Report on Population

The report submitted last March by the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future was broad in its scope and forthright in its recommendations. The close relationship between population size and most problems of natural resources and the environment sufficed in itself to make the document a landmark in both those areas. In addition, the report gave explicit attention to questions of resource adequacy and environmental quality.

"After two years of concentrated effort," the commission chairman, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, wrote in his letter of transmittal to the President, "we have concluded that, in the long run, no substantial benefits will result from further growth of the Nation's population, rather, that the gradual stabilization of our population through voluntary means would contribute significantly to the Nation's ability to solve its problems."

The idea is carried further in the report itself: "We have examined the effects that future growth alternatives are likely to have on our economy, society, government, resources, and environment and we have found no convincing argument for continued national population growth. On the contrary, the plusses seem to be on the side of slowing growth and eventually stopping it altogether. Indeed, there might be no reason to fear a decline in population once we are past the period of growth that is in store."

There was nothing in this conclusion to surprise anyone familiar with long-range population or resources problems; in fact, the emphasis on gradual stabilization struck some observers as being over-mild. But coming from a panel representing the highest level of national government, established by act of Congress on recommendation of the President, the report broke new ground.

Between 1900 and 1970 the U.S. population rose from about 76 million to almost 205 million. The annual rate of growth over that period was erratic. From 2.1 percent during the first decade of the century it fell to around 0.7 percent in the 1930s, rose to around 1.9 percent during the 1950s, the period of the "baby boom," and had fallen to around 1.1 percent by the time the commission completed its research late in 1971. But, as the report points out, even that low rate would add 2.25 million people a year because our population is now so large.

"We cannot predict how fast our population will grow in the years ahead," the report adds, "but we can be sure that, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, substantial additions to our numbers lie ahead. Our population has a potential for further growth greater than that of almost any other advanced country." Among the reasons cited is the preponderance of youth in the population. "The youngsters born during the baby boom are reaching adulthood today—finishing school, seeking jobs, developing careers, getting married, and having children of their own. Even if immigration from abroad ceased and couples had only two children on the average, just enough to replace themselves, our population would continue to grow for about 70 years."

In looking ahead, the commission drew several comparisons between an average of two children per family (approximately the current rate) and of three children per family (considered the norm until a few years ago). One hundred years from now the two-child family would result in a population about 350 million persons, whereas the three-child family would produce a total of nearly a billion.

In following out its mandate to look at all of the major implications of population growth in the United States, the commission, in addition to considering national trends, studied a number of special aspects. Among these was the impact of growth on natural resources and the environment. Other major topics were: (1) the distribution of population among urban and rural areas; (2) effects on the general economy; and (3) impacts upon government at all levels. Special attention was also given to problems of the aged, child care, racial and ethnic minorities, the status of women, and research and education needs. A series of research papers on such specialized subjects were planned as supplements to the main report. [One of these volumes, Population, Resources, and the Environment, primarily prepared by RFF, was published in December.] Although the commission concentrated on domestic aspects of population growth, the report at several points took note of the worldwide prospect as a problem of vast importance in its own right as well as for the United States.

The report noted that for the next three decades general economic growth will probably be a stronger factor than population in demand for nonfuel minerals, and technology the stronger factor in energy supply and demand. Population appeared to be more important in problems of regional water supply, agricultural land, and outdoor recreation. As for environmental quality, progress over the next 30 years was seen as depending more on direct efforts to reduce the emission of pollutants than on population growth. However, the report points out, many such programs will require more public regulation and restrictions on individual actions than Americans are accustomed to. Also, along with efforts to meet demands from resource materials, remedial actions will often call for introducing new technologies before we know enough about how they work and what their full effects will be. Population growth will aggravate such problems

The commission found that with regard to both resources and the environment "slower population growth can contribute to the Nation's ability to solve its problems . . . by providing an opportunity to devote resources to the quality of life rather than its quantity, and by 'buying time' . . . that is, slowing the pace at which problems accumulate so as to provide opportunity for orderly and democratic solutions."

The commission concluded that in the long run "population growth is one of the major factors affecting the demand for resources and the deterioration of the environment. The further we look into the future, the more important population becomes."

In the course of its report the commission offered 47 recommendations for action by government at various levels, schools and universities, professional groups, and the public at large. The wide range of suggestions included better childcare services, freer choice of housing in metropolitan areas, guidelines for national distribution of population, and expanded research and education on population problems.

