AN UNREPORTED REVOLUTION IN POPULATION ECONOMICS Julian L. Simon In the 1980's a revolution occurred in scientific views toward the role of population growth in economic development. Revolution is usually the most newsworthy of events. Yet this revolution has gone unreported in the popular press, and conventional ideas therefore continue as before the revolution. The lack of news of this revolution is itself newsworthy. Any sample of the television news or the newspapers shows notables from Andrei Sakharov to Dan Rather repeating that more people on earth mean poorer lives now and worse prospects for the future. In a typical sample from the few months prior to this writing, World Bank president Barber Conable calls for population control because "poverty and rapid population growth reinforce each other" (Washington Post, July 16, 1990, p. A13)...Prince Philip advises us that "It must be obvious by now that further population growth in any country is undesirable" (Washington Post, May 8, 1990, p. A26)...37 Senators write President Bush in support of funding for population control (Washington Post, April 1, 1990, p. H1)...The Trilateral Commission and the American Assembly call for reduction in population growth (U. S. News and World Report, May 7, 1990)...Newsweek's year-ending cover story concluded that "Foremost of the new realities is the world's population problem" (December 25, 1990, p.44)...The president of NOW warns that continued population growth would be a "catastrophe" (Nat Hentoff in The Washington Post, July 29, 1989, p. A17)...The quotes could be multiplied indefinitely. Paul Ehrlich had an entire series, Assignment Earth, on the Today show in January, 1990, fingering overpopulation for "destroying the entire ecological system" and for every ill of humanity, without even token counter-comment. He was on the same Today show for five full minutes on each of three days in May, 1989, about the "problem" of "overpopulation", with nary a whiff of the "balance" that journalists pride themselves on. But this is an old story. Ehrlich has been on Johnny Carson's show for an unprecedented full hour -- more than once -- all the while complaining that the danger of population growth is being ignored by the media. The editorial and opinion writers chime in. Ellen Goodman laments "People Pollution" (Washington Post, March 3, 1990, p. A25)...Herblock cartoons the U. S. neglecting the "world population explosion" (Washington Post, July 19, 1990, p. A22) Hobart Rowen likens population growth to "the pond weed [which] grows in huge leaps" (Washington Post, April 1, 1990, p. H8). A Newsweek "My Turn" suggests giving every teen-age girl a check for up to $1200 each year that she does not have a baby "in order to stop the relentless increase of humanity" (Noel Perrin. "A Nonbearing Account", April 2, 1990, p. 9). A typical editorial in the Washington Post (June 3, 1989, p. A14) says that "in the developing world...fertility rates impede advances in economic growth, health, and educational opportunities". These ideas affect public events. In 1973, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's vote in Roe v. Wade was influenced by this idea, according to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong: "As Stewart saw it, abortion was becoming one reasonable solution to population control" (quoted in Newsweek of September 14, 1987, p. 33.). In 1989, when hearing the Webster case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor again brought the idea of overpopulation into a hypo- thetical question she asked of Charles Fried, former solicitor- general, "Do you think that the state has the right to, if in a future century we had a serious overpopulation problem, has a right to require women to have abortions after so many children?" The decision said: "If the secular analysis were based on a strict balancing of fiscal costs and benefits, the economic costs of unlimited childbearing would outweigh those of abortion" (whatever that means). And in a series of state supreme court decisions, unfounded demographic-economic notions have been adduced to support anti-abortion arguments, too. (Judith Simon, 1989). Erroneous belief about population growth has cost dearly in material terms. It has directed attention away from the factor that we now know is central in a country's economic development, its economic and political system. Economic reforms away from totalitarianism and central economic planning in poor countries probably would have been faster and more widespread if slow growth was not explained by recourse to population growth. And in rich countries, misdirected attention to population growth and the supposed consequence of natural resource shortage has caused waste through such programs as synthetic fuel promotion and the development of airplanes that would be appropriate for an age of greater scarcity. Our anti-natalist foreign policy also is dangerous politically because it risks being labeled racist, as happened to us when Indira Ghandi was overthrown because of her sterilization program. Furthermore, misplaced belief that population growth slows economic development provides support for inhumane programs of coercion and