Government influence to fertility rates
Evaluate the impact of government’s influence on the proximate variables in attempting to achieve a desired fertility rate If follows that if the cost of living and the cost of having children limits family size, then government policies towards taxation and family welfare are also significant influences on how many children a couple will have. Such government policies generally include family planning programmes, financial incentives to control/increase family size, and the provision of health care facilities. Governments can adopt one of three attitudes or sets of policies with respect to their population: a pr-natal view, by which an increase in fertility is promoted, an anti-natal view, by which a decrease in fertility is promoted or a neutral view which is indifferent about population growth or decline. In the LEDCs, there is a large scale population growth in LEDCs and population growth can be reduced through reducing the fertility rate of a woman. The TFR of a woman of 2.1 is needed for a country’s population size to remain stable. It can be achieved through increasing the availability of family planning services and contraception, informing people about the importance of family planning and contraception, reducing infant mortality rates as large families are often regarded as an insurance against child deaths, improving the economic base of the country so that there are fewer rural people who have large families to work on family farms, improving government care and financial provision for the elderly, so that couples do not have a large family to care for them in their old age, increasing the age at which women marry, and improving the role and status of women within a country’s economy and improving education facilities for girls and women. There are 2 main approaches to the introduction of population control polices, using incentives for reducing family size, such as cash benefits, lower taxes, social housing or education benefits. Or using