Good News

Birth rates are down, but...

The world's fertility rate is dropping, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities reported last week, principally because of delayed marriages and decisions to have smaller families. The U.N. study notes that most governments now recognize the need for comprehensive population policies. Even so, by the end of this decade alone there will be an estimated 738 million more people alive than there were in 1970. By the year 2000 more than 6 billion people will inhabit the planet, twice as many as in 1960. Worse yet, the population of the poorer, developing nations will account for 90% of the increase, multiplying problems of illiteracy, unemployment, poor health and scarcity of food.

Other major conclusions of the study:

P: In 1950 half the people in developed regions lived in the cities; two-thirds do so now, and 75% are expected to mob the cities by 2000. In less developed nations, heavy migration to the cities has swiftly changed the ratio of urban to rural dwellers. In Third World countries, one person in six lived in a city in 1950; one in three does so today. More than any other trend, the urban boom is "bound to have radical to revolutionary implications for national economic and social structures."

P: Even in Third World nations, where the incidence of disease remains chronically high, public health programs have resulted in a dramatic increase in life expectancy at birth, from just over 40 years in 1950 to 55 years now and a projected 63 years by 2000. At the same time, Third World birth rates are dropping, although they are still far above replacement level. This is not so in much of the First World: such countries as the U.S. and Japan are only slightly above zero population growth. The result: a "rising average age of the population and increasing proportions of the aged." The phenomenon will require a shift in social spending from child health and education to welfare systems for the old, but a smaller working population will have to bear the increasing cost. Moreover countries with dwindling populations, the report suggests obliquely, may face necessary "changes in political attitudes toward immigration.''

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