A sound population program

A sound population program must respond to real human needs, must be rooted in values, must generate results, must be administered in an integrated manner, must be based on the ethic and goal of self reliance and on the belief that it must operate and grow on its own steam, and must release human resources for productive economic endeavors. To make any sense at all, population must be linked to the gut level needs of the individual. People should not be viewed as demographic statistics, and the word human should be used in the basic sense of hunger and poverty. If the goal is to bring about lasting change in the way that Filipinos manage their lives and their living, it is necessary to probe their values. If social change is the goal, tradition must be challenged. In the area of family planning, persons who can communicate the fact that the program seeks to enrich life more than prevent birth must be chosen. There has been some criticism that the population/family planning program is "too contraceptive oriented" and too mechanistic in the approach to population. Contraception is behavior, a good measure of acceptance and an effective measure of commitment. The delivery of welfare must be horizontally integrated. Thus it is necessary to learn to work in teams, teams of development workers. The value of self determination and the conscious practice of planning and shaping one's life is the very logic of family planning. The program needs to implant the values of family planning firmly in the community, or, more accurately, in the small face to face primary groups where social norms are set and where change must take place if it is to last. The answer to how to achieve a sound population program lies less in what is done than how it is done.     

从一次人口转变到二次人口转变——现代人口转变及其启示

在扼要解析狭义人口转变及其经典模型的基础上,认为第二次人口转变的提出,是结合人口"中间变量"从广义上阐释了人口变化的内在动因与作用机理,进而在宏观、中观和微观三个层面引入了对现代人口转变与社会变迁关系的思考。主张人口转变是一个多维的动态历史过程,蕴涵着婚姻、生育、家庭、健康、人口调控等系列转变。提出第二次人口转变在中国的城市地区已露端倪。最后特别指出人口转变不仅仅是人口变化,更重要的是将其嵌套的社会变迁,两者关系的空前紧密折射着社会变化与社会需求。过去30年中国通过计划生育让人口"适应"了经济腾飞,而今后三、五十年以至更长时间,应使人口的"主体"地位逐步复归,让经济社会发展适应新的人口变化与社会需求,提高人口生存与生命质量,这才是发展的目的本身。     

Planning population development in Pakistan

Population development planning is an effort to reconcile numbers with individual, national, and global needs. The emphasis is on the integral linkage that exists between development planning and people's needs, which is best identified through demographic characteristics. Population development planning should focus on the 40% of those living below the poverty level and the 50% at the subsistence level. Limiting a country's population, or family planning, is not an end in itself; it should be complemented by long-term development. Planners and programmers in education, rural development, trade, social welfare; health, labor, agriculture, or local government should ensure a consonance between the people's aspirations and the nation's needs. Family planning must be joined with efforts to change standards of living. Individual behavior is affected by intermediary areas of association and authority, the extended family, the neighborhoods, and the local community. Government programs will fail if they do not consider the grass-roots, individual, and community needs.     

Measuring Stability and Change: Methodological Issues in Quality of Life studies

The aim of the paper is to show how the variety of approaches to study social change may result in a challenging complexity for the social scientist, starting from the difficulty of defining the concept of “change” itself and managing it through observed data. This is particularly true in presence of complex phenomena, such as those defining and composing the quality of life. What should be pointed out is that quality of life studies not only are focused on the present time but have also long term perspectives. This represents the link between studies on quality of life and forecasting. When applied to the field of quality of life, the typical logical approach to forecasts, based upon inferential statistics, could reveal its limits. Those limits are related to different aspects: e.g., the forms of relationships between different aspects of the phenomenon, which can be linear and non-linear; the dimensionality of phenomenon, which can turn out to be very complex; the causality, which could be direct or indirect; the entity of change, which implies the idea that also small change can have great impact; the perspective of observation, which can be internal or external and local or global. Consequently, the study of change related to quality of life needs, in addition to the traditional statistical tools as well as the tradition of social indicators, a different approach. Although the Futures Studies are not a proper science, nevertheless their approach to social research may ensure the requested accuracy of a scientific forecasting process.     

