Attached is a draft position paper for the International Conference on
Population in Mexico City, August 6–13, 1984. The paper was prepared by
the White House Office of Policy Development, in coordination with our
staff.
Please provide your comments or concurrence by Wednesday, June 13. Please
respond jointly to Robert C.
McFarlane and John A.
Svahn, Assistant to the President for Policy
Development.
Tab A
Draft Position Paper Prepared in the National
Security Council2
DRAFT Statement
For many years, the United States has supported, and helped to
finance, programs of family planning, particularly in the less
developed countries. This Administration has continued that support
but has placed it within a policy context different from that of the
past. It is sufficiently evident that the current exponential growth
in global population cannot continue indefinitely. There is no
question of the ultimate need to achieve a condition of population
equilibrium. The [Page 779]
differences that do exist concern the choice of strategies and
methods for the achievement of that goal. The experience of the last
two decades not only makes possible but requires a sharper focus for
our population policy. It requires a more refined approach to
problems which appear today in quite a different light than they did
twenty years ago.
First and most important, in any particular society today, population
growth is, of itself, a neutral phenomenon. It is not necessarily
good or ill. It becomes an asset or a problem only in conjunction
with other factors, such as economic policy, social constraints,
need for manpower, and so forth. The relationship between population
growth and economic development is not a negative one. More people
do not mean less growth; that is absurd on its face. Indeed, both in
the American experience and in the economic history of most advanced
nations, population growth has been an essential element in economic
progress.
Before the advent of governmental population programs, several
factors had combined to create an unprecedented surge in population
over most of the world. Although population levels in many
industrialized nations had reached or were approaching equilibrium
in the period before the Second World War, the baby boom that
followed in its wake resulted in a dramatic, but temporary,
population “tilt” toward youth. The disproportionate number of
infants, children, teenagers, and eventually young adults did strain
the social infrastructure of schools, health facilities, law
enforcement and so forth. It also sustained strong economic growth
and was probably critical in boosting the American standard of
living to new heights, despite occasionally counterproductive
government policies.
Among the less developed nations, a coincidental population increase
was caused by entirely different factors, directly related to the
humanitarian efforts of the United States and other western
countries. A tremendous expansion of health services—from simple
inoculations to sophisticated surgery—saved millions of lives every
year. Emergency relief, facilitated by modern transport, helped
millions to survive flood, famine, and drought. The sharing of
technology, the teaching of agriculture and engineering, the spread
of western ideals in the treatment of women and children all helped
to drastically reduce the mortality rates, especially infant
mortality, and to lengthen the life span.
The result, to no one’s surprise, was more people, everywhere. This
was not a failure but a success. It demonstrated not poor planning
or bad policy but human progress in a new era of international
assistance, technological advance, and human compassion. The
population boom was a challenge; it need not have been a crisis.
Seen in its broader context, it required a measured, modulated
response. It provoked an overreaction by some, largely because it
coincided with two negative factors which, together, hindered
families and nations in adapting to their changing
circumstances.
[Page 780]
The first of these factors was governmental control of economies, a
pathology which spread throughout the developing world with
sufficient virulence to keep much of it from developing further. As
economic decision-making was concentrated in the hands of planners
and public officials, the ability of average men and women to work
towards a better future was impaired, and sometimes crippled.
Agriculture was devastated by government price fixing that wiped out
rewards for labor. Job creation in infant industries was hampered by
confiscatory taxes. Personal industry and thrift were penalized,
while dependency upon the state was encouraged. Political
considerations made it difficult for the economy to adjust to
changes in supply and demand or to disruptions in world trade and
finance. Under such circumstances, population growth changed from an
asset in the development of economic potential to a peril.
The worst consequence of economic statism was that it disrupted the
natural mechanism for slowing population growth in problem areas.
The world’s more affluent nations have reached a population
equilibrium without compulsion and, in most cases, even before it
was government policy to achieve it. The controlling factor in these
cases has been the adjustment, by individual families, of
reproductive behavior to economic opportunity and aspiration.
Economic freedom has led to economically rational behavior. As
opportunities and the standard of living rise, the birth rate
falls.
That historic pattern would already be well under way in many nations
where population growth is today a problem, if short-sighted
policies had not disrupted economic incentives, rewards, and
advancement. In this regard, localized crises of population growth
are evidence of too much government control and planning, rather
than too little.
