“A powerful model of how to understand the complex array of issues that will shape the political economy of population in the future.”—American Historical Review
From the founders’ fears that crowded cities would produce corruption, luxury, and vice to the zero population growth movement of the late 1960s to today’s widespread fears of an aging crisis as the Baby Boomers retire, the American population debate has always concerned much more than racial composition or resource exhaustion, the aspects of the debate usually emphasized by historians. In The State and the Stork, Derek Hoff draws on his extraordinary knowledge of the intersections between population and economic debates throughout American history to explain the many surprising ways that population anxieties have provoked unexpected policies and political developments—including the recent conservative revival. At once a fascinating history and a revelatory look at the deep origins of a crucial national conversation, The State and the Stork could not be timelier.
“Hoff has done a real service by bringing to the foreground the economic dimension of U.S. debates over population size and growth, a topic that has been relegated to the shadows for too long.”—Population and Development Review
“After decades of failed efforts by the scientific community to alert the public to the environmental dangers of population growth and overpopulation, a first-rate historian has finally detailed both the arguments and their policy implications … Everyone interested in population should read The State and the Stork. This is an incredibly timely book.”—Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb

Derek S. Hoff