the denial of personal liberty in one of the most sacred and valued choices a family can make -- the number of children that it wishes to bear and raise -- in such countries as China, Indonesia, Vietnam. Given the nearly uniform blanket of assertion and belief, who would believe that scientists who study these matters have reversed their views from the earlier consensus that population growth is a key force holding back economic development? Yet this has indeed happened. By 1989, the economics profession has turned almost completely away from the previous view that population growth is a crucial negative factor in economic development. There is still controversy about whether population growth is even a minor negative factor in some cases, or whether it is beneficial in the long run. But there is no longer any support for the earlier view which was the basis for the U. S. policy and then the population policy of other countries. The "official" turning point came in 1986 with the publication of a report by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences, entitled Population Growth and Economic Development, which almost completely reversed an earlier report on the same subject from the same institution. The 1971 report said at the beginning of its "Overview": "[A] reduction in present rates of population growth is highly desirable from many points of view, because high fertility and rapid population growth have seriously adverse social and economic effects (p. 1)...Rapid population growth slows down the growth of per capital incomes in less developed countries (p. 2)." And it then proceeded to list the supposed ill effects upon savings, investment, food supplies, unemployment, modernization, technological change, industrialization, social effects, education, health and child development, and the environment. It is worth noting, however, that -- in a pattern now familiar in such reports -- many of the background chapters exhibit far less alarm, and state many more qualifications, than does the summary. For example, the 1971 report even notes: "Providing for the required resources seems overwhelmingly difficult when we look into the future, and yet, looking backward, we learn that man seems not to have failed...Specifically, mankind has not 'run out' of any critical resources" (pp. 16-17). While asserting that population growth is an obstacle to economic growth, it noted that "Unprecedented and still accelerating population growth has not prevented very rapid economic advance. Population growth, though not a negligible block to development and modernization, has also not been an overriding factor...Among individual less developed countries, moreover, the relation between income ...and rates of populatin growth has been low during the 1950's and again in the 1960's. The statistical relations are, if anything, positive in each case." (p. 27; interestingly, the volume did not mention Kuznets's pathbreaking investigations showing much the same thing, published four years earlier). And it goes on even more surprisingly: "Much the same patterns have held for the developed economies during the postwar decades. Here, however, one would expect population groth to have a positive impact on economic growth" (p. 28). Furthermore, the 1971 report makes clear that "We have limited outselves to relatively short-term and clear-cut issues...We have endeavored to examine the population problem as it affects us now-- and for the next 5 to 30 years", a period too short for any of the beneficial effects of babies currently being born to come into play (p. vi). Only now do I notice this moderation and balance from the 1971 volume. Undoubtedly typically, I took away an impression of only the alarming notes sounded in the summary, which referred only to speculations about the future, and ignored the evidence cited from the past that contradicted the speculations. The biased summary is an example of how science has been perverted in the service of zealous belief that population growth is a demon to humanity, and must be suppressed at all costs. Compare the 1986 report. On the specific issue of raw materials that has been the subject of so much alarm, 1986 NRC- NAS concluded: "The scarcity of exhaustible resources is at most a minor constraint on economic growth (p. 16)...the concern about the impact of rapid population growth on resource exhaustion has often been exaggerated (p. 17)." And it was quite unworried about most of the other effects that caused alarm in the 1971 report. The general conclusion goes only as far as "On balance, we reach the qualitative conclusion that slower population growth would be beneficial to economic development for most developing countries...