Ford Grant Awarded To Population Center

The Harvard Center for Population Studies has been awarded a $393,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for research in problems of human ecology.

The grant is part of a $15.7 million program aimed at developing "simpler, safer, more effective" methods of birth control, McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation announced Sunday.

It will pay salaries and travel expenses for the Center's projects in "the economics and sociology of population change," Roger R. D. Revelle, director of the Center, said yesterday.

Religious Attitudes

Under the grant, the Center is studying religious atitudes toward family planning, population genetics, and the effect of population on resource development, Revelle said. Projects in India and Greece are currently being planned.

One branch of the Center's work not affected by the Ford Grant is its study of the physiology of human reproduction.

At the moment, engineers, divinity students, psychologists, computer experts, medical researchers, educators, and economists share in the Center's work. Revelle hopes the new grant will give students a greater sense of urgency about population problems.

Founded in '64

Founded in 1964, the Center has been operating for three years on another grant--of $500,000--from the Ford Foundation. The new grant, which Revelle describes as "absolutely essential," will enable the Center to continue a number of existing projects.

Currently, the Center is investigating population problems in both underdeveloped and highly urbanized societies. One panel at the Center is concerned with the position of women in Indian villages, and another is developing theories of space and population planning in the United States.

The United States panel is tackling the questions of optimum population in an advanced industrial society, and the roles of government, the private citizen, and the planner in creating an ideal urban government.