The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History PDF
Preview The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History
The State and the Stork The State and the Stork The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History derek s. hoff the university of chicago press chicago and london derek s. hoff is an associate professor of history at Kansas State University. He is also coauthor, with John Fliter, of Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Decision, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2012 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978-0-226-34762-2 (cloth) isbn- 13: 978-0-226-34765-3 (e- book) isbn- 10: 0-226-34762-1 (cloth) isbn- 10: 0-226-34765-6 (e- book) Portions of chapter 7 appeared in an earlier version as “‘Kick That Population Commission in the Ass’: Richard Nixon, the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, and the Defusing of the Population Bomb,” Journal of Policy History 22 (January 2010): 23–63. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hoff, Derek S. The state and the stork : the population debate and policy making in US history / Derek S. Hoff. pages. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn- 13: 978-0-226-34762-2 (cloth: alkaline paper) isbn- 10: 0-226-34762-1 (cloth: alkaline paper) isbn- 13: 978-0-226-34765-3 (e- book) isbn- 10: 0-226-34765-6 (e- book) 1. United States—Population policy. I. Title hb3505.h64 2012 363.90973—dc23 2012001903 o This paper meets the requirements of ansi/ niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). to the memory of isaac starr, and to jeanine Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 chapter 1. Foundations 14 chapter 2. The Birth of the Modern Population Debate 44 chapter 3. Population Depressed 72 chapter 4. Population Unbound 105 chapter 5. Managing the Great Society’s Population Growth 135 chapter 6. The New Environmental State and the Zero Population Growth Movement 165 chapter 7. Defusing the Population Bomb 195 chapter 8. Population Aged 219 Epilogue 243 Notes 249 Index 359 Acknowledgments This book would not exist had my mom not had a friend in graduate school in the early 1960s who was interested in American population issues long before the zero population movement rose to prominence at the end of that decade. A Yale biologist who teaches a class on popula- tion, Bob Wyman became a friend of mine as well, and I arrived at col- lege in the early 1990s curious about why population growth seemed off the table for serious national discussion when, just a generation earlier, millions of Americans had cared passionately about its perceived social, economic, and environmental hazards. I began graduate school with the inchoate idea of researching this question, and I am grateful that Don- ald Critchlow (who had just published his fi ne history of family planning policy) struck up a correspondence with a new Ph.D. student and encour- aged me to write a broad study of American population debates rather than another book on eugenics. A couple of my chapter titles come di- rectly from an ancient e-mail from Don. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but luckily my advisor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, Olivier Zunz, stresses a “big tent” approach to the study of history, and luckily I had magnifi cent mentors to guide me through a sprawling topic. John James patiently brought me to up to speed on modern economic theory, and our meetings in the Colonnade Club were some of my favorite mo- ments in graduate school. Charles McCurdy provided me ample access to his encyclopedic mind and pushed me to turn a jumbled mess into a co- herent study. Brian Balogh is a tough but charitable critic who taught me that historians should gladly participate in public debates. Professor Zunz provided indefatigable support. His contributions to this project and to my career are too numerous to fully describe, but I thank him for the
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