The second factor that turned the population boom into a crisis was
confined to the western world. It was an outbreak of an
anti-intellectualism, which attacked science, technology, and the
very concept of material progress. Joined to a commendable and long
overdue concern for the environment, it was more a reflection of
anxiety about the unsettled times and the uncertain future and
disregard of human experience and scientific sophistication. It was
not unlike other waves of cultural anxiety that have, over the
centuries, swept through western civilization during times of social
stress and scientific exploration.
The combination of these two factors—counterproductive economic
policies in poor and struggling nations and a pseudo-scientific
pessimism among the more advanced—provoked the demographic
overreaction of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Doomsday scenarios took the
place of realistic forecasts, and too many governments pursued
population control measures that have had little impact on
population growth, rather than sound economic policies that create
the rise in living stan[Page 781]dards historically associated with decline in fertility rates. It
was the easy way out, and it did not work. It focused on a symptom
and neglected the underlying ailments. For the last three years,
this Administration has sought to reverse that approach. We
recognize that, in some cases, immediate population pressures may
make advisable short-term efforts to meliorate them. But this cannot
be a substitute for the economic reforms that put a society on the
road toward growth and, as an aftereffect, toward slower population
increase as well.
Nor can population control substitute for the rapid and responsible
development of natural resources. In responding to certain Members
of Congress concerning the previous Administration’s Global 2000
report,3 this
Administration in 1981 repudiated its call “for more governmental
supervision and control. Historically, that has tended to restrict
the availability of resources and to hamper the development of
technology, rather than to assist it. Recognizing the seriousness of
environmental and economic problems, and their relationship to
social and political pressures, especially in the developing
nations, the Administration places a priority upon technological
advance and economic expansion, which hold out the hope of
prosperity and stability of a rapidly changing world. That hope can
be realized, of course, only to the extent that government’s
response to problems, whether economic or ecological, respects and
enhances individual freedom, which makes true progress possible and
worthwhile.”
Those principles underlie this country’s approach to the United
Nations Conference on Population to be held in Mexico City in
August. In accord with those principles, we reject compulsion or
coercion in family planning programs, whether it is exercised
against families within a society or against nations within the
family of man. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the
Child (1959) calls for legal protection for children before birth as
well as after birth; and the United States accordingly does not
consider abortion an acceptable element of family planning programs
and will not contribute to those of which it is a part. Nor will it
any longer contribute directly or indirectly to family planning
programs funded by governments or private organizations that
advocate abortion as an instrument of population control. Efforts to
lower population growth in cases in which it is deemed advisable to
do so must, moreover, respect the religious beliefs and culture of
each society. Population control is not a panacea. It will not solve
problems of massive unemployment. Jobs are not lost because there
are too many people in a given area. Jobs are created by the
conjunction of human wants and investment capital. Population growth
[Page 782] fuels the former;
sound economic policies and properly directed international
assistance can provide the latter. Indeed, population density may
make the latter more feasible by concentrating the need for both
human services and technology. But as long as oppressive economic
policies penalize those who work, save, and invest, joblessness will
persist.
Population control cannot solve problems of unauthorized migration
across national boundries. People do not leave their homes, and
often their families, to seek more space. They do so in search of
opportunity and freedom. Reducing their numbers gives them neither.
Population control cannot avert natural disasters, including famines
provoked by cyclical drought. Fortunately, world food supplies have
been adequate to relieve those circumstances in recent years.
Problems of transportation remain; but there are far deeper problems
as well, in those governmental policies which restrict the rewards
of agricultural pursuits, encourage the abandonment of farmland, and
concentrate people in urban areas.
It is time to concentrate upon those root problems which frequently
exacerbate population pressures. By focusing upon real remedies for
underdeveloped economies, the United Nations Conference on
Population can reduce demographic issues to their proper place. It
is an important place, but not the controlling one. It requires our
continuing attention within the broader context of economic growth
and of the economic freedom that is its prerequisite. Most of all,
questions of population growth require the approach outlined by
President Reagan in 1981, in
remarks before the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia: “Trust the
people, trust their intelligence and trust their faith, because
putting people first is the secret of economic success everywhere in
the world.”4 That is the agenda of the United
States for the United Nations Conference on Population this year,
just as it remains the continuing goal of our family planning
assistance to other nations.