The dynamics of contraceptive adoption in Bohol,Philippines: 1976-1978

A researcher analyzed 1976 and 1978 data on 414 rural women who had never used a family planning method to prevent pregnancy and lived in the predominantly Catholic island province of Bohol in the Philippines to look at the influence certain aspects of the family planning program, begun in 1976, as predictors of changes in contraceptive behavior. 34.5% accepted contraception between 1976-1978. The researchers learned that couple traits (e.g., age, income, education, and religiosity) had only an indirect effect on change in contraceptive behavior. A desire to stop, limit, or space births (motivation) was a strong predictor of family planning method acceptance (p.001). Further couples who clinic providers contacted the most often or who had received more family planning services (services) were much more likely to use contraceptives (p.001). Indeed a significant relationship existed between motivation and services (p.001). Moreover couples who were truly motivated to use family planning methods did not let distance to family planning services prevent them from seeking these services (p.001). On the other hand, couples who confronted personal obstacles to family planning including social, psychological, and other subjective costs (cost index) tended not to accept family planning methods (p.001). A negative association existed between services and location of households vis a vis the intervention program (p.001) which indicated that the program did have an effect in the area of the province where it was located. In conclusion, the strongest predictors of change in contraceptive behavior included motivation, services, and cost index. Services and cost index indicated the great importance of interpersonal and/or client staff contact, especially since they were more important in influencing behavior change than distance and family planning site.     

Multivariate relationships between modernity value orientations and family planning indicators

Using canonical correlation techniques in the analysis of data collected from interviews with 1,737 married women of three Indian states, this paper evaluated three modernity value orientations—subjective efficacy, openness to change, and propensity to plan—as predictors of a set of four family planning indicators. The analysis revealed that, in Haryana, both subjective efficacy and openness to change were related to family planning knowledge and attitudes as well as to favorability toward small family size. Propensity to plan was related to adoption. In rural Tamil Nadu, subjective efficacy and openness to change were related essentially to family planning attitudes, whereas in urban Tamil Nadu they were strongly related to adoption. In the latter area, the best linear association between the modernity variables (predictor set) and the family planning variables (criterion set) resulted when the criterion set was so weighted that it involved a large amount of adoption and a moderate amount of contraceptive knowledge and attitudes. Thus, in urban Tamil Nadu, the four family planning variables seemed to cohere, reflecting cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral consistency. Except in Meghalaya, it appears that married women with higher subjective efficacy, openness to change, and planning tendency may be more likely than others to translate their family planning knowledge and favorability toward small family size into action, under suitable conditions. Some of the implications of the findings are discussed.The author is affiliated with the Council for Social Development, 53 Lodi Estate, New Delhi, 110003, India.     

人口和计划生育基层网络在基本公共服务中的作用研究

党的十七届五中全会通过的我国国民经济和社会发展第十二个五年规划中,明确提出推进基本公共服务均等化,加强社会管理能力建设,创新社会管理机制的工作要求。围绕相关概念的解析,结合我国人口和计划生育基层网络体系的功能、特点和优势,指出人口计生基层网络在新形势下必须完成其职能定位的转变,明确提出人口和计划生育基层网络在基本公共服务中的作用和服务内容,对于我国人口和计划生育基层网络的未来的功能定位和工作内容开展有一定的借鉴意义。     

Interpersonal communication and the diffusion of family planning in West Malaysia

Using data from a 1966–1967 probability sample of West Malaysian married women 15–44 years of age, this paper analyzes the characteristics of women who were active in diffusing information about family planning. The woman’s age and her parity, her educational attainment, her race, her present residence (urban-rural), and whether or not she wanted more children were significantly related to opinion leadership in bivariate tables. However, these relationships appeared to be substantial mainly because these social and demographic characteristics were highly related to whether the woman participated in discussions about family planning with other women. Among women who did participate in such discussions, the social and demographic variables were not substantially related to opinion leadership. In fact, the critical variables for opinion leadership appeared to be participation in the discussions, greater knowledge of family planning, and a higher level of family planning use. An attempt is also made to assess the effect of interpersonal communication on the adoption of family planning among women in the sample.     