In view of the commission's strong conviction that population growth should be first slowed and then stopped, and its emphasis upon voluntary methods, the recommendations on human reproduction were critical to the whole report. Here the commission met the main issue directly, though with a caution appropriate to so sensitive and controversial an area. Citing fragmentary evidence that suggests that a sizable fraction—perhaps one-sixth—of recent births in the United States was unwanted, or at least unplanned, the report observes that prevention of these births would have taken the country a long way, perhaps halfway, to the replacement level. (One gathers from other sections of the report that going the full way would have depended on education on population problems and principles and other long-term measures.) Steps recommended for reducing the number of unwanted births included the following:

—Greater investment in research and development of improved methods of contraception
—Elimination of legal restrictions on access to contraceptive information and services, and affirmative state legislation to permit minors as well as adults to receive such information and services
—Elimination of administrative restrictions on access to voluntary contraceptive sterilization
—Liberalization of state abortion laws (advocated primarily to offer women more freedom of choice and to get rid of quacks and shysters).

Five of the commission's 24 members dissented on various grounds from the last-named recommendation, the exact wording of which was: "Therefore, with the admonition that abortion not be considered a primary means of fertility control, the Commission recommends that present state laws restricting abortion be liberalized along the lines of the New York State statute, such abortions to be performed on request by licensed physicians under conditions of medical safety."

The commission's two-year life ended last March. It had discharged its formal responsibility by turning in a report outstanding for both its content and the clarity of its presentation. Issued as a paperback by a commercial publisher as well as by the Government Printing Office, the document was widely circulated and well received by the daily press and by periodicals. The public response might have been even greater had the U.S. birthrate not dropped so markedly during the life of the commission and (as noted below) continued to fall during 1972. This coincidence may have led some people to relax with a comfortable feeling that the population problem had gone away.

What next? Reports of other distinguished Congressional or Presidential commissions have received wide public attention and ended up by gathering dust in the files. It is still too early to say what will happen, but by the end of the year a few indications were apparent.

Organized effort to publicize and interpret the report will continue. A privately financed Citizens Committee on Population and the American Future was established at the request of the commission, and will operate for a year. One of the committee's first undertakings was a one-hour television film on the commission's findings which, on its first presentation late in November, was followed by another hour of discussion.

Official reactions to the report were mixed. The President, on whose recommendation the commission had been established, complimented the panel for performing a valuable public service, but declined at that time to "comment extensively on the contents and recommendations of the report." He added that the report would be studied by the executive branch and that its recommendations would be taken into account in policy and budgetary decisions. By the close of the year no results of any formal review had been made public, although in April the commission's executive director, Charles F. Westoff, testified on request before the President's Science Advisory Committee. The President did, however, publicly reject two of the commission's recommendations, commenting that open abortion policies "would demean human life," and that widespread distribution of family planning services and devices to minors "would do nothing to preserve and strengthen close family relationships."

The Administration's restrained reception was something of an anticlimax. After all, Mr. Nixon had been the first President to send Congress a major message on this politically touchy subject; ten years earlier President Eisenhower had said that birth control was not the government's business. The Administration's public response may have been influenced by the fact that the report was issued in a presidential election year; on the eve of a second term some of the early reactions should perhaps be discounted.

Congressional responses may also have been tempered by the election. Although no concrete legislative proposal had been advanced by the end of the year, members of the commission and its staff gave testimony, upon invitation, before the Urban Growth Subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the Task Force on Population Growth and Ecology of the House Republican Research Committee. The responses of the new 93rd Congress remain to be seen.

The downtrend in the U.S. population growth rate that the commission had noted in its report continued into 1972. The estimated fertility rate for the first nine months of the year, for the first time in the nation's history, fell below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. True, it was only a shade below—2.08 was the figure announced in December by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—but the contrast with the 2.39 figure for the corresponding months of 1971 is significant. So is the fact that last September was the 19th consecutive month in which the birth rate had been lower than for the same month in the previous year.

Despite a rise in the number of women of childbearing age, the total of 2.4 million births in the first nine months of 1972 was 9 percent down from the figure for the first nine months of 1971.

In the light of the most recent data, Census Bureau alternate projections for the year 2000, announced in mid-December, were about 20 million lower than those of two years earlier. The new projections range from a high of 300 million to a low of 251 million.

To those who believe, with the commission, that a stabilized population would be good for the country, the new figures are encouraging but not cause for complacency. Though useful as a benchmark, the much discussed 2.1 replacement level makes no allowance for immigration, which currently is adding about 400,000 new people a year, an increment which the Bureau of the Census assumed in making its new projections. Even if there were to be no more immigrants and if the fertility rate should stay around its new low level, the U.S. population would keep on growing until the middle of the next century. Furthermore, no one can be sure that the level of fertility won't turn upward again. It has taken great swings in the past, the all-time high of 1957 came less than 20 years after the previous low point of 2.2 in the Depression era.

Demographers, in and out of government, are keeping their fingers crossed.