12 



None of these centers that pushed administration of 

 family planning programs really has survived very well. 

 It's not really a university subject. It's sort of related 

 to agriculture, but not very much, it seemed to me at least, 

 and that's the way it pretty much turned out. 



I was really frowned upon by the population 

 establishment because of the way I looked at the problem. I 

 organized a committee of the National Academy of Sciences 

 which was handled staff-wise by a man named Murray Todd, who 

 was Harrison Brown's right-hand man in the Office of the 

 Foreign Secretary, to study the consequences of rapid 

 population growth. 



We published a book about 1970 or '71 called Rapid 

 Population Growth: Its Consequences and Policy Implications . 

 This was published by the Johns Hopkins Press for the 

 National Academy. This was really my major contribution to 

 the population problem. 



I still use it as a text for my course in population 

 studies here, particularly the chapter in it on population 

 policy. The chapter says that population policy must be 

 infused by ethical principles. That has many implications. 

 For example, you don't push things that people don't 

 understand. They have to understand what you're doing and 

 why you're doing it. You don't violate their mores. You 

 don't do something that harms the kids, harms the innocent. 

 You mustn't hurt the innocent. And various things like 

 that. 



Another thing we said was that population policy must 

 be integrated with overall government policy. It's not just 

 a separate thing by itself, pushing I.U.D.'s into girls' 

 vaginas. It's talking about food production and land tenure 

 and opportunity for education and the status of women. It 

 turns out that, in fact, probably the most important single 

 thing which brings about a decline in birthrates is an 

 iit^rovement in the status of women. The education of women, 

 legal rights for women, jobs for women, particularly jobs 

 outside the home. 



Sharp: Giving them more options than they had? 



Revelle: Giving them more options, exactly. 



At the present time there are a dozen less-developed 

 countries that have done pretty well in reducing birthrates, 

 particularly China, the biggest country of all, but also Sri 

 Lanka, Costa Rica, Barbados, Tunisia, Trinidad, Tobago, 

 Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong. 



All these countries of Chinese culture have got 

 relatively low birthrates, interestingly enough. There's 

 some kind of a lesson to be gained there. 



Sharp: In China there are monetary incentives and other kinds 

 of incentives that I understand have been used. 



Revelle; 



Well, they actually use social pressure more than anything 