(p. 17)" That is, 1986 NRC-NAS found forces operating in both positive and negative directions, its conclusion does not apply to all countries, and the size of the effect is not known even where it is believed to be present. This is a major break from the past monolithic characterization of additional people as a major drag upon development across the board. The background paper on macroeconomic-demographic models for the NAS-NRC report by Dennis Ahlburg concluded: It is widely believed that population growth has an adverse effect on economic growth in developing nations...However, a group of scholars have recently argued that the effects of population growth are neutral or may even be positive (no date, p. 2)... The early models found a very large negative impact of population growth on economic development. Subsequent models have found that while the short-run impact is negative it may not be as large as previously thought (Barlow-Davies, Bachue-Kenya, Simon, Kelley- Williamson) and may even be positive in the very long- run (Simon, Mohan). Other models have shown that demographic effects can vary widely across countries (Wheeler) and that population change has had little impact on the degree of urbanization in developing countries (Kelley-Williamson, Mohan). On the basis of this review of economic-demographic models, we concur with Preston that "population growth is not so overwhelmingly negative a factor for economic advance as to swamp the impact of all other influences. That is a worthwhile lesson that bears repeating, but it is no argument for faster demographic growth".(p. 47) Even earlier "establishment" recognition came in the 1984 report of the World Bank. That institution for many years has been the strongest and shrillest voice calling for reduction in the rate of population growth on the grounds that the world is running out of natural resources. In its 1984 World Development Report, however, the World Bank did an about-face and said that natural resources are not a reason to be concerned about population growth. Still earlier, in his Presidential Address to the Population Association of America (PAA) John Kantner (not an economist) took notice of the new thinking, but also denounced it. He recognized the excesses until then: "In this war against rapid population growth, truth often fell before expediency". And he asserted that though many demographers understood the "full complexity" of the "problem of rapid population growth...few of us made more than mild protest as the profession was borne to prominence on a Malthusian tide of alarm" (1982, p. 430). And he speculated why this was so: Heady times those, and something in it for everyone--the activist, the scholar, the foundation officer, the globe circling consultant, the wait-listed government official. World conferences, a Population Year, commissions, select committees, new centers for research and training, a growing supply of experts, pronouncements by world leaders and, most of all, money--lots of it (p. 430). Though he recognized that "There has been a sea change" in thinking, he lambasted it: The recent spate of revisionist writing ... asserts that the effect of population growth on development...is at best indeterminate and, as Colin Clark has argued for years, can sometimes be beneficial. The most prevalent form of analysis employed by the revisionist school is to selectively cite negative cases... The conclusions derived from selective citing of negative evidence have been reinforced by appeal to that arcanum of modern policy analysis, the computerized simulation -- a useful policy tool which, as in this case, is often abused. One can select among economic-demographic models, as among facts, to get the desired results -- a familiar problem to demographers. A current model (Simon, 1981) much admired by the revisionists and used to give further solidity to their argument. It is unarguably not legitimate (p. 436). "In sum, the revisionist case is a weak one, flawed in logic, method and empirical understanding (p. 437). Kantner treated the new thinking as dangerous. With Ismail Sirageldin he wrote: "This is not an area for frivolous approaches [they were referring to my work] or one where academics may contend confusedly with no great harm to anyone. It is an area where an effective mobilization of public will and commitment based on understanding of issues is essential" (1982, p. l73). The 1986 PAA Presidential Address by Paul Demeny also took notice that "Since the early 1980s a substantial shift has occurred in the balance of views" (p. 473). "The various lines of attack on the orthodoxy converge in a newly optimistic assessment of the population problem... In the extreme formulations, the problem is disposed of entirely. The more typical revisionist views, however, merely put the problem in its presumed deserved place: several drawers below its former niche" (p. 474). In a later article Demeny quoted with approval Colin Clark's assessment of the current situation as "Malthusianism in retreat" (1989, p. 38). (I do not quote Clark directly because the views of that great scientist are discredited for many by his being a Catholic, and even worse, a convert to that church.) Demeny is respectful of the "revisionist" view, but he says early on that "I will find it wanting" (p. 474) because the revisionist view does not call for population-policy rearrangements of society to allow for the negative externalities of children (though the present revisionist, at least, calls for the rearrangement of internalizing the externalities by privatising such services as housing and transportation in China.) The revolution in economic-demographic thought is