ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the age of development and modernization theories were at their height and the perception of the world was predominantly shaped by the decolonization process and the ideological divisions of the Cold War. The idea of problematic population growth can be traced at the end of eighteenth century when Thomas Robert Malthus published his influential 'population law'. The historian Simon Szreter has demonstrated how within the rationale of demographic-transition theory, modernization was first conceptualized as a catalyst for reducing the birth rate and as a consequence of reduced fertility. Family planning became part of development programs and the rationales behind the programs and their implementation also influenced how the developing countries were imagined and perceived within the modern world. Agents of development increasingly saw their planning efforts in the third world threatened by the population explosion and included attempts to limit population growth in modernization and development programs.
