The Costly Crowd

Duration: 1200 Feet

Year Published: 1961

Creator: Parthenon Pictures : Planned Parenthood

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: Sound

Description: Shows that the radical population expansion in the United States has created severe economical, social, political and human problems which will develop into serious threats to the soundness of this country if they go unheeded. Shows the fallacy of the premise that "more babies mean more business and prosperity for everyone".

Complete Record: Illustrates that rapidly increasing population strains a city's economic, transportation, housing, medical, educational, welfare, and other municipal resources. Through a dramatized search for answers to the problems of urban overcrowding by John Clayton, head of a metro Development Committee, the film argues against the reasoning that an increased population will pay for the needed services through its increased income and prosperity. The majority of the population expansion will occur in the urban slums among those with little disposable or taxable income and often dependent on welfare funds. Clayton finds his answer in the work of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its programs of research and education on effective, acceptable, and affordable birth control. Like many upper-echelon business men, John Clayton thinks of this so-called population explosion as a good thing--although as chairman of his city's Forward Planning Commission, he recognizes that more people will need more civic expenditures. But, as he tells his wife, the increasing population will finance those things with increased income. But then in a counterpoint pictorial sequence that will curl the hair of thinking citizens, he realizes the perilous truth. And unexpectedly, in the course of his work, he finds something he can do about it.

Metadata Source:Educational film guide. Supplements (1959-62)