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Population Issues in the United States

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Book cover Curbing Population Growth

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Abstract

In the fifties and sixties there was widespread apprehension that the U.S. population was growing too fast. Naturalists and conservationists, always more hawkish than demographers and other social scientists on the subject of controlling population growth, were particularly vociferous in their cries of alarm. In their eyes, excessive population growth was the main reason why too much of the nation’s wilderness and farmland was being paved over for superhighways, shopping malls, and housing subdivisions. The twin generators of this pernicious population growth were the post-World War II baby boom and a growing wave of legal and illegal immigration to the United States from Latin America and Asia. A tinge of elitism and/or nativism energized those most upset by these developments.

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Notes

  1. The U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) rose from 1.824 in 1987 to 2.05 in 1992. The U.S. Census Bureau assumes that the TFR will climb to 2.119 by 2050, reflecting an increasing proportion of Hispanics and blacks in the population. The latter groups currently have slightly higher TFRs than that of non-Hispanic whites, but their fertility is assumed to fall during the first half of the twenty-first century. In 1992 the Census Bureau projected a U.S. population of 383 million as of 2050 (see Dennis A. Ahlburg, “The Census Bureau’s New Projections of the US Population,” Population and Development Review 19, no. 1 (March 1993):160-164.

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  2. By 1995, however, 85 percent of fecund Catholic wives, aged 25–39, were using contraception (Ronald Freedman, personal communication, July 1994).

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  3. Julian Simon, Population Matters: People, Resources, Environment and Immigration (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1989), pp. 263–303.

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  4. Phyllis Piotrow, World Population Crisis: The United States Response (New York: Praeger, 1973), pp. 16–17.

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  5. David Radel, “Recent Developments in U.S. Population Policy: A Chronology,” unpublished memo, April 1965, Ford Foundation.

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  6. Oscar Harkavy, Fred Jaffe, and Samuel Wishik, Implementing DHEW Policy on Family Planning and Population, September 1967, reprinted in Hearings before the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Senate, 1967–68, Part 1, pp. 163-180.

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  7. Judith Blake, chair of the Department of Demography at the University of California at Berkeley, took strenuous objection to the estimate of five million poor women in need of subsidized family planning services. Based on her analysis of Gallup poll data (subsidized, incidentally, by a Ford Foundation grant), Blake asserted that the five million estimate was greatly exaggerated, that poor women wanted larger families than middle-class women, and that extending family planning services for the poor would not significantly reduce U.S. population growth. She urged, instead, “basic changes in the social organization of reproduction” including removal of sanctions against homosexuality. (Judith Blake, “Population Policy for Americans: Is the Government Being Misled?” Science 164 (May 1969):522-529.) Jaffe, Wishik, and I defended the five million estimate and our policy recommendations in an article published in Science only two months later, entitled “Family Planning and Public Policy: Who is Misleading Whom?” (Science 165 (July 25 1969):367-373). [While I did most of the work on the “Harkavy report,” Jaffe was the principal author of the Science article.]

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  8. Stephen P. Strickland, ed., Population Crisis, Hearings before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures, Committee on Government Operations, Washington, D.C., 1965–1968 (Washington, D.C.: Socio-Dynamics Publications, 1970), p. xvi.

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  9. Ibid., p. 252.

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  10. Ibid., p. 303.

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  11. Ibid., p. 309.

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  12. Piotrow, World Population Crisis, p. 169.

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  13. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, Population and the American Future, Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 75.

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  14. Ibid., pp. 100-104.

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  15. Martha C. Ward, Poor Women, Powerful Men: America’s Great Experiment in Family Planning (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), p. 108.

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  16. Ibid., pp. 21-25.

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  17. Ibid., pp. 28-30.

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  18. J. D. Beasley and V. W. Parrish, “Epidemiology and Prevention of Illegitimate Births in the Rural South,” paper presented to the American Public Health Association, November 1968.

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  19. Ward, Poor Women, Powerful Men, p. 131.

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  20. Ibid., p. 108. Three were leased, one was bought with federal funds, and one with private money.

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  21. “Birth Control Group Indicted in ‘Laundry’ Scheme,” American Medical News, February 18, 1974, p. 10.

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  22. Ibid.

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  23. Kristin A. Moore, “Trends in Teenage Fertility,” Child Trends, Inc., Washington, D.C., March 1994.

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  24. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sex and America’s Teenagers, New York and Washington: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994, p. 46.

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  25. Moore, “Trends.”

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  26. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sex and America’s Teenagers, p. 44.

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  27. E. F. Jones, J. D. Forrest, N. Goldman, S. K. Henshaw, R. Lincoln, J. I. Rosoff, C. F. Westoff, and D. Wolf, Teenage Pregnancy in Developed Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), cited in Lisbeth B. Schorr, Within Our Reach (New York: Anchor Press, 1988), p. 14.

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  28. Douglas Kirby, Richard P. Barth, Nancy Leland, and Joyce C. Febro, “Reducing the Risk: Impact of a New Curriculum on Sexual Risk-Taking,” Family Planning Perspectives 23, no. 6 (Nov/Dec 1991):253-254.

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  29. Ibid., pp. 261-262. The population studied is about 60 percent white, 20 percent Latino, 10 percent Asian, and 2 percent black.

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  30. L. S. Zabin, M. B. Hirsch, E. A. Smith, R. Streett, and J. B. Hardy, “Evaluation of a Pregnancy Prevention Program for Urban Teenagers,” Family Planning Perspectives 18:119, 1986.

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  31. Douglas Kirby, Cynthia Waszak, and Julie Ziegler, “Six School-Based Clinics: Their Reproductive Health Services and Impact on Sexual Behavior,” Family Planning Perspectives 23, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 1991):6-7.

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  32. Ibid., p. 11.

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  33. Ibid., p. 16.

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  34. Schorr, Within Our Reach, p. 13.

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  35. Ibid., p. 56.

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  36. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Washington Memo, December 9, 1994, p. 2.

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  37. James Trussell, “The Impact of Restricting Medicaid Financing for Abortion,” Family Planning Perspectives 12, no. 3 (May/June 1989):120–130.

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  38. Stanley K. Henshaw and Kathryn Kost, “Parental Involvement in Minors’ Abortion Decisions,” Family Planning Perspectives 24, no. 5 (September/October 1992): 196.

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  39. Cited in the Washington Post, December 13, 1992.

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  40. Sidney and Daniel Callahan, eds., Abortion: Understanding Differences (New York: Plenum Press, 1984).

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  41. Gilbert Y. Steiner, ed., The Abortion Dispute and the American System (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1983).

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  42. In 1992 Ms. Benshoof established a free-standing organization—the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy—to continue this work.

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  43. Stephen L. Carter, “Strife’s Dominion,” New Yorker, August 9, 1993, p. 86.

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  44. Ibid., p. 92.

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  1. The Ford Foundation, New York, New York, USA

    Oscar Harkavy

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Harkavy, O. (1995). Population Issues in the United States. In: Curbing Population Growth. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9906-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9906-4_7

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