Um, yes I did. I read it very thoroughly and I suggest you do the same. The quotes that you used demonstrates a misunderstanding of the intent of the wording and lack of comprehension of the English language as follows:
You emphasized the word appreciable and I am not sure why. In this context, all it means is that there was not a measurable increase in sterility. Nothing to see here.
But... it did not give prominence to the benefits of a restricted birth rate. The paper clearly states that there are many facets to the issue on many levels, including moral, per the following quote.
This specific quote did not state exactly what the perceived problem was, but a large chunk of the paper talked about the concerns of not having high enough numbers for effective population replacement. The concern was the decline in birth rates.
The paper did talk a lot about the the science of demography and the importance of tracking population numbers. It even talks about the adverse effect of birth control in it's reduction of fertility.
Then there is the obvious attack on the Sanger minds of the world...
"The short report on reproductive capacity is a sensible, level-headed
document which justly gives short shrift to obscurantist theories about ‘racial
degeneration’. Such legends as the supposed infecundity of third-generation
town dwellers are more often the product of befuddled or fanatical minds than
of sober evidence. "
This piece was very much pro-family.
Ok, so I mistook the meaning of "appreciable".
As far as prominence is concerned, I doubt if the reasons are of "moral" concerns. If they published a paper calling for world depopulation in 1949, and have been funding eugenic programs in pre-war years in United States, particularly FORCED STERILIZATION, their aims would be ANYTHING but increasing the population. It has not given prominence BECAUSE IT'S NOT A PAPER OF THE NEED OF STERILIZATION. It is a paper assessing (mainly via mathematical patterns and methods) fertility and the current status of birth and rates particularly by examining families.
And like I said before, if you read it thoroughly and connect the dots via their entire operations, you begin to eventually find what function this "piece" plays in the puzzle. It does not demonize or praise "family". It simply ASSESSING and ANALYZES it, based on the population then and gives probable figures based on that.
It is interesting that they deduced the fact that ongoing catastrophes including wars can play a disastorous role on world population.
Overall, I think this paper is full of BULLSHIT and twisted facts. One for example is this (Page 86):
"Although there have been many local or temporary variations—such as, for
example, were associated with the development or devastation of particular
areas—there have perhaps been only two major phases of human history when
large-scale expansions of population have been possible: the first in neolithic
times when, as Prof. Gordon Childe has pointed out,* the change from
a food-gathering society to a food-producing society was followed by a very
substantial increase in the human species ; the second in the Western world
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the discovery of new
methods of agriculture and other scientific advances greatly multiplied the
food-producing possibilities.
By and large, however, human population has always been subject to the
Malthusian checks, This fundamental fact of existence is to-day particularly
manifest in India and China, where the pressure of increasing numbers in
relation to inadequate food resources is the grimmest problem which now faces
mankind."
Problem is not really the population BUT THE POLITICAL tensions in those countries as well as the introduction of the BRITISH BASED BANKING SYSTEM. The more the population, the more man power to grow food, an more probability of human ingenuity (provided being able to operate under minimal restrictions such as in a FREE MARKET SYSTEM) to play the role curbing the needs of the population.
And here another thing to make note of (Page 95-96):
"Volume V also contains two contributions which no one interested in
demographic studies can afford to neglect. One is a careful analysis of the economic position of the family and of the effect of children on the parents’
standard of life. This reveals not only-as would be expected-that the marginal
income available for luxuries is lower in a family where there are children than
in a childless family, but also that the amount spent in rent by childless
families is greater than among families with children. In other words,
the
larger the family the poorer the quality of living accommodation, and both here
and in other ways the large family is at a serious economic disadvantage.(OF COURSE!! When living in a fraction reserve system, many FINANCIAL SHORTAGES follow that eventually branch out to other shortages and thus reducing the standard of living of society while benefiting the few)Let's go on in the same paragraph:
However, the inquiry was based on a survey carried out in 1937-38, and the
investigators admit that since then certain changes have occurred which have
improved the relative position of the larger family. These are food rationing
coupled with subsidies, resulting in a more equal distribution of foodstuffs per
head of population, the provision of cheap school meals and the payment of
family allowances.
Of course these changes, while benefiting the mass of the population, are of
little value to the professional and upper middle class. The cost of a public
school education nowadays makes a large gap in the net income of even a wellto-
do parent, and whereas the relative position of the family may have improved
since 1938 in the working and lower middle classes, in the upper middle class
the trend has been definitely in the reverse direction. (Hmmm...this was never a problem in medieval times mainly in NON-EUROPEAN civilizations such as the Arabs, Chinese, Africans, Aztecs before the British conquest. On the contrary, the more people THE BETTER in their system of government. Once again, BLAME HAVING MORE KIDS rather than the feudalistic scumbags and possibly the ass kissing "groom of the stools" who probably wrote this paper if not the Eugenists themselves!!).Your quote:
"This specific quote did not state exactly what the perceived problem was, but a large chunk of the paper talked about the concerns of not having high enough numbers for effective population replacement. The concern was the decline in birth rates."
NOT QUITE. It STATES that large populations may be a liability to the state IN FINANCIAL TERMS. And it basically ONCE AGAIN ANALYZES the growth, lack of birth, and increase in birth. There is no real quote in the paper to state that it is "concerned". ON THE CONTRARY, the opposite MAY BE true in the minds of those who wrote this paper. THE POPULATION IS THE PROBLEM!!
Speaking of Eugenics, here is a piece from the paper that may capture everyone's interest:
"Finally, we come to a discussion on The Relations between Intelligence and
Fertility.
Four psychologists and two geneticists have here set down their
views on what is one of the most vital problems of demography, namely, the
question whether we may be breeding from the less intelligent sections of
society and so gradually lowering with each generation the average level of
national intelligence. The views presented vary, but this is of smaller importance
than it might be because each authority qualifies his conclusions with a rider
that their validity is weakened by inadequacies in the data.
One thing is
certain: according to recent experience, the level of intelligence tends on the
average to diminish with increasing family size. But whether this is so because,
on the average, the parents of large families are less intelligent than the parents
of small families, or whether it is because the existence of a large family reduces
the advantages from which the children might profit in the course of their
growth and development, or whether some other unknown factor may be
responsible, cannot yet be definitely decided. We may hope, therefore, that
further data will be forthcoming in the near future from which a more
satisfactory conclusion can be derived.
Even if the first, and more pessimistic, conclusion is true it may nevertheless
be that the feature is transitional. The decline in the birth-rate has not taken
place uniformly throughout all groups of the community. If, as seems to be the
case, it has spread downwards affecting first the more intelligent, and later the
less intelligent groups, then during the period of transition a lower birth-rate
would automatically be thrown up by the more intelligent classes"
