"Integrating research from anthropology, biology, and history, this book proposes a theory of demographic equilibrium. The author's hypothesis is that human beings, like many other species, are able to adjust their population numbers to the carrying capacity of the environment. Virginia Deane Abernethy points out that in response to perception of scarcity or abundance of resources, culturally mediated values, beliefs and behavioral patterns are modified in ways that can either raise or lower rates of population growth." "This work will inevitably be controversial because of its implications for the limits as well as the potential of public policy in both advanced and underdeveloped societies."--BOOK JACKET.