evident in an outpouring of scholarly "reviews". Though the reviews vary in whether they consider the shift to be important but not revolutionary, or completely revolutionary, they all agree that what has come to be called the "revisionist" viewpoint cannot be ignored. To all, the view that population growth is either neutral or favorable to development in the long run is at least a controversial pole in a legitimate debate. And there is consensus that if population growth has a negative effect in any given country, it is not a factor of overwhelming importance. From the Introduction to a United Nations Expert Group Meeting on "Consequences of Rapid Population Growth in Developing Countries", August, 1988 (pre-published June, 1989): [T]he majority of popular writings during the 1970's portrayed population growth as a major obstacle to achieving economic development in the Third World. A major exception was the more balanced view found in the second edition of the Determinants and Consequences of Population Growth", published by the United Nations in 1974. During the 1980's, this more balanced view emphasizing the complexity of demographic-economic interrelations has re-emerged. The negative effects of population growth are now portrayed as less important than had been asserted during the previous decade, and some scholars have even indicated that potentially favourable effects may be non-negligible" (p. 1) From Geoffrey McNicoll of the Population Council in that organization's Population and Development Review: [T]here was a casual assumption by many that early efforts to model economic-demographic relationships had wrapped up the subject, demonstrating to general satisfaction the net adverse results of rapid population growth for the development effort...The assumption that the various studies of the consequences problem have cumulatively settled the matter might be plausible were there a reasonable consensus on where the balance of growth consequences lies. Such a consensus probably did exist in the 1960's, but is much less evident today. In the last decade a revisionist stream of thought has emerged that seems to cast doubt on the previous orthodoxy; rapid population growth, according to scholars of this persuasion, is often a neutral and can even be a positive factor in development. Hence the odd current situation of fundamental disagreement about the net impact of one of the most profound changes in social circumstances in the modern world -- a disagreement found, moreover, not in variant political or philosophical premises but in economic modeling and in readings of the empirical record (1984, pp. 177-178). From a recent article by T. N. Srinivasan entitled "Population Growth and Economic Development": Much of the concern about the deleterious effect of a rapid growth of population on economic development is based largely on the view that either household fertility decisions are exogenous or if endogenous, pervasive and significant externalities distort them. It is argued that this view is mistaken and that many of the alleged deleterious consequences result more from inappropriate policies and institutions than from rapid population growth. Thus policy reform and institutional change are called for, rather than policy interventions in private fertility decisions to counter these effects...(1987, abstract) To conclude, most of the arguments for a policy intervention in private household fertility decisions appear to be based either on an inappropriate association of undesirable social consequence due to other distortions in the society with individual fertility choices, or on associations that cannot be ruled out in theory but are empirically weak, if not exaggerated (p. 25). From "Population Growth Versus Economic Growth" by David E., Horlacher and F. Landis MacKellar: Contrary to the [earlier views of Coale and Hoover], this paper will advance the thesis that population growth has both beneficial and adverse effects and that we remain relatively uncertain concerning its net effect on development (1987, p. 1). The principal author of the 1986 NAS-NRC report, Samuel Preston, recently summarized the situation as follows: "Discussions of the role of population growth in economic progress have become markedly less alarmist in the past decade" (1987, p. 1987?????????). Allen Kelley recently reviewed the reviews, as well as the literature as a whole, for the American Economic Association's "official" Journal of Economic Literature. He finds that the recent work converges at a position much like that of the 1986 NRC-NAS, and he adds the interpretation that "in a number of countries the impact of population was probably negligible, and in some it may have been positive" (1988, p. 1715). Here as elsewhere he endorses the view that there has been a "revision" in thinking about the consequences of population. (In fact, he may be the person who coined the term.) Kelley himself has broadly shared this general view since at least 1970, one of the very few demographers who has done so. Until I re-examined the above statements when writing this article, I did not realize how massively the professional opinion has shifted on this matter. And