In the early post-World War II decades rapid population growth in poor countries was widely seen as harming prospects for economic and social development. The immediate trigger for that growth—declining mortality—was a welcome trend, leaving the other driver, sustained high fertility, as the main plausible target for policy intervention. In the spirit of the prevailing thinking on how government action could lead to faster development, policies aimed at reducing fertility were focused on providingservices to individual couples through family planning programs. Outright dissent or at least pervasive unease among social scientists concerning the effectiveness of that approach is well reflected in the economic and sociological literature of that time. An especially articulate discussion of the conditions necessary for the reduction of fertility as seen from a social science standpoint was offered in an informal paper by Norman Ryder, one of the leading American sociologists of the period. The paperwas originally prepared for oral presentation at the April 1974 meeting of the Population Association of America in New York. A revised version was issued in 1976 as paper no. 3 7 in the series Papers of the East-West Population Institute (Honolulu). It appeared under the title "Some sociological suggestions concerning the reduction of fertility in developing countries. " It is reproduced below in full.
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