ABSTRACT
Hampered by political and religious prejudices associated with "birth control," United Nations programs got off to a very slow start, and only in the late 1960s were more than a handful of large-scale family planning programs operating in the underdeveloped world. A useful introduction to world population issues is found in Ronald Freedman, ed., Population: The Vital Revolution. With more than 30 nations trying or planning to reduce population growth and with numerous private and international organizations helping, the degree of unanimity as to the kind of measures needed is impressive. Curiously, it is hard to find in the population-policy movement any explicit discussion of long-range goals. The promised goal—to limit population growth so as to solve population problems—is a large order. Most discussions of the population crisis lead logically to zero population growth as the ultimate goal, because any growth rate, if continued, will eventually use up the earth.
