on food and nutrition, health and population, and
education and human resources; assistance programs have less chance of
success as long as the numbers to be fed, educated, and employed are
increasing rapidly.
Thus, to assist in achieving LDC fertility reduction, not only
should family planning be high up on the priority list for U.S. foreign
assistance, but high priority in allocation of funds should be given to
programs in other sectors that contribute in a cost-effective manner in
reduction in population growth.
There is a growing, but still quite small, body of research to
determine the socio-economic aspects of development that most directly
and powerfully affect fertility. Although the limited analysis to date
cannot be considered definitive, there is general agreement that the
five following factors (in addition to increases in per capita income)
tend to be strongly associated with fertility declines: education,
especially the education of women; reductions in infant mortality; wage
employment opportunities for women; social security and other
substitutes for the economic value of children; and relative equality in
income distribution and rural development. There are a number of other
factors identified from research, historical analysis, and
experimentation that also affect fertility, including delaying the
average age of marriage, and direct payments (financial incentive) to
family planning acceptors.
There are, however, a number of questions which must be
addressed before one can move from identification of factors associated
with fertility decline to large-scale programs that will induce
fertility decline in a cost-effective manner. For example, in the case
of female education, we need to consider such questions as: did the
female education cause fertility to decline or did the development
process in some situations cause parents both to see less economic need
for large families and to indulge in the “luxury” of educating their
daughters? If more female education does in fact cause fertility
declines, will poor high-fertility parents see much advantage in sending
their daughters to school? If so, how much does it cost to educate a
girl to the point where her fertility will be reduced (which occurs at
about the fourth-grade level)? What specific programs in female
education are most cost-effective (e.g., primary school, non-formal
literacy training, or vocational or pre-vocational training)? What, in
rough quantitative terms, are the non-population benefits of an
additional dollar spent on female education in a given situation in
comparison to other non-population investment alternatives? What are the
population benefits of a dollar spent on female education in comparison
with other population-related investments, such as in contraceptive
supplies or in maternal and child health care systems? And finally, what
is the total population plus non-population benefit of investment in a
given specific program in female education in comparison with the total
population plus non-population benefits of alternate feasible investment
opportunities?
As a recent research proposal from Harvard’s Department of
Population Studies puts this problem: “Recent studies have identified
more specific factors underlying fertility declines, especially, the
spread of educational attainment and the broadening of non-traditional
roles for women. In situations of rapid population growth, however,
these run counter to powerful market forces. Even when efforts are made
to provide educational opportunities for most of the school age
population, low levels of development and restricted employment
opportunities for academically educated youth lead to high dropout rates
and non-attendance…”
Fortunately, the situation is by no means as ambiguous for all
of the likely factors affecting fertility. For example, laws that raise
the minimum marriage age, where politically feasible and at least
partially enforceable, can over time have a modest effect on fertility
at negligible cost. Similarly, there have been some controversial, but
remarkably successful, experiments in India in which financial
incentives, along with other motivational devices, were used to get
large numbers of men to accept vasectomies. In addition, there appear to
be some major activities, such as programs aimed to improve the
productive capacity of the rural poor, which can be well justified even
without reference to population benefits, but which appear to have major
population benefits as well.
The strategy suggested by the above considerations is that the
volume and type of programs aimed at the “determinants of fertility”
should be directly related to our estimate of the total benefits
(including non-population benefits) of a dollar invested in a given
proposed program and to our confidence in the reliability of that
estimate. There is room for honest disagreement among researchers and
policy-makers about the benefits, or feasibility, of a given program.
Hopefully, over time, with more research, experimentation and
evaluation, areas of disagreement and ambiguity will be clarified, and
donors and recipients will have better information both on what policies
and programs tend to work under what circumstances and how to go about
analyzing a given country situation to find the best feasible steps that
should be taken.
Recommendations:
1. AID should implement the strategy set out in the World
Population Plan of Action, especially paragraphs 31 and 32 and Section I
(“Introduction – a U.S. Global Population Strategy”) above, which calls
for high priority in funding to three categories of programs in areas
affecting fertility (family-size) decisions:
a. Operational programs where there is proven cost-effectiveness,
generally where there are also significant benefits for non-population
objectives;
b. Experimental programs where research indicates close relationships
to fertility reduction but cost-effectiveness has not yet been
demonstrated in terms of specific steps to be taken (i.e., program
design); and
c. Research and evaluation on the relative impact on desired family
size of the socio-economic determinants of fertility, and on what policy
scope exists for affecting these determinants.
2. Research, experimentation and evaluation of ongoing programs
should focus on answering the questions (such as those raised above,
relating to female education) that determine what steps can and should
be taken in other sectors that will in a cost-effective manner speed up
the rate of fertility decline. In addition to the five areas discussed
in Section II. B 1-5 below, the research should also cover the full
range of factors affecting fertility, such as laws and norms respecting
age of marriage, and financial incentives. Work of this sort should be
undertaken in individual key countries to determine the motivational
factors required there to develop a preference for small family size.
High priority must be given to testing feasibility and replicability on a
wide scale.
3. AID should encourage other donors in LDC governments to carry
out parallel strategies of research, experimentation, and
(cost-effective well-evaluated) large-scale operations programs on
factors affecting fertility. Work in this area should be coordinated,
and results shared.
4. AID should help develop capacity in a few existing U.S. and
LDC institutions to serve as major centers for research and policy
development in the areas of fertility-affecting social or economic
measures, direct incentives, household behavior research, and evaluation
techniques for motivational approaches. The centers should provide
technical assistance, serve as a forum for discussion, and generally
provide the “critical mass” of effort and visibility which has been
lacking in this area to date. Emphasis should be given to maximum
involvement of LDC institutions and individuals.
The following sections discuss research experimental and
operational programs to be undertaken in the five promising areas
mentioned above.
II. B. 1. Providing Minimal Levels of Education, Especially for Women
Discussion
There is fairly convincing evidence that female education
especially of 4th grade and above correlates strongly with reduced
desired family size, although it is unclear the extent to which the
female education causes reductions in desired family size or whether it
is a faster pace of development which leads both to increased demand for
female education and to reduction in desired family size. There is also
a relatively widely held theory — though not statistically validated —
that improved levels of literacy contribute to reduction in desired
family size both through greater knowledge of family planning
information and increasing motivational factors related to reductions in
family size. Unfortunately, AID’s experience with mass literacy
programs over the past 15 years has yielded the sobering conclusion that
such programs generally failed (i.e. were not cost-effective) unless
the population sees practical benefits to themselves from learning how
to read — e.g., a requirement for literacy to acquire easier access to
information about new agricultural technologies or to jobs that require
literacy.