the statements cited above are only those that arrived spontaneously in my mail, without my attempting to systematically survey the literature. The fallback position of some of the population-control enthusiasts says that the "revisionist" shift is due to the shift of larger political forces rather than to new discoveries of facts and theory -- "just politics". For example, Barbara Crane writes that "There is no doubt that the relatively sudden reversals we have seen in recent years reflect the influence of the New Right with the Reagan White House as well as in Congress" (1989, p. 126). But then why should one not think that previous positions were also "just" politics, especially given the huge political organizations maintained by the population and environmental organizations in Washington and elsewhere? What Crane et. al. are saying is: When government agencies agreed with us, that was because what we said was the scientific truth. But when the government no longer agreed with us, that is due to the other side's political machinations. Indeed, Hodgson (1988) extends this sort of analysis to the rise of the population-control orthodoxy, too. Orthodoxy's emergence is attributed to two sets of factors: first, the inability of demographic transition theory to explain several postwar demographic trends; second, the manner in which the Cold War, decolonization, and the influx of funds for fertility control changed American demographers' approach to the study of population trends. The recent rise of revisionism is attributed both to orthodoxy's difficulty in digesting the favorable economic and demographic trends of the 1970s and to the changes in the political and funding environments within which American demographers work (Abstract, p. 759). Please note that "revisionism" is treated in the above quote as simply a fait accompli. This indicates, I think, that it is not necessary to further multiply the quotations to prove that this shift in thinking has surely occurred. The issues that have been subject to revision include all the purported negative effects with which the doomsaying authors and organizations have taxed population growth -- income growth slowing, reduction in saving and investment, natural resource exhaustion, worsening of the food supply, hindering the supply of education -- the works. In each case, examination of the evidence leads to complete or near-complete exoneration of population growth and size. There has even been some "revisionist" research rebutting the charge that population growth promotes violence and war (Zuk, 1985; Simon, 1989, Cuhsan, forthcoming). This is not the place to review the intellectual history of the ideas underlying this "revision", or to discuss credit for the revolution, especially because it is difficult for me to either understand my own role clearly or to assess it without bias. Suffice it to say that William Petty in 1682 stated the key idea that human minds are the key element in human progress, and more minds on balance lead to more progress. Friedrich Engels grasped this idea in the context of modern science. Colin Clark was the first economist in the twentieth century to work systematically on these ideas, both theoretically and empirically, but he was dismissed as being "just" a Catholic and, even worse, a convert. Simon Kuznets provided the first statistical evidence that nations' economic growth is not negatively affected by their population growth. Ester Boserup surveyed anthropological and historical evidence to show that increased population density has led to an adoption of already- known but more arduous agricultural practices that use land more intensively, a process that points toward modern economic development. Harold Barnett provided theory and data proving that natural resources become more plentiful rather than more scarce as demand increases due to the growth in income and population. My 1980 article and 1981 book brought these ideas as well as my own and others' earlier research on this subject to the public at large, and by good luck they received sufficient attention that the scientific public was forced to take notice, which catalyzed the revision in thinking. (This technique of reaching the scientists by way of inquiries to them by non- scientists -- a technique which John K. Galbraith designed for use with his 1952 book American Capitalism -- probably was crucial. Until that time my 1977 book which provided the technical research underlying my 1981 book had received no attention at all, and almost surely would have continued in obscurity.) The scientific U-turn does not seem to matter to makers of policy and public opinion, however. The president of the same World Bank, Barber Conable, was still saying at the 1988 annual meeting of the World Bank that "curbing excessive population growth" is one of the key elements of the Bank's strategy with respect to world poverty. He said that it is "imperative that developing countries renew and expand efforts to limit population growth" (1988, p. 753). The commitment of the official organizations to the old beliefs and policy is evidenced in this comment by the then-head of AID's population program quoted in a Science