Population growth

Abstract

What is the historical process by which goal settingin this sector has developed?Population movement has a long and political history, with goal setting linked at various times to macro-economic and development decisions, women's health, conservative religious agendas, and individual rights.Since the 1950s, demographics has been seen as a core consideration of economic development.Overpopulation and rapid population growth were seen as major barriers to economic growth (Coale & Hoover 1958), sometimes linked to more Malthusian concerns about overreaching the Earth's human carrying capacity (Ehrlich 1968;Meadows et al. 1972).This led many developing countries to invest in the procurement and distribution of commercially accessible contraception throughout the 1950s and 60s, in order to secure economic progress.Formal government family planning programmes were established in many developing countries over the next three decades.The development of NGOs also proliferated: the IPPF was founded in 1952 and the UNFPA was founded in 1969.Family planning programmes tended to focus on limiting numbers of births among married women.In some parts of the world (notably India and China) this narrow approach led, in some cases, to coercive practices that tainted the entire population agenda with the spectre of population control, and even eugenics.In India, the forced sterilisation programme of the mid 1970s brought down a Government.In China,

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