Now, however, AID has recently revised its education strategy,
in line with the mandate of its legislation, to place emphasis on the
spread of education to poor people, particularly in rural areas, and
relatively less on higher levels of education. This approach is focused
on use of formal and “non-formal” education (i.e., organized education
outside the schoolroom setting) to assist in meeting the human resource
requirements of the development process, including such things as rural
literacy programs aimed at agriculture, family planning, or other
development goals.
Recommendations
1. Integrated basic education (including applied literacy) and
family planning programs should be developed whenever they appear to be
effective, of high priority, and acceptable to the individual country.
AID should continue its emphasis on basic education, for women as well
as men.
2. A major effort should be made in LDCs seeking to reduce birth
rates to assure at least an elementary school education for virtually
all children, girls as well as boys, as soon as the country can afford
it (which would be quite soon for all but the poorest countries).
Simplified, practical education programs should be developed. These
programs should, where feasible, include specific curricula to motivate
the next generation toward a two-child family average to assure that
level of fertility in two or three decades. AID should encourage and
respond to requests for assistance in extending basic education and in
introducing family planning into curricula. Expenditures for such
emphasis on increased practical education should come from general AID
funds, not population funds.
II. B. 2. Reducing Infant and Child Mortality
Discussion:
High infant and child mortality rates, evident in many
developing countries, lead parents to be concerned about the number of
their children who are likely to survive. Parents may overcompensate for
possible child losses by having additional children. Research to date
clearly indicates not only that high fertility and high birth rates are
closely correlated but that in most circumstances low net population
growth rates can only be achieved when child mortality is low as well.
Policies and programs which significantly reduce infant and child
mortality below present levels will lead couples to have fewer children.
However, we must recognize that there is a lag of at least several
years before parents (and cultures and subcultures) become confident
that their children are more likely to survive and to adjust their
fertility behavior accordingly.
Considerable reduction in infant and child mortality is possible
through improvement in nutrition, inoculations against diseases, and
other public health measures if means can be devised for extending such
services to neglected LDC populations on a low-cost basis. It often
makes sense to combine such activities with family planning services in
integrated delivery systems in order to maximize the use of scarce LDC
financial and health manpowder (sic.) resources (See Section IV). In
addition, providing selected health care for both mothers and their
children can enhance the acceptability of family planning by showing
concern for the whole condition of the mother and her children and not
just for the single factor of fertility.
The two major cost-effective problems in maternal-child health
care are that clinical health care delivery systems have not in the past
accounted for much of the reduction in infant mortality and that, as in
the U.S., local medical communities tend to favor relatively expensive
quality health care, even at the cost of leaving large numbers of people
(in the LDC’s generally over two-thirds of the people) virtually
uncovered by modern health services.
Although we do not have all the answers on how to develop
inexpensive, integrated delivery systems, we need to proceed with
operational programs to respond to ODC requests if they are likely to be
cost-effective based on experience to date, and to experiment on a
large scale with innovative ways of tackling the outstanding problems.
Evaluation mechanisms for measuring the impact of various courses of
action are an essential part of this effort in order to provide feedback
for current and future projects and to improve the state of the art in
this field.
Currently, efforts to develop low-cost health and family
planning services for neglected populations in the LDC’s are impeded
because of the lack of international commitment and resources to the
health side. For example:
A. The World Bank could supply low-interest credits to LDCs for
the development of low-cost health-related services to neglected
populations but has not yet made a policy decision to do so. The Bank
has a population and health program and the program’s leaders have been
quite sympathetic with the above objective. The Bank’s staff has
prepared a policy paper on this subject for the Board but prospects for
it are not good. Currently, the paper will be discussed by the Bank
Board at its November 1974 meeting. Apparently there is some reticence
within the Bank’s Board and in parts of the staff about making a strong
initiative in this area. In part, the Bank argues that there are not
proven models of effective, low-cost health systems in which the Bank
can invest. The Bank also argues that other sectors such as agriculture,
should receive higher priority in the competition for scarce resources.
In addition, arguments are made in some quarters of the Bank that the
Bank ought to restrict itself to “hard loan projects” and not get into
the “soft” area.
A current reading from the Bank’s staff suggests that unless
there is some change in the thinking of the Bank Board, the Bank’s
policy will be simply to keep trying to help in the population and
health areas but not to take any large initiative in the low-cost
delivery system area.
The Bank stance is regrettable because the Bank could play a
very useful role in this area helping to fund low-cost physical
structures and other elements of low-cost health systems, including
rural health clinics where needed. It could also help in providing
low-cost loans for training, and in seeking and testing new approaches
to reaching those who do not now have access to health and family
planning services. This would not be at all inconsistent with our and
the Bank’s frankly admitting that we do not have all the “answer” or
cost-effective models for low-cost health delivery systems. Rather they,
we and other donors could work together on experimentally oriented,
operational programs to develop models for the wide variety of
situations faced by LDCs.
Involvement of the Bank in this area would open up new
possibilities for collaboration. Grant funds, whether from the U.S. or
UNFPA, could be used to handle the parts of the action that require
short lead times such as immediate provision of supplies, certain kinds
of training and rapid deployment of technical assistance.
Simultaneously, for parts of the action that require longer lead times,
such as building clinics, World Bank loans could be employed. The Bank’s
lending processes could be synchronized to bring such building activity
to a readiness condition at the time the training programs have moved
along far enough to permit manning of the facilities. The emphasis
should be on meeting low-cost rather than high-cost infrastructure
requirements.
Obviously, in addition to building, we assume the Bank could
fund other local-cost elements of expansion of health systems such as
longer-term training programs.
AID is currently trying to work out improved consultation
procedures with the Bank staff in the hope of achieving better
collaborative efforts within the Bank’s current commitment of resources
in the population and health areas. With a greater commitment of Bank
resources and improved consultation with AID and UNFPA, a much greater
dent could be made on the overall problem.
B. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its counterpart for
Latin America, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), currently
provide technical assistance in the development and implementation of
health projects which are in turn financed by international funding
mechanisms such as UNDP and the International Financial Institutions.
However, funds available for health actions through these organizations
are limited at present. Higher priority by the international funding
agencies to health actions could expand the opportunities for useful
collaborations among donor institutions and countries to develop
low-cost integrated health and family planning delivery systems for LDC
populations that do not now have access to such services.
Recommendations:
The U.S. should encourage heightened international interest in
and commitment of resources to developing delivery mechanisms for
providing integrated health and family planning services to neglected
populations at costs which host countries can support within a
reasonable period of time. Efforts would include:
1. Encouraging the World Bank and other international funding
mechanisms, through the U.S. representatives on the boards of these
organizations, to take a broader initiative in the development of
inexpensive service delivery mechanisms in countries wishing to expand
such systems.
