ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to evaluate various policies intended to reduce fertility in less developed countries by means of changing peoples’ in come and wealth. Income and wealth invite consideration as social con trol variables because economic status always matters. They seem to be related to almost every aspect of a society-its patterns of production and consumption, its attitudes, and its health and mortality, as well as its fertility. But just how income and wealth are related to fertility is ex ceedingly complex.1 After an analysis of the income-fertility relation ship, the ways in which countries might intervene in the relationship in order to influence fertility will be considered.