A new terminal judgment method for family planning: indistinct comprehensive judgment]

The purpose of family planning (FP) program evaluation is to make comparisons between different work units and between the past and the present. The evaluation covers the impact of programs in economic, social, and demographic terms. If the impact is not quantified, it is difficult to distinguish differences in program performance. It is also hard to determine the relative standing of different organizations if each one has different merits and deficiencies. A mathematical model is used to quantify the performance of each unit in a FP program. 4 variables are used as the program indicators in the model: 1) percentage of child births following planning, 2) percentage of deferred marriages, 3) birth control prevalence, and 4) percentage of one child pledges. Indicators of social impact include 3 variables: 1) the attitude of FP workers, 2) the efforts of FP workers put in FP and 3) the results of program implementation. The indicator of economic impact is the investment for evasion of the birth of a child. Grades are assigned to indicators of social impact for each organization. The values of each variable is put in a matrix. Weights are given to each variable based on the emphasis of the program or a specific evaluation. The weights are determined through discussion with people involved in the program. A weighted average of all the above factors is the final grade of an organization's FP program performance.     

A social change index-an objective means to discern and measure the relative current social condition of cities,towns, and their sub-communities

A social change index has been developed in response to a social planning need to have a means whereby the current social pathology of communities may be identified on an objective basis. The index is derived from a combination of social indicators which are reported by census tract by the State of Rhode Island on an annual basis. The index is particularly useful for the inter-decennial years because high mobility rates, particularly in central cities (up to 80% in some areas of these cities), cause census data to be unrepresentative in many instances for these years. In addition to serving as a means to identify social needs and problem areas, the index may be used for priority ranking of need for social program services, program monitoring, and program evaluation. The State of Rhode Island is expected to institute a Committee on Social Statistics among whose primary responsibilities will be to encourage state agencies to publish their social statistics by census tracts in their annual reports. It is presumed, consequently, that a larger number of current social indicators will be available to be included in the social change index and increase its accuracy.     

Ways that Social Change Predicts Personal Quality of Life

A notable way that social change affects personal quality of life would rely on the person’s experience with social change. This experience may influence societal quality of life and quality of work life, which may in turn affect personal quality of life. Additionally, the experience of social change is possibly less detrimental to personal quality of life later in the presence of higher existing personal quality of life. These influences over time become transparent through a three-wave panel study of 531 working people in Hong Kong, China. Findings show that although social change experienced did not generally impair subsequent quality of life, it tended to be more detrimental to the person with lower quality of life before. In addition, social change experienced tended to erode societal quality of life and quality of work life experienced, which appeared to be predictors of personal quality of life. Hence, there are possible ways for social change to predict personal quality of life.     

Minister Wang Wei on family planning policy and population aging

Mr. Wang Wei, Minister-in-Charge of the State Family Planning Commission, was interviewed by the correspondent of the magazine "Outlook Weekly" on the 16th of last July in Beijing. Mr. Wang Wei said that the aging process of China's population could not be separated from the family planning program which was an important factor leading to China's population aging. He also said that population aging in China would have its limit as any development does. The aging of China's population is the manifestation of the contradiction between the unplanned and planned reproduction of its population. Population aging will disappear as soon as the contradiction is settled. Since the aging of China's population is caused by the decrease of children, one cannot only see the social burden aggravated by the relative increase in elderly population but should also see the social burden alleviated by the decrease in the absolute number of children. Only by doing so can one see the whole picture. The allegation made by some people that the social dependency ratio would increase due to population aging is groundless. Mr. Wang Wei does not agree with the viewpoint that China may relax its policy of family planning to some extent on the ground that population aging causes the decrease in the total social dependency ratio so as to ease the difficulties brought about by the rapid population aging. The basic state policy of striving to quadruple the gross output value of industry and agriculture and to control China's population at about 1.2 billion at the end of the century is the correct policy to solve the problem of population aging in China, and it is also the only alternative.     