2. Indicating U.S. willingness (as the U.S. did at the World
Population Conference) to join with other donors and organizations to
encourage and support further action by LDC governments and other
institutions in the low-cost delivery systems area.
A. As offered at Bucharest, the U.S. should join donor
countries, WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank to create a consortium
to offer assistance to the more needy developing countries to establish
their own low-cost preventive and curative public health systems
reaching into all areas of their countries and capable of national
support within a reasonable period. Such systems would include family
planning services as an ordinary part of their overall services.
B. The WHO should be asked to take the leadership in such an
arrangement and is ready to do so. Apparently at least half of the
potential donor countries and the EEC’s technical assistance program are
favorably inclined. So is the UNFPA and UNICEF. The U.S., through its
representation on the World Bank Board, should encourage a broader World
Bank initiative in this field, particularly to assist in the
development of inexpensive, basic health service infrastructures in
countries wishing to undertake the development of such systems.
3. Expanding Wage Employment Opportunities, Especially for Women
Discussion
Employment is the key to access to income, which opens the way
to improved health, education, nutrition, and reduced family size.
Reliable job opportunities enable parents to limit their family size and
invest in the welfare of the children they have.
The status and utilization of women in LDC societies is
particularly important in reducing family size. For women, employment
outside the home offers an alternative to early marriage and
childbearing, and an incentive to have fewer children after marriage.
The woman who must stay home to take care of her children must forego
the income she could earn outside the home. Research indicates that
female wage employment outside the home is related to fertility
reduction. Programs to increase the women’s labor force participation
must, however, take account of the overall demand for labor; this would
be a particular problem in occupations where there is already widespread
unemployment among males. But other occupations where women have a
comparative advantage can be encouraged.
Improving the legal and social status of women gives women a
greater voice in decision-making about their lives, including family
size, and can provide alternative opportunities to childbearing, thereby
reducing the benefits of having children.
The U.S. Delegation to the Bucharest Conference emphasized the
importance of improving the general status of women and of developing
employment opportunities for women outside the home and off the farm. It
was joined by all countries in adopting a strong statement on this
vital issue. See Chapter VI for a fuller discussion of the conference.
Recommendation:
1. AID should communicate with and seek opportunities to assist
national economic development programs to increase the role of women in
the development process.
2. AID should review its education/training programs (such as
U.S. participant training, in-country and third-country training) to see
that such activities provide equal access to women.
3. AID should enlarge pre-vocational and vocational training to
involve women more directly in learning skills which can enhance their
income and status in the community (e.g. paramedical skills related to
provision of family planning services).
4. AID should encourage the development and placement of LDC
women as decision-makers in development programs, particularly those
programs designed to increase the role of women as producers of goods
and services, and otherwise to improve women’s welfare (e.g. national
credit and finance programs, and national health and family planning
programs).
5. AID should encourage, where possible, women’s active
participation in the labor movement in order to promote equal pay for
equal work, equal benefits, and equal employment opportunities.
6. AID should continue to review its programs and projects for
their impact on LDC women, and adjust them as necessary to foster
greater participation of women – particularly those in the lowest
classes – in the development process.
4. Developing Alternatives to the Social Security Role Provided By Children to Aging Parents
Discussion:
In most LDCs the almost total absence of government or other
institutional forms of social security for old people forces dependence
on children for old age survival. The need for such support appears to
be one of the important motivations for having numerous children.
Several proposals have been made, and a few pilot experiments are being
conducted, to test the impact of financial incentives designed to
provide old age support (or, more tangentially, to increase the earning
power of fewer children by financing education costs parents would
otherwise bear). Proposals have been made for son-insurance (provided to
the parents if they have no more than three children), and for deferred
payments of retirement benefits (again tied to specified limits on
family size), where the payment of the incentive is delayed. The intent
is not only to tie the incentive to actual fertility, but to impose the
financial cost on the government or private sector entity only after the
benefits of the avoided births have accrued to the economy and the
financing entity. Schemes of varying administrative complexity have been
developed to take account of management problems in LDCs. The economic
and equity core of these long-term incentive proposals is simple: the
government offers to return to the contracting couple a portion of the
economic dividend they generate by avoiding births, as a direct
trade-off for the personal financial benefits they forego by having
fewer children.
Further research and experimentation in this area needs to take
into account the impact of growing urbanization in LDCs on traditional
rural values and outlooks such as the desire for children as old-age
insurance.
Recommendation:
AID should take a positive stance with respect to exploration of
social security type incentives as described above. AID should
encourage governments to consider such measures, and should provide
financial and technical assistance where appropriate. The recommendation
made earlier to establish an “intermediary” institutional capacity
which could provide LDC governments with substantial assistance in this
area, among several areas on the “demand” side of the problem, would add
considerably to AID’s ability to carry out this recommendation.
5. Pursuing Development Strategies that Skew Income Growth Toward the
Poor, Especially Rural Development Focusing on Rural Poverty
Income distribution and rural development: The higher a family’s
income, the fewer children it will probably have, except at the very
top of the income scale. Similarly, the more evenly distributed the
income in a society, the lower the overall fertility rate seems to be
since better income distribution means that the poor, who have the
highest fertility, have higher income. Thus a development strategy which
emphasizes the rural poor, who are the largest and poorest group in
most LDCs would be providing income increases to those with the highest
fertility levels. No LDC is likely to achieve population stability
unless the rural poor participate in income increases and fertility
declines.
Agriculture and rural development is already, along with
population, the U.S. Government’s highest priority in provision of
assistance to LDCs. For FY 1975, about 60% of the $1.13 billion AID
requested in the five functional areas of the foreign assistance
legislation is in agriculture and rural development. The $255 million
increase in the FY 1975 level authorized in the two year FY 1974
authorization bill is virtually all for agriculture and rural
development.
AID’s primary goal in agriculture and rural development is
concentration in food output and increases in the rural quality of life;
the major strategy element is concentration on increasing the output of
small farmers, through assistance in provision of improved
technologies, agricultural inputs, institutional supports, etc.
This strategy addresses three U.S. interests: First, it
increases agricultural output in the LDCs, and speeds up the average
pace of their development, which, as has been noted, leads to increased
acceptance of family planning. Second, the emphasis on small farmers and
other elements of the rural poor spreads the benefits of development as
broadly as is feasible among lower income groups. As noted above
spreading the benefits of development to the poor, who tend to have the
highest fertility rates, is an important step in getting them to reduce
their family size. In addition, the concentration on small farmer
production (vs., for example, highly mechanized, large-scale
agriculture) can increase on and off farm rural job opportunities and
decrease the flow to the cities. While fertility levels in rural areas
are higher than in the cities, continued rapid migration into the cities
at levels greater than the cities’ job markets or services can sustain
adds an important destabilizing element to development efforts and goals
of many countries. Indeed, urban areas in some LDCs are already the
scene of urban unrest and high crime rates.
