The Population Threat

Stemming Fertility Rates and Migration Flows

THE CLINTON administration can ill-afford to ignore international population trends as it begins to formulate its key foreign policy initiatives. A decade ago the U.S. government performed an extraordinary about-face on this subject, and since then has paid insufficient heed to two increasingly salient sets of demographic issues: the need to forge a balanced and effective foreign assistance program aimed at moderating high fertility rates in the developing world; and the need for better monitoring of disturbingly large migration flows stemming from demographic/ethnic-based disputes.

During the 1980s the United States forfeited operational