Low fertility: An East Asian dilemma

In the immediate post-war years, two prominent American demographers were attached to the MacArthur administration in Japan. One was Warren Thompson who, from the 1920s, had been an advocate of control over population growth as a necessary condition of economic development in developing countries. The other was Frank Lorimer, who was associated with the Princeton group of demographers which, from the late 1940s, began to argue that family planning was a necessary precursor to development in third world countries. Before this, according to demographic transition theory, control over fertility had been seen as a consequence of development. Fertility in Japan fell rapidly from around 3.7 births per woman in 1950 to around the replacement level of two births per woman in 1960 and development took off much as had been predicted.