We must do no worse. The way to lower family size is to simply talk to people about overpopulation. I call this approach population education , rather than population control, because it's voluntary, and based on people making informed decisions. We also need to ask our government for less immigration, both legal and illegal. Otherwise, our small family gains will be in vain.
Many people confuse population growth with population density.
This study is about population density more than growth, although the two are obviously related. The correlation factor for the 1980-1990 period was .66. Because these correlations rely on relative values which are averaged over many years, they are independent of inflation and many other economic factors. See attached table for data. Data used was from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census .