Family planning payments urged

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 11

Family planning payments urged

NZPA-Reuter Washington Birthrates in most underdeveloped countries are not declining fast enough to permit improved standards of living, and governments should develop incentives to encourage small families, the Worldwatch Institute says. The report by the private, non-profit research group was sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. “Extra effort must be made if countries are to avoid the enormous population increases likely to bankrupt their physical, economic, and social resources,” wrote the author of the report, Judith Jacobsen. Government policies were more effective if they nudged rather than pushed people to have fewer children, the report said. Since the 1960 s birthrates had fallen almost everywhere, except in Africa, but were still too high in many developing countries to allow an improved standard of living, it said. Payments for sterilisation and contraception had been

criticised as coercive, particularly in exerting psychological influence on the poor. More innovative incentives, such as pensions to guarantee that parents did not need several children to support them in their old age, seemed to work better, the report said. Some two dozen developing countries had Government programmes to encouarge women not to have children. In the Philippines, a country that had lowered its birth-rate, the Government had encouraged work bonuses to women who did not use their maternity leave. The main population problem was still the lack of family planning services. Making contraception information available, with commitment from the highest levels of Government, was the best way to encourage fewer children. “Governments reluctant to confront the difficulties of influencing family size ... should consider the alternatives: doubling and tripling of populations already on the margin of survival,” the report said.