FROM the window of the house in Pasay where she was born and has lived for more than 80 years, Dr. Mercedes B. Concepcion has witnessed firsthand the burgeoning growth of the country?s population.

Once upon a time, this was a genteel neighborhood, the suburbs to which prominent families moved to escape the congestion of the city. Now it has been engulfed by the sea of teeming humanity that is Metro Manila.

?Look at all the side streets and see how many children are on them,? she says.

It is both appropriate and ironic, since Concepcion is the country?s foremost demographer. (Demography is the statistical study of human populations.) Last February, she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist in recognition of her achievements in the field of demographics and population, which include several landmark studies on population growth in the Philippines and Asia, and the establishment of the UP Population Institute.

She was also instrumental in crafting the country?s national population policy in the late 1960s, which led to the creation of the Commission on Population, on whose board she still sits. In the last five decades, she has seen the country?s efforts to keep its growing population in check rise, fall and stagnate.

A prominent and respected business figure, she says, was so horrified at the sight of all those street children without any future that he is now busy building a consensus group to present a bill to the next congress creating a national population policy in lieu of the contentious Reproductive Health Bill, which has become an albatross around the legislature?s neck. Some might see it as a sign of progress, but those who?ve been there and done that see it more as a sign of how far we?ve retrogressed.

?We?re back almost to where we were in the 1970s,? notes Concepcion.

While other Asean countries have established fully-functioning population programs, we have been locked in a vicious cycle of building up and then tearing down our own.

This bodes ill at a time when the Philippine population is poised to hit 94 million, and is projected to reach 112 million in another ten years. Population figured prominently in the debates leading up to the last elections, with some candidates openly supporting the Reproductive Health Bill and others taking a pro-natalist stance. It will clearly be one of the issues that the incoming administration will have to face, if it is to keep its campaign promise of alleviating poverty.

?The fertility rate in the early 1960s was over six children per woman,? says Concepcion. (The total fertility rate is the number of children expected to be born to a woman in her lifetime.) ?It went down to about 4.5 by the time Marcos was ousted. Now it?s about 3.3. It has been declining, but very slowly. In terms of total fertility rate, we should be in the 2 children per woman. And since we are at 3.3, malayo pa (we have a long way to go).?

Despite his lukewarm support for the Reproductive Health Bill, Concepcion hopes that incoming president Noynoy Aquino will take a somewhat more progressive stance on population than his mother did. Under President Corazon Aquino, conservative elements in the Catholic hierarchy were able to influence national health policy and effectively emasculated the population program by cutting off funding and support. The current administration has largely preserved the status quo.

?His big problem is income growth and the fact that the treasury is empty,? Concepcion says of the incoming president. ?He cannot alleviate poverty without doing something about population. It has to be a two-pronged approach: population management on the one hand, and poverty reduction on the other. When you reduce poverty you have to improve education, job creation, improve infrastructure ? they?re all connected. Until you can create jobs that give a better income, the level of living will not improve. Income growth is important, and if you do not manage population so that income is divided among less people, you cannot move forward.?

Like all his predecessors, Aquino will also have to contend with an antagonistic Church. Since the 1970s, studies have shown that Filipino couples? reproductive behavior is not really influenced by the Church.

?The Church instills a fear of God among some politicians, frequently through their wives, by saying ?this is against the church, you will go to hell?,? she says. ?And the politicians are intimidated, although our surveys have shown time and again that this will not stand in the way of their being elected. It is at the policy level that the Church does have an influence; but at the acceptance level, it has none.?

Concepcion continues: ?The Church considers this their last bastion, so they have come out increasingly saying their stand is non-negotiable, and they will continue to judge the incoming administration with regard to their stand against population. They agree that something has to be done to improve the conditions of the poor, but they say it should not be done in terms of contraception, and that it can only be done with natural family planning.

?We are saying, let the couples decide; after all it is their life. If they decide to use natural family planning, so be it, but if they opt for one of the artificial methods, help them. Provide them with the services. If they are poor, it should be free. If they are middle to upper income, they should pay for the services. Data shows that the middle and upper income groups are willing to pay.

?Data shows that there is a difference of one child between the desired family size of the poor and their actual number of children. Until that gap is closed, we will still have a problem. It will be closed if we improve the information and the services.?

Concepcion was actually a Chemistry major at the University of the Philippines. She came to demographics in a roundabout way when her father, a physician, encouraged her to study biostatistics to help him with his studies on diabetes. She obtained a fellowship in Biostatistics at the University of Sydney and came back to work for the UP Statistical Center in 1954 ? the first Filipina to do so.

In 1955, she attended the first seminar on population in Asia and the Far East sponsored by the United Nations, which was the first time that the ?developing nations? became conscious of themselves as such. It was also the first time that unchecked population growth came to be seen as a problem threatening social and economic progress.

Concepcion was offered a fellowship in the then still new field of demography by the Population Council of New York. She began doctorate studies in demography at the University of Chicago, finishing in 1963, by which time she had become the head of the UP Statistical Center.

It was in 1968 that then executive secretary Rafael Salas recognized the country?s need to address its population problem. Concepcion became part of the ad hoc committee that crafted a national population policy, which was eventually signed into law by President Marcos in 1971 as Republic Act 6365, the Population Act, which is actually still in effect up to the present.

The Marcos era became the golden years for the population program. Not only was international funding readily available, but Marcos managed to stymie the Church?s protests by threatening to pass a divorce bill if they forced him to dismantle the population program.

In any case, Marcos?s fall gave conservative elements the upper hand, and the dwindling international funding and economic recession did the rest. The population program today is a shadow of what it used to be, and a couple in a rural health center is more likely than not to come out empty handed if they ask for any artificial contraceptive.

The network of government health centers through which reproductive health services used to be provided has also shrunk after the centers were devolved to local governments. Many barangay (village) health centers do not have a doctor or even a nurse, only an overburdened midwife who is left to do all the work for little pay.

Small wonder then that we rank near the bottom in population management in the Asean.

?Don?t congratulate me for my success, because I am a failure ? I am back to square one again,? says Concepcion, though without any trace of bitterness. With over five decades in population work, she has learned to be philosophical. How does she deal with the many frustrations?

?Tinatawanan ko na lang, kung hindi maloloka ka talaga, [I laugh them off, otherwise I?d go crazy],? she says.

?What keeps me here is the hope that something can be done, even at this late stage. Everything hinges on what we do to slow down our growth rate in population. The first thing to be done is to choose very good Cabinet members ? those who will do the work without any thought of self. And then look for funding because we need money to do all of this, and we cannot expect the kind of largesse we had in the ?70s and ?80s.?

We talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk, she adds.

?We have to do something ? whether it is natural family planning or artificial contraception. You cannot just proscribe, you have to prescribe.? ?