Population policy

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Population policy is a political term that describes a policy of states or interest groups that is aimed at influencing the number of inhabitants and the structure of the population living in the national territory . Population policy is part of the governmentality of the modern nation-state ( bio-power ). For this grab population politicians and lobby groups interested in the reproductive behavior of their government the people and subject the migration behavior of their government people and the people outside the territory of emigration - and immigration regulatory burdens restrictions. Historical examples of population policy measures included the prohibition and criminalization of various forms of birth control such as infanticide , abortion or contraception ( prenatalistic population policy in the era of mercantilism ), or their dissemination (which enables people to tailor the number of children to their own interests ); the extermination or deportation of population groups; a targeted immigration policy .

Basics

The demographics (population studies) provides the statistical basis for modern population policy. The goals of population policy are formulated at national level by the governments , political parties and individual social interest groups and implemented in family policy , social policy and migration policy . Access to family planning is either made more difficult or easier by various measures . Individual measures are anchored in relevant laws, such as family law, criminal law, immigration laws, etc.

At the international level, a. the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO) or the World Bank with population policy.

aims

Historically, a distinction can be made between three basic forms of population policy. The promotion or restriction of the local population by raising or lowering the birth rate (pro- or anti-natalistic population policy) and migration, the expulsion or settlement of population groups, on the other hand, there are measures that are part of the offense of genocide or at least close to it. These basic forms can of course also appear in various combinations.

  1. Maintaining a balanced age structure in countries with a low birth rate. This is counteracted by a ban on abortion, childbirth promotion, other family policies or immigration . This problem exists mainly in countries with a higher standard of living.
  2. The promotion of population growth after epidemics or wars, settlement and use of previously unused parts of the country.
  3. A limit on population growth to accommodate a country's limited resources .
  4. The expulsion or relocation of members of ethnic minorities for economic, political or racial reasons is a deliberate method of politics.
  5. The promotion of population growth can be based on economic or power-political reasons in order to reach more workers, otherwise more soldiers.
  6. A promotion of population growth with an expansionist , nationalist or religious background aims at the conquest and settlement of new areas or at the penetration and dominance of other ethnic groups in the settlement area.

Historical examples

Before 1945

  1. In National Socialist Germany as well as in the Soviet Union , numerous population groups were deported or murdered with the aim of homogenizing the population according to ethnic (e.g. living space for ethnic Germans ) or socio-structural criteria (e.g. deportation of the kulaks ) in certain areas to reach. It was believed that the genocide could be justified with the principles of eugenics .
  2. An example of an expansionist population policy is the colonization of the American continent by European settlers through incentives to colonize and reclaim the land in the 18th and 19th centuries.
  3. After the medieval plague epidemics in the mercantilist era a policy of repopulation or "was Peuplierung " pursued the most affected areas.

After 1945

  1. From the Deng era until 2015, China practiced a very restrictive form of population policy in the form of the one-child policy to reduce population growth. A less rigid implementation of the goal of curbing population growth can also be observed in India and in some African developing countries .
  2. In Romania , under the rule of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, attempts were made to increase the population with state coercive measures and repressive means. The measures taken included a. a ban on abortion drugs and contraceptive methods and disadvantages for small families.
  3. In Albania , contraceptives were banned until 1990 under the communist government of Enver Hoxhas and his successor Ramiz Alia . As in the case of Romania, the aim was to increase population growth.
  4. In May 2012, then Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan surprisingly announced that he considered abortion to be murder and that he would soon only exempt abortions for the first four or five weeks. This would de facto be a ban on abortion, because pregnancies are usually only discovered afterwards. According to Frank Nordhausen , Erdogan is “not only concerned with the fact that abortions are“ against the will of God ”, but above all that they endanger the existence of the Turkish people and their economic dynamism. For a long time he has been recommending at least three, preferably five children to every Turkish woman. ”At the beginning of 2013, he set up a commission made up of several ministers to propose ways to increase the birth rate; He justifies his demand for at least three children with the risks of an aging society.
  5. In Iran (2014: 78 million inhabitants, annual population growth 1.3%), Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i , the country's supreme leader, wants to at least double the population.

