The Problem of an Optimum Population

Shall we aim to have a large or a limited population? This is major problem in the development of a population policy, and it is a question on which opinions differ. The manufacturer may see in a stationary or diminishing population a limitation of his market, whereas a smaller population may mean a higher standard of living for consumers. A patriotic militarist may have a very different idea of the optimum population from that of a labor leader. Similarly a real estate owner and a social worker may disagree concerning the most desirable numbers. Thus the population policy of the United States as it develops through the coming years will be affected by a variety of conflicting ideals and interests.

But while population policy is shaped by social wishes, knowledge may influence the decisions which are made. One influence may be the amount of unemployment which results from the displacement of men by machines and which may increase with the growing number of inventions. Similarly the methods of controlling the size of the population may differ. The policy of restricting immigration from Europe and of regulating the inflow from Mexico and Canada requires collective active while it is difficult to control social attitudes toward the natural rates of increase.

The future is likely to bring continuing discussion of the optimum population, which is turn may effect the validity of present predictions. The forces which determine the size of our population may be expected to vary from time to time, so that in the future numbers may fall and later rise again, but within the near future the prospect is for further decline in rates of increase, as the use of contraceptives may spread, if not among those religious groups which now bar them, certainly farther into the farming areas ad among the groups with lower incomes in cities and villages.

Source: Recent Social Trends in the United States, an examination of the social state of the United States at the end of the 1920s undertaken at the direction of President Herbert Hoover.