
The myth that
the world is overpopulated and disasters will ensue as
a result was popularized in Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The
Population Bomb.
The myth remains popular today even as Ehrlich's predictions
turned out to be wildly off the mark. Not only was he wrong about
mass starvation by the end of the 1970s, notes Last, a senior
writer at The Weekly Standard, but he was wrong at exactly the time that fertility rates
began a steep drop in the U.S. and across the
world...
CP: You talk about how the 1969
book, The Population Bomb, warned that the
Earth is becoming overcrowded. Why do you think the myth that the
world is overcrowded persists?
Last: Part of it is
because we've been told it. The
book was enormously influential. It sold two million copies. It
really shaped the thinking of people who don't do this for a living
-- people who work in government, people in
the academy who actually don't study demographics full time were
enormously influenced by this. It's sort of gotten into the
bloodstream...
http://www.christianpost.com/news/interview-us-decline-ahead-without-more-babies-author-says-90287/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_control_in_Singapore#Stop_at_Two