Reducing population growth - Kerala's social reforms Flashcards
a) What is Kerala trying to control?
b) What are they trying to decrease in order to achieve this?
a) The increasing population.
b) Birth rates.
What does Kerala focus on in order to control the population growth?
Social reforms including gender equality, education and healthcare. In Kerala, the literacy rate is 91% where as India as a whole only has a literacy rate of 61%. It also has more females studying at universities than males.
What factors have made the county’s goal a success?
*An investment in education and women’s health- almost all villages have an access to a school and health clinic within 2.5 km.
*Economics- Kerala relies on service industries like tourism, rather than farming.
*Land reform programme means that each family has 8ha - enough to support a small family but not large enough to require lots of children to help out farming the land.
Adult education meant that the policy took hold immediately.
State 2 ways that Kerala is different to the rest of India.
- In Kerala, rural poverty is low.
- Women in Kerala marry 4 years later than women in the rest of India: this is actively encouraged.
- Woman have children 5 years later than women in the rest of India, and on average only have 2 - again this is encouraged as it helps create a stable population.
- Infant mortality is low (over 95% of babies are born in hospitals) in Kerala; in the rest of India it remains much higher.
What makes Kerala’s strategy different to China’s?
Kerala only encourage people to have smaller families, they don’t force it. People are allowed to freely choose their family size.
