1. NUMBERS VERSUS WELFARE.
- Author
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Spengler, Joseph J.
- Subjects
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POPULATION research , *SOCIAL problems , *CONSERVATION of natural resources , *DEMOGRAPHY , *EMIGRATION & immigration , *APPLIED sociology - Abstract
The article focuses on population commission's report in the U.S. The report of the commission and the papers accompanying it constitute a remarkable document and suggestions that could, if expanded and fully translated into policy, bring a nearly optimum demographic state into being. While discussion of population questions in both quantitative and qualitative terms has commanded attention in America since even before the nation's founding, treatment of demographic matter has been circumscribed by particular premises and objectives which have never, at least until recently, been transformed into an approach that is systematic. With the disappearance of the frontier in the 1890's, attention was directed to conservation of resources and possible shortages of agricultural land and critical minerals. Congressional concern was directed less to problems of this sort, however, than to control of immigration, demand for which issued not from fear of excessive population growth but from concern about increasing ethnic and cultural heterogeneity, labor's fear of excessive competition from immigrant workers, and so on.
- Published
- 1972