Population Control Policies

Because the worldwide expansion of population is a global problem, the attempts to control it by governments and nongovernmental international organizations are of vital concern to the field of global studies. Population control policies are usually carried out at the national level, although they are supported internationally because the global phenomenon of population growth is of political, economic, and environmental interest to many states and has a transnational impact. In some cases, these policies are geared toward reducing the numbers of world population, usually for environmental reasons and the scarcity of global resources, and carried out by international organizations such as the United Nations (through the UN Population Fund), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Globally, the most salient types of population control are (a) control of natural growth of population and (b) control of population movement and immigration. The control of natural growth of population is geared toward the reduction of population growth in the future, through methods designed to reduce fertility rates. These types of policies are highly controversial because they are usually geared toward reducing future population in developing nations, motivated by research that has consistently shown associations between high fertility rates and high rates of poverty. Advocates of population growth control point to the scarcity of world resources on an environmental level. Fertility reduction programs are politically controversial, drawing opposition from varied and rival worldviews: Advocates of women's reproductive rights view these policies as impeding on a protected human right to have a family, while religious communities view the use of contraception and abortion as violations of their religious values. Control of population movement and immigration is geared toward monitoring, reducing, and controlling the movement of population through borders and across territories and states. These policies are mostly enacted and enforced by developed countries, attempting to regulate the number of migrant workers and foreign remittances that share in the distribution of state resources. Origin states view migration as problematic because of the inherent loss of skilled populations who emigrate to affluent states. Both types of population control are heated political debates, but they are asserted for different reasons: Control of population growth is contended for environmental and economic reasons because of the scarcity of global material resources available to sustain a population and the fear that overpopulation will drain the Earth's resources, affecting health, hygiene, and the quality of life of the global population. Control of population movement is contended for political and cultural reasons, particularly definitions of nationalism and belonging, which serve to limit the amount of persons who share the distribution of national resources. In the last decade, the control of population movement has been justified by national security arguments.