Planners, householders and fertility reduction.

Abstract

Ways to resolve conflicts between individual families and societies as a whole concerning fertility are examined using the example of Singapore. The focus is on how the government developed an effective antinatalist policy during the 1960s and 1970s. The author concludes that the "non-coercive population policies aimed at altering family reproductive life-styles had relatively little to do with fertility reduction", and therefore that measures designed to penalize large families are relatively ineffective.