What Developing Countries Can Do
Earlier discussions have led to the conclusion that the principal variables in fluencing the demand for children at the family level are the ones most closely associated with the concept of development as we have defined it in Part One of this book. Thus certain development policies are particularly crucial in the transition from a high-growth to a low-growth population. These policies aimat eliminating absolute poverty; lessening income inequalities; expanding educational opportunities, especially for women; providing increased job opportunities for both men and women; bringing the benefits of modern preventive medicine and public health programs, especially the provision of clean water and sanitation, to the rural and urban poor; improving maternal and childhealth through more food, better diets, and improved nutrition so as to lower
infant mortality; and creating a more equitable provision of other social services to wide segments of the population. Again, it is not numbers per se orparental irrationality that is at the root of the “population problem.” Rather, it is the pervasiveness of absolute poverty and low levels of living that provides the economic rationale for large families and burgeoning populations. And it is the spillover effects or negative social externalities of these private parental decisions (e.g., for education, health care, food supplies, resource degradation,job creation, and income distribution) that provide the strictly economic justification (in terms of “market failure” arguments) for government intervention in population matters. Clearly, there are noneconomic justifications as well.