article on the 1986 National Academy of Science work. Steven Sinding "said he felt enormous 'relief' at the [NAS] committee's conclusions". That it, AID was pleased that the report was sufficiently ambiguous that it could be interpreted as a warrant for business as usual. So what's to be done? I'm afraid the answer is: Nothing. Efforts to change the beliefs of the public and the assertions of journalists are likely to be a waste of time. A few columnists protest. Editorials appear in The Wall Street Journal and in a few other newspapers across the country, mostly in small cities. The Economist carries some right-thinking discussion, but even it still retains a sense of limits: "[I]t is surely inconceivable that the earth can support 14 billion people -- the eventual total now predicted by the United Nations -- at anything like the standard of living enjoyed today in middle-income countries such as Mexico and Malaysia, let alone that of the rich West" (Sept 12, 1989, p. 16). Some Catholic leaders speak out. A think tank such as Cato may hold a meeting. But the overall state of thought will remain as it is because this revolution in thought will not penetrate the fortress of belief. Typically, in the service of maintaining its treasured belief and urging U. S. funding for population programs, the Washington Post editorial of June 3 says that "The Chinese vehemently deny" forced abortions. This is despite the fact that the columns of the same newspaper not many months earlier contained a physician's account of forced abortions in Tibet, a couple of years earlier the paper's own staff reported on page 1 about coercive population control in China, and not long before The Wall Street Journal had carried quotations from official Chinese statements showing unmistakably that what the Chinese deny to the Washington Post they affirm as policy at home. Yet the editorial staff of the Post proceeds as if nothing more were known about the topic that what people thought they knew as fact two decades ago. The public often assumes that the very absence of contrary information means that the prevailing wisdom must be sound. Would that it were always so. But every school child in the Soviet Union has been taught a pack of lies about Soviet history. And there have been many episodes in the West when monolithic public belief has been all wrong on the facts. Near-unanimity is no guide to truth. Malcolm Muggeridge was the only foreign reporter in the famine area of the U. S. S. R. unaccompanied by Soviet officials in 1933 when Stalin's program of collectivization of agriculture killed perhaps 16 million human beings. Muggeridge described the horrors of the famine, and wrote of Stalin as "a bloodthirsty tyrant of unusual ferocity even by Russian standards". In response he was simply accused of being a liar. Meanwhile, the prevailing newspaper coverage -- typified by the New York Times -- talked about "plump cows and apple-cheeked dairy maids and plump, contented cows." Muggeridge concludes that "People, after all, believe lies, not because they are plausibly presented, but because they want to believe them. So their credulity is unshakable." Similarly, almost no one in American journalism seems to care about the tens of millions of children the Chinese government prevents couples from bringing into life with the one- child policy, with loss to the potential human beings as well as to the potential parents. Nor do discussions of human rights mention the scores of millions of women in China whose bodies are violated by Chinese policies which include forced insertion of IUD's, followed by subsequent X-ray surveillance to ensure that the IUD's have not been removed, and banning childbearing among those said to be "psychotic". A recent review of the politics of the matter noted that even the Reagan administration has paid no attention: "From the President and the Secretary of State on down, US diplomats dealing with China and speaking in public on overall US-China relations have scarcely even mentioned, much less condemned, China's population policy." (Crane and Finkle, 1989, p. 25). Twenty years after the first great spasm of environmental concern, the arena is again in the hands of the yahoos, the same people with the same ideas that have been discredited by events and by scientific research since then. The educated public and the journalists seem even more credulous than ever, and there are large numbers of professors on campuses who have been raised in this movement and now teach it as professionals, in comparison to the amateur zealots who powered the movement two decades ago without professional stake in carrying on. An incredible 80 percent of the U. S. public now agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost," up from about 40% in 1981. And in Britain, the proportion who "say the environment is one of the most important issues facing Britain" jumped from about 5 percent to about 35 percent from December, 1988 to July, 1989, extraordinary testimony to the power of modern communications. (The Economist, September 2, 1989, p. 4). The weight of these numbers is overwhelming. True, there has been a shift in the declared policy of the U. S. From the days