Population and the Family in Southeast Asia

Abstract

The decade of the 1960s was one of growing concern among demographers with the acceleration of the world's population growth, resulting largely from the sharp decline in mortality rates in the early post-World War II period. The concern has become more selective in recent times, with the prospects for population stabilization becoming clearer in some countries and regions as a result of sharp declines in fertility, but with population growth rates continuing to cause great disquiet in others. Southeast Asia as a whole gives grounds for a somewhat sanguine assessment; its population growth rate is slowing as a result of quite spectacular declines in fertility in a number of major countries. But the situation is quite variable, and some countries maintain high rates of fertility and of population growth.