Some dimensions of population and family planning: goals and means.

Abstract

There are 2 philosophies relating to the population problem: population planning, which focuses on the society as the unit of analysis, and family planning, which focuses on the individual or the family as the unit of analysis. The ultimate goals of population planning are those of improvement of the quality of life, economic development, and survival. The goals that have the most support among family planning advocates are those of family health and welfare, women's liberation, and human rights. Population and family planners disagree on the means by which limited population growth may be accomplished. The disparity in the views of these 2 philosophies can be clarified by classifying all the means of population control into 3 categories - primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary means consists of providing contraceptive information and services to the entire population. The secondary means includes campaigns to persuade people to reduce family size, inducements or rewards for practicing family planning, disincentives aimed at the bearing of large families, and campaigns to persuade people to postpone marriage to a later age. Family planners tend to regard these secondary means as unnecessary although many are amenable to massive persuasion campaigns which supplement the information and delivery systems. The major difference between family planning and population planners occurs in terms of tertiary means, which are structural social changes with only an indirect connection with fertility control. Population planners believe that only by altering and manipulating social institutions on a massive scale will significant demographic change occur.