The dominant themes of population policy for less-developed countries appear to be changing. For years discussions have focused on the production of more and better contraceptives, better ways to distribute contraceptive devices, and education in family planning. At the World Population Conference of 1974, however, attention turned toward the role of economic development as a check on population. Participants recognized that contraceptives and family planning without corresponding social and economic changes would have little impact on the birth rate.
The need for a more sophisticated approach was emphasized by particpants in a 1975 conference sponsored by Resources for the Future. Instead of general policies to promote development, participants talked of "select interventions" to encourage those aspects of development that are more likely to affect fertility. Their papers focused on such socioeconomic determinants of fertility as education, female employment, and mortality. They examined the possibilities of changing the environment within which marital and parental decisions are made so as to increase the costs and decrease the benefits, broadly defined, that appear to be associated with the bearing and rearing of children. It was no more than a start in the quest for "selective interventions," but the approach was one that seemed in harmony with changing views throughout the world, and it opened up several promising avenues for future research and experimentation.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Winter 1976 issue of Resources magazine.
