IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 23, Issue 1, Ver. 7 (January. 2018) PP 40-47 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/0837-2301074047 www.iosrjournals.org 40 | Page Policy Priorities to Reduce Excessive Rate of Population Growth in Underdeveloped Countries Eli Shnaider 1 , Nava Haruvy 2 , Arthur Yosef 3 1 Peres Academic Center, 10 Shimon Peres St., Rehovot, Israel 2 Netanya Academic College 1 University St., Netanya, Israel 3 Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, 2 Rabenu Yeruham St., Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel Corresponding Author’: Eli Shnaider Abstract : This study addresses one of the most important policy issues for underdeveloped countries: what are the factors which must be addressed, when designing effective policy to reduce excessive rate of population growth. We introduce quantitative model based on cross-national data in order to find out what are the most important variables associated with population growth. The model is based on Soft Regression (SR) method. This method is based on Fuzzy Information Processing and Heuristic approach. In contrast to traditional statistical regression methods, it does not require restrictive conditions (which often contradict the “real world” conditions), and thus avoids computational distortions when such conditions are violated. It allows us to include in the model all the relevant explanatory variables without losing some variables due to multi-collinearity problem. Moreover, SR method performs reliable computation of relative importance of the explanatory variables, which is a very helpful feature for determining policy priorities. The main conclusion of this study is: Secondary and Tertiary Education enrollment variables are the most important policy variables to reduce excessive rate of population growth. JEL classification:C21, J10, O20. Keywords: Demographic policy, Soft Regression, excessive rate of population growth, cross-national model. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 12-01-2018 Date of acceptance: 25-01-2018 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. BACKGROUND It is desirable for the underdeveloped economies to attempt to lower the pace of the natural growth rate of their population (in particular for countries where such a growth is excessively high). The reason is: the only way to increase standard of living is by increasing aggregate income faster than the rate of increase of population. Therefore, it is necessary to attain a sustainable increase in aggregate income that is sufficiently larger in comparison to the rate of population growth, in order to gradually diminish the standard of living gap versus developed countries. Hence, when the rate of population growth is high it requires to attain and to maintain very rapid economic growth rate on a sustainable basis for decades. However, such an exceptional economic performance has been extremely unusual historically, and is difficult to achieve by most underdeveloped economies for reasons explained below. 1. Large majority of underdeveloped economies (characterized by a very rapid rate of natural population increase) rely to a very large extend on traditional economic activities, associated with utilization of natural resources (including traditional agriculture, forestry, fishery, etc.), and critically depend on these natural resources. Such traditional economic activities when combined with rapid growth of population face the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns and thus achieving a rapid long-term growth of aggregate economic activities becomes unfeasible. 2. Underdeveloped economies usually rely on primary commodities for exports. There have been many cases of underdeveloped economies displaying impressive rates of growth over limited (in general) number of years due to favorable conditions in the relevant for them commodity markets. However, primary commodity markets are characterized by wide fluctuations of prices over the years and this fact complicates sustainable and rapid long-term economic growth. Decline of commodity prices in a major export market or markets generally leads to economic crisis, and when combined with a rapid population growth over an extended time period, further exacerbates the situation. During the period of economic difficulties due to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns and/or unfavorable commodity markets, we expect the persisting rapid population growth to exert substantial stress on political system and social stability, and if such conditions persist long enough, they can lead to very severe consequences.