of President Lyndon Johnson in the early 1960's until 1984, it was the policy of the U.S. to urge and even coerce developing countries to reduce their population growth rates. (See Phyllis Piotrow (1973) for an excellent history.) At the World Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974, the U.S. voice was the loudest in calling for population control. At the next World Population Conference in Mexico City in 1984, the official U.S. position was exactly the opposite, and said that population growth is "neutral" with respect to economic development. This adjustment of policy to scientific fact certainly is gratifying. Unfortunately, however, the policy statement is interpreted by both the pro-abortion and anti- abortion camps as pertaining solely to the abortion issue, though the entire statement contained just a few sentences about abortion. This partisan attention from both sides of that issue has caused the rest of the message to be forgotten except by a few foreign demographers. And its impact on larger issues gets lost in the welter of the argument about abortion. Planned Parenthood responded to the 1984 Mexico City policy with a continuing public-relations campaign of great breadth and expense. They have run a long series of full-page advertisements in such newspapers as The Washington Post and The New York Times, and large signs on buses and subways, attacking the U. S. position. Rather than considering the scientific argument on its merits, they simply refer to a putative conspiracy of "right-wing extremists" said to be "in the White House" who are supposed to lack compassion for the poor women of the world. Implicated in both cause and effect of this state of affairs is that there is not a single pro-people organizational address in journalists' rolodexes for them to turn to, in contrast to the enormous roster of organizations that work against population growth. The everlasting abortion wars absorb the energy that might otherwise be attracted to the more general issue of the value of human life. The abstraction of human life cannot compete in drama with hacked-up fetuses and back-alley operations. This situation inevitably worsens because the few people who might try to publicize the truth are scared off to start with, or give up in despair. At some point even a not-so-prudent person sees the handwriting on the wall, and stops devoting chunks of life to a losing cause. People who hear or read the central message expressed by "our side" often say that we are "just" optimists. We are indeed optimistic about the long-run future of humanity, though I reply with a line swiped from Herman Kahn: I'm not an optimist, I'm a realist. With respect, however, to the short-run likelihood that people in the Western countries will have an accurate assessment of the issues discussed here, and the probability of avoiding great losses of life and wealth as a result of faulty assessments, I am extremely pessimistic. In the long run, the inevitable forces of progress will roll over these intellectual obstacles. Population will grow, knowledge will increase, economies will develop, liberty will flourish. But the meantime there will be innumerable avoidable tragedies because the good news goes unreported. How sad that is. REFERENCES Ahlburg, Dennis A. "The Impact of Population Growth on Economic Growth in Developing Nations: the Evidence from Macroeconomic-Demographic Models ," no date. Conable, Barber, extracted in Population and Development Review, vol 14, December, 1988, pp. 753-755. Crane, Barbara, "Policy Responses to Population Growth: A Global Perspective", in Population and U. S. Policy, Principia College, 20-22 April, 1989 ----- and Jason L. Finele, "The United States, China, and the United Nations Population Fund", Population and Development Review, vol 15, March, 1989, pp23-60. Cuhsan, Alfred G., "Demographic Correlates of Political Instability in Latin America: The Impact of Population Growth, Density, and Urbanization", forthcoming in Review of Latin American Studies. Demeny, Paul, "Population and the Invisible Hand", Demography, vol 23, November, 1986, 473-488 -----"Demography and the Limits to Growth", Population and Development Review, forthcoming, 1989. Hodgson, Dennis, "Orthodoxy and Revisionism in American Demography", Population and Development Review, 14, December, 1988, 541-570. Horlacher, David E., and F. Landis MacKellar, "Population *Growth Versus Economic Growth (?)", xerox, 1987 Kantner, John F., "Population Policy and Political Atavism," Demography, volume 19, November, 1982, pp. 429-438 Kelley, Allen C., "Economic Consequences of Population Change in the Third World", Journal of Economic Literature, Dec, 1988, 1685-1728) McNicholl, Geoffrey, "Consequences of Rapid Population Growth: An Overview and Assessment", Population and Development Review, Volume 10, June, 1984, 177-240. Muggeridge, Malcolm, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol I: The Green Stick, New York: William Morrow, 1972, pp. 258, 274. National Academy of Sciences, Rapid Population Growth: Consequences and Policy Implictions (Baltimore: The Johns Hop- kins Univ Press, 1971). 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