World Population Problems THE GROWTH OF WORLD POPULATION The population of the world, now somewhat in excess of three bi

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World Population Problems THE GROWTH OF WORLD POPULATION Thepopulation of the world, now somewhat in excess of three billionpersons, is growing at about two per cent a year, or faster than atany other period in man’s history. While there has been a steadyincrease of population growth during the past two or threecenturies, it has been especially rapid during the past 20 years.To appreciate the pace of population growth we should recall thatworld population doubled in about 1,700 years from the time ofChrist until the middle of the 17th century; it doubled again inabout 200 years, doubled again in less than 100, and, if thecurrent rate of population increase were to remain constant, woulddouble every 35 years. Moreover, this rate is still increasing. Tobe sure, the rate of increase cannot continue to grow much further.Even if the death rate were to fall to zero, at the present levelof human reproduction the growth rate would not be much in excessof three and one-half per cent per year, and the time required forworld population to double would not fall much below 20 years.Although the current two per cent a year does not sound like anextraordinary rate of increase, a few simple calculationsdemonstrate that such a rate of increase in human population couldnot possibly continue for more than a few hundred years. Had thisrate existed from the time of Christ to now, the world populationwould have increased in this period by a factor of about 7×1016; inother words, there would be about 20 million individuals in placeof each person now alive, or 100 people to each square foot. If thepresent world population should continue to increase at its presentrate of two per cent per year, then, within two centuries, therewill be more than 150 billion people. Calculations of this sortdemonstrate without question not only that the current continuedincrease in the rate of population growth must cease but also thatthis rate must decline again. There can be no doubt concerning thislong-term prognosis: Either the birth rate of the world must comedown or the death rate must go back up. POPULATION GROWTH INDIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD The rates of population growth are notthe same, of course, in all parts of the world. Among theindustrialized countries, Japan and most of the countries of Europeare now growing relatively slowly—doubling their populations in 50to 100 years. Another group of industrialized countries—the UnitedStates, the Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, andArgentina—are doubling their populations in 30 to 40 years,approximately the world average. The pre-industrial, low-income,and less-developed areas of the world, with two thirds of theworld’s population—including Asia (except Japan and the Asiaticpart of the Soviet Union), the southwestern Pacific islands(principally the Philippines and Indonesia), Thus, one canunderstand the varying rates of population growth of differentparts of the world by understanding what underlies their respectivebirth and death rates. THE REDUCTION OF FERTILITY AND MORTALITY INWESTERN EUROPE SINCE 1800 A brief, over-simplified history of thecourse of birth and death rates in western Europe since about 1800not only provides a frame of reference for understanding thecurrent birth and death rates in Europe, but also casts some lighton the present situation and prospects in other parts of the world.A simplified picture of the population history of a typical westernEuropean country is shown in Figure 1. Schematic presentation ofbirth and death rates in western Europe after 1800. (The time spanvaries roughly from 75 to 150 years.) Bottom of Form Figure 1. Thejagged interval in the early death rate and the recent birth rateis intended to indicate that all the rates are subject tosubstantial annual variation. The birth rate in 1800 was about 35per 1,000 population and the average number of children ever bornto women reaching age 45 was about five. The death rate in 1800averaged 25 to 30 per 1,000 population although, as indicated, itwas subject to variation because of episodic plagues, epidemics,and crop failures. The average expectation of life at birth was 35years or less. The current birth rate in western European countriesis 14 to 20 per 1,000 population with an average of two to threechildren born to a woman by the end of childbearing. The death rateis 7 to 11 per 1,000 population per year, and the expectation oflife at birth is about 70 years. The death rate declined, startingin the late 18th or early 19th century, partly because of bettertransport and communication, wider markets, and greaterproductivity, but more directly because of the development ofsanitation and, later, modern medicine. These developments, part ofthe changes in the whole complex of modern civilization, involvedscientific and technological advances in many areas, specificallyin public health, medicine, agriculture, and industry. Theimmediate cause of the decline in the birth rate was the increaseddeliberate control of fertility within marriage. The only importantexception to this statement relates to Ireland, where the declinein the birth rate was brought about by an increase of several yearsin the age at marriage combined with an increase of 10 to 15 percent in the proportion of people remaining single. The average ageat marriage rose to 28 and more than a fourth of Irish womenremained unmarried at age 45. In other countries, however, suchsocial changes have had either insignificant or favorable effectson the birth rate. In these countries—England, Wales, Scotland,Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, andFrance—the birth rate went down because of the practice ofcontraception among married couples. It is certain that there wasno decline in the reproductive capacity; in fact, with improvedhealth, the contrary is likely. Only a minor fraction of thedecline in western European fertility can be ascribed to theinvention of modern techniques of contraception On the other hand,in an urban, industrialized society, children are less of aneconomic asset and more of an economic burden. Among the socialfactors that might account for the change in attitude is thedecline in the importance of the family as an economic unit thathas accompanied the industrialization and modernization of Europe.In an industrialized economy, the family is no longer the unit ofproduction and individuals come to be judged by what they do ratherthan who they are. Children leave home to seek jobs and parents nolonger count on support by their children in their old age. As thiskind of modernization continues, public education, which isessential to the production of a literate labor force, is extendedto women, and thus the traditional subordinate role of women ismodified. Since the burden of child care falls primarily on women,their rise in status is probably an important element in thedevelopment of an attitude favoring the deliberate limitation offamily size. Finally, the social and economic changescharacteristic of industrialization and modernization of a countryare accompanied by and reinforce a rise of secularism, pragmatism,and rationalism in