Population Council

The Population Council Annual Report 1957 The Population Council REPORTS OF THE EXECUTIVE OFFICERS For the Year Ended December 31, 19 57 Administrative 0 ffice: 0 ffice of the Medical Directo r: 230 Park Avenue The Rockefeller Institute New York 17, N .Y. New York 21, N.Y. The Population Council, Inc. BOARD OF TRUSTEES COMMITTEES FRANK G. BouDREAU FREDERICK OsBoRN President, President, FINANCE The Milbank Memorial Fund The Population Council joHN j. ScANLON, Chairma11 DETLEV w. BRONK THOMAS PARRAN Treasurer, President, Dean, Graduate School of Public Health, American Telephone & Telegraph Company The Rockefeller Institute University of Pittsburgh RAYMOND G. FISHER jAMES B. CoNANT joHN D. RocKEFELLER, 3RD, Chairman Director, Sales Research and Promotion, President Emeritus, Harvard University Chairman of the Board, Continental Can Company Former Ambassador to the The Rockefeller Foundation Federal Republic of Germany joHN D. LocKTON Treasurer, THEODORE W. ScHULTZ General Electric Company CARYL P. HASKINS Chairman, Department of Economics, President, University of Chicago Carnegie Institution of Washington CHARLES B. NEWTON Vice President, FRANK W. NoTESTEIN LEWIS L. STRAUSS Chase Manhattan Bank Director, Office of Population Research, Chairman, Princeton University Atomic Energy Commission joHN W. F. NEILL, Ex-officio Treasurer, The Population Council ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS FREDERICK OsBORN, President DEMOGRAPHIC FELLOWSHIPS DoNALD H. McLEAN, jR., Secretary jOHN W. F. NEILL, Treasurer P . K. WHELPTON, Chairman (Scripps Foundation for Research in PopuLation Problems) MARGUERITE H. KRAMER, Assistant Treasurer E. P. HUTCHINSON (Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania) DEMOGRAPHIC DIVISION MEDICAL DIVISION W. PARKER MAuLDIN (The Population Council) DuDLEY KIRK WARREN 0. NELSON Director Director W. PARKER MAULDIN MEDICAL ADVISORY SHELDON j. SEGAL Associate Director Assistant Director GEORGE W. CORNER, M.D. (The Rockefeller Institute) *VINCENT H. WHITNEY Associate Director ALAN F. GuTTMACHER, M.D. (Mt. Sinai Hospital) *On leave from Brown University. HowARD C. TAYLOR, ]R., M.D. (Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center) The Population Council Report of the President FoR THE YEAR 1957 IN 1957 the Population Council completed its fifth year of operation. In the five-year period its staff has grown from a skeleton force to include by the end of 1957 a Demographic Director and Associate Director, a Medical Director and Assistant Director, a demographic research office, and a well-equipped and staffed research laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute. The Council's expenditures for administration and appropria tions for grants, fellowships, research by its own staff and other purposes have risen from $147,263.37 in 1953, $254,703.04 in 1954, $420,375.08 in 1955, and $501,700.32 in 1956 to $776,697.26 in 1957. The geographical scope of the Council's activities has greatly ex panded. Foreign demographic grants and fellowships, which began with India, Japan and Egypt, have now been extended to include Burma, the Philippines, Pakistan, Vietnam, Korea and Taiwan; Brazil, Chile and Peru; Puerto Rico and Jamaica; Poland and Hungary; and exploratory work in Africa. Centers for scientific training in population studies, which in 1953 were limited to the United States and one or two European countries, are now available in India and Chile under the auspices of the United Nations, and other training centers are being planned. The Council's program of demographic and medical fellowships, which began in 1953 with awards to a few Fellows, mostly American, is now each year returning to work in their native countries a small but steady stream of men and women trained in demographic and medical research. Research on the physiology of reproduction has been encour aged by grants to laboratories not only in this country, but in Austria, Sweden, England, Denmark, Germany, Japan, India, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Canada and Israel. All these changes might seem to indicate that the Council is increasingly in a position to contribute to the understanding and so, perhaps, to the solution of problems of world population growth and change. But the larger scope of the Council's work must be balanced against the rate at which problems of population have themselves in creased during the same five years. 