The Population Investigation Committee is a United Kingdom social research group founded in 1936 by the council of the
British Eugenics Society
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
.
Its original members included
David V. Glass,
Griselda Rowntree
Griselda is a feminine given name from Germanic sources that is now used in English, Italian, and Spanish as well. According to the 1990 United States Census, the name was 1066th in popularity among females in the United States.
It has been su ...
and
J.W.B. Douglas.
Since the second world war it has been housed at the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
(LSE).
The PIC founded a journal, ''
Population Studies Population study is an interdisciplinary field of scientific study that uses various statistical methods and models to analyse, determine, address, and predict population challenges and trends from data collected through various data collection met ...
'' and also a Scholarship Fund for UK students studying for master's degrees in demography.
Formation
The origins of the PIC lie in an annual lecture of the Eugenics Society. On 16 February 1935, the Society's Galton Lecture was delivered by
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the University of Liverpool, and Chairman of the Eugenics Society's
Positive Eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
Committee. Entitled ‘Eugenics in the Light of Population Trends’, Carr-Saunders's lecture drew attention to the falling birth rate in Britain and his fears for what this meant for British society.
Carr-Saunders argued for a more structured approach to the topic of population and the creation of a "coherent population policy".
It was towards these ends that the Council of the Eugenics Society formed a research body – the Population Investigation Committee - in 1936.
At the first meeting of the PIC on 15 June 1936, Carr-Saunders was elected Chairman of the committee,
C.P. Blacker the General Secretary, and David Glass the Research Secretary. It was also resolved that the PIC would be an independent organisation to the Eugenics Society (and to other organisations who had appointed representatives to the PIC).
Despite Carr-Saunders original call for a "coherent population policy", the PIC's originating remit was towards research, not in formulating policy. As such, the PIC played a major role in a number of national surveys which sought to investigate the "medical, economic and social factors affecting changes in the population".
Research
The PIC has been involved in a number of social science research projects, the most notable were the
National Survey of Health and Development and the
Scottish Mental Survey of 1947.
The
National Survey of Health and Development developed from a Maternity Inquiry established in 1946 through a collaboration of the PIC with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The
Scottish Mental Survey of 1947 was carried out by the PIC in cooperation with the
Scottish Council for Research in Education
The Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) was set up by the Scottish teachers’ union (The Educational Institute of Scotland, EIS) and the Association of Directors of Education in 1928. At that time, there were no similar organisatio ...
.
Other research activities of the PIC included inquiries and surveys into fertility and birth control; marriage and divorce and the British Peerage.
''Population Studies''
The PIC's journal, ''Population Studies'', was established in 1947. It was the first English-language journal "exclusively concerned with
demography
Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...
".
''Population Studies'' was also the place of publication for much of the research carried out by the PIC.
Later years
It has been suggested that the research outputs of the PIC slowed down after the death of its then Chairman David Glass in 1978.
The work of the PIC remains centred around ''Population Studies'' even if since 2002 the journal has been published externally to the PIC. The PIC also retains interests in the postgraduate teaching of demography - it established a training programme in demography at the LSE in 1965
- and in recent years has maintained a Scholarship Fund (drawn from profits of ''Population Studies'') for the support of UK masters students studying demography.
Chairmen
The Chairmen of the PIC have been:
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders (1936-1958)
David Glass David Glass may refer to:
*David Glass (businessman) (1935–2020), American executive
*David Glass (Canadian politician) (1829–1906), Canadian lawyer and political figure
* David Glass (Israeli politician) (1936–2014), Israeli politician
*Davi ...
(1958-1978)
Prof. Ralph Dahrendorf (1978-1984)
Prof. Sir Tony Wrigley (1984-1991)
Prof. John Hobcraft (1991-2003)
Prof. John Cleland (2003- )
References
{{reflist
External links
Research Activities of the Population Investigation CommitteePIC timeline* The Population Investigation Committe
archivesare freely available online through
Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring "ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art". Founded in 2007, the Wellcome C ...
.
Demographics of the United Kingdom
Genetics in the United Kingdom
London School of Economics
Organisations based in the City of Westminster
Organizations established in 1936
Population
Research in the United Kingdom
Scientific organisations based in the United Kingdom