Recommendation
AID should continue its efforts to focus not just on agriculture
and rural development but specifically on small farmers and on
labor-intensive means of stimulating agricultural output and on other
aspects of improving the quality of life of the rural poor, so that
agriculture and rural development assistance, in addition to its
importance for increased food production and other purposes, can have
maximum impact on reducing population growth.
6. Concentration on Education and Indoctrination of The Rising
Generation of Children Regarding the Desirability of Smaller Family Size
Discussion:
Present efforts at reducing birth rates in LDCs, including AID
and UNFPA assistance, are directed largely at adults now in their
reproductive years. Only nominal attention is given to population
education or sex education in schools and in most countries none is
given in the very early grades which are the only attainment of 2/3-3/4
of the children. It should be obvious, however, that efforts at birth
control directed toward adults will with even maximum success result in
acceptance of contraception for the reduction of births only to the
level of the desired family size — which knowledge, attitude and
practice studies in many countries indicate is an average of four or
more children.
The great necessity is to convince the masses of the population
that it is to their individual and national interest to have, on the
average, only three and then only two children. There is little
likelihood that this result can be accomplished very widely against the
background of the cultural heritage of today’s adults, even the young
adults, among the masses in most LDCs. Without diminishing in any way
the effort to reach these adults, the obvious increased focus of
attention should be to change the attitudes of the next generation,
those who are now in elementary school or younger. If this could be
done, it would indeed be possible to attain a level of fertility
approaching replacement in 20 years and actually reaching it in 30.
Because a large percentage of children from high-fertility,
low-income groups do not attend school, it will be necessary to develop
means to reach them for this and other educational purposes through
informal educational programs. As the discussion earlier of the
determinants of family size (fertility) pointed out, it is also
important to make significant progress in other areas, such as better
health care and improvements in income distribution, before desired
family size can be expected to fall sharply. If it makes economic sense
for poor parents to have large families twenty years from now, there is
no evidence as to whether population education or indoctrination will
have sufficient impact alone to dissuade them.
Recommendation
1. That U.S. agencies stress the importance of education of the
next generation of parents, starting in elementary schools, toward a
two-child family ideal. 2. That AID stimulate specific efforts to
develop means of educating children of elementary school age to the
ideal of the two-child family and that UNESCO be asked to take the lead
through formal and informal education. General Recommendation for UN
Agencies
As to each of the above six categories State and AID should make
specific efforts to have the relevant UN agency, WHO, ILO, FAO, UNESCO,
UNICEF, and the UNFPA take its proper role of leadership in the UN
family with increased program effort, citing the World Population Plan
of Action.
II.
C. Food for Peace Program and Population
Discussion:
One of the most fundamental aspects of the impact of population
growth on the political and economic well-being of the globe is its
relationship to food. Here the problem of the interrelationship of
population, national resources, environment, productivity and political
and economic stability come together when shortages of this basic human
need occur.
USDA projections indicate that the quantity of grain imports
needed by the LDCs in the 1980s will grow significantly, both in overall
and per capita terms. In addition, these countries will face
year-to-year fluctuations in production due to the influence of weather
and other factors.
This is not to say that the LDCs need face starvation in the
next two decades, for the same projections indicate an even greater
increase in production of grains in the developed nations. It should be
pointed out, however, that these projections assume that such major
problems as the vast increase in the need for fresh water, the
ecological effects of the vast increase in the application of
fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation, and the apparent adverse trend
in the global climate, are solved. At present, there are no solutions to
these problems in sight.
The major challenge will be to increase food production in the
LDCs themselves and to liberalize the system in which grain is
transferred commercially from producer to consumer countries. We also
see food aid as an important way of meeting part of the chronic
shortfall and emergency needs caused by year-to-year variation at least
through the end of this decade. Many outside experts predict just such
difficulties even if major efforts are undertaken to expand world
agricultural output, especially in the LDCs themselves but also in the
U.S. and in other major feed grain producers. In the longer run, LDCs
must both decrease population growth and increase agricultural
production significantly. At some point the “excess capacity” of the
food exporting countries will run out. Some countries have already moved
from a net food exporter to a net importer of food.
There are major interagency studies now progressing in the food
area and this report cannot go deeply into this field. It can only point
to serious problems as they relate to population and suggest minimum
requirements and goals in the food area. In particular, we believe that
population growth may have very serious negative consequences on food
production in the LDCs including over-expectations of the capacity of
the land to produce, downgrading the ecological economics of marginal
areas, and overharvesting the seas. All of these conditions may affect
the viability of the world’s economy and thereby its prospects for peace
and security.
Recommendations:
Since NSC/CIEP studies are already underway we refer the reader
to them. However the following, we believe, are minimum requirements for
any strategy which wishes to avoid instability and conflict brought on
by population growth and food scarcity:
(1) High priority for U.S. bilateral and multilateral LDC
Agricultural Assistance; including efforts by the LDCs to improve food
production and distribution with necessary institutional adjustments and
economic policies to stimulate efficient production. This must include a
significant increase in financial and technical aid to promote more
efficient production and distribution in the LDCs.
(2) Development of national food stocks15 (including those
needed for emergency relief) within an internationally agreed framework
sufficient to provide an adequate level of world food security;
(3) Expansion of production of the input elements of food
production (i.e., fertilizer, availability of water and high yield seed
stocks) and increased incentives for expanded agricultural productivity.
In this context a reduction in the real cost of energy (especially
fuel) either through expansion in availability through new sources or
decline in the relative price of oil or both would be of great
importance;
(4) Significant expansion of U.S. and other producer country
food crops within the context of a liberalized and efficient world trade
system that will assure food availability to the LDCs in case of severe
shortage. New international trade arrangements for agricultural
products, open enough to permit maximum production by efficient
producers and flexible enough to dampen wide price fluctuations in years
when weather conditions result in either significant shortfalls or
surpluses. We believe this objective can be achieved by trade
liberalization and an internationally coordinated food reserve program
without resorting to price-oriented agreements, which have undesirable
effects on both production and distribution;
(5) The maintenance of an adequate food aid program with a
clearer focus on its use as a means to make up real food deficits,
pending the development of their own food resources, in countries unable
to feed themselves rather than as primarily an economic development or
foreign policy instrument; and
(6) A strengthened research effort, including long term, to
develop new seed and farming technologies, primarily to increase yields
but also to permit more extensive cultivation techniques, particularly
in LDCs.
III. International Organizations and other Multilateral Population Programs
A. UN Organization and Specialized Agencies
Discussion
In the mid-sixties the UN member countries slowly began to agree
on a greater involvement of the United Nations in population matters.
