Asia-Pacific Population Journal - Volume 2, Issue 2, 1987

Thailand is by all odds one of the most successful economic and demographic stories in South-east Asia, an area in which other success stories can also be found. The average annual growth of Thailand’s gross national product (GNP) from 1960 to the early 1980s was almost 8 per cent and, during the period 1970 to 1985, the country’s population growth rate fell from over 3 per cent per annum to about 1.5 per cent.

The family planning programme of the Republic of Korea has been quite successful, yet it has not been able to extend its services to all couples of childbearing age. For example, there still exists a group of couples who want no more children and yet are not currently using any contraceptive method. The word “pong-eem “, which literally means “being neglected”, i.e. untouched by the family planning programme, was coined to describe this group (Park et al.).

The contributions of development and of family planning programmes to fertility decline in third world countries have been the subject of enquiry and controversy for several decades. Although opinions still differ on the relative influence of development and the provision of family planning services on fertility, there is a growing consensus that both factors are important and may influence fertility.

Two or three decades ago, when birth rates were high in most of the countries and areas of the Asian and Pacific region, the major emphasis of population policies was on reducing fertility. Government family planning programmes introduced in the 1950s and 1960s combined with sustained socio-economic development resulted in reduced birth rates. The crude birth rate for the region as a whole is estimated to have declined from 40 to 36 per thousand in the period 1970-1975 and to 27 per thousand in the period 1980-1985.

As fertility and population growth rates decline in the Asian and Pacific region, populations of the elderly (people age 65 years and older) are growing rapidly. Increasing attention is being devoted to the issue of aging, and censuses have a role to play in providing information to policy makers as they prepare to accommodate their aging populations.