Abstract

PIP: A lecture on attitudes of different social classes and people of different political convictions toward development and population problems is summarized. Attitudes toward family planning vary greatly; the number of children felt to be the optimum is greater in lower-class families and less developed areas. The higher classes have always practiced family planning, while there is widespread indifference, although not hostility, among the lower classes. In Universities the medical schools are generally more favorable, while sociologists and eco nomists tend to be opposed. Politically, groups and countries of revolutionary tendency favor family planning, but are generally opposed to population control in principle, which they regard as a capitalist and imperialist policy, and as a palliative advocated by social reformers to decrease the pressures that would lead to revolution.