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Negotiating the Problems of Population:
Demography, Ecology, and Family Planning in the Post-war United States
Edmund Ramsden
Centre for Medical History
University of Exeter
United Kingdom
© 2010 by Edmund Ramsden
e.ramsden@exeter.ac.uk
The subject of population has long proven controversial, so much so that the demographer Charles Westoff once described it as a "dirty word."[1] Its study and control has been associated with birth control activism, eugenics, even racial genocide. My research is focused on the ways in which the discipline of demography emerged and developed in association with social and political movements, and how its members negotiated the stigma that resulted from these associations. The success of demography has depended upon its perceived utility to policy, and yet this, in turn, has demanded that it stand apart as an objective science. Population has also existed as a site of intense contest, struggle and negotiation between disciplines, and as demography evolved as a social science in the United States, its members sought to discredit and distance themselves from the biological study of population dynamics. Particularly important to the discipline was the Population Council, founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1952. It was a professional organization that functioned to balance these two elements, walking a thin line that emphasized policy usefulness while retaining scientific credibility.
My research at the Rockefeller Archive Center has focused on the development of population science and policy in the United States from the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) early support of the field in the 1940s, through to the successes of the Population Council in promoting a voluntary family planning approach to the population problem, and culminating in the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future which reported in 1972. In my research visit of October 2009, I focused on the Population Council material relating to Bernard Berelson, who came to the Council in 1962 to oversee a communications research program, became vice-president in 1963, and president from 1968 until 1974. Berelson provides a particularly rich resource, not only due to his senior position in the Council and as a member of the Commission on Population Growth, but because he was so candid and direct in facing up to the political problems of reducing population growth. By attempting to develop a common framework that sidestepped accusations of racism and elitism, he was a key figure in addressing the American population problem. He was also a key figure in the well-publicized and often vitriolic debates with other population scientists and policy makers who sought more direct, even coercive, methods to lower population growth.
In this regard, I have focused my attention on the relationship between the demographers associated with the Population Council and the Commission on Population and an increasingly outspoken and influential community of ecologists who questioned the assumption that voluntary family planning would successfully limit population growth. While, in the 1940s, the field of ecology was seen as a means of placing the subject in broader social and scientific context, diminishing the need for a direct population control program, by the 1970s, ecology was at the forefront of attempts to instigate more direct, even coercive measures to limit population growth. Nevertheless, there are also similarities in the attempts of Population Council members to quell controversy by making population processes consistent with broader social values, and earlier attempts to avoid the stigma surrounding population by RF leaders. Indeed, it is this response to stigma, as much as the stigma itself, which has profoundly influenced the fortunes of the population field.
Human ecology and the study of population
In 1946, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) began a period of assessment into its future role in health. This would culminate in the amalgamation of the International Health Division (IHD) with the Medical Sciences to form a new Division of Medicine and Public Health in 1951. The IHD was not only considered costly and inflexible in its organization, but trustees and officers were concerned that the RF should address new, potentially critical social and medical problems. Of particular concern was the subject of population. The Director of the IHD,
George K. Strode, spoke of an "uneasiness" shared by all members of the RF "respecting certain implications of health work. Those of us who have worked in densely populated, economically backward areas are particularly aware of the dilemma. We ask ourselves what will happen to the people saved from malaria; whether in cheating the parasites, we are merely providing fodder for the ravages of famine."[2] While others such as John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Alan Gregg were by now publicly expressing their concerns, many others were cautious, fearing the controversy generated by population and birth control. The compromise was a survey of the field, with two demographers from the Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton, Frank Notestein and Irene Taeuber, and two RF officers, Roger F. Evans and Marshall C. Balfour, travelling to the Far East. The trip only strengthened their belief that urgent action was needed.
