Derek S. Hoff. The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History.

Abstract

The state of the American population has been a political concern since Benjamin Franklin's 1751 essay on population growth in the colonies. While Derek S. Hoff's book takes us from Franklin to the late twentieth century, The State and the Stork goes beyond a narrative survey of population issues in the United States to offer a focused history of the political economy of population. Hoff's careful analysis of the history of American economic thought and population policies from the colonial era to the present provides an important and welcome complement to histories of demographers, eugenicists, and politicians. Hoff begins his narrative before Thomas Malthus had put pen to paper on the consequences of population growth. By laying out the tension between Jeffersonian optimism and Federalist concern, Hoff demonstrates that, even in this new national context, concerns over resource economics shaped how politicians viewed their growing populace. However, both population growth and economic growth were in flux and not necessarily in coordination with each other. The changing relationships between population growth, stability, and decline and economic growth, stability, and decline form the background for Hoff's historical consideration of how economists and policymakers have understood the interplay between population and economic trends.