Population Control

The Emergence of Population Control as a Strategy of “Economic Development”

The ideology of population control has its antecedents in the late 18th and early 19th century writings of Thomas Malthus, who argued that population grows geometrically, while foodstuffs increase arithmetically. Thus, as population increases, the demand for food will eventually become greater than the supply for food. While Malthus did not focus on birth control as a general strategy for curbing population growth, except within very limited circumstances, his ideas were subsequently reworked by others. In particular, neo-Malthusians argue that excessive population growth is a major cause of poverty and that the limitation of fertility through birth control is a key avenue to economic prosperity.

The concerns of neo-Malthusians, particularly within the United States, became focused on the newly independent and poor countries of Asia and Africa, as well as of the Americas, after World War II. Despite its own postwar baby boom, the United States government noticed with alarm the relative fertility growth rates of “northern” versus “southern” countries, wherein the rates of the latter outstripped the rates of the former. As these countries themselves sought what has been called economic development after a long period of formal and informal imperial and colonial rule, the American public became concerned with population growth. In particular, there was concern that “excessive population growth” would contribute to and exacerbate conditions of “economic underdevelopment” and poverty, which were in turn seen as dangerous breeding grounds for communism. As a number of authors such as Susan Greenhalgh, Dennis Hodgson, and Susan Watkins have explained, the U.S. government thus became concerned with population control in poor countries as a strategy of national security. In the 1960s, this concern became central in U.S. foreign policy, and the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) launched its “inundation strategy” to broadly expand contraception and sterilization access around the world. Beyond such governmental action, the United States also provided funding to address these concerns among various national and international nongovernmental and academic organizations.

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