Fertility policies, and evaluating one

Overview

Anti-natalist policy, pro-natalist policy and aims of anti-natalist and pro-natalist policies.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is an anti-natalist policy?

   Model answer

   An anti-natalist policy is a government policy deliberately designed to reduce the birth rate and total fertility rate of its population, so that the population grows more slowly, stops growing, or in the strongest versions falls. It is a deliberate intervention in family size, distinct from the fall in fertility that happens anyway as a country develops.

2. 2

   What measures does an anti-natalist policy typically use?

   Model answer

   Free or subsidised contraception and a network of family planning clinics. Sterilisation, sometimes with a payment attached. Public education campaigns promoting later marriage, longer gaps between children and fewer of them. Raising the legal age of marriage. Educating girls and keeping them in school, and opening employment to women, both of which lower fertility powerfully on their own. Financial incentives for small families — tax relief, priority for housing, school places, health care — and penalties for large ones, such as fines, loss of benefits or of promotion. In the strictest versions, a legal limit on the number of children with enforcement machinery behind it. The measures run along a spectrum from provision and persuasion at one end to compulsion at the other, and the criticisms a policy attracts depend on where along that spectrum it sits.

3. 3

   Explain why a government would introduce an anti-natalist policy.

   Model answer

   Because its population is growing faster than the resources and services needed to support it. Food output, farmland, water and fuelwood cannot keep pace, so the population-resource balance tips towards overpopulation. There are too few jobs, houses, school places and clinics for the numbers arriving, and informal settlements grow faster than services can be laid. A very high youth dependency ratio means a small working population is supporting a large number of children. The environment degrades under the pressure of cultivation and fuelwood collection. And at national level, rapid population growth eats into any rise in total output, so income per head improves only slowly, or not at all, unless output grows faster than the population. Such a policy is a response to a population and resource imbalance, and it is characteristic of countries in stage 2 or early stage 3 of the demographic transition.

4. 4

   What is a pro-natalist policy?

   Model answer

   A pro-natalist policy is a government policy deliberately designed to raise the birth rate and total fertility rate of its population, so that more children are born and the long-run decline and ageing of the population is slowed or reversed.

5. 5

   What measures does a pro-natalist policy typically use?

   Model answer

   Cash payments at the birth of a child and monthly child benefit that rises with the number of children. Tax allowances for families. Generous paid maternity and paternity leave with the job protected for the parent's return. Free or heavily subsidised childcare and nursery places, which is among the measures most consistently associated with higher fertility, though effects on completed family size are modest. Priority in housing allocation, and subsidised loans that are reduced or written off as further children are born. Free or subsidised fertility treatment. Public campaigns, awards and medals for large families. Historically, and still in some places, restricting access to contraception and abortion, though that is now rare in democracies and heavily criticised. Many governments also use immigration to fill the labour gap, either instead of raising births or alongside doing so.

6. 6

   Explain why a government would introduce a pro-natalist policy.

   Model answer

   Because its total fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman and it faces a shrinking, ageing population. The consequences it is trying to avoid are a falling workforce and labour shortages in key sectors; a rising old-age dependency ratio, so that fewer workers support more pensioners; steeply rising pension, health and social care costs falling on those workers; school closures and the depopulation of rural areas and small towns; weaker demand and slower economic growth; and eventually a decline in total population. Such a policy is characteristic of countries at the end of stage 4 or in stage 5 of the demographic transition.

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