REPLY TO M. MOES AND MR. VILLARD.

This article presents repose of the authors on comments made by scholar Henry H. Villard on the paper "Investment Criteria, Productivity, and Economic Development" that was published in the August 1955 issue of the periodical "The Quarterly Journal of Economics." Villard raises issues, which the authors agree are important, and must be taken into account in any realistic discussion of economic development. The paper makes clear, the awareness of the fact that population must be regarded as a variable, rather than a constant, in development plans. One of the authors had already devoted a considerable amount of attention to the theoretical side of this question. But it is difficult to understand Villard's feeling of practical certainty about the productiveness of direct investment in factories making birth control devices, in the agricultural setting. No evidence is presented to support this assertion. Since he speaks only of devices, he evidently does not include the cost, both private and social, of achieving the revolution in mores, mental attitudes, and social and moral values, conducive to the acceptance of birth control. This is a delicate and perhaps explosive issue. A reading of the contributions of demographers and other experts who have been close students of this problem does not leave one with a feeling of practical certainty on this point.