Quote:Exactly. Which is why educating people about the dangers of smoking stops a few, but making fun of smoking and smokers (as so many adds did in the 60's and 70's) stops many.But, in a low-media society where women's education is at a level somewhere between pathetic and non existent, those numbers could well be backwards.
Education gets to the small percentage who think. Propaganda gets to the vast majority who don't.
Imagine trying to format your advertising to the Bolivian (or Kenyan, Liberian, etc...) women who are going to be the primary decision makers for having more babies. What kind of campaign would you try? They don't have TVs, and I suspect even radios are fairly rare. (They are also listened to by the men, and if the men hear something they don't like, that could seriously hurt your program. Men in many of these places have zero incentive not to have more kids.) What else? Pamphlets? Illiteracy is high. Songs? How do you get the songs to become popular? (If you could solve that one, you could make a killing.) Puppet shows? Maybe in Java. There is no sesame street equivalent in many of these countries, at least not one that's watched by the same people who are having 6 kids on average. There are all sorts of potential ways to try, but I'm not really seeing an effective one. The reason these countries are behind on the demographic curve is the same reason they're tough to reach with advertising: they're not developed.
But, if you include heath and contraception education as part of a basic literacy and education program, especially for women and children, you can get a captive audience who probably is actually interested in what you have to say, or at least interested enough to make a difference. This isn't college education we're talking about here, but just basic schooling, or even something less academic and more pragmatic than that. Governments can do that best, but international organizations can often do it as well, if the country is poor enough.
I still see that as by far the most pragmatic route to get to the audience that needs getting to.
Plus, I suspect that the issue may not be direct effects of education at all, but indirect ones. Women choose to have fewer children when they and their kids have more education, not because they're better informed, but because their time, and their kids' time, is worth more. Ditto with health care. If you know your child has a 99% chance to survive until at least adulthood, and that they'll get an education so long as they survive, investing in them has better returns. If you know that you could work part-time at something other than farm labour if you had 2 kids, but not if you had 5, then that's an incentive to have fewer kids. Education changes the incentive structure. Advertising does not, at least, not in the same direct way.
-Jester