On his return, Balfour found himself paired with another officer, the medical entomologist Marston Bates. Their charge was to review the field of population and reflect on potential RF involvement. Balfour described himself as being "perplexed" by the appointment of Bates, and his concern would prove justified.[3] Bates' training and background were believed to "supplement" those of Balfour, and he was not attached to any division, but served as an assistant to the president, Chester Barnard.[4] Yet Balfour was not only uneasy with regards to Bates' temperament and enthusiasm, but concerned as to what, exactly, the biologist might bring to the population table: "Is the experience in the animal kingdom to be explored and correlated with human problems?"[5] Balfour's population education had, in contrast, resulted from his observation of "the demographers' thinking and the social scientists' approach." He was similarly unhappy at the decision to accept Lowell J. Reed's offer of office space at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, in preference to the OPR, as Reed sought to reinvigorate the university's tradition of population biology that he had established with Raymond Pearl.
Consistent with the views of demographers such as Notestein, Balfour recommended that the RF involve itself directly in a program of fertility control, suggesting Ceylon as the most feasible site.[6] Yet, with the field increasingly being described as one of "human ecology" rather than "population study," Balfour feared that any attempts to realize an operating program were rapidly disappearing. Balfour later described the concept of human ecology as having "added vagueness and confusion to our purpose more than anything else. At one time I thought the RF would interest itself in the field of population studies in some form. The vogue of talking about human ecology came over us. I resisted, but was in the minority."[7] The term had been preferred by the RF leadership, including Barnard, "out of respect for national prerogatives and sensitivity and to minimize opposition."[8] As Hugh Smith explained, "it is more inclusive and perhaps more acceptable to those who feel that population studies have a primary connotation of birth control."[9] While Balfour understood the concern to "camouflage the purpose by omitting the title 'Population,'" he described himself as being "bewildered" by the apparent need to borrow from "most of the biological sciences, public health, humanities, etc.," while population was the "real interest and crying need."[10] It was essential to retain concentration and focus on the main issue at hand -- fertility. With "ecology," however, the problems of population and the means of their solution were lost amidst a wide range of environmental factors.
This was, of course, precisely what many intended, and for those seeking to diffuse controversy, Bates was an astute appointment. He admitted that human ecology covered a lot of territory, such as man's relation with physical environment, resource utilization, relations between men and with other organisms: "Human ecology, in short, would seem to cover a good part of the cosmos of knowledge."[11] For Bates it was necessary to develop broad interdisciplinary programs in order to truly understand population dynamics. He derided the Princeton demographers for their specialization, excessive zeal and single-mindedness, and suggested that in order to understand fertility behavior, it was necessary to include the behavioral and biological sciences.[12] He also criticized some ecologists for being equally narrow-minded, such as members of the RF- funded Rodent Ecology Project at Johns Hopkins.
Established in 1942 to tackle Baltimore's burgeoning rat population through improved methods of poisoning, the Rodent Ecology Project's director, David E. Davis, was increasingly turning to ecological methods of control -- controlling rats through controlling space. In order to understand how alterations in the physical environment influenced rodent population dynamics, Davis employed the ecologist John B. Calhoun in 1946. Placing a number of rats in a quarter-acre pen behind his house in Towson, Maryland, and allowing their population to grow, Calhoun showed how crowding led to increased stress, strife, and the breakdown of social, psychological, and physiological systems. For Calhoun, the implications for humanity in crowded urban environments were apparent in the language that he used. He described how dominant or "boss" rats were able to secure territories in his "rat city," while crowding elsewhere ensured that the lives of the "plebeian families" were marked by constant violence, struggle, and disruption, severely increasing mortality.[13] The project was a potential candidate for support under the rubric of human ecology, as long as it could develop a "broad fundamental interest. Rat ecology alone will not qualify it."[14] While Calhoun was more comfortable exploiting connections between man and other animals, Davis was more cautious. For Bates, however, just because the social scientists needed to take heed of fundamental biological principles did not mean that biologists could ignore the significance of man's "cultural environment."[15] Having given Davis one final opportunity to outline how his ideas were relevant to RF interests in human ecology, Bates considered the result "quite disappointing": "It is probably perfectly good ecology, but I don't see the broader implications as he has set it up." [16]
