Population Politics: The Choices That Shape Our Future

International efforts to regulate fertility rates so that populations do not grow beyond the earth's capacity have included technical assistance & capital; improved health care conditions to lower the risk of infant mortality; increased opportunities to develop literacy; the democratization of governments; & several decades of liberal immigration & refugee policies favoring third world nations. The persistence of high fertility despite international efforts confounds demographers. Population Politics brilliantly dissects the paradigm responsible for the counterproductive efforts of nations & international agencies. Abernethy, a renowned anthropologist, shows why policies hamper the shift to lower fertility. Ireland, Indonesia, Cuba, China, Turkey & Egypt are but a few of the countries Abernethy examines, showing how economic, sociocultural, & agricultural factors that have caused population growth can be harnessed to stabilize population size. Population Politics is a provocative examination of the influence of aid & liberal immigration policies on world population growth, & often counterproductive to the role of the United States as an industrial power. This volume's uniquely interdisciplinary perspective will enlighten the lay reader, as well as demographers & epidemiologists, conservationists, reproduction & family specialists, agricultural economists, & public health personnel.

Virginia D. Abernethy is professor emeritus of psychiatry (anthropology) at Vanderbilt Medical School and was for 11 years the editor of the scholarly journal Population and Environment.