Fertility and immigration policies can work to increase or decrease a country’s population. How effective the policies are, and what their overall goals are, largely depend on each individual country.

How do fertility policies increase population?

Fertility policies that provide tax benefits, monetary incentives, generous maternal and paternal leave, and overall systemic support for children and families with children work to increase the fertility rate in a population, therefore increasing the size of the population.

How do immigration policies increase population?

Immigration policies that are very open to an influx of skilled and unskilled workers, provide preferences to the family of an immigrant, have a more easily navigable citizen/visa application process, provide equal rights and benefits for temporary immigrants and citizens (including healthcare, education, and employment benefits), have more general definitions of refugees and asylum seekers, and actively recruit people from other countries for job positions also aim to increase the size of the population. Immigration policies usually help to increase the size of a population temporarily, but they can work in tandem with fertility policies to increase a country’s population. 

Why would a country want to increase their population?

Countries that actively want to increase their population size either have a declining population and are trying to thwart the negative effects associated with that, or are enjoying a period of economic prosperity. Many developed countries fall into the first category, such as Germany and Japan. Both of these countries are highly developed, but they are experiencing population declines due to falling fertility rates and overall population aging.

A unique phenomenon of developed countries with declining populations is that they tend to have anti-immigration policies due to cultural or ethnic preferences/biases, and these policies typically worsen the declining population problem. Developed countries have not yet found the magic answer for how to increase population through increased fertility rates alone, but even in countries that have pro-fertility and pro-immigration policies, population can still decline. This is an ongoing issue for many developed countries, especially in Europe.

How do fertility and immigration policies work to decrease population?

Fertility and immigration policies can be used to decrease population. Strict immigration policies can prevent sanctioned immigrants, both skilled and unskilled, from becoming temporary or permanent immigrants. They can also limit many potential refugees or asylum seekers from entering or remaining in the target country. However, countries will likely still experience illegal immigration, which poses its own set of problems for the people and countries involved.

Fertility rates can be negatively influenced by eliminating tax incentives, monetary benefits, reducing parental leave time, not providing affordable childcare or healthcare, and having a generally high cost of living. On the extreme side, governments can enact policies that largely penalize births over a specified number.

The best example of this is China with its One Child Policy in which families with more than one child were monetarily penalized, with some people even undergoing forced sterilization. Because of the severity of China’s fertility policies, fertility rates were dramatically reduced, but there have been many ethical issues raised over the methods used. Immigration policies were also very strict in China, and together these two policies were relatively successful in reducing the rate of growth of China’s population.

Do fertility and immigration policies always work?

Although countries usually put fertility and immigration policies in place to intentionally increase or decrease population, some countries may have an increasing population without desiring it. In these cases, population can still increase even with fertility and immigration policies that do not support population growth. This usually occurs in developing countries and is projected to be an active problem for countries that are or will be in developing status over the next several decades.

The population of developing countries severely outnumbers the population of developed countries, with China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria making up nearly half of the world’s population. The top 20 countries in the world with the most population are largely composed of developing countries.

India is projected to overtake China as the most populous country, and they have implemented many fertility policies to try and reduce their population. However, they have not been largely successful. Prime methods of reducing fertility involve elevating the status of women in a population, a process that includes equal rights for women, access to family planning and care, advanced education opportunities, and opportunities in the workplace. Many developing countries still struggle with one or all of these aspects, which can hinder the application of fertility reduction policies.