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Many of the countries in the deepest demographic trouble have imposed aggressive family-planning programs, only to see them go badly--even criminally--awry. In the 1970s, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tried to reduce the national birthrate by offering men cash and transistor radios if they would undergo vasectomies. In the communities in which those sweeteners failed, the government resorted to coercion, putting millions of males--from teenage boys to elderly men--on the operating table. Amid the popular backlash that followed, Gandhi's government was turned out of office, and the public rejected family planning.
China's similarly notorious one-child policy has done a better job of slowing population growth but not without problems. In a country that values boys over girls, one-child rules have led to abandonments, abortions and infanticides, as couples limited to a single offspring keep spinning the reproductive wheel until it comes up male. "We've learned that there is no such thing as 'population control,'" says Alex Marshall of the U.N. Population Fund. "You don't control it. You allow people to make up their own mind."
That strategy has worked in many countries that once had runaway population growth. Mexico, one of Latin America's population success stories, has made government-subsidized contraception widely available and at the same time launched public-information campaigns to teach people the value of using it. A recent series of ads aimed at men makes the powerful point that there is more machismo in clothing and feeding offspring than in conceiving and leaving them. In the past 30 years, the average number of children born to a Mexican woman has plunged from seven to just 2.5. Many developing nations are starting to recognize the importance of educating women and letting them--not just their husbands--have a say in how many children they will have.
But bringing down birthrates loses some of its effectiveness as mortality rates also fall. At the same time Mexico reduced its children-per-mother figure, for example, it also boosted its average life expectancy from 50 years to 72--a wonderful accomplishment, but one that offsets part of the gain achieved by reducing the number of births.
When people live longer, populations grow not just bigger but also older and frailer. In the U.S. there has been no end of hand wringing over what will happen when baby boomers--who owe their very existence to the procreative free-for-all that followed World War II--retire, leaving themselves to be supported by the much smaller generation they produced. In Germany there are currently four workers for every retired person. Before long that ratio will be down to just 2 to 1.