While Bates shared Balfour's concern that the subject of population be addressed, it assumed such a fundamental role in Bates' vision of science and medicine, as to invalidate direct policy engagement. He spoke vaguely of a need to recognize "the inter-relatedness of things."[17] Here he turned to RF experience for examples: the public health officer recognizing the need for understanding agricultural practices, political and educational systems, living habits, and other aspects of community life; the General Education Board recognizing the need to improve agricultural production, health, and nutrition in order to advance education in the South. For Bates, the RF was already and inevitably engaged in human ecology, and his recommendation was to simply continue in its approach, albeit with a more explicit ecological rationale. His final report of 1951 on the subject allowed the RF to declare: "The Commission finds support in Dr. Bates' reflections for its own conclusion that, as an over-all policy, it would be wiser for The Rockefeller Foundation to continue the evolution of its health, agricultural, and related activities with a fresh, ecological point of view, than to wipe the slate clean for the ephemeral satisfaction of making a fresh start."[18]
Demography versus ecology
For many RF officers and trustees, the concept of "ecology" functioned to restrict controversy while encouraging communication across disciplinary boundaries. While the subject of population could also be seen as a site of tremendous interdisciplinary potential, it was too closely associated with the study and control of fertility -- not a field that RF members felt they could be directly involved in, let alone base a new division. Nevertheless, the RF was giving regular grants to the OPR from 1945 -- seen as providing a respectable social scientific approach to population studies, as opposed to the biological, and in 1952 John D. Rockefeller 3rd founded the Population Council. Supported by the Council, the science of demography grew so rapidly that in 1963, Vincent Whitney reported that the demand for demographers now outstripped supply.[19] Demographic study lent its support to family planning policy, and much of the stigma that had overshadowed the scientific study of sexual behavior, fertility, marriage and birth control began to dissipate. The birth control pill was approved by the FDA in 1960, and by 1965, the last legal restriction against birth control (in Connecticut) was dismissed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. For the first time, government seemed to conceive of lending its support to family planning as a means of incurring a political advantage. The President's Committee on Population and Family Planning of 1968 resulted in a Center of Population Research and a National Center for Family Planning Services, and in 1970, the prestigious Commission on Population Growth and the American Future was established by Congress. The United States would bolster attempts to reduce population growth throughout the world by showing "that we too had a population problem". [20]
This very success was also built on the Population Council's ability to avoid controversy. Under the leadership of Frank Notestein and Frederick Osborn, the Council focused on the unmet need or desire for family planning, identified through social demographic surveys. The population was constructed and enrolled as an aggregation of rational and potential birth control users, by-passing the need, and the stigma, of coercive policies associated with eugenic fears of degeneration or the Malthusian specter of over-population.[21] The concept of "quality" was crucial to this liberal approach to fertility rationalization, privileging the health and well-being of the mother, the education of the child, and the social mobility of the family. As
John D. Rockefeller 3rd declared in his testimony to Congress prior to the establishment of the Commission on Population Growth:
many people I fear have a negative reaction when they think of the population problem. This is, I believe, to a considerable extent because we use such words as population control and birth control. In reality, the reaction should be quite the reverse as the objective is the enrichment of life, not its restriction. What is at stake is human dignity and the attainment by the individual of his full potential... the quality of life for all of us.[22]
