UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
|
| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
|
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This newsletter is being made available by the Population Information
Network (POPIN) Gopher/Web site of the United Nations Population Division,
Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, in
collaboration with the Population Reference Bureau and with funding from
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Population Today
Monthly newsletter of the Population Reference Bureau
December 1995, Vol 23, No. 12
Please note: The graphics that appeared in the printed copy of
Population Today have not been included here. For a complete
copy of Population Today, send $2.00 to Population Reference
Bureau,1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 520, Washington, D.C.
20009.
In this issue: ** Our Demographic Future: Predictions for the
Next 50 Years ** PRB's Population Bulletin: The First 50 Years
** Kenneth Boulding: Population Debate in Rhyme ** Plus: PRB's
new Home Page [http://www.prb.org/prb/]**
Our Demographic Future: Predictions for the Next 50 Years
This year, the Population Reference Bureau is celebrating 50
consecutive years of publishing our quarterly Population
Bulletin. This special issue of Population Today commemorates
one-half century of the Population Bulletin by looking one-
half century into the future. We asked experts and advocates
for their predictions: What will be the most important
demographic development in the next 50 years? The people we
asked ranged from well-known leaders in the field to young
people just starting out. We are grateful to all who
participated. Their responses attest to the inexorability of
continued population growth, the uncertainty about many key
outcomes, and the great importance of demography. We at PRB
hope that this special feature will stimulate thought about
our world's future, as viewed through the lens of demography.
For 50 years, the Population Bulletin has played a central
role in informing people about population issues. We have
provided a forum for the dissemination of the best research on
population, and made it accessible to generations of students,
advocates, policymakers, and population professionals. Across
the decades, PRB has been an innovator in building new
audiences for population information_from grade school
teachers to policymakers in developing countries. Thanks to
PRB's World Edition project, an influential set of senior
media editors in Africa, South America, and Asia have made
population trends part of their news beat. Our recent 13-part
radio series, World of Women, carried interviews of women
leaders_from Nafis Sadik to Hillary Clinton_around the world.
And, in response to Japan's emergence as the world's top
foreign aid donor, PRB this November hosted an unprecedented
meeting of U.S. and Japanese experts and public officials on
trends in Japanese population assistance.
In this issue, we also depart from our usual format of country
spotlights in order to give Population Bulletin editor Mary
Kent a chance to turn a spotlight on the history of the
venerable publication in her charge. No other population
periodical is older. Indeed, few periodicals of any kind reach
50. We are proud and happy with our longevity, and look
forward to exploring population issues in the year 2045.
Peter J. Donaldson
President
Population Reference Bureau
**
An emphasis on meeting people's unmet needs in regard to
reproductive and sexual health and family planning will result
in stronger and smaller families as a matter of choice,
contributing to slower population growth and the achievement of sustainable
development.
The international community's approach to population and
development challenges is now changing in ways that will
profoundly shape people's quality of life in the decades
ahead. Increasingly, governments and intergovernmental
organizations are coming to realize that development efforts
must focus on meeting the needs and protecting the human
rights of individual women and men, and that this requires the
full involvement of civil society. In the next 50 years,
women, communities, and nongovernmental organizations must
increasingly be empowered to participate at all levels in
developing and implementing programs so that everyone has
access to education, health care, and employment
opportunities.
Nafis Sadik
Executive Director
UN Population Fund
**
The next 50 years will see a continuation in the fall of birth
rates, to where absolute numbers of births will converge to
deaths in a stationary condition of 8 billion to 10 billion
world population. Around that average, birth rates will vary,
both over time and among countries. Death rates will also
fluctuate, with raging epidemics and occasional famines in
some places, unprecedented longevity in others.
Prosperity will be widespread, and so will poverty. Three
billion middle-class people and 5 billion poor will put
unbearable stress on the planet's ecology. The poor will press
against the boundaries of the rich, much of whose politics
will turn on keeping out a potential flood_of people and
disease. The drive to keep national boundaries congruent with
cultural boundaries could well be the most important trend of
all. There will be no "end of history" and certainly no end of
demographic history.
Nathan Keyfitz
Emeritus Professor of Population
Harvard University
**
The intersection of two demographic trends_the maintenance of
replacement- or near replacement-level fertility, plus the
steady increase in life expectancy_will expand the number of
life stages experienced by each individual. This will be
particularly noticeable for women, who have traditionally
spent the bulk of their adult life raising children. But the
average American girl born today has a life expectancy of 79.
So raising two, or possibly three, children to adulthood will
leave many years for other life activities.
