I've been musing over different global statitistics, etc, and have come to the conclusion that I want to find a couple of books or short stories that discuss (either literally or through fiction) the results from having an excess of population, in particular relating people as a commodity (that can be affected by supply and demand with the end result being an excess of supply).  I know this is touched upon in several books (such discussion of welfare states as in some of Poul Anderson's books and Orson Scott Card's Shadow series), but the only books that I could think of that use it as the primary driving force were Asimov's robot series, and I was trying to find other books or series.

The classics are:

• Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison
• Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner

-Tom Hl.

 Another potential, this time from outside the SF/F community, is My Petition for More Space, by John Hersey. Though I don't remember how much info is given on the economy. . .

Make Room! Make Room! was made into a movie called Soylent Green in the 70s ... which is very dated now but is good for some laughs! If you enjoy Charlton Heston, you will enjoy it.

Thank You all,

I'd forgotten about Make Room! Make Room!, almost afraid to go to the library and re-read it though (I loved the Deathworld Trilogy when I was the same age, but re-read it recently and found it to be flat and lacking in true content).  (Charlton Heston is fun though -- "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!")

I've have been looking for an excuse to get a John Brunner book, this seems like a good one, and I've read John Hersey's accounts of Hiroshima, they were really good, I'll have to check that out.

There is a "sequel"  to Brave New World, the famous futuristic novel by Aldous Huxley.   It is entitled Brave New World Revisited, and it came out many years after the original BNW.   Its purpose was to show how the author's vision of an "engineered" society had come about in actuality.  One of the features of BNW was the way in which the State regulated human reproduction.

This may not be what you have in mind, but the first thing I thought of was Swift's A Modest Proposal.  It is satire, and not science fiction, but it is brief and available freely online, since it is long out of copyright, and certainly does have some ideas on human babies as a commodity.

You could try The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse by Dale Pendall. It's actually about the aftermath of world wide societal collapse, so it might be a slight frameshift from what you're looking for. It's a great book, though.  

I highly recommend the Wess'har War series by Karen Travis beginning with City of Pearl.  It's a fictional look at perceived environmental problems on several worlds, different alien cultural viewpoints - culminating in the 6th book which takes place on earth.  One of the main characters comes in contact with a biological life-form that causes immortality - hence the connection to overpopulation

Wow.  That sounds rather dry.  But it's not - I had to wait patiently for each new book to get written/published.  It was well worth it.  Lucky be the person who gets to start this series fresh.   

I am drawing a blank on the title, but I am going to describe a book to see if anyone else can get the title:

The world is divided into 3 major political blocks: The countries with farmland (Food Block/Fatties), the coutries with petroleum (Fuel block/Greasers) and those with a high population, -- who uses their population as virtual slaves (Service Block).

For the life of me, I cannot remember anything else...

Caves of Steel deals with mega cities. The collected Elijah Baley/Daneel Olivaw robot novels deal with the pressure of humanity and overpopulation as excess people try to move into space.

I'd also recommend Stand on Zanzibar by Brunner. Another of his that I really enjoyed in the dystopian genre is The Sheep Look Up. One of my favorites, actually. Probably means I need some sort of counseling...