This approach was duly adopted by the Commission, directed as it was by Charles Westoff of the OPR, a close ally of the Population Council. In turn, Notestein and his successor as president of the Council, Bernard Berelson, were active advisors to the Commission, encouraging the so-called family planning approach to population problems. They were particularly concerned with the growing criticism of family planning by those such as Judith Blake and Kingsley Davis. For Davis, political expediency had been privileged over demographic reality, the family planning approach offering "an escape from consideration of the painful social and economic changes necessary to achieve fertility control."[23] For Blake, they had targeted the "excessive" fertility of poor and minority populations as the key to solving population growth, "all the while implying that the very considerable 'planned' fertility of most Americans inexplicably requires no government attention at all."[24]
Blake and Davis's criticisms were seen to fuel the more radical demands of biologists and ecologists who, demographers worried, were becoming so large and vocal a group "that the field of population is in danger of being taken over by them."[25] Paul Ehrlich, president of the organization Zero Population Growth, predicted a rapidly encroaching ecological holocaust as a direct result of population growth. He also drew from Calhoun's studies in rodent ecology and population density, which had now become more sophisticated and more widely publicized following his employment at the National Institute of Mental Health. As Calhoun argued in an influential paper published in 1962 in the Scientific American, crowding led to a range of social pathologies -- violence, sexual deviance, alienation, withdrawal. The pathologies witnessed among crowded animals were easily and quickly mapped upon those associated with crowded and poor urban residents, and Calhoun's rats made regular appearances in the propaganda materials of the population control movement. The association between fertility and family breakdown was there for all to see in the crowded rodent pens, as Mary Steichen Calderone of the Sex Information and Education Council argued: "Calhoun in his rat population studies has demonstrated all kinds of abnormal behavior patterns that follow crowding."[26]
For demographers, demands for more extreme measures of population control, such as taxation, cash payments, or even forcible sterilization, would further tarnish the ideal of population stabilization as inherently coercive and discriminatory. Dudley Kirk outlined what he and others perceived as a "basic difference" in approach between social scientists and biologists:
The biologist are using what is essentially a Malthusian approach and are saying that people will breed up to the level of subsistence and that one cannot count on the rationality of man. By contrast, the social scientists say that we are going through a vital revolution, through a period of demographic transition, and we assume that we are now in a period of disequilibrium, but there is a rational lag between the lowering of the death rate and of the birth rate.[27]
Berelson advised on how to deal with these unwelcome newcomers at the Commission proceedings. He suggested that Richard Scammon, former director of Census, go up against "Kingsley et al" in the session on policy: "As you know, he takes a very dovish position on population in the United States, and it would be useful for the Commission to hear him alongside some of the hawks."[28] He also accepted that they would have to hear some of the "ecological" groups and "conservation outfits." Berelson felt that the Council had been "somewhat unprepared for the recent upsurge of concern over the ecological-environmental side of population problems," and arranged a meeting to help bridge the "unhappy gulf".[29] The result was a productive collaboration between the Council and the more moderate Resources for the Future, whose Ronald Ridker contributed a Commission report that associated ecological destruction with mismanagement rather than population growth.[30] The significance of population distribution over size was flagged, and that fact that population density in cities was actually in decline was continuously emphasized, as the social psychologist Jonathan Freedman was commissioned to write a scathing critique of Calhoun's influence in the human sciences. While the reports contributed by the more radical ecologists Barry Commoner and Paul Ehrlich were included in a Commission volume edited by Ridker, they were differentiated from the main body of articles and placed at the end, under the sub-title, "Two Other Views."[31]
