Research Catalog

Title

Population politics : the choices that shape our future / Virginia D. Abernethy ; with a foreword by Garrett Hardin.

Author

Abernethy, Virginia.

Publication

New York : Insight Books, ©1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 350 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

The United Nations has stated that the 1990s are the last possible decade for regulating fertility rates so that populations do not grow beyond the earth's capacity to sustain human life. Demographic experts are confounded by the persistence of high fertility in light of a number of circumstances that were expected to cause a decline, such as international dissemination of technical assistance and capital; improved health care conditions to lower the risk of infant mortality; increased opportunities to develop literacy in men and women; the democratization of governments; and several decades of liberal immigration and refugee policies favoring third-world nations. Population Politics brilliantly dissects the paradigm responsible for the counterproductive efforts of nations and international agencies. Virginia D. Abernethy, Ph. D., a renowned anthropologist, shows why support offered in the name of a "demographic transition" has been misdirected; why policies which do not encourage caution and restraint hamper the shift to lower fertility. Ireland, Indonesia, Cuba, China, Turkey, and Egypt are a few of the countries to which Dr. Abernethy looks, showing how economic, sociocultural, and agricultural factors have been both a cause of population growth and a way-of attempting to stabilize population size. The author stresses that motivation is the key to birth control and, using historical and cross-cultural data, hypothesizes that perception of limited resources is the chief stimulus. Renewed interest in limiting family size is seen in third-world countries, such as Sudan and Burma, where traditional patterns of delaying first births and increasing the interval between having one child and the next are reviving. Dr Abernethy proceeds with a fascinating critical perspective on population growth in the United States, relating it to twentieth-century industrialization, urbanization, fluctuations in the economy, and an "open door" immigration policy. All sectors of society have been affected. A growing population drives exploitation of the environment; the swelling workforce also undercuts the value of labor and is a disincentive to investing in ways that raise productivity. Population Politics: The Choices that Shape Our Future is a provocative examination of the influence of aid and liberal immigration policies on world population growth, and the role the United States is taking as an industrial power. It will enlighten the lay reader, as well as demographers and epidemiologists, conservationists, reproduction and family planning specialists, agricultural economists, and public health personnel.

Subject

• Population policy
• Fertility, Human
• Demographic transition
• Fertility
• Population
• Fertility
• Population Growth
• Public Policy
• population growth
• Population
• Demographic transition
• Fertility, Human
• Population policy
• Bevolkingspolitiek

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

I. Framing the Issues. 1. Growth: Why We Love It. 2. A Global Dilemma -- II. Why Growth Flies Out of Control. 3. Belief as Part of the Problem. 4. Cultural Brakes. 5. Where to Look for Balance. 6. Which Incentives? 7. Development Alone May Spur Population Growth. 8. Culture: Make or Break -- III. The Big Picture: Politics, Incentives, and Strategies. 9. One-World: A Global Folly. 10. Potlatching Twentieth-Century Style. 11. Helping While Not Harming. 12. Conservation, Incentives, and Ethics. 13. Limiting Factors -- IV. America: Past and Future. 14. Kissing the Blarney Stone and Other Tales. 15. History Does Not Stop. 16. The Path to Poverty. 17. All Our People. 18. The Carrying Capacity of the United States. 19. And Away We Go. 20. Let Freedom Ring. 21. Taking Hold.

ISBN

• 0306444615
• 9780306444616

LCCN

92041791

OCLC

• ocm27070738
• 27070738
• SCSB-1977701

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library