POPULATION
The fewer, the merrier

by Susan Hegger for
St. Louis Post Dispatch

Five years ago, the Cairo conference on international population adopted what many thought a radical premise: that population and development were inextricably linked and that Women ,with access to education and contraceptives have fewer children. In retrospect, those assumptions are "blindingly obvious" United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said at "Cairo Plus Five," the recent U .N. special session to evaluate progress since Cairo.

Over the past five years, countries have voluntarily developed programs reflecting the insights of Cairo. In some parts of the Third World, for example puppet shows dramatizing the virtues of educating girls travel from village to village. "Micro-finance programs help women set up their own businesses, whether they're herb farms, bakeries or sewing cooperatives.

Third World countries are learning what the developed countries already know. When women are educated, they delay marriage and child-bearing which reduces the number of children they bear. When women have additional options in their lives besides motherhood -such as education and career -they have fewer children. Women typically spend whatever resources they control on their children so that the better off the mother, the better off the child.

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