In 1967 the Secretary-General created a Trust Fund to finance work in
the population field. In 1969 the Fund was renamed the United Nations
Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and placed under the overall
supervision of the United Nations Development Program. During this
period, also, the mandates of the Specialized Agencies were modified to
permit greater involvement by these agencies in population activities.
UNFPA’s role was clarified by an ECOSOC resolution in 1973: (a)
to build up the knowledge and capacity to respond to the needs in the
population and family planning fields; (b) to promote awareness in both
developed and developing countries of the social, economic, and
environmental implications of population problems; (c) to extend
assistance to developing countries; and (d) to promote population
programs and to coordinate projects supported by the UNFPA.
Most of the projects financed by UNFPA are implemented with the
assistance of organizations of the Untied Nations system, including the
regional Economic Commission, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
International Labour Organization (ILO), Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), the World Health Organization (WHO).
Collaborative arrangements have been made with the International
Development Association (IDA), an affiliate of the World Bank, and with
the World Food Programme.
Increasingly the UNFPA is moving toward comprehensive country
programs negotiated directly with governments. This permits the
governments to select the implementing (executing) agency which may be a
member of the UN system or a non-government organization or company.
With the development of the country program approach it is planned to
level off UNFPA funding to the specialized agencies.
UNFPA has received $122 million in voluntary contributions from
65 governments, of which $42 million was raised in 1973. The Work Plan
of UNFPA for 1974-77 sets a $280 million goal for fund-raising, as
follows:
1974 – $54 million
1975 – $64 million
1976 – $76 million
1977 – $86 million
Through 1971 the U.S. had contributed approximately half of all the
funds contributed to UNFPA. In 1972 we reduced our matching contribution
to 48 percent of other donations, and for 1973 we further reduced our
contribution to 45%. In 1973 requests for UNFPA assistance had begun to
exceed available resources. This trend has accelerated and demand for
UNFPA resources is now strongly outrunning supply. Documented need for
UNFPA assistance during the years 1974-77 is $350 million, but because
the UNFPA could anticipate that only $280 million will be available it
has been necessary to phase the balance to at least 1978.
Recommendations
The U.S. should continue its support of multilateral efforts in the population field by:
a) increasing, subject to congressional appropriation action,
the absolute contribution to the UNFPA in light of 1) mounting demands
for UNFPA Assistance, 2) improving UNFPA capacity to administer
projects, 3) the extent to which UNFPA funding aims at U.S. objectives
and will substitute for U.S. funding, 4) the prospect that without
increased U.S. contributions the UNFPA will be unable to raise
sufficient funds for its budget in 1975 and beyond;
b) initiating or participating in an effort to increase the
resources from other donors made available to international agencies
that can work effectively in the population area as both to increase
overall population efforts and, in the UNFPA, to further reduce the U.S.
percentage share of total contributions; and
c) supporting the coordinating role which UNFPA plays among
donor and recipient countries, and among UN and other organizations in
the population field, including the World Bank.
B. Encouraging Private Organizations
Discussion:
The cooperation of private organizations and groups on a
national, regional and world-wide level is essential to the success of a
comprehensive population strategy. These groups provide important
intellectual contributions and policy support, as well as the delivery
of family planning and health services and information. In some
countries, the private and voluntary organizations are the only means of
providing family planning services and materials.
Recommendations:
AID should continue to provide support to those private U.S. and
international organizations whose work contributes to reducing rapid
population growth, and to develop with them, where appropriate,
geographic and functional divisions of labor in population assistance.
IV. Provision and Development of Family Planning Services, Information and Technology
In addition to creating the climate for fertility decline, as
described in a previous section, it is essential to provide safe and
effective techniques for controlling fertility.
There are two main elements in this task: (a) improving the
effectiveness of the existing means of fertility control and developing
new ones; and (b) developing low-cost systems for the delivery of family
planning technologies, information and related services to the 85% of
LDC populations not now reached.
Legislation and policies affecting what the U.S. Government does
relative to abortion in the above areas is discussed at the end of this
section.
IV. A. Research to Improve Fertility Control Technology
Discussion
The effort to reduce population growth requires a variety of
birth control methods which are safe, effective, inexpensive and
attractive to both men and women. The developing countries in particular
need methods which do not require physicians and which are suitable for
use in primitive, remote rural areas or urban slums by people with
relatively low motivation. Experiences in family planning have clearly
demonstrated the crucial impact of improved technology on fertility
control.
None of the currently available methods of fertility control is
completely effective and free of adverse reactions and objectionable
characteristics. The ideal of a contraceptive, perfect in all these
respects, may never be realized. A great deal of effort and money will
be necessary to improve fertility control methods. The research to
achieve this aim can be divided into two categories:
1. Short-term approaches: These include applied and developmental
work which is required to perfect further and evaluate the safety and
role of methods demonstrated to be effective in family planning programs
in the developing countries.
Other work is directed toward new methods based on well
established knowledge about the physiology of reproduction. Although
short term pay-offs are possible, successful development of some methods
may take 5 years and up to $15 million for a single method.
2. Long-term approaches: The limited state of fundamental knowledge
of many reproductive processes requires that a strong research effort of
a more basic nature be maintained to elucidate these processes and
provide leads for contraceptive development research. For example, new
knowledge of male reproductive processes is needed before research to
develop a male “pill” can come to fruition. Costs and duration of the
required research are high and difficult to quantify.
With expenditures of about $30 million annually, a broad program
of basic and applied bio-medical research on human reproduction and
contraceptive development is carried out by the Center for Population
Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development. The Agency for International Development annually funds
about $5 million of principally applied research on new means of
fertility control suitable for use in developing countries.
Smaller sums are spent by other agencies of the U.S. Government.
Coordination of the federal research effort is facilitated by the
activities of the Interagency Committee on Population Research. This
committee prepares an annual listing and analyses of all government
supported population research programs. The listing is published in the
Inventory of Federal Population Research.
A variety of studies have been undertaken by non-governmental experts
including the U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American
Future. Most of these studies indicate that the United States effort in
population research is insufficient. Opinions differ on how much more
can be spent wisely and effectively but an additional $25-50 million
annually for bio-medical research constitutes a conservative estimate.
Recommendations:
A stepwise increase over the next 3 years to a total of about
$100 million annually for fertility and contraceptive research is
recommended. This is an increase of $60 million over the current $40
million expended annually by the major Federal Agencies for bio-medical
research. Of this increase $40 million would be spent on short-term,
goal directed research. The current expenditure of $20 million in
long-term approaches consisting largely of basic bio-medical research
would be doubled. This increased effort would require significantly
increased staffing of the federal agencies which support this work.
Areas recommended for further research are:
1. Short-term approaches: These approaches include improvement and
field testing of existing technology and development of new technology.
