Toward an Equitable Population Policy: Addressing Contemporary Eugenics and Social Inequality

Leonard Lopoo, Visiting Scholar, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Abstract: Policymakers spend a considerable amount of time discussing the economic and environmental consequences of all proposed legislation. The implications of public policy for our population are an afterthought, at best. This general lack of demographic attention in the policy arena has led to family planning policies targeting low-income Americans that have eugenic undertones, harming disadvantaged subgroups. I use the Medicaid Family Planning Program as a case study discussing both its history and what we can learn from its current form. I also collect data from a nationally representative set of Americans asking their opinions about government sponsored family planning programs. Finally, I propose a solution for our nation to generate a more equitable set of population policies.

Leonard Lopoo is the Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, professor of public administration and international affairs, director and co-founder of the Maxwell X Lab, and senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University. Lopoo has been on the faculty at Syracuse University since 2003. His research is interdisciplinary and his interests primarily involve the family: fertility, marriage, maternal employment and the social welfare policies designed to assist the low-income population. He has published in a number of journals, including Demography, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and Journal of Public Economics, among many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award (twice), the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award, the Meredith Professors Recognition Award, and the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize. Lopoo received a Ph.D. from the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago in 2001, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University from 2001-2003.