Similar trends are at work in most countries, and they will
change men's life course, too. Both public and private
organizations will feel the effects as people make decisions
about their work life, their housing and living arrangements,
their financial planning, and their social support networks in
response to this demographic development.
Martha Farnsworth Riche
Director
U.S. Bureau of the Census
**
Skyrocketing growth in resource consumption will be the most
important demographic development in the next half century.
Rapid economic growth in populous countries such as China and
India_and the prospect of a huge middle class in those
countries aspiring to a western lifestyle_could place
unbearable pressures on renewable resources. The strain is
already beginning to show. For example, two-thirds of China's
cities face shortages of fresh water, and some urban areas are
actually sinking as their aquifers are depleted. Consumption
patterns are a crucial lever in our work to build a
sustainable future. As all demographers know, a population
increase of at least 3 billion is virtually inevitable. That
we cannot change. But if 8 billion humans were to consume
resources at the rate of late 20th century Americans,
unimaginable environmental devastation would result. That we
can change. It is up to us in the industrialized world to find
new, environmentally benign pathways to economic progress.
Susan E. Sechler
Executive Director
Pew Global Stewardship Initiative
**
My hunch is that the top demographic development over the next
50 years will be the speed with which developing countries
complete their transitions to lower fertility, so that total
world population in 2050 will be at or below the "low" variant
of current projections. Many forces will contribute, but the
underlying one will be the rapid diffusion of ideas and
resulting behavioral changes generated by changing
communications technologies.
Thomas W. Merrick
Senior Population Advisor
The World Bank
**
I predict that adolescent fertility rates will begin to
decline over the coming half century, and the average age of
first marriage will continue to rise to the point that teen
marriage becomes almost obsolete. For these predictions to
become reality, however, the population and health community
must make a concerted effort to understand the factors that
influence the sexual and reproductive health behaviors of
young adults and to design programs responsive to their needs.
Governments, nongovernmental organizations, and donor agencies
are beginning to address these issues, and I am convinced that
innovative programs and services will enable youth to make
informed and responsible choices about their sexual behavior.
By the year 2000, over half the world's population will be
under age 20. Whether global population size stabilizes at 8
billion, 12 billion, or higher will depend on the decisions of
all age groups, including young people.
Elizabeth Maguire
Director
Office of Population, USAID
**
Africa, the least urbanized continent, has the highest growth
rate. In 1950, only 15 percent of the African population
lived in cities. In 1992, that proportion was 33 percent and
it is expected to reach 42 percent by the end of the century.
In most African countries, there is a lack of balance in
the distribution of the population. A single city sometimes
shelters more than half a country's urban population.
In western Africa, the urbanization rate will probably surpass
60 percent by the year 2020, and its urban population will
have tripled since 1990. It is a striking picture: 30 cities
or so will have more than 1 million inhabitants instead of six
cities in 1990, and between Benin City and Accra there will in
all probability be five cities of 1 million-plus, holding 25
million inhabitants.
Accommodating these burgeoning urban populations is a
challenge that will require massive investment in
infrastructure and social services, as well as talented
statesmen with strong economic and administrative acumen.
Papa Syr Diagne
Population Consultant
Dakar, Senegal
**
As in the past, the major demographic shifts will arise from
changes in production technology. The dramatic improvements in
communication and information technologies will make one's
physical location increasingly irrelevant. Migration will
diminish. Central cities, built for the factory era, will
continue to lose population. More people will be able to work,
attend school, and be entertained at home, thereby reducing
the costs of children and exerting upward pressure on birth
rates. The attendant industrial shifts will continue to raise
women's wages relative to men's. Much of the greater economic
power of women will be directed towards creating and
maintaining intimate social relations, including those with
children and mates.
Samuel Preston
Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography
University of Pennsylvania
**
I predict that the most important demographic development in
the next 50 years will be the worldwide recognition that there
is an intimate connection between the size of the human
population and the state of earth's life support systems. This
will be accompanied by a realization that current levels of
overpopulation greatly increase the vulnerability of humanity
to catastrophe, and that it is in the common interest of
both rich and poor to work together to solve the human
predicament. That should lead to a determined effort to: 1)
gradually and humanely reduce human population size
(especially in the rich countries which have disproportionate
per-capita impacts); 2) limit wasteful consumption among the
rich to make room for needed growth among the poor; and 3)
transition to much more efficient, environmentally benign
technologies and cultural practices.
Whether this can be accomplished in time to avoid an enormous
increase in death rates from widespread loss of agricultural
productivity and/or deterioration of the epidemiological
environment is inherently unpredictable at the moment.