It is expected that some of these approaches would be ready for use
within five years. Specific short term approaches worthy of increased
effort are as follows:
a. Oral contraceptives have become popular and widely used; yet the
optimal steroid hormone combinations and doses for LDC populations need
further definition. Field studies in several settings are required.
Approx. Increased Cost: $3 million annually.
b. Intra-uterine devices of differing size, shape, and bioactivity
should be developed and tested to determine the optimum levels of
effectiveness, safety, and acceptability. Approx. Increased Cost: $3
million annually.
c. Improved methods for ovulation prediction will be important to
those couples who wish to practice rhythm with more assurance of
effectiveness than they now have. Approx. Increased Cost: $3 million
annually.
d. Sterilization of men and women has received wide-spread acceptance
in several areas when a simple, quick, and safe procedure is readily
available. Female sterilization has been improved by technical advances
with laparoscopes, culdoscopes, and greatly simplifies abdominal
surgical techniques. Further improvements by the use of tubal clips,
trans-cervical approaches, and simpler techniques can be developed. For
men several current techniques hold promise but require more refinement
and evaluation. Approx. Increased Cost $6 million annually.
e. Injectable contraceptives for women which are effective for three
months or more and are administered by para-professionals undoubtedly
will be a significant improvement. Currently available methods of this
type are limited by their side effects and potential hazards. There are
reasons to believe that these problems can be overcome with additional
research. Approx. Increased Cost: $5 million annually.
f. Leuteolytic and anti-progesterone approaches to fertility control
including use of prostaglandins are theoretically attractive but
considerable work remains to be done. Approx. Increased Cost: $7 million
annually.
g. Non-Clinical Methods. Additional research on non-clinical methods
including foams, creams, and condoms is needed. These methods can be
used without medical supervision. Approx. Increased Cost; $5 million
annually.
h. Field studies. Clinical trials of new methods in use settings are
essential to test their worth in developing countries and to select the
best of several possible methods in a given setting. Approx. Increased
Cost: $8 million annually.
2. Long-term approaches: Increased research toward better
understanding of human reproductive physiology will lead to better
methods of fertility control for use in five to fifteen years. A great
deal has yet to be learned about basic aspects of male and female
fertility and how regulation can be effected. For example, an effective
and safe male contraceptive is needed, in particular an injection which
will be effective for specified periods of time. Fundamental research
must be done but there are reasons to believe that the development of an
injectable male contraceptive is feasible. Another method which should
be developed is an injection which will assure a woman of regular
periods. The drug would be given by para-professionals once a month or
as needed to regularize the menstrual cycle. Recent scientific advances
indicate that this method can be developed. Approx. Increased Cost: $20
million annually.
Development of Low-cost Delivery Systems
Discussion
Exclusive of China, only 10-15% of LDC populations are currently
effectively reached by family planning activities. If efforts to reduce
rapid population growth are to be successful it is essential that the
neglected 85-90% of LDC populations have access to convenient, reliable
family planning services. Moreover, these people — largely in rural but
also in urban areas — not only tend to have the highest fertility, they
simultaneously suffer the poorest health, the worst nutritional levels,
and the highest infant mortality rates.
Family planning services in LDCs are currently provided by the following means:
1. Government-run clinics or centers which offer family planning services alone;
2. Government-run clinics or centers which offer family planning as part of a broader based health service;
3. Government-run programs that emphasize door to door contact by
family planning workers who deliver contraceptives to those desiring
them and/or make referrals to clinics;
4. Clinics or centers run by private organizations (e.g., family planning associations);
5. Commercial channels which in many countries sell condoms, oral
contraceptives, and sometimes spermicidal foam over the counter;
6. Private physicians.
Two of these means in particular hold promise for allowing significant expansion of services to the neglected poor:
1. Integrated Delivery Systems. This approach involves the provision
of family planning in conjunction with health and/or nutrition services,
primarily through government-run programs. There are simple logistical
reasons which argue for providing these services on an integrated basis.
Very few of the LDCs have the resources, both in financial and manpower
terms, to enable them to deploy individual types of services to the
neglected 85% of their populations. By combining a variety of services
in one delivery mechanism they can attain maximum impact with the scarce
resources available.
In addition, the provision of family planning in the context of
broader health services can help make family planning more acceptable to
LDC leaders and individuals who, for a variety of reasons (some
ideological, some simply humanitarian) object to family planning. Family
planning in the health context shows a concern for the well-being of
the family as a whole and not just for a couple’s reproductive function.
Finally, providing integrated family planning and health services on a
broad basis would help the U.S. contend with the ideological charge
that the U.S. is more interested in curbing the numbers of LDC people
than it is in their future and well-being. While it can be argued, and
argued effectively, that limitation of numbers may well be one of the
most critical factors in enhancing development potential and improving
the chances for well-being, we should recognize that those who argue
along ideological lines have made a great deal of the fact that the U.S.
contribution to development programs and health programs has steadily
shrunk, whereas funding for population programs has steadily increased.
While many explanations may be brought forward to explain these trends,
the fact is that they have been an ideological liability to the U.S. in
its crucial developing relationships with the LDCs. A.I.D. currently
spends about $35 million annually in bilateral programs on the provision
of family planning services through integrated delivery systems. Any
action to expand such systems must aim at the deployment of truly
low-cost services. Health-related services which involve costly physical
structures, high skill requirements, and expensive supply methods will
not produce the desired deployment in any reasonable time. The basic
test of low-cost methods will be whether the LDC governments concerned
can assume responsibility for the financial, administrative, manpower
and other elements of these service extensions. Utilizing existing
indigenous structures and personnel (including traditional medical
practitioners who in some countries have shown a strong interest in
family planning) and service methods that involve simply-trained
personnel, can help keep costs within LDC resource capabilities.
2. Commercial Channels. In an increasing number of LDCs,
contraceptives (such as condoms, foam and the Pill) are being made
available without prescription requirements through commercial channels
such as drugstores.16 The commercial approach offers a practical,
low-cost means of providing family planning services, since it utilizes
an existing distribution system and does not involve financing the
further expansion of public clinical delivery facilities. Both A.I.D.
and private organizations like the IPPF are currently testing commercial
distribution schemes in various LDCs to obtain further information on
the feasibility, costs, and degree of family planning acceptance
achieved through this approach. A.I.D. is currently spending about $2
million annually in this area.
In order to stimulate LDC provision of adequate family planning
services, whether alone or in conjunction with health services, A.I.D.
has subsidized contraceptive purchases for a number of years. In FY 1973
requests from A.I.D. bilateral and grantee programs for contraceptive
supplies — in particular for oral contraceptives and condoms — increased
markedly, and have continued to accelerate in FY 1974. Additional rapid
expansion in demand is expected over the next several years as the
accumulated population/family planning efforts of the past decade gain
momentum.
