Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said last week, "there is a dire need to check rapid growth of population, which is posing serious threat to the efforts aimed at development."

For this purpose, he emphasized public awareness about reasonable family size and female literacy, modern education, and training to face the new challenges. All of these are very noble goals and means but the odds against them are high and need scrutiny.

The poor below the poverty line comprise almost one-third the country's population with another one-third not too significantly above it. It is these two-thirds that are contributing the most to the population burden.

Many of them are exposed to the electronic media campaigns they watch on TV sets available somewhere in the neighbourhoods. And, they smirk as the campaign makes little or no socio-economic sense to them.

First, children are not only viewed by the majority amongst them as "Allah ki dain" (God's gift) but they also tend to pity the small family size of the educated segments. They wonder why God gave the educated affluent everything but not enough children.

So, for one, they prefer a large family size to first demonstrate that they are closer to God as God bestows His "gifts" on them in the form of children. This perspective is diametrically opposite amongst the educated for whom more children may be viewed as a liability due to the huge opportunity costs associated with having more children than less.

So, while the emphasis amongst the educated is on the quality of children, amongst the uneducated poor, the emphasis is on quantity instead. They reproduce to the extent possible further hoping that Providence would take care of the rest.

In fact, their children begin to supplement family income at a very young age and the second major reason for having large families revolves around an economic logic.

Consequently, the poorer they are, the greater would be their need for more income earning hands sooner than later. Their children begin to generate income at ages as early as around ten (10).

The responsibility for providing for younger children is then shared between the parents and elder siblings. With more elder siblings, one of the two parents may even go for early retirement (read laze around).

In many cases, little regard is shown for the needs of elder children who are virtually slave-driven by none other than the parents themselves. Not only is child abuse common but the child might find himself/herself safer at work than at home.

The cost of staying at home is thus raised and the child rushes out to work every morning. This cost of staying at home may be further raised by depriving them of adequate food.

The child, therefore, has an incentive to look forward to going to work where he/she is better fed and clothed than would otherwise be the case. Even though poor and uneducated, the parents "innovatively" use carrots and sticks to drive even 10-year olds out to work. And, even though very young, the children are able to do their cost-benefit analysis of working even if their hard-earned income is snatched by the father to clear his debts that he could have done without or to buy undesirable goods or appropriated by the mother.

A third reason for inflated family size is high child mortality. So, the poor must have a large family to eventually have a bare minimum desired number of surviving children.

A fourth reason is to have a desired number of male children as sons are viewed to be definitely superior than girls even if sons turn out to be wasters and burdensome and girls more productive in terms of income generation capability.

Education does not feature too significantly in their calculations as many of them argue on the basis of the number of educated unemployed they see all around. Under these circumstances, education for them is either an expense item with little or no expectations of future returns.

Or, education is viewed as an opportunity cost in terms of incomes of the young foregone and thus non-remunerative in the present as well as in the future. So, why study? For girls, education is viewed as twice as complicating. They fear that an educated girl will have difficulty adjusting in their social setup with the kind of boys that will be available for them. So, the best and the brightest brain of the girl child is made to stagnate for this social reason.

Scores of talented and potentially shining stars of either gender are thus made to repeat the experiences of the previous generation which is not just their personal loss but a collective loss of this nation that has not been able to turn the corner in over half a century since independence.

As the above vicious circle gets reinforced generation after generation, the causes need to be determined. While economic underdevelopment and poverty remain at the roots (economic intervention is the responsibility of the government through quantum change efforts), there is a very pronounced element of maladaptive individual behaviour of the poor who too refuse to see the benefits of small family size even if the calculations are laid out before them threadbare.

While there are many amongst the lowest income segments closer to the poverty line who can change the class of their next generation by restricting family size and educating their children instead, they simply refuse to budge from their traditional line of thinking. On some counts, it is just not possible to change opinion if the society thinks similarly too.

For example, there is a preference for large families even amongst some of the wealthiest asset-owning classes to not only strengthen family empires but to retain the wealth within the family. In such circles, it is common to boast about the family size in general and the number of sons in particular.

The poor tend to relate more to them whom too they think are gifted especially because of their abundance in wealth. The poor, therefore, tend to identify much less with the educated middle-classes whom they see running from pillar to post to maintain living standards.

The value trickling down in the society is one of large family and sons. As for sons, this is a "value" (read dis value) amongst most of the educated middle-classes too. There are, therefore, strong social influences on the maladaptive individual behaviour of the poor that the government cannot do much about.

This degenerate outlook cannot be changed by public policy but only through an awakening of the collective social conscience. To this extent, each one of us is responsible for the rapid population growth rate that no one likes, even though we are all equally responsible for contributing to it through social values that we accept silently instead of speaking up against them.

The factors required to influence change in the reproductive behaviour of the poor, therefore, include poverty reduction, economic development, employment generation, universal healthcare, social values conducive for development, and religious influences which power was mobilized for the better in some Muslim countries to legitimize family planning. The above variables are caught up in an intricate web of relationship which together needs to change to influence the rate of population growth favourably.

This means that while there is a definite role for the government, there is a responsibility on the educated affluent too in their individual and collective capacities to influence the mindset of the poor especially vis-à-vis their reproductive behaviour which is a burden on not just their own souls but on all of us together in more ways than one.

While NGOs could run targeted campaigns in poor neighbourhoods, others could try to influence minds in individual interactions with those sold to the idea of large families in a resource poor country.