place of custom and tradition. Sincemodernization of a nation involves extension of deliberate humancontrol over an increasing range of the environment, it is notsurprising that people living in an economy undergoingindustrialization should extend the notion of deliberate andrational control to the question of whether or not birth shouldresult from their sexual activities. As the simplifiedrepresentation in Figure 1 indicates, the birth rate in westernEurope usually began its descent after the death rate had alreadyfallen substantially. (France is a partial exception. The declinein French births began late in the 18th century and the downwardcourses of the birth and death rates during the 19th century weremore or less parallel.) In general, the death rate appears to beaffected more immediately and automatically by industrialization.One may surmise that the birth rate responds more slowly becauseits reduction requires changes in more deeply seated customs. Thereis in most societies a consensus in favor of improving health andreducing the incidence of premature death. There is no suchconsensus for changes in attitudes and behavior needed to reducethe birth rate. DECLINING FERTILITY AND MORTALITY IN OTHERINDUSTRIALIZED AREAS The pattern of declining mortality andfertility that we have described for western Europe fits not onlythe western European countries upon which it is based but also,with suitable adjustment in the initial birth and death rates andin the time scale, eastern and southern Europe (with the exceptionof Albania), the Soviet Union, Japan, the United States, Australia,Canada, Argentina, and New Zealand. In short, every country thathas changed from a predominantly rural agrarian society to apredominantly industrial urban society and has extended publiceducation to near-universality, at least at the primary schoollevel, has had a major reduction in birth and death rates of thesort depicted in Figure 1. The jagged line describing the variablecurrent birth rate represents in some instances—notably the UnitedStates—a major recovery in the birth rate from its low point. Itmust be remembered, however, that this recovery has not been causedby a reversion to uncontrolled family size. In the United States,for example, one can scarcely imagine that married couples haveforgotten how to employ the contraceptive techniques that reducedthe birth rates to a level of mere replacement just before WorldWar II. We know, in fact, that more couples are skilled in the useof contraception today than ever before. (Nevertheless, effectivemethods of controlling family size are still unknown and unused bymany couples even in the United States.) The recent increase in thebirth rate has been the result largely of earlier and more nearlyuniversal marriage, the virtual disappearance of childless andone-child families, and a voluntary choice of two, three, or fourchildren by a vast majority of American couples. There has been nogeneral return to the very large family of pre-industrial times,although some segments of our society still produce many unwantedchildren. POPULATION TRENDS IN LESS-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES We turn nowto a comparison of the present situation in the less-developedareas with the demographic circumstances in western Europe prior tothe industrial revolution. Figure 2 presents the trends of birthand death rates in the less-developed areas in a rough schematicway similar to that employed in Figure 1. There are severalimportant differences between the circumstances in today’sless-developed areas and those in pre-industrial Europe. Note firstthat the birth rate in the less-developed areas is higher than itwas in pre-industrial western Europe. This difference results fromthe fact that in many less-developed countries almost all women atage 35 have married, and at an average age substantially less thanin 18th-century Europe. Second, many of the less-developed areas ofthe world today are much more densely populated than was westernEurope at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Moreover,there are few remaining areas comparable to North and South Americainto which a growing population could move and which could providerapidly expanding markets. Finally, and most significantly, thedeath rate in the less-developed areas is dropping very rapidly—adecline that looks almost vertical compared to the gradual declinein western Europe—and without regard to economic change. Theprecipitous decline in the death rate that is occurring in thelow-income countries of the world is a consequence of thedevelopment and application of low-cost public health techniques.Unlike Figure 2. Schematic presentation of birth and death rates inless-developed countries, mid-20th century. (The steep drop in thedeath rate from approximately 35 per thousand began at timesvarying roughly between 1940 and 1960 from country to country.) thecountries of western Europe, the less-developed areas have not hadto wait for the slow gradual development of medical science, norhave they had to await the possibly more rapid but still difficultprocess of constructing major sanitary engineering works and thebuild-up of a large inventory of expensive hospitals, public healthservices, and highly trained doctors. Instead, the less-developedareas have been able to import low-cost measures of controllingdisease, measures developed for the most part in the highlyindustrialized countries. The use of residual insecticides toprovide effective protection against malaria at a cost of no morethan 25 cents per capita per annum is an outstanding example. Otherinnovations include antibiotics and chemotherapy, and low-cost waysof providing safe water supplies and adequate environmentalsanitation in villages that in most other ways remain relativelyuntouched by modernization. The death rate in Ceylon was cut inhalf in less than a decade, and declines approaching this inrapidity are almost commonplace. The result of a precipitousdecline in mortality while the birth rate remains essentiallyunchanged is, of course, a very rapid acceleration in populationgrowth, reaching rates of three to three and one-half per cent.Mexico’s population, for example, has grown in recent years at arate of approximately three and one-half per cent a year. Thisextreme rate is undoubtedly due to temporary factors and wouldstabilize at not more than three per cent. But even at three percent per year, two centuries would see the population of Mexicogrow to about 13.5 billion people.If so, a course of action thatwould directly accelerate the decline in fertility becomes animportant part of the whole development effort which is directedtoward improving the quality of each individual’s life. POPULATIONTRENDS AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-INDUSTRIAL COUNTRIES Thecombination of high birth rates and low or rapidly declining deathrates now found in the less-developed countries implies twodifferent characteristics of the population that have importantimpli- cations for the pace of their economic development. Oneimportant characteristic is rapid growth, which is the immediateconsequence of the large and often growing difference between birthand death rates; the other is the heavy burden of child dependencywhich results from a high birth rate whether death rates are highor low.