Population quality must be improved to carry out the strategic goal of economic construction]

The poor population quality (quality of life of the population as a whole) of Zhejiang Province in southeast China and the imperative need for its improvement are the subject of this report. Its 40 million inhabitants have a life expectancy of 69 years. For every 1000 people there is only 1 doctor and 1.7 hospital beds. These figures are lower for all the other southeastern provinces. According to the 1982 census, there are 47 college graduates, 517 high school graduates, and 1779 middle school graduates for every 10,000 people. The quality of life of the population can be improved through increased productivity because there is a direct relationship between the 2. Although China already enjoys a high level of productivity, it is up to the government to concentrate its efforts on the quality of productivity through reform. China's political structure, its rules, regulations and conventions have contributed to making the economy backward. A substantial change within the social system is imperative to put China's economy on a more progressive footing. Moreover, efforts in family planning must continue. The current population growth rate is not commensurate with the economic growth rate. As population control and population quality are interrelated, a smaller population would mean a higher standard of living. The report concludes that in order to fulfill the strategic goal of economic construction quality is a task that cannot be postponed, since it concerns Zhejiang Province's economic projections, as well as the quality of the new labor force that will be in place by then.     

Latin American typology: An essay on measuring social discontinuities

The aim of the article is to work out a classification of the Latin-American countries considering economic and social aspects of development. Therefore, it seemed convenient to take the following steps:

1. A critical review of the existing literature on the subject, stressing the theoretical and methodological assumptions on which these constructions are based.
2. A selection and discussion of some social indicators, in particular those usually employed for this kind of task, especially in planning.
3. An analysis of methodological procedures in order to present alternative options which could give better theoretical, methodological and technical results.
4. The classification of Latin-American countries using a quantitative technique based on the combination of a selected set of interval variables which permits the computation of a measure of the distance between cuples of countries.
5. A graphical representation of the ‘profiles’ obtained for each group of countries.
6. Variables not included in this classification and also historical dimensions are introduced in order to explain the different levels of achievement of the socioeconomic goals of the countries and regions.

The quantitative results go hand in hand with the revision of the historical process. For this reason, it seemed necessary to formulate a set of significant structural categories and some tentative hypotheses. These should be tested in more exhaustive studies if one wishes to explain the differential achievement reached by different countries in solving their social problems.     

On family planning and socialist cultural civilization]

Family planning is a very important part of the Socialist cultural civilization, and it has a great impact on the ideology, ethics, and change of moral concepts. The old concept of having a large family and favoring boys over girls has been changed because of the popularization of family planning, and the overall quality of China's population can thus be improved. In the practical work of family planning, construction of the Socialist cultural civilization should be handled well. Science should be developed and taught to the general public, and the traditional ideology concerning birth and population should be gradually changed and eliminated. In this way, people will become more conscious of the need for family planning. In the meantime, efforts should be made to promote social welfare, such as the establishment of more and better daycare centers and nursing homes so that the common worries about family planning can be removed. The people should gradually learn about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and understand that family planning is in the best interest of the whole country as well as for the good fortune of later generations. With close cooperation between the people and the government and with reasonable management of family planning, China will be built into a strong nation with an adavnced Socialist cultural civilization.     

出生性别比失衡与社会政策的柔性调节

出生人口性别比失衡问题日趋严重．不进行治理将带来严重的社会后果。目前采取的一些治理人口出生性别比的措施。如加强宣传教育、加强计划生育管理等。这些手段在一定程度上能对人们的生育观念和行为产生改观,但要实现全社会出生性别比的正常化需从根本上改变人们的生育意愿．放弃男孩为首选的生育偏好。这种观念的转变和形成应从社会政策入手和进行调节。根据个体生命周期中不同的个体和社会需求．依靠教育政策、生育政策、社会保障制度、就业政策及退休政策等具体的社会政策对女性和独女户家庭进行关爱和倾斜．通过利益导向创设出生女有福气的生育观和“关爱女孩、尊重女性”的性别价值现。在实施社会政策时,应发挥各项社会政策的灵活性;同时各项社会政策之间应该具有联动性和协调性。此即是社会政策的柔性调节。     

Options and sequences: Europe’s demographic patterns

It is argued in this lecture that Ryder’s approach to the study of the role of the cohort in social change is too narrow. Cohorts do not only permit change; they actively create the options succeeding cohorts have to choose from. Through its own choice from amongst the options perceived, each cohort both limits and enriches the options of the next. It is through the choice people make with regard to life shaping demographic events that they group themselves into ‘mental’ cohorts. The course of demographic events in Western Europe in the postwar period is difficult to understand if one does not appreciate that these events form a sequence. A sequence generated by the quite specific option(s) each ‘mental’ cohort, through its own choice, created for the next. Current demographic patterns in Europe have to be interpreted in terms of differences in social and cultural heritage of the countries concerned, and in terms of the differences in options perceived and selected.     

