Policy Series – II

Continuing our little series looking at some examples of 'population management' policies, today's one is SOUTH KOREA.

Like in Europe and the West previously, South Korea and a lot of developing countries experienced a rapid fall in death rates but no fall in births, resulting in massive population growth after WWII. So in 1962 they began a family planning campaign which focussed on education, maternal and child health services, and the provision of family planning supplies (e.g. contraception) and services. This was all in order to achieve 'modernisation' and of course economic growth.

top image: from 1974: "sons or daughter, let's have two children and raise them well";
bottom image: from 1981: "even two children per family are too crowded for our tiny country"

In fact, it worked so well that by the 1980s the total fertility rate had fallen below replacement level (below 2.1). So, the population began to age significantly and this put pressure on social services like the pension scheme. By 2005, the government had turned pro-natalist, with incentives like tax incentives, child care and assistance to infertile couples.

Once again, this makes you think of the different and sometimes conflicting consequences of population size and structure. What might be better for the environment – to have smaller populations – often causes stress to social and economic systems put in place for the human population. The question is really do we have the right to manipulate human activity and populations for our own, medium-term gain when this might be causing long-term damage to the global ecosystem?