Paul R. Ehrlich
Bing Professor of Population Studies
Stanford University
**
Aside from the decline in mortality, the most important
demographic trend is the increase in the amounts of education
youths receive. It started in the 19th century in the advanced
countries, and accelerated in the 20th century in the entire
world. This trend is crucial for economic development; it
represents an increase in people's capacity to work
productively, and therefore to raise their standards of
living. Others also benefit from the new knowledge that these
educated people contribute. This trend also implies
opportunity for personal fulfillment rather than frustration
of aspirations for talented people everywhere.
The number of educated people has also been increasing,
because of increasing populations throughout the world. This
implies an increase in the total amount of knowledge that is
created, which increases the standard of living for the
community.
This trend in education will be the most important demographic
development of the next 50 years. And there is no obvious
reason why these trends should not continue indefinitely.
Julian L. Simon
Professor of Business Administration
College of Business and Management
University of Maryland
**
The urbanization of the world's population is likely to be one
of the most powerful demographic forces in the 21st century.
While the world's population is doubling, the world's urban
population is likely to triple. As a result, many of the
environmental problems of the 21st century are likely to be
the consequence of increased urban consumption. But
urbanization is also likely to accelerate declines in
fertility rates and increases in human capital.
Because urban opportunities attract migrants from many places,
urban areas are likely to be more culturally diverse than the
countryside. Also, migrants to cities bring their human
capital with them, but leave their social capital behind.
The continuation of the cultural diversity and the need to
reinvent urban social capital is likely to make governance the
biggest challenge of the rapid urbanization of the world's
population in the next century.
Barbara Boyle Torrey
Executive Director
Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
National Academy of Sciences
**
When PRB was founded 50 years ago, the prevailing view of
analysts was the gloomy Malthusian perspective that population
would grow more rapidly than production. Since then, there has
been a virtual explosion of information for all parts of the
world. It has become increasingly clear that population growth
and distribution are part of a complex set of
interrelationships that include land and land-based resources,
biological processes, technology, and aspirations for a better
life. The massive programs for economic development underway
or planned call for continued growth of information and an
ongoing analysis of the interrelationships between population
and development.
Conrad Taeuber
Emeritus Professor of Demography
Georgetown University
**
Over the next five decades, the most rapidly developing
countries of the developing world will complete the transition
from high to low fertility.
In consequence, these countries will have to cope with equally
rapid shifts in age structure, including slow or negative
growth at labor force ages. Each of these countries will have
some neighboring countries where the fertility transition has
been slower. The demographically induced disparities in labor
force growth will create large flows of labor between such
countries. Because of internal political pressures, a large
proportion of these flows will be illegal, or temporary.
Countries will resort to a number of strategies to minimize
the flows, including political pressures to increase their own
fertility levels. Meanwhile, the flows will dominate bilateral
and multilateral country relations. Accompanying the fertility
transition will be an equally rapid increase in levels of
urbanization. Large numbers of people in urban areas will
exacerbate urban problems.
Aphichat Chamratrithirong, Director
Varachai Thongthai and Philip Guest, Research Associates
Institute for Population and Social Research
Mahidol University, Thailand
**
The next 50 years will see a dramatic intensification of the
costs of raising children, and the assignment of these costs
to a declining proportion of willing and able parents_mostly
mothers. At the societal level there is currently an
increasing unwillingness to invest in the education and health
of the next generation. At the individual and family level, an
increasing proportion of children are receiving the economic
and social support of just one parent.
Unless societies can make adequate public investment in the
next generation and encourage a more equitable distribution of
the costs of children at the private level, I foresee the
welfare of adults and children being explicitly traded off
against one another. Some adults will avoid becoming parents
or minimize investments in their children. Some politicians
will play the generations off against each other. Just at the
moment when demographic factors would incline towards more
care and attention towards children, we will see less.
Judith Bruce
Program Director, Gender, Family and Development Program
The Population Council
**
The first part of the 21st century could be for the world what
the 19th century was for the now-developed nations. As in the
19th century, global integration and technological change will
forcefully affect national labor markets and urbanization
processes. Burgeoning urban agglomerations will be sharply
divided between wealthy and poor, exacerbating health and
mortality risks. The economic polarization of the past will be
reproduced on a greater scale. Vast contingents of people will
be forced from their old traditional environments only to find
themselves with no viable alternatives. International
migration regimes will experience tremendous pressures.
If, by the middle of the 21st century, most of the currently
less advanced countries manage to couple the demographic
transition with the educational, technical, and
socialpolitical revolutions of modern times, then the world
will be able to look confidently towards the future.