The Commission met regularly to carefully review and edit the varied contributions and the final report.[32] They were direct in their criticisms, with Notestein complaining that "It ought to be beneath the dignity of the Commission to pick up the tripe about density from animal experiments. If you think best, you can study human density -- but the cage tripe is surely beyond the pale."[33] The final report duly declared the dangers of crowding to be overrated and unproven, mere "speculation." Nevertheless, in spite of their criticisms of the ecologists for attracting controversy, there are some notable similarities between the approach of demographers in the Commission and that of RF trustees in the late 1940s. Both were responding to the continued stigma surrounding "population." This is even reflected in the very the wording of the Commission -- "American Future" being preferred in the place of "Population Policy."[34] Numerous historians have identified how seriously members of the OPR and the Population Council considered population growth to be essential to future social and economic stability. Yet they were simultaneously attempting to diffuse controversy by arguing that it was neither the cause nor cure for the nation's problems. In a similar vein, the Commission's public opinion survey had identified that the majority (64%) of the public agreed that it produced "a lot of social unrest and dissatisfaction."[35] Accordingly, the Commission's PBS film contained numerous scenes of crowded streets and parks to reflect the "loneliness, impersonality and alienation caused by the feeling that one is an insignificant individual in a city of millions."[36] Yet they simultaneously sought to diffuse concern over crowding as a source of social ills. As Berelson argued, population was a "pervasive pressure" on a variety of extant problems, "environment, race, crime, infant health, etc.", that needed to be attacked directly through other, more general and more integrated, social and public policy. The population problem was not all that could be associated with controversial politics and radical policy, such as: "sheer numbers, a high birth rate, densities, environmental deterioration, the welfare burden, minorities, and perhaps national security."[37] The Commissioners described population as "an intensifier and multiplier of whatever social political and ecological problems are facing the country, rather than a root cause. Some Commissioners expressed concern that the draft placed too much emphasis on 'population' per se as a 'problem.'"[38]
Conclusion
In spite of the attempts to quell controversy, the Commission's recommendations were not taken up by the Nixon administration, and for this reason, the Commission was deemed "a failure" by its executive director, Charles Westoff.[39] Yet this was not simply the consequence of the negative publicity surrounding family planning policy and population control as a method of racial "genocide," or the unease generated by its support for a policy of abortion upon request.[40] While historians have tended to focus on the controversies that have inhibited the development of population study and control policies, it is also important to examine the implications of demographers' attempts to respond to, and manage, this stigma. Westoff admitted that perhaps they had been victims of their own success in making the subject of population control consistent with general social values and with extant public policy, just as RF members had once sought to make the subject consistent with existing RF operations through the concept of human ecology. The Commission had emphasized that people were choosing to limit their family size of their own volition, that the urban crowds were decreasing and, in any case, did little harm to mental or physical health or the environment. Westoff noted how that they had been "betrayed ironically" by an accelerating decline in fertility with the decrease in unplanned and unwanted births as more and more people used contraceptive technologies. The sense of urgency with regards population problems had dissipated, and Westoff admitted that "it would be unrealistic to expect any sustained interest in a topic that appeared to be self-correcting."[41] For many demographers, it seemed that the focus of the Commission -- the control of America's population -- had been diluted, political acceptability coming at the cost of political exigency.[42]
Editor's Note: This research report is presented here with the author's permission but should not be cited or quoted without the author's consent.
Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online is a periodic publication of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Edited by Ken Rose and Erwin Levold. Research Reports Online is intended to foster the network of scholarship in the history of philanthropy and to highlight the diverse range of materials and subjects covered in the collections at the Rockefeller Archive Center. The reports are drawn from essays submitted by researchers who have visited the Archive Center, many of whom have received grants from the Archive Center to support their research.
The ideas and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and are not intended to represent the Rockefeller Archive Center.
ENDNOTES
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1. Quoted in B. Ruxin, "Westoff Rates Population Confab Success." Daily Princetonian (September 13, 1972), pp. 1, 3.
2. Statement by Strode in Presenting the Human Ecology Reports, Meeting of the Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, December 7, 1949, box 57, folder 310, Series 900,
RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
3. Balfour to Strode, December 22, 1948, box 51, folder 310, Series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
4. Strode to Balfour, December 10, 1948, box 51, folder 310, Series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
5. Balfour to Strode, ibid.
6. Meeting of the RF staff, September 27, 1949, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
7. Excerpt from a letter dated April 22, 1953, Balfour to R. P. Burden, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, and Balfour and Bates, Special Report to the Board of Scientific Directors of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: Human Ecology (Population), November 4, 1949, box 57, folder 312, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
8. "Population," RFE (Evans), informal notes of RF Interdivision meeting called by IHD, September 27, 1949. See also, Meeting of the RF staff, September 27, 1949, when Barnard "warned that, if and when, population work leads to birth control or fertility change the RF would probably divorce itself from any action program. Our association with a birth control movement might be interpreted as propaganda or an effort to influence public opinion, which is contrary to our policy and possibly dangerous to our charter." Box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
9. IHD staff meeting, September 20, 1949, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
10. Marshall C. Balfour, Officer's Diaries, October 4, 1949, p. 9-10, box 14, RG 12.1, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
11. Bates, "Reflections on Research in Human Ecology," AAAS Meeting, Cleveland, December 27, 1950, box 469, folder 3144, series 100, RG 2-1950. Also quoted in Report of Commission on Review of IHD, November, 1951, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
12. See Bates' diary, his memorandum, "The Biology of Human Populations," November 5, 1948, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, and his Human Ecology and the Rockefeller Foundation: Final Report to C. I. Barnard, October 22, 1951, box 57, folder 312, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
13. "The Fitness of the Environment," Rodent Ecology Project Report, 1950, p.7. RG 1.2, series 200, Box 58, Folder 478, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
14. GKS (Strode) Diary Excerpt, Wednesday November 5, 1947: discussions with Reed and Stebbins. RG 1.1, 200L, box 186, folder 2234, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
15. Diary, 6 March 1949, p. 22, RG 12.1, Officer's Diaries, Box 15, Marston Bates, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
16. Unfortunately, it seems that Davis's document has been lost, Bates having "filed it in the waste basket." Warren Weaver and Hugh Smith agreed with Bates' assessment - Memorandum from Bates to Weaver, 15 November 1950, RF, 1.2, Series 200, Box 58, Folder 479, RAC. Balfour had also confidently predicted: "I doubt if the rat population studies of Davis will have any early bearing on our problem." Balfour to Strode, ibid.
17. Bates, "Reflections," ibid.
18. Report of Commission on Review of IHD, November, 1951, box 57, folder 310, series 900, RG 3.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, emphasis in original.
19. Whitney, V. H., 1963. "Recruitment of Demographers: Background Paper," box 108, folder: PAA, Population Council Archives.
20. This comment was attributed to Leona Baumgartner. Bernard Berelson to John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Frank Notestein, November 10, 1964, box AD-37, Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, File I, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
21. For a concise yet comprehensive overview of this strategy, see: Oscar Harkavy, Frederick Jaffe, and Samuel Wishik, "Implementing DHEW Policy on Family planning and Population; A Consultants' Report," AD-64, unprocessed, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
22. Hearing Before the Committee of Government Operations, United States Senate, Ninety-first Congress, First Session on S. 2701, A Bill to Establish a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, September 15, 1969, Effects of Population Growth on Natural Resources and the Environment, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington D.C., pp. 201-202.
23. Kingsley Davis, letter, Science, 1968, pp. 827-829. While Notestein accepted that "there is much that is true in Davis's article... I cannot get it out of my head that the most effective way even to change attitudes is to enable people already motivated to reduce their fertility to do so." Notestein to Marion P. Bassett, November 20, 1967, box 48, folder: Notestein, Frank. W. D&I -- Ad. 67, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
24. Judith Blake, "Population Policy for Americans: Is the Government Being Misled?" Science, 1969,
pp. 522-529. Berelson's correspondence contains much relating to demographers' attempts to organize a response to Davis and Blake's articles, arguing that the family planning approach would achieve much in terms of lowering growth in ways that were consistent with existing social values. See for example, Notestein to Berelson, 12/7/67, box 4, folder 37; Westoff's "Reply to Blake," box AD-37, folder: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future -- Westoff; correspondence between Ronald Freedman and Berelson, May 1969, box AD-22, folder: Freedman, Population Council Papers,
Accession 2.
