Hindered growth: the ideology and implications of population assistance

Purpose - This paper aims to highlight the role of the United Nations in the formulation and implementation of the current understanding of “population assistance” and examine some of the arguments for “population assistance” in the form of reproductive health care. Design/methodology/approach - It presents the data for global population assistance and briefly compares these figures with data for other developmental sectors, recommending certain policy changes if real development is to be achieved. Findings - During the last decade increasingly large amounts of money have been spent on limiting population growth of underdeveloped countries. Population control is seen as the corner‐stone of development and population activities. Thus, population control has become “population assistance,” and birth control has become “reproductive health services.” Population control is pursued at the expense of women's rights and to the detriment of real economic growth and social improvement. Originality/value - For more than two decades, John Conway O'Brien has written on the importance of ethics for economic growth. In a recent article, he concluded that “although the illuminated may have been activated by the most altruistic of motives, their search for the good society was doomed from the start.” This paper attests the validity of his remarks.