Limiting Population Growth and the Ford Foundation Contribution.

Abstract

This book provides a comprehensive historical review of the Ford Foundations investment in the development of graduate education in the field of population. Academic population programs were established in several US universities in the early 1960s in time to address the critical need for the establishment of new population/family planning programs in Third World countries. The Ford Foundations lack of enforced direction of funding meant that high quality innovative programs could be quickly put in place. During the 1970s many of these graduate programs became orthodox components of their institutions--a trend that enhanced their respectability but weakened connections with the Third World. In recent years many of these programs have shifted from a family planning administration to health management emphasis in part because of declining foreign student enrollments. The Ford Foundation discontinued funding of university-based population programs as a result of many factors: an atmosphere of growing conservatism controversies about the value of technical aid assumption that the population problem has been solved and declining Foundation budgets. The author urges the Ford Foundation to reconsider this decision. The Foundations establishment of population centers has provided a major anchor for contemporary social demography. There are several reasons for continued involvement. Very little is known about reducing fertility in Africa the Middle East and much of South Asia. Moreover without an infusion of new ideas there is a danger of rigidity in both outlook and research approaches. There is an urgent need for small-scale experimental family planning projects and for long-term collaborative nonsurvey studies of the social and economic contexts of reproduction. The Ford Foundation could play a valuable role in this effort.