While it is useful to subsidize provision of contraceptives in
the short term in order to expand and stimulate LDC family planning
programs, in the long term it will not be possible to fully fund demands
for commodities, as well as other necessary family planning actions,
within A.I.D. and other donor budgets. These costs must ultimately be
borne by LDC governments and/or individual consumers. Therefore, A.I.D.
will increasingly focus on developing contraceptive production and
procurement capacities by the LDCs themselves. A.I.D. must, however, be
prepared to continue supplying large quantities of contraceptives over
the next several years to avoid a detrimental hiatus in program supply
lines while efforts are made to expand LDC production and procurement
actions. A.I.D. should also encourage other donors and multilateral
organizations to assume a greater share of the effort, in regard both to
the short-term actions to subsidize contraceptive supplies and the
longer-term actions to develop LDC capacities for commodity production
and procurement.
Recommendations:
1. A.I.D. should aim its population assistance program to help
achieve adequate coverage of couples having the highest fertility who do
not now have access to family planning services.
2. The service delivery approaches which seem to hold greatest
promise of reaching these people should be vigorously pursued. For
example:
a. The U.S. should indicate its willingness to join with other donors
and organizations to encourage further action by LDC governments and
other institutions to provide low-cost family planning and health
services to groups in their populations who are not now reached by such
services. In accordance with Title X of the AID Legislation and current
policy, A.I.D. should be prepared to provide substantial assistance in
this area in response to sound requests.
b. The services provided must take account of the capacities of the
LDC governments or institutions to absorb full responsibility, over
reasonable timeframes, for financing and managing the level of services
involved.
c. A.I.D. and other donor assistance efforts should utilize to the
extent possible indigenous structures and personnel in delivering
services, and should aim at the rapid development of local (community)
action and sustaining capabilities.
d. A.I.D. should continue to support experimentation with commercial
distribution of contraceptives and application of useful findings in
order to further explore the feasibility and replicability of this
approach. Efforts in this area by other donors and organizations should
be encouraged. Approx. U.S. Cost: $5-10 million annually.
3. In conjunction with other donors and organizations, A.I.D. should
actively encourage the development of LDC capabilities for production
and procurement of needed family planning contraceptives. 17
C. Utilization of Mass Media and Satellite Communications Systems for Family Planning
1. Utilization of Mass Media for Dissemination of Family Planning Services and Information
The potential of education and its various media is primarily a
function of (a) target populations where socio-economic conditions would
permit reasonable people to change their behavior with the receipt of
information about family planning and (b) the adequate development of
the substantive motivating context of the message. While dramatic
limitations in the availability of any family planning related message
are most severe in rural areas of developing countries, even more
serious gaps exist in the understanding of the implicit incentives in
the system for large families and the potential of the informational
message to alter those conditions.
Nevertheless, progress in the technology for mass media
communications has led to the suggestion that the priority need might
lie in the utilization of this technology, particularly with large and
illiterate rural populations. While there are on-going efforts they have
not yet reached their full potential. Nor have the principal U.S.
agencies concerned yet integrated or given sufficient priority to family
planning information and population programs generally.
Yet A.I.D.’s work suggests that radio, posters, printed
material, and various types of personal contacts by health/family
planning workers tend to be more cost-effective than television except
in those areas (generally urban) where a TV system is already in place
which reaches more than just the middle and upper classes. There is
great scope for use of mass media, particularly in the initial stages of
making people aware of the benefits of family planning and of services
available; in this way mass media can effectively complement necessary
interpersonal communications.
In almost every country of the world there are channels of
communication (media) available, such, as print media, radio, posters,
and personal contacts, which already reach the vast majority of the
population. For example, studies in India – with only 30% literacy, show
that most of the population is aware of the government’s family
planning program. If response is low it is not because of lack of media
to transmit information.
A.I.D. believes that the best bet in media strategy is to
encourage intensive use of media already available, or available at
relatively low cost. For example, radio is a medium which in some
countries already reaches a sizeable percentage of the rural population;
a recent A.I.D. financed study by Stanford indicates that radio is as
effective as television, costs one-fifth as much, and offers more
opportunities for programming for local needs and for local feedback.
Recommendations
USAID and USIA should encourage other population donors and
organizations to develop comprehensive information and educational
programs dealing with population and family planning consistent with the
geographic and functional population emphasis discussed in other
sections. Such programs should make use of the results of AID’s
extensive experience in this field and should include consideration of
social, cultural and economic factors in population control as well as
strictly technical and educational ones.
2. Use of U.S. broadcast satellites for dissemination of family planning and health information to key LDC countries
Discussion:
One key factor in the effective use of existing contraceptive
techniques has been the problem of education. In particular, this
problem is most severe in rural areas of the developing countries. There
is need to develop a cost-effective communications system designed for
rural areas which, together with local direct governmental efforts, can
provide comprehensive health information and in particular, family
planning guidance. One new supporting technology which has been under
development is the broadcast satellite. NASA and Fairchild have now
developed an ATS (Applied Technology Satellite), now in orbit, which has
the capability of beaming educational television programs to isolated
areas via small inexpensive community receivers.
NASA’s sixth Applications Technology Satellite was launched into
geosynchronous orbit over the Galapagos Islands on May 30, 1974. It
will be utilized for a year in that position to deliver health and
educational services to millions of Americans in remote regions of the
Rocky Mountain States, Alaska and Appalachia. During this period it will
be made available for a short time to Brazil in order to demonstrate
how such a broadcast satellite may be used to provide signals to 500
schools in their existing educational television network 1400 miles
northeast of Rio de Janeiro in Rio Grande do Norte.
In mid-1975, ATS-6 will be moved to a point over the Indian
Ocean to begin beaming educational television to India. India is now
developing its broadcast program materials. Signals picked up from one
of two Indian ground transmitters will be rebroadcast to individual
stations in 2500 villages and to ground relay installations serving
networks comprising 3000 more. This operation over India will last one
year, after which time India hopes to have its own broadcast satellite
in preparation.
Eventually it will be possible to broadcast directly to
individual TV sets in remote rural areas. Such a “direct broadcast
satellite,” which is still under development, could one day go directly
into individual TV receivers. At present, broadcast satellite signals go
to ground receiving stations and are relayed to individual television
sets on a local or regional basis. The latter can be used in towns,
villages and schools.
The hope is that these new technologies will provide a
substantial input in family planning programs, where the primary
constraint lies in informational services. The fact, however, is that
information and education does not appear to be the primary constraint
in the development of effective family planning programs. AID itself has
learned from costly intensive inputs that a supply oriented approach to
family planning is not and cannot be fully effective until the demand
side – incentives and motivations – are both understood and accounted
for.
