Constructing the Reproductive Behavior of Poor People: Regulating Procreation by Public Aid Recipients from Malthus to Murray

Abstract

This article examines the influence of dominant thinkers, social welfare leaders, and popular authors who asserted that public aid stimulates recipients’ biological reproduction. This idea was first systematized by political economist Thomas Robert Malthus during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most notably in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthusian ideas on public aid and reproduction then influenced policy in the United States in the late nineteenth century. The ideas also provided a rationale for attacks on public aid programs in the mid-twentieth century and throughout the era of so-called welfare reform, typified by policies such as the family cap and other provisions initiated to regulate welfare recipients’ reproduction. These measures were influenced substantially by the work of political scientist Charles Murray. After presenting this history, the article explores implications of these ideas for current and future policy.