National policies for population control

Abstract

The subject of this paper concerns the whole of demography. As soon as human beings decided a long time ago to live in groups of households which they called villages, towns, cities, etc., and to establish laws and customs to permit the development of individual life, they had to adopt policies which had, more often than not, a bearing on population growth. Inversely, the demographic evolution led, in the course of history, to the adoption of policies aimed at modifying this evolution. Interrelationship between demography and policies is, therefore, at the very core of human relations. Before coming to the modern shape of policies for population control, it is worth while discussing the case of people living under the so called ‘natural’ demographic conditions.