Leaving this vast problem aside, AID has much relevant
experience in the numerous problems encountered in the use of modern
communications media for mass rural education. First, there is
widespread LDC sensitivity to satellite broadcast, expressed most
vigorously in the Outer Space Committee of the UN. Many countries don’t
want broadcasts of neighboring countries over their own territory and
fear unwanted propaganda and subversion by hostile broadcasters. NASA
experience suggests that the U.S. #notemust tread very softly when
discussing assistance in program content. International restrictions may
be placed on the types of proposed broadcasts and it remains
technically difficult to restrict broadcast area coverage to national
boundaries. To the extent programs are developed jointly and are
appreciated and wanted by receiving countries, some relaxation in their
position might occur.
Agreement is nearly universal among practitioners of educational
technology that the technology is years ahead of software or content
development. Thus cost per person reached tend to be very high. In
addition, given the current technology, audiences are limited to those
who are willing to walk to the village TV set and listen to public
service messages and studies show declining audiences over time with
large audiences primarily for popular entertainment. In addition,
keeping village receivers in repair is a difficult problem. The high
cost of program development remains a serious constraint, particularly
since there is so little experience in validifying program content for
wide general audiences.
With these factors it is clear that one needs to proceed slowly
in utilization of this technology for the LDCs in the population field.
Recommendations:
1. The work of existing networks on population, education, ITV, and
broadcast satellites should be brought together to better consolidate
relative priorities for research, experimentation and programming in
family planning. Wider distribution of the broad AID experience in these
areas would probably be justified. This is particularly true since
specific studies have already been done on the experimental ATS-6
programs in the U.S., Brazil, and India and each clearly documents the
very experimental character and high costs of the effort. Thus at this
point it is clearly inconsistent with U.S. or LDC population goals to
allocate large additional sums for a technology which is experimental.
2. Limited donor and recipient family planning funds available for
education/motivation must be allocated on a cost-effectiveness basis.
Satellite TV may have opportunities for cost-effectiveness primarily
where the decision has already been taken — on other than family
planning grounds — to undertake very large-scale rural TV systems. Where
applicable in such countries satellite technology should be used when
cost-effective. Research should give special attention to costs and
efficiency relative to alternative media.
3. Where the need for education is established and an effective
format has been developed, we recommend more effective exploitation of
existing and conventional media: radio, printed material, posters, etc.,
as discussed under part I above.
V. Action to Develop World-Wide Political and Popular Commitment to Population Stability
Discussion:
A far larger, high-level effort is needed to develop a greater
commitment of leaders of both developed and developing countries to
undertake efforts, commensurate with the need, to bring population
growth under control.
In the United States, we do not yet have a domestic population
policy despite widespread recognition that we should — supported by the
recommendations of the remarkable Report of the Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future.
Although world population growth is widely recognized within the
Government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for
urgent measures, it does not rank high on the agendas of conversations
with leaders of other nations.
Nevertheless, the United States Government and private
organizations give more attention to the subject than any donor
countries except, perhaps, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. France makes no
meaningful contribution either financially or verbally. The USSR no
longer opposes efforts of U.S. agencies but gives no support.
In the LDCs, although 31 countries, including China, have
national population growth control programs and 16 more include family
planning in their national health services — at least in some degree —
the commitment by the leadership in some of these countries is neither
high nor wide. These programs will have only modest success until there
is much stronger and wider acceptance of their real importance by
leadership groups. Such acceptance and support will be essential to
assure that the population information, education and service programs
have vital moral backing, administrative capacity, technical skills and
government financing.
Recommendations:
1. Executive Branch
a. The President and the Secretary of State should make a point of
discussing our national concern about world population growth in
meetings with national leaders where it would be relevant.
b. The Executive Branch should give special attention to briefing the
Congress on population matters to stimulate support and leadership
which the Congress has exercised in the past. A program for this purpose
should be developed by S/PM with H and AID.
2. World Population Conference
a. In addition to the specific recommendations for action listed in
the preceding sections, U.S. agencies should use the prestige of the
World Population Plan of Action to advance all of the relevant action
recommendations made by it in order to generate more effective programs
for population growth limitation. AID should coordinate closely with the
UNFPA in trying to expand resources for population assistance programs,
especially from non-OECD, non-traditional donors.
The U.S. should continue to play a leading role in ECOSOC and General Assembly discussions and review of the WPPA.
3. Department of State
a. The State Department should urge the establishment at U.N.
headquarters of a high level seminar for LDC cabinet and high level
officials and non-governmental leaders of comparable responsibility for
indoctrination in population matters. They should have the opportunity
in this seminar to meet the senior officials of U.N. agencies and
leading population experts from a variety of countries.
b. The State Department should also encourage organization of a UNFPA
policy staff to consult with leaders in population programs of
developing countries and other experts in population matters to evaluate
programs and consider actions needed to improve them.
c. A senior officer, preferably with ambassadorial experience, should
be assigned in each regional bureau dealing with LDCs or in State’s
Population Office to give full-time attention to the development of
commitment by LDC leaders to population growth reduction.
d. A senior officer should be assigned to the Bureau of International
Organization Affairs to follow and press action by the Specialized
Agencies of the U.N. in population matters in developing countries.
e. Part of the present temporary staffing of S/PM for the purposes of
the World Population Year and the World Population Conference should be
continued on a permanent basis to take advantage of momentum gained by
the Year and Conference.
Alternate View on 3.c.
c. The Department should expand its efforts to help Ambassadorial and
other high-ranking U.S.G. personnel understand the consequences of
rapid population growth and the remedial measures possible.
d. The Department would also give increased attention to developing a
commitment to population growth reduction on the part of LDC leaders.
e. Adequate manpower should be provided in S/PM and other parts of
the Department as appropriate to implement these expanded efforts. 4.
A.I.D. should expand its programs to increase the understanding of LDC
leaders regarding the consequences of rapid population growth and their
commitment to undertaking remedial actions. This should include
necessary actions for collecting and analyzing adequate and reliable
demographic data to be used in promoting awareness of the problem and in
formulating appropriate policies and programs.
5. USIA.
As a major part of U.S. information policy, the improving but still
limited programs of USIA to convey information on population matters
should be strengthened to a level commensurate with the importance of
the subject.
Palestinians pray outside the compound that houses al-Aqsa
mosque following scuffles between Muslim worshippers and Jewish visitors
at the site in Jerusalem's Old City May 7, 2013. (Reuters)
The 
A
General who made the decision to assist diplomatic and intelligence
assets on the ground has been arrested and will likely be retired or
worse, while those who ordered the removal of embassy security details
and ordered U.S. forces to stand-down are left to go on about their
business and likely risk more American lives in the future.
