Time of great global demographic u-turn

In the late 19th century, the British biologist Francis Galton came up with a new field of population studies called eugenics (literally meaning “good birth”).

- Pramit Bhattacharya

Drawing on the work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin, Galton argued that the human race could be improved by encouraging the fittest members to have more children.

The eugenics movement spread across the West in the early part of the 20th century, with the focus gradually shifting from promoting desirable traits to removing undesirable traits.

In the US, this took the form of population control for minority groups (including forced sterilisations for African-Americans and native Americans). The movement took an even more horrific turn in Germany, with concentration camps designed to segregate, and eventually kill, those deemed undesirable by the Nazis.

The association with Nazism proved to be a death knell for eugenics. But the population control movement survived. In the post-War years, global concerns about food insecurity and environmental degradation stirred a new paranoia about population growth. The “undesirable” elements of the human race were now located in the Third World, rather than in the West.

The ideas of an 18th century economist and clergyman were used to drum up support for population control campaigns. In his 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, Robert Thomas Malthus had warned that population growth would soon outstrip global food supply. The Industrial Revolution proved Malthus wrong. It raised productivity across all spheres of the economy, including agriculture.