Reminiscences: the role of foundations the Population Association of America Princeton University and the United Nations in fostering American interest in population problems.

Frederick Osborn: Ntestein pointed out in the latter part of his statement that the major determinant of attitudes toward population has been the course of great events including population growth. I believe he has failed to define an emerging and basic determinant of the importance of population studies. I think he implied and might have added a third casue of change in public attitudes-- the sudden realization that the very survival of man is threatened by the destructiveness of our technologic society and its weapons a development closely linked in the public mind with the growth of population. Fear that man may not survive strikes at the deepest chords in mans being. Nothing could change public opinion and public policy toward population as much as the fear of nonsurvival with which it appears linked. Inevitably demography becomes more important as (to paraphrase Corning and others) society national and global is recognized as a collective goal-directed survival enterprise within which the demographic discipline constitutes one of the functional divisions of labor. Such a society is in the making. In it problems of reproduction and child rearing of the distribution of births and of maintaining both genetic and social diversity become among the most important elements of social life. The course of world events will force demography to widen its horizons in interdependecny with all the disciplines involved in the study of man and his survival.(Full text)