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Population Policies Framework

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World Population Policies

Abstract

Most governments and public authorities have addressed population issues at national (or state) level. First, they collected the demographic data they needed, in the form of censuses, civil registration systems, and more recently, surveys. Then, they designed specific public health and population policies, with respect to mortality, fertility, and migration, and attempted to implement them.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This definition, as proposed, is an attempt to summarize numerous definitions of population policies; see Anonymous (1983), Gérard (1983), and Demeny (2003a). As mentioned in the General Introduction, the term “population” covers two main areas: reproductive health issues and broader demographic issues; see World Bank (2007b: 1).

  2. 2.

    Some policies, e.g., Germany before World War II, were not designed to serve “the rights, needs, and aspirations of the people”, but rather the goals of the state.

  3. 3.

    As industrialization proceeds, it could be argued that the positive effects of the demographic dividend might decrease due to the rising costs of child rearing.

  4. 4.

    See http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/l2ptichr.htm, accessed on November 15, 2010.

  5. 5.

    A community is demographically trapped (because of rapid demographic growth) when, with existing levels of technology: (1) it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem; (2) there is nowhere to migrate to; and (3) there are insufficient exports to exchange for food and other essentials. The outcome of entrapment is the direst poverty, starvation, and sometimes violence. This is the definitive stage. In a rapidly growing community there is also a warning stage when, although starvation and violence have not yet broken out, they can be confidently predicted; see Mola et al. (2003), Section 3.3.

  6. 6.

    Many family planning programs have addressed mostly the reduction of fertility, and sometimes have isolated this specific goal from mortality and broader socioeconomic considerations.

  7. 7.

    Hardee and colleagues (Ibid.: 4) have developed a comprehensive framework called the Policy Circle. Although policymaking occurs within various political, social, cultural, and economic settings, the Policy Circle comprises six major elements: the Problems that arise requiring policy attention; the People who participate in policy and Places they represent; the Process of policymaking; the Price Tag of the policy (the cost of policy options and how resources are allocated); the Paper produced (actual laws and policies); and the Programs that result from implementing policies and their Performance in achieving policy goals and objectives.

  8. 8.

    The need to know the different characteristics of the population and the collection of data (census, survey, civil registration, etc.) is already part of the process of elaborating the population policy. It is, in fact, its first step.

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    John F. May

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May, J.F. (2012). Population Policies Framework. In: World Population Policies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2837-0_3

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