Poor people generally have large families. Why? The fundamental reason behind it is that poor people tend to believe “two hands are better than one”. Poor parents see benefits in having more hands for subsistence agribusiness, for example, as well as to ensure that they will have a stable support in their old age. They believe that one more person in the family will be a help in their work and family earning. What they don’t understand is that this would in turn lead to their misery.

I will illustrate this with an example. Suppose a poor family (husband and wife) with an income of Rupees 6000 a month has only a child. The household per capita income will be still high being Rs 2000 per person. The child can get better food, clothing and education and thus, in the future, can contribute to the well-being of the family. Whereas if there are four children, it will be very difficult for the family to provide them proper care food and education. Other reason of poor family being large family is that the birth control is not free or automatic. Poor women not only cannot afford but they also don’t know how to use it properly. Moreover they do not even know about contraception, fertility, sterilization and other family planning approaches.

There are various problems of having a number of children. The basic problem is with respect to employment generation programs, since there is a limit to what the government can generate. Moreover, additional children hinder mothers from taking on employment, since the mothers have to look after them. Third, the low per capita household income compels the small children to involve themselves in child labor in order to sustain the family which can be very dangerous for a growing child. Fourth, with additional child, all the family resources are exhausted in bringing up, with a result that there is no savings in the poor family for any unsolicited future needs.

According to Boyd Orr’s survey data, birth order and child mortality are directly related. For instance, a fourth child born to a family will have a greater chance of mortality in the early age compared to the third child. Thus this also adds to the problem with large family size. Another drawback of having a large family is that the children don’t get enough care regarding nutrients and education. Thus without proper growth and education, instead of contributing to the well-being of the family, the children would not even become self-sustaining. This leads to more poverty resulting in more births and the cycle continues.

Therefore in a country like India where more than half of the population is considerably poor, the large family size has become a major issue in reducing income gap as well as ensuring a decent standard of living to everyone. India is not facing the problem of large population; it is struggling with the problem of large poor population which is not even self-sustaining.

The solution to this can be that the government can incentivize the large poor families by increasing Child Benefit with respect to additional child and through various other schemes which aim to protect large families. But this also has two major problems. First, it would cost a lot of money and thus will create a huge burden on public exchequer resulting in other economic problems. Second, this solution can promote the people to have large families considering the benefits they are getting.

Thus the aim should be to help the current large families as well as to create awareness among the poor about family planning through various programs which tend to impart knowledge regarding the disadvantages of having a large family. The use of economic incentives to encourage family planning among the poor is an innovative method that can probably contribute to control family size. Incentives, such as providing free food, can be used to encourage appearance of the poor people at contraceptive education gatherings, adoption and furtherance of contraceptive methods, sterilization, and to plan the family. Moreover in any program or seminars on family planning, the basic subject should be fertility awareness since many women are not even aware that they have a natural cycle of fertile and infertile periods.

Moreover, birth control devices should be made free and efforts should be taken to make them available and usable to the poor. These efforts have to be taken not only by the government but also by the people because the best way to eradicate anything is to attack its roots.

(The writer is a student at Nalsar University of Law).

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