25. David Sills (Demographic Division, Population Council) to Berelson, 1/7/70, box AD-47, Ecology Meeting, March 6-7, 1970, Population Council Papers, Accession 2.
26. "Human Cost Accounting." In The Complete Book of Birth Control, North Hollywood: American Art Agency, 1965, p. 9, Box AD-64, unprocessed material, Population Council Papers, Accession 2.
27. Population Council meeting, Scientific Foundations of Population Policy with Particular Attention to Population Growth and Distribution in the United States, March 6-7, 1970, Notestein to Marion P. Bassett, November 20, 1967, box 47, Population Council Papers, Accession 2.
28. Berelson to Westoff, March 1, 1971, box AD-38, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
29. Berelson, memorandum to WPM (Mauldin) and DLS (Sills), January 6, 1970, box AD-47, Ecology Meeting, March 6-7, 1970, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
30. They developed a research and training program in the field of population/environment relations, overseen by David Sills. See box 47, folder Delete, Population Council Papers, Accession 2. Sills also had support in his attempts to bridge the divide between demographers and sociobiologists, ecologists and geneticists from Michael Teitelbaum -- See Teitelbaum to Sills, "Social-biology as it relates to PC programs," 12/23/71, box 23, folder 196, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
31. Ehrlich's paper, co-authored with J. P. Holdren, argued that population density was associated with increased aggression - "Impact of Population Growth." In R. Ridker, editor, Population, Resources and the Environment, U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future 3, Washington D.C., 1972.
32. See box 38, folder: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future -- Summary (meetings), Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
33. Notestein to Westoff, February 18, 1971.Berelson agreed, suggesting "There is no evidence that density and crowding leads to psychological disturbance in human populations." Berelson, The Commission's Reports: Tentative Outline, September 1970, box AD-38, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
34. It was agreed, for example, that the title of the document "Towards a United states Population Policy," for inclusion in the New York Times supplement on population should be changed to "Population and the American Future," and the document was voted not to be included in final report. Summary of the Commission meeting, February 24-25, 1972, box 38, folder: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future -- Summary (meetings), Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
35.Opinion poll carried out by Opinion Research Corporation: "Analysis of Commission's Public Opinion Survey," October 15, 1971, box 38, Folder: Growth and American Future, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
36. Script of film by Fisher Film Group, "Population and the American Future," shown on PBS November 29, 1972, box 38, folder: Commission TV Film, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
37. Letter, Berelson to Craig Fisher, August 24, 1972, box 38, folder: Commission TV Film, Population Council Papers, Accession 2. Notestein was again direct on this matter, writing to Westoff: "No, damn it all, here you list only the things that are superficial... Is it too much to ask that the Commission also include the fact that we are tending to blame population growth for our inadequate foresight and rotten economic mismanagement." February 18, 1971, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
38. Summary of Commission meeting, January 21-22, 1971, box 38, folder: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future -- Summary (meetings), Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
39. C. F. Westoff, Comments on Population Commission, organized by RP, May 10, 1976, box AD 24, folder: Westoff, Charles, Population Council Papers, Accession 2.
40. As social worker and family planning consultant, Naomi Gray, warned the Commission, "The lack of support for comprehensive health services... on the part of providing birth-control services in black communities created a...climate for the charge of genocide." William Hines, "Blacks equate birth control, genocide, panel told," Chicago Sun-Times, April 16, 1971, box AD-38, folder: America Future -- Population, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
41. Westoff, Comments on Population Commission, ibid.
42. For a revealing discussion over the Commission's final report where Davis and Otis Dudley Duncan expressed concern that they had gone too far in their attempts to avoid viewing population in "crisis" terms, inadvertently supporting a more general "pro-growth" philosophy. Summary of Commission Meeting, August 15-16, 1971, box AD-38, Population Council Archives, Accession 2.
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