Some fundamental problems in population projection]

When family planning work in China developed, during the 1970's, the work of population projection also expanded. Population projections were done for China and its regions beginning in 1974 and remains a relatively new activity. Some question its validity, while others speculate about its methods and beleive only higher mathematics can be used, but this is all due to a lack of understanding of the nature of population forecasting. It is possible to predict population because if a current population situation and its changes are known, population of a particular future period can be projected e.g. for each year that is lived, a person will be 1 year older. And, population changes are primarily based on changes in births and deaths. These changes in turn are influenced by social and economic factors. Population projection is basically a forecasting of a certain period's total population, age and sex structure, the number of births and deaths, and migration. Different methods and formulas can be used to measure different population indicators, but all methods utilize comparisons. There are basically 2 methods for projecting total population: 1) the "direct method" regards total population as a quantity that itself changes and 2) the "separate factor method" breaks down total population into births, deaths, and migration. In the past, population projection has focused on the natural development of population which can be called "uncontrolled" because it makes "passive measurements" of possible population developments. In China, however, population projection is "controlled." Although it too measures future population developments, China's projections are not based on natural developments, but on definite population policies and estimates of results of family planning efforts.     

韩国人口政策及其对中国农村人口政策的启示

韩国的人口政策经历了由控制人口增长的计划生育政策到鼓励人口增长的新人口政策的转变,成功控制了人口的快速增长。缓解了人口与经济、社会资源、环境之间的矛盾,但也引起了人口老龄化、出生婴儿性别比失调等一系列社会问题。这些社会问题如今也正在中国农村上演。如能借鉴立法先行、大力发展社会福利事业、善于运用经济杠杆等经验,对维持中国农村人口的低出生率,抑制出生婴儿性别比例失调和人口老龄化的加剧具有积极的意义。     

Marital moratorium and fertility control in China

Abstract Since 1949, the issue of marital postponement has been extensively discussed in China. Unlike some other means of fertility control (e.g. abortion and oral contraception), marital postponement has been welcomed with the fewest misgivings. Lately, marital postponement has also been given renewed emphasis by those outside China who see a weak link between various current national family planning programmes based on improved technology and the goal of fertility reduction. One aim of this paper is to render a comprehensive account of the marital postponement programme in China in the course of the birth control campaign during the last two decades. The second objective is to discuss the lessons that may be learned from it, and its implications for the current fertility controversy in the United States. Four general conclusions emerge from a careful analysis of the available documents: (1) in China, proponents of delayed marriage were divided on the question of how to secure its general acceptance. One issue dividing them was whether or not China's Marriage Law of 1950 should be amended in order to achieve it. Those who favoured raising the minimum legal age disagreed on the details of the presumably needed change. There is enough evidence to suggest that medical personnel were the chief advocates of compulsory postponement of marriage. The government rejected this legalistic approach and, in so doing, agreed with Chen Ta (a noted demographer) and others who sought to achieve postponement of marriage through appropriate social and economic measures. (2) Decisions to delay matrimony in different socio-cultural settings are not necessarily identical sociological phenomena. In some societies, (e.g. the United States), they may amount to no more than a course of action that enables individuals involved to realize or develop alternate goals in life. In others (e.g. China), they are literally acts of rebellion. (3) The fertility policy dispute has been carried on in a context of revolutionary change, and involved persons who have committed themselves to transforming the Chinese family. This prior commitment was mainly responsible for the relative lack of controversy about marital postponement as a means of fertility control. (4) Use of contraception is private, hidden from open view. But postponement of marriage is public and may be a source of inter-generational and interpersonal conflict. In China and other parallel situations, a decision to delay marriage is in itself against tradition. In this sense, a full-scale marital moratorium cannot but be more than a partial assault on the hold that the family has over its offspring. This must be unequivocally reflected in discussions of fertility control policy everywhere.