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Population control policies and fertility convergence

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  • de Silva, Tiloka
  • Tenreyroa, Silvana

Abstract

The rapid population growth in developing countries in the middle of the 20th century led to fears of a population explosion and motivated the inception of what effectively became a global population-control program. The initiative, propelled in its beginnings by intellectual elites in the United States, Sweden, and some developing countries, mobilized resources to enact policies aimed at reducing fertility by widening contraception provision and changing family-size norms. In the following five decades, fertility rates fell dramatically, with a majority of countries converging to a fertility rate just above two children per woman, despite large cross-country differences in economic variables such as GDP per capita, education levels, urbanization, and female labour force participation. The fast decline in fertility rates in developing economies stands in sharp contrast with the gradual decline experienced earlier by more mature economies. In this paper, we argue that populationcontrol policies are likely to have played a central role in the global decline in fertility rates in recent decades and can explain some patterns of that fertility decline that are not well accounted for by other socioeconomic factors.

Suggested Citation

  • de Silva, Tiloka & Tenreyroa, Silvana, 2017. "Population control policies and fertility convergence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86158, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:86158
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86158/
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    3. Doepke, Matthias & Hannusch, Anne & Kindermann, Fabian & Tertilt, Michèle, 2022. "The Economics of Fertility: A New Era," IZA Discussion Papers 15224, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Sun, Tianyu & Wei, Sichao, 2022. "Longer parental time and lower fertility rate," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 22(C).
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    6. Swastika Chakravorty & Srinivas Goli & K. S. James, 2021. "Family Demography in India: Emerging Patterns and Its Challenges," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, April.
    7. Liu Qiang & Fernando Rios-Avila & Han Jiqin, 2020. "Is China's Low Fertility Rate Caused by the Population Control Policy?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_943, Levy Economics Institute.
    8. Xiaohui Liu & Zhihao Zhou & Jing Zhang, 2023. "Longevity, Fertility, and the Real Exchange Rate," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 31(2), pages 26-57, March.
    9. Jorge M. Agüero, 2019. "Information and Behavioral Responses with More than One Agent: The Case of Domestic Violence Awareness Campaigns," Working papers 2019-04, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    10. Bidisha Mandal & Wenjun Wu, 2023. "Examining the effects of a two-child policy in rural India," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1-20, September.
    11. Wang, Qingfeng, 2018. "Missing Women, Gender Imbalance and Sex Ratio at Birth: Why the One-Child Policy Matters," MPRA Paper 95412, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Aug 2019.
    12. Frank Götmark & Malte Andersson, 2023. "Achieving sustainable population: Fertility decline in many developing countries follows modern contraception, not economic growth," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 1606-1617, June.
    13. de Silva, Tiloka & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2017. "The large fall in global fertility: A quantitative model," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86157, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. O'Sullivan, Jane N., 2020. "The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    15. Huang, Kaixing, 2018. "Secular Fertility Declines Hinder Long-Run Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 106977, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Apr 2021.
    16. Brian Beach & W. Walker Hanlon, 2019. "Censorship, Family Planning, and the Historical Fertility Transition," NBER Working Papers 25752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Yi Chen & Yingfei Huang, 2020. "The power of the government: China's Family Planning Leading Group and the fertility decline of the 1970s," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 42(35), pages 985-1038.
    18. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "When is fertility too low or too high? Population policy preferences of demographers around the world," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 289-303, May.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    fertility rates; birth rate; convergence; macro-development; Malthusian growth; population; population-control policies. growth; population.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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