Buddhist factors in population growth and control

Abstract

Abstract Although Buddist doctrine and institutions do not directly encourage the procreation of children, the Buddhist countries of South Asia (for the purposes of this paper, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand and Cambodia) have high fertility rates. The first half of this paper is devoted to examining possible reasons for this: particularly, whether there are non-Buddhist factors which produce high fertility and outweigh the negative Buddhist attitude, or whether there are less obvious factors within the structure of Buddhist culture which tend to produce high fertility indirectly; this preliminary review of evidence favours the latter explanation. In the second half of the paper South Asian Buddhist attitudes to policies of population control are examined. While in theory there is no Buddhist opposition to family planning, apart from the general Buddhist rejection of abortion, some differences of attitude towards other methods are observable between Ceylon and Thailand, the Buddhist opposition to contraception being stronger in the former than in the latter. It is suggested that the differences in attitude may be due to the larger proportion of non-Buddhists in the population of Ceylon than in Thailand, although the opposition is expressed in primarily doctrinal terms.

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