Developing countries face a lot of problems concerning size and development of their population. Their territory is limited but population steadily grows. Overpopulation makes natural resources scarce and diminishes well-being of the poorest groups. Public health, population growth, and high fertility were addressed by the UN, its partner organizations, and surely by governments of developing countries that issued population policies to tackle high fertility.
To address the problem of overpopulation, more than 30 percent of the world governments implemented policies to tackle fast population growth. One-child policy introduced in China in 1979 was a vivid and radical example of how governments of developing countries could slow down the population growth, however, it was not the only one. In 1994, a broad set of provisions concerning family planning, women’s empowerment, and male responsibility was presented at the International Conference on Population and Development. The same issues were stated in the Millennium Development Goals at the UN World Summit in 2000. Abortions were legalized in several more developing countries, however, the procedure was frequently medically unsafe.
In the late twentieth century, family-planning programs became a new hope for governments of the developing nations. In 1970, Thailand’s legislators introduced a program that made various kinds of contraceptives accessible without a prescription. Contraceptives were distributed to a large number of women; as a result, women started to give birth to 1-2 children between 1972 and 2010. The government saved a millions of dollars due to this policy. A similar policy was implemented by the Iranian government. It achieved broad political and religious support and reduced the rate of births to 2 – 3 per woman.