Population and policy in the USA.

Growing urbanization and urban disorders and violence in the 1960s led people in the United States to sense a deteriorating quality of life. Stirred up by publication of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich the American intellectual and youthful public became convinced that population was the problem. The government embraced a radical view of the population "problem. " The threat of overpopulation has no basis in fact for the United States. Growth has been slowing down each decade. The average number of children per family in 1973 was only 2.03 not even replacement level. A declining birthrate cannot solve the social problems in a society. Economic inequality pollution and wasteful use of natural resources are problems in the United States which will not be solved by a lowered birth rate. An added problem--aging of the population--will result from a declining birthrate.