Reducing Fertility Rate
A Challenging Task

By Khilendra Basnyat

TODAY, the world population has increased rapidly at a rate that will double human numbers within four decades.

From mid-1965 to 1975 alone, the population increase was equal to the world total of two centuries ago. Since 1900, population has risen from about one and half billion to six billion.

Problems

Advanced countries, including the United States, have population growth rates lower than those of the developing ones. However, many industrialised countries also have problems related to population growth. These problems are severe in the cities, where there is overcrowding and unemployment, inadequate health as well as education services, increasing crime rates and pollution.

No doubt, in the past, in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, there has been some gains in total gross national product, industrialisation, agricultural production, educational facilities and health services. These are the gains through which poor nations helped services. These are the gains through which poor nations helped to relieve widespread poverty and accumulate the savings necessary for sustainable development.

However, in many developing countries, population growth has had a negative impact.

As a result of high population growth, not only will the total demand for food be greater than it has ever been, but the nature of that demand will be different. In many countries, changes have taken place in dietary habit, and in the methods of food production, processing and marketing. Apart from this, international trade in raw commodities and processed foods has also increased.

With the increased in population, the challenge is to complete the demographic transition in order to reestablish the balance between births and deaths that characterise a sustainable society.

Actually, the world’s interest in population growth intensified in the mid-1960s when a grave food shortage developed in the South Asian countries.

Since the mid-1960s, new and stronger population policies and programmes leading to high birth rate reduction have been initiated by many national governments and by the United Nations, other international organisations, and many non-governmental organisations and institutions. Consequently, by mid-1975s over two-thirds of the world’s people were living in countries with positive programmes for family planning and control of excess fertility.

Both the developing and developed countries have initiated population/family planning programmes as a means of attacking economic and social problems, stemming from some degree of excessive or poorly distributed populations. These activities are having a measurable effect on the fertility rate throughout the world.

Nepal’s demographic target of reducing the present high fertility rate poses a challenge. In order to reduce the fertility rate, the number of contraceptive users must be increased. Apart from this, the predicted cost for delivery may have to be reevaluated and realistic levels set to be consistent with the resources available.

According to a sample survey, Nepalese women want to space their children or limit the number of birth. The reasons for the non-use of family planning methods are because of the lack of information, education and communication.

Due to the mountainous terrain, it is difficult to deliver the family planning services and information to potential acceptors. What is more, there is a shortage of trained medical personnel to implement family planning activities in different parts of the country.

Despite the inception of the family planning programme in our country in 1968, the achievements of the programme in terms of acceptors have not been encouraging. Although the number of new acceptors has increased, acceptances are heavily weighted towards less effective birth control method, such as the condom.

Although Nepal has developed a policy to moderate the population growth rate, it encounters difficulties in expanding family planning activities to reduce the fertility rate.

Attitudinal changes regarding health and family size seem to be determined by the level of education and the spread of women’s education.

Change

Studies from different countries show that the number of children born to a woman declines as her educational level rises. It is because women’s education initiates changes in one’s attitude toward family size and children health within the family and in the society.

The relatively less significant women’s role in various decision-making processes and their relatively small participation of family planning activities have hindered family planning programmes. In fact, the importance of the women’s status for fertility reduction needs to be recognised in our development programmes.

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