Old Age Security with Fewer Children
Less developed countries can promote reduced fertility and slower population growth while still supporting the idea of old age security through children. If parents have enough children to provide a high probability of one son surviving until the father is age 65 they will have had many children even if the father has a vasectomy once having reached the larger family size. The interval between generations will be short and natural increase rapid. Instead governments should encourage couples to adopt the "always a son" strategy whereby parents have a son as soon as possible and then practice contraception as long as he survives making use of only reversible contraceptive techniques. This strategy is in accord with most traditional societies values since it means having children soon until a son is born who survives and hence is presumbably more readily acceptable. Less developed countries and citizens can and perhaps should rely upon surviving children to support older parents. Insofar as security through children is practical governments should refrain from introducing financial systems of old age support that are premature given the development stage of the national economy. This strategy is comparable with the slow population growth rate necessary for accelerated economic development if life expectancies at birth are not very low. A national objective of lower mortality rates is compatible with reduced fertility for economic development and sufficient fertility for old age security. With lower mortality rates parents can achieve their old age insurance goals yet have their children late which means fewer children die that have to replaced. Spacing not only prevents unwanted births but also reduces the number of needed births.
The Role of Bonuses and Persuasive Propaganda in the Reduction of Birth Rates
Bonuses and persuasion should not be considered as alternatives in efforts to reduce birthrates. There should be plans to use both of them in meaningful quantities until the margin is approached at which point decisions can be made about their joint use. Thus the task is simplified and the employment of bonuses and propaganda persuasion can be considered separately. Enke was the first to maintain that an underdeveloped country can afford to pay large sums as incentives to prevent births because the payments are only transfers rather than real resource costs. Enkes reasoning is flawed yet a different sort of calculation yields estimates of the same order of magnitude as Enkes. The critical point is that everyone agrees that a large bonus to prevent births is beneficial. The only disagreement is whether the ceiling to the bonus is high or higher. Focus here is on what is solidly known what is believed and what is unknown about bonuses. Political leaders in less developed countries as well as scientific leaders in the birth control movement believe that bonuses will be ineffective because of a natural human revulsion against the practice. 2 obstacles exist to actual experiments with bonuses: the long time period required for testing and evaluation; and the "injustice" to other communities of giving bonuses in test communities. A 2nd reason for nonimplementation of bonus schemes is that the response function is unknown i.e. how many "sales" would be made at different bonus prices. Another issue with bonuses is that of whom they should be paid to. The ends of public policy can probably be best served by offering different size bonuses depending upon age and number of children. A 4th issue concerning bonuses is whether the bonuses should be paid only to "salesmen" or whether the family should receive the bonus directly. Finally bonus implementation plans must be developed to make bonus schemes feasible. By persuasion is meant all kinds of personal and impersonal communications except basically informative messages that tell people what birth control is how it works and how they can obtain it. The outlook for persuasion is not hopeless. The well known persuasive device of the testimonial will affect the behavior of some people who otherwise would not accept contraception as evidenced by data from a Turkish survey. The differences in persuasive power of the various Turkish sources of influence showed that effectiveness varied considerably among persuasive messages. The importance of the content of persuasive messages suggests that advertising people should be hired to construct the messages. Any decisions about expenditures for propaganda campaigns must depend upon estimates of the effectiveness of persuasion (of the best techniques available). When assessing the effect of any campaign of persuasion one must consider the long run result. Finally the total costs of a persuasion campaign are not obvious.
The Cause of the Newspaper Rate Differential: A Subjective-Demand-Curve Analysis
W ITH very few exceptions, American newspapers charge "national"' advertisers a higher rate than "retail" advertisers. The differential s substantial and is larger than any possible cost difference. In 1956 the average differential was 34 per cent for papers with circulation under 50,000, and ranged upward to an average of 72 per cent for papers with circulation over 300,500.3 The variation among papers is great, from no differential towell over 200 per cent.4 The differential has been increasing for the last thirty years.5 The explanation of newspaper rate-setting behavior is our subject here. But though this question is entwined with the question of the price elasticities of demand for advertising space, this is not an investigation of the elasticities themselves; it is rather an investigation of what decisionmakers in the newspaper business consider