ABSTRACT
Favorable demographic trends had prevailed without interruption up to that time, but the following decade (1970-1980) was one of serious decline: war, revolution, and the Vietnamese invasion all affected the size, dynamism, and character of the Kampuchean population. The birth rate dropped during the war, as it did under the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime, due to several factors: the high mortality rate of men and women of reproductive age, mass military mobilization, intensive labor projects, and amenorrhoea caused by famine. The recovery in the birth rate and the increase in the number of marriages could not, however, be as rapid or prodigious as the new government would hope and seeks to demonstrate. When the new government came to power, it tried to "console" the population with a "laissez-faire" policy, including free travel within the country. Peasants abandoned agricultural work as they returned to their villages or took up the search for family members, scattered under Democratic Kampuchean rule.
