How Thailand's Family Planning Program Reached Replacement Level Fertility: Lessons Learned

摘要

Thailand's is a family planning success story. In 25 years, its people have moved from being pronatalist, with fertility levels between 6.3 to 6.6 births per woman, to a society of contraceptive users, with fertility almost at replacement levels. The dramatic decline in births and fertility levels started in the early 1960s when government policy-makers learned that the expected population growth would seriously retard the country's economic development plans. These individuals shared their concerns with groups that could help and together, these bodies initiated a demographic revolution that relatively quickly began to limit the population size of Thailand. The report discusses the magnitude of this demographic revolution and the way it took place. The analysis is made in the context of a new framework developed by the Agency for International Development's (A.I.D.'s) Office of Population, which classifies countries in terms of their contraceptive prevalence and the stage of their family planning program.