New research by Associate Professor Miriam Bankovsky (co-authored with Professors Rebeca Gomez Betancourt and Marianne Johnson) has examined how three foundational economists – Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto and Knut Wicksell – connected family size with poverty in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
“Our research shows that economists approached reproduction differently to other fields. Economists focused on poverty alleviation, education, population health and the use of statistical data to guide policy.”
The study shows that while all three economists recognised a link between large families and poverty, they had very different views on whether economists should accept dominant moral views about contraception and birth control in their own times.
“For example, Marshall built institutionalised moral views into his work, rejecting contraception, advocating delayed marriage and sexual restraint.”
“In contrast, Pareto thought that economists should study people as they are, suspending moral and religious judgments, and he privately accepted birth control as a rational choice for managing family size and securing well-being in the face of economic shocks.”
“Wicksell took the most progressive position, arguing for legal access to contraception and universal sex education as tools for both poverty reduction and sexual expression.”
Associate Professor Bankovsky says these early debates reflect contemporary tensions, with several countries “rolling back legal protections on access to abortion and contraception, with access increasingly positioned not as an economic or public health issue, but rather as a moral problem.”
“But economists can assist,” she says. “Economists have always produced their work in response to social and political problems. If we can agree that valuable political and social goals include poverty reduction, intersectional justice across race and class, gender equality and wellbeing, then economists can use their skills and toolkits to promote these. Economics is always a contribution to public reason.”
The current research forms part of a broader book project with Rebeca Gomez Betancourt and Marianne Johnson exploring why and how economists engaged with birth control debates, from the early years of disciplinary professionalisation in economics, throughout the War on Poverty, and into the contemporary period.
