Ansley J. Coale

Twenty years ago, there were two polarized positions with respect to the implications of population trends: one pessimistic and the other optimistic. The pessimists asserted that rapid population growth constituted a trap for the poorer countries: their best efforts to develop could serve only to maintain an ever larger population under unimproved or even deteriorating conditions. Those holding the optimistic counterposition denied any ominous implications of population growth, asserting that poverty was caused by remediable institutional defects, whether these be a highly unequal division of property, the capitalist system, or the unwarranted interference of the government in a free market.