This economic analysis of population policy assumes that human choices involved in the determination of population size are rational and are affected by economic and political circumstances. In advanced c ountries population growth depends primarily on fertility morbidity and migration are relatively small factors. The population bomb decried by many authors lies not in the fact that Americans want too many children but in the fact that contraception is not freely available to all to avoid unwanted children. Also the decried density of anticipated population is actually due to poor population distribution in this country. However a slower growth rate would be desirable. Those who feel that population growth in developed countries is more dangerous than population growth in underdeveloped countries because of higher consumption per person do not take into account the fact that persons in developed countries produce more per person and add more value to what is produced. An economic model of fertility decision-making by households is basically a model of demand for consumer durables. Children yield psychic income over a span of many years. The households demand for children is a function of income taste price of children prices of complementary and substitutable goods and the prevailing institutional or cultural environment. The direct cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in a family earning $9000 annually is about 13300. The indirect costs including the labor of the wife and the income she loses by being forced to quit her job amount to an additional $17600. Total cost is roughly $31000. Ways to decrease the demand for children include: raising wage rates for women to make the cost of children greater; not subsidizing day care for children thus raising the cost; lower tax deductions for children; changing welfare payments so that the amount increases as the child gets older and costs more and giving proportionately less for each additional child in the family; subsidizing birth control and other antinatalist measures. External issues such as a desire for larger populations to gain advantage in war or desire of ethnic groups for larger populations to gain more power operate against rational economic decisions. In a discussion by others which follows the rationality of a couples decision-making on children is questioned. It is also questioned whether people make rational choices concerning the welfare of their children or grandchildren; it is felt that people do not make fertility decisions with the conscious wish of doing what is best for society.