Martin, I'm a little out of touch with this literature so maybe somebody will correctly if I'm wrong, but there's a lively field of research on factors which might influence family size which include things like educational attainment, economic security, and the availability of birth control. There's also a fair bit of information on large-scale policies such as the one-child/"family planning" policy in China and related issues such as gender-selective abortion (Google scholar provides plenty of references). Finally, I continue to see more historical work which digs up all sorts of interesting outcomes of past population control policies (e.g.-California prison sterilization program[1]). I think that hardly adds up to a ban and I would be surprised if any of these topics were not fair game for academic or government demographers. Sure it's a controversial topic, but so are policies on economic growth.
Krzysztof [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/09/200444613/californias-prison-sterilizations-reportedly-echoes-eugenics-era On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 8:52 PM, Martin Meiss <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm tired of people expressing deep thoughts about sustainability and > "green" this and "green" that and steady-state economics and never once > mentioning limiting the human population. I realize that people running > for public office dare not mention population control, but does the ban > extend to scientists and economists? > > Martin M. Meiss > > > 2013/9/24 Rob Dietz <[email protected]> > >> This short essay by Herman Daly describes the political ramifications of >> approaching the ecological limits to economic growth: >> http://steadystate.org/growth-and-laissez-faire/ >> >> Thanks, >> Rob >> -- >> Robert Dietz >> Author, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH - http://steadystate.org/enough-is-enough/ >> Editor, DALY NEWS - http://dalynews.org >> -- Krzysztof Sakrejda Organismic and Evolutionary Biology University of Massachusetts, Amherst 319 Morrill Science Center South 611 N. Pleasant Street Amherst, MA 01003 work #: 413-325-6555 email: [email protected] -----------------------------------------------
