Application of control theory to population policy

Population policy for a single nation is considered as an optimal control problem. It is studied how the population of a country like The Netherlands could be reduced from its present size and age distribution to a prescribed, stationary size and age distribution in the shortest time possible. The control variable is the annual number of live births. Two constraints are taken into account: a socio-psychological constraint consisting of a (time-dependent) lower bound on fertility, and an economic constraint in the form of an upper bound on the demographic burden. The possible effects of emigration are also studied. The problem is solved by linear programming. Numerical results that apply to The Netherlands are shown and extensively discussed.