Abstract
The twentieth century saw unprecedented efforts to measure, analyze, and control the world's population. Particularly after World War II, population control and demography—the social science of human population dynamics—developed in tandem and largely through the impetus of U.S.-based philanthropies. This article explains how U.S. actors exercised power over population in sovereign nations throughout the Global South and how demographic theory came to shape population policy worldwide. It contends that U.S.-based philanthropies gained global traction for their population control projects by developing demography as an ally and then leveraging its scientific authority to put population control on the foreign policy agenda of the U.S. government and on the nation-building and economic development agendas of countries in the Global South.
Highlights
The twentieth century saw unprecedented efforts to measure, analyze, and control the world’s population
This article explains how U.S actors exercised power over population in sovereign nations throughout the Global South and how demographic theory came to shape population policy worldwide. It contends that U.S.-based philanthropies gained global traction for their population control projects by developing demography as an ally and leveraging its scientific authority to put population control on the foreign policy agenda of the U.S government and on the nation-building and economic development agendas of countries in the Global South
Aiming to stem the tide of population growth, nongovernmental organizations based primarily in the United States leveraged demographic research to legitimate the establishment of family planning programs throughout the Global South in the 1950s; over the decade, a number of governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America promulgated their own policies aimed at reducing birth rates
Summary
The twentieth century saw unprecedented efforts to measure, analyze, and control the world’s population. The third section explores how U.S.-based philanthropies fostered the growth of demography in the United States and used it as a vehicle to promote population control as a key element of nation-building and economic development in the Global South, leading many developing countries to fund family planning programs aimed at slowing population growth What emerges from this history is a story about how U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations used science to mobilize the U.S government and sovereign governments worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century in support of their own agendas
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