Approaches to population policy measures have recently also been practiced in Europe. In addition to child benefit, which is widespread in many European countries , control instruments have recently been used which affect the qualitative composition of the population. With the introduction of parental allowance, well-educated parents receive significantly higher financial benefits than parents with lower incomes due to the de facto higher average income. High-earning parents who temporarily quit their job in Germany receive, based on the couple, up to € 25,200 parental allowance over 14 months, while at the lower end of the income scale € 4,200 is paid out. In France , an income tax regime has a similar effect : the income tax payable by a high-income family decreases significantly with the number of children.

See also

literature

  • Aufhauser, Elisabeth: population policy. Between human economy and human rights . Vienna 2003.
  • Overpopulation underdevelopment. Discourse on population policy (= Journal für Entwicklungspolitik. Vol. 17, no. 1, collection of articles). Frankfurt & Vienna 2001
  • Dienel, Christiane: Number of children and reasons of state: Contraception and population policy in Germany and France until 1918 (= theory and history of civil society. 10). Munster 1995.
  • Etzemüller, Thomas: An eternal downfall. The apocalyptic population discourse in the 20th century . Bielefeld 2007.
  • Fuhrmann, Martin: Increasing the population as a state task? Population and marriage policy in German political and economic theory of the 18th and 19th centuries (= legal and political science publications of the Görres Society. NF Vol. 101). Paderborn u. a. 2002.
  • Feucht, Ralf: Influence of Demographic Facts by the State. An analysis of the population policy characterization of selected policy areas in Germany . Baden-Baden 1999.
  • Heinsohn, Gunnar / Steiger, Otto: Human production - general population theory of modern times . Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1979, ISBN 3-518-10914-6 ( summary from the "Lexicon of Economic Works" )
  • Hummel, Diana: The population discourse. Demographic knowledge and political power . Opladen 2000.
  • Höhn, Charlotte (ed.): Demographic trends, population science and political advice . From the work of the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), 1973 to 1998 (= publication series of the Federal Institute for Population Research 28). Opladen 1998.
  • Honekamp, ​​Gerhard: Erbhege and Erbmerze - The National Socialist Population Policy . In: Learn History, Heft 93 (2003), pp. 35–41.
  • Kligman, Gail: The Politics of Duplicity. Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania. Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988, ISBN 0-520-21074-3 .
  • Lipinsky, Astrid: Human rights and population policy. China's first national population and birth planning law . In: Jahrbuch Menschenrechte , Vol. 7 (2005), pp. 169–178.
  • Schlebusch, Cornelia: Population Policy as a Development Strategy: Historical and Current Issues on a Questionable Argument , Frankfurt am Main 1994.
  • Schultz, Susanne: Hegemony - Governmentality - Biopower. Reproductive Risks and the Transformation of International Population Policy . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-896-91636-X .
  • Tremmel, Jörg: Population Policy in the Context of Ecological Intergenerational Justice . Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-8350-6017-1 .
  • Wichterich, Christa (Ed.): People made to measure. Population policy in the north and south . Goettingen 1994.

Web links

  • Population policy , article in the online manual of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinsohn, Gunnar / Steiger, Otto: People production - general population theory of the modern age . Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1979, ISBN 3518109146
  2. ↑ UN: Outcomes on Population
  3. ↑ G. Heinsohn, R. Knieper, O. Steiger: People production. General population theory of the modern age. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1979
  4. ^ G. Heinsohn, O. Steiger: Witchcraft, Population Catastrophe and Economic Crisis in Renaissance Europe: An Alternative Macroeconomic Explanation , IKSF Discussion Paper No. December 31, 2004, University of Bremen .
  5. ^ G. Kligman: The Politics of Duplicity. Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania . University of California Press Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1998
  6. ↑ Manuela Lataianu: The 1966 Law Concerning Prohibition of Abortion in Romania and its Consequences - the Fate of a Generation (PDF; 57 kB)
  7. ↑ Lorena Anton: Abortion and the Making of the Socialist Mother during Communist Romania ( Memento from September 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Population growth in Albania ( Memento of December 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 21, 2011.
  9. ↑ Relapse in times of quackery , Frankfurter Rundschau June 4, 2012
  10. ↑ Turkish PM pushes for, three children incentive ' , hurriyetdailynews.com, February 10 2013
  11. ↑ The Iranian Fear of Contraception , welt.de, July 10, 2014
  12. ↑ More details in the French Wikipedia