A reexamination of integrated population activities

The term integrated population activities came into style at the World Population Conference at Bucharest in 1974, where it was used to refer to national planning that recognizes the integral role of population in development, the use of socioeconomic change to solve a nation's population problem, or the implementation of population activities along with health or agricultural projects. In this paper, Laurel Files calls for a more precise definition of the word integrated and the use of different terminology for other types of coordinating activities. She argues that integrated is meaningful only when it refers to planning or implementation of population activities by several ministries, or to the combination of population activities with related services. Beyond restricting the definition, Files calls into question the habit of appending integrated onto population activities as a kind of halo. "Unintegrated" family planning does not deserve a pejorative connotation, for in some situations it may be more effective than integrated family planning.