The Growth of World Population Analysis of the Problems and Recommendations for Research and Training (1963) / Chapter Skim
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World Population Problems
World Population Problems
Pages 8-19
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From page 8... ...
While there has been a steady increase of population growth during the past two or three centuries, it has been especially rapid during the past 20 years. To appreciate the pace of population growth we should recall that world population doubled in about 1,700 years from the time of Christ until the middle of the 17th century; it doubled again in about 200 years, doubled again in less than 100, and, if the current rate of population increase were to remain constant, would double every 35 years.
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From page 9... ...
Annual growth rates in all these areas range from one and one-half to three and one-half per cent, doubling in 20 to 40 years. The rates of population growth of the various countries of the world are, with few exceptions, simply the differences between their birth rates and death rates.
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From page 10... ...
35 30 25 _ 20 _Birth Rate \ OWN, \ ah Rate \ \ \ 10 WAY Figure 1. Schematic presentation of birth and death rates in western Europe after 1800.
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From page 11... ...
The average expectation of life at birth was 35 years or less. The current birth rate in western European countries is 14 to 20 per 1,000 population with an average of two to three children born to a woman by the end of childbearing.
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From page 12... ...
In this instance, the decline in fertility was not the result of technical innovations in contraception, but of the decision of married couples to resort to folk methods known for centuries. Thus we must explain the decline in the western European birth rates in terms of why people were willing to modify their sexual behavior in order to have fewer children.
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From page 13... ...
In short, every country that has changed from a predominantly rural agrarian society to a predominantly industrial urban society and has extended public education to near-universality, at least at the primary school level, has had a major reduction in birth and death rates of the sort depicted in Figure 1. The jagged line describing the variable current birth rate represents in some instances-notably the United States-a major recovery in the birth rate from its Tow point.
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From page 14... ...
Finally, and most significantly, the death rate in the less-developed areas is dropping very rapidly-a decline that looks almost vertical compared to the gradual decline in western Europeand without regard to economic change. The precipitous decline in the death rate that is occurring in the low-income countries of the world is a consequence of the development and application of low-cost public health techniques.
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From page 15... ...
the countries of western Europe, the less-developed areas have not had to wait for the slow gradual development of medical science, nor have they had to await the possibly more rapid but still difficult process of constructing major sanitary engineering works and the build-up of a large inventory of expensive hospitals, public health 15
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From page 16... ...
POPULATION TRENDS AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-INDUSTRIAL COUNTRIES The combination of high birth rates and low or rapidly declining death rates now found in the less-developed countries implies two different characteristics of the population that have important impli 16
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From page 17... ...
The reason at least slight increases in per capita income appear feasible is that the low-income countries can import industrial and agricultural technology as well as medical technology. Briefly, the realistic question in the short run does not seem to be whether some increases in per capita income are possible while the population grows rapidly, but rather whether rapid population growth is a major deterrent to a rapid and continuing · .
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From page 18... ...
Net investment is investment in factories, roads, irrigation networks, and fertilizer plants, and also in education and training. The low-income countries find it difficult to mobilize resources for these purposes for three reasons: The pressure to use all available resources for current consumption is great; rapid population growth adds very substantially to the investment targets that must be met to achieve any given rate of increase in material well-being; and the very high proportions of children that result from high fertility demand that a larger portion of national output must be used to support a very large number of non-earning dependents.
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From page 19... ...
Economic progress will be slower and more doubtful if less-cleveloped areas wait for the supposedly inevitable impact of modernization on the birth rate. They run the risk that rapid population growth and adverse age distribution would themselves prevent the achievement of the very modernization they count on to bring the birth rate down.
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