Economic Development, Population Policy and Reproductive Choice

Abstract

Both as a concept and as a rallying point for gender-based concerns, the emergence of reproductive choice is a relatively new phenomenon in the area of population policy. For decades on end, population policy had been primarily, if not solely, concerned with the regulation and control of human fertility. The prime mover has always been the perceived need to control the rate of growth of population in the aggregate. The Malthusian spectre of a population explosion in the developing world, perceived as a growing strain on world resources, prompted several governments in the North and many international organizations as well to press for demographically-driven population control policies in the developing countries - a position that found widespread support among bureaucrats and policy makers in a majority of Third World countries.