The Effects of Socio Economic-Demographic Factors and Family Planning Programs on Fetility in Third World Countries

The controversial disagreement between the Third World and the developed countries as exhibited in the World Population Conference of 1974 in Bucharest focused on whether population control is best achieved through concentration on socio-economic development or on intensive family planning programs. This study tries to discover the effects of socio-economic conditions as well as some crude family planning measures on fertility through factor and regression analyses on data from Third World countries. These methods, however, can only ascertain the existence and magnitudes of correlative relationships and cannot imply casual effects. The analysis indicated that the socio-economic and demographic conditions do have very strong and statistically significant relationships with fertility. Furthermore, family planning program measures also seem to have significantly strong correlation with economic growth, education and population density. Family planning measures fail to show sufficiently significant relations with fertility. This is most probably due to the crudeness of data used in this study as well as the lack of sophistication and experience in family planning of most Third World countries. This supports the case of the importance of socio-economic conditions in population control. However the lag between development and fertility must be determined before development can be recommended as a solution to the population problem. It is safe to suggest that both developmental and family programs be adopted. Further studies - preferably at the micro level - need be made to determine the amount of concentration on each. But family planning programs should be considered in separable from the socio-economic and demographic situations.