For most people the idea of someone else telling them how many children they should have is simply unacceptable so when governments attempt to do just that it always causes controversy. In 1979 the Chinese government introduced its infamous one-child policy, changing family life in China forever. Families were encouraged to have fewer children. Those that didn't were fined. The policy was a direct
response to the preceding decades of famine and starvation. It's still in place today. According to official figures, without the one-child policy, there'd be four hundred million more people in China, that's more than the entire population of the USA. Its unlikely that other governments could undertake such an extreme path without major civil opposition. In the 1970s the Indian government also
sought to bring down its birthrate. To start with it took a less aggressive path, setting up festivals around the country where vasectomies were carried out for small incentives. m31s56
In the south west of India lies the long narrow coastal state of Kerala. Most of its thirty-two million inhabitants live off the land and the ocean, a rich tropical ecosystem watered by two monsoons a year. It's also one of India's most crowded states - but the population is stable because nearly everybody has small families… At the root of it all is education. Thanks to a long tradition of
compulsory schooling for boys and girls Kerala has one of the highest literacy rates in the World. Where women are well educated they tend to choose to have smaller families… What Kerala shows is that you don't need aggressive policies or government incentives for birthrates to fall. Everywhere in the world where women have access to education and have the freedom to run their own lives, on the
whole they and their partners have been choosing to have smaller families than their parents. But reducing birthrates is very difficult to achieve without a simple piece of medical technology, contraception. m35s09-m38s21
Didi: "Was kucken se denn so, haben se überhaupt nen Durchsuchungsbefehl?" Langenhagen: "Nee. Aber haben sie"n Alibi?" Didi: "Nö, a-aber ich kann ja mal nachgucken!" Langenhagen: "Ah, verstehe. Sie gehören zu jenem Täterkreis der durch aggressive Vorwärtsverteidigung-" Kommissar: "-LANGENHAGEN!!!!"