5 In this period world population is estimated to have grown by emotional or ideological approach could rapidly turn questions of popula 233 millions, a number greater than the total population of either the tion into highly divisive issues, and postpone their solution to a distant United States or of the Soviet Union in 1956. In most of western Europe future when it would be too late to avert disaster. the postwar upsurge in births has now ceased, and birth rates are stabi The scientific approach lays a base for the understanding of popula lized, at least temporarily, slightly above those of the prewar period. tion problems by the intellectual groups in every country and is the only This return to lower levels has not yet occurred in the United States, basis for developing sound policies for changing the fertility patterns though it is doubtful that our population will long continue to grow at of people when their rapid increase threatens their aspirations for better its present rate. It is in the countries where the populations are already conditions of living. Individual decisions as to size of family are then large in proportion to their developed or available resources, and where more likely to be made in a rational way, appropriate to the improvement tl1ere is a minimum base for economic growth, that we must expect the of family life. If intelligent pressures for change are to come from within most rapid increase in population during the next generation. The high the countries concerned, it is necessary to train men and women in death rates of many of these areas are dropping rapidly with the spread scientific procedures and to return them to jobs in their own countries of simple measures of public health and it is highly unlikely that their so that, as they establish themselves in positions of influence, they can birth rates will fall with anything like the same speed. The people in initiate and take part in programs of research and publication and in the several of these countries are at present increasing at a rate sufficient to training of a larger group of successors. double their numbers in each generation, and this rate of increase may The work of the Council received stimulus in 1957 from a grant well extend to other and larger areas in the near future. It is hard to see of one million dollars from the Ford Foundation, to be spent over a five how the levels of living for the mass of the people can be raised in the year period, and from a grant from the Markle Foundation for the face of continuous rapid increases in numbers. Council's Medical Division. Following on a previous grant from the In those countries which are already highly industrialized, pro Rockefeller Brothers Fund, construction is now going forward on en duction is increasing more rapidly than population. In the less indus larged laboratory space for the Council at the Rockefeller Institute for trialized countries the reverse is often the case; population tends to Medical Research. A grant has been made to the Council from the increase more rapidly than production. The disparity between individual National Institutes of Health in support of the work to be carried on consumption in the industrial countries and the individual consumption in this laboratory. Finally, gifts made by others to the National Committee in the underdeveloped countries is growing each year. The situation on Maternal Health, together with a substantial grant from the Council, bodes no good for the peace of the world. If corrective measures are to be have enabled the National Committee to undertake under the best taken, there needs first to be an understanding in the areas concerned of medical auspices an important program of research to evaluate the effec the retarding effect of too rapid population growth on the production and tiveness, acceptability, safety and cost of various methods and materials consumption of goods, the spread of education, and the improvement of of fertility control. health and of conditions of living generally. The Population Council The work of the Demographic and Medical Divisions is described continues to have as one of its major purposes the study of these problems by the respective Directors in the reports which follow. The enthusiasm by local personnel, trained in objective scientific methods and able to and dedication of a highly competent staff and the constant support and mterpret the results to their own people. encouragement of an unusual Board of Trustees continue to contribute The transfer to other countries of our experience in the scientific vital elements to the Council's work. study of population problems is important for a number of reasons. The social sciences in general, and the subdivision of demography in par ticular, are well advanced in the United States, but in most other coun tries outside of Europe they are unknown or barely making a beginning. The contribution which the United States can make in the next few years is unique. There is an opportunity here not only to disseminate knowledge, but to forestall an emotional approach to the complex and potentially explosive problems of population. The science of demography deals with the quantitative analysis of measurable units. Its findings, like those of any scientific inquiry, present demonstrable facts. These can provide a non-controversial approach to human problems. Such an ap proach is particularly important to the solution of problems of world population and the population problems of individual countries. An 6 7 In this period world population is estimated to have grown by emotional or ideological approach could rapidly turn questions of popula 233 millions, a number greater than the total population of either the tion into highly divisive issues, and postpone their solution to a distant United States or of the Soviet Union in 1956.

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