Francisco Alba
Professor of Sociology
El Colegio de Mexico
**
In five years, the world will have two demographic
billionaires, when India's population reaches 1 billion
persons as China's did 10 years ago. Almost two of every five
citizens in the world during the next half century will live
in these two countries. And in 2050, India and China together
will have as many people as now live in the developing
world_3.2 million persons. China and India not only share
responsibility for a significant portion of the continuing
momentum in world population growth but also comprise two of
the world's largest labor, commercial, and trade markets and
contain two of its oldest major cultures and languages.
Populations in these two countries, if properly nurtured, will
constitute important human capital for world economic
development, and globalized communications will play a
critical role in drawing local ideas and thought into
interaction with those of other political and cultural points
in the world.
Amy Ong Tsui
Associate Professor
Carolina Population Center
University of North Carolina
**
I believe that the most important demographic development in
the next 50 years will involve the distribution of wealth and
income in the world. Ninety-five percent of all future
population growth is projected to take place in the nations of
the developing world. While the percentage of the human
population living in poverty may decline over the next 50
years, it is likely that by the middle of the next century
more human beings will be living in abject poverty than ever
before. At the same time, the world will face the ecological
consequences of a consumption boom in the rapidly growing
nations of China and India. As the forces of globalization
spread across the world, wealth will continue to move more
easily across national boundaries while rising levels of
poverty will remain contained within. These factors do not
bode well for either national sovereignty or global security.
James B. Martin-Schramm
Assistant Professor of Religion
Luther College
**
I am now convinced that in the years to come, demographic
transitions will be smoothest in the places where the status
of women rises fastest. The status of women is rising now
almost everywhere with the advent of modernization, and will
continue rising, in fits and starts. These trends will raise
overall consumption rates, which means more environmental
trouble. Women's advances will also trigger increasingly
powerful religious and political counterattacks. Where these
counterattacks succeed, populations will grow
furiously_threatening social, political, religious,
environmental, and economic systems with collapse.
John Nielsen
Correspondent
National Public Radio
**
The most significant demographic event of the next 50 years
will be the rapid growth of developing countries and the
decline of today's industrialized nations. I would be
surprised if the fertility of many industrialized countries
actually returns to replacement level. On the other hand, I
would expect the record of the developing countries to be
mixed on this score. They will all likely approach replacement
in 50 years, but some will remain above it, while others drop
below. We will have a truly transformed world with the former
"colonial" powers greatly eclipsed both demographically and
economically. Declining population size and societal aging in
the industrialized world will contribute to making the next 50
years a period of greatly increased clout in today's Third
World countries. Look for China to eclipse today's economic
giants_Japan, the United States, and Germany_as a leader in
this wholesale change worldwide.
Carl Haub
Director of Information and
Education Services
Population Reference Bureau
**
Looking at the accuracy of projections over the past 20 years,
we find that life expectancy gains have generally been
underestimated in the most advanced societies, and
overestimated in the least developed countries. Thus, the
politically desirable expectation of converging life
expectancies ("Health for all by the year 2000") does not seem
to be matched by the current trends.
Over the next 50 years there may well be a further strong
increase in mortality differentials. I see the wealthier
populations experiencing gains in longevity that may sound
like science fiction (such as a female life expectancy of 100
years). At the same time, the poorest populations may see
decreases in life expectancies due to AIDS, other infectious
diseases, malnutrition, and environmental problems. This is
not a desirable scenario, but it is clearly a possible one, if
not a likely one.
Wolfgang Lutz
Department Program Leader
Population Project, International
Institute of Applied Systems Analysis
**
Expanding markets, continued rapid population growth, and
declining resource bases may lead to two (perhaps
interrelated) outcomes. The first will be a growing number of
disputes between groups over access to important resources
such as land and water_both within and among countries.
Second, the declining resource base in some countries, which
may result in conflicts, will also lead to severe dislocations
of people as they move in search of employment or land. This
movement is increasingly likely to occur within regions, as
expanding markets increase trade relations and as borders
tighten in more developed countries. One positive outcome
could be stronger regional economic and social alliances among
countries within regions.
Sara Curran
Research Associate
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of
Washington
**
In the United States, I expect the most significant
demographic change will be our increasingly diverse ethnic
constituency and the resulting lack of a clear "racial
majority." Immigration, especially from Latin America, will
continue to change the composition of our country. I think
that it is possible that in 50 years, non-Hispanic white
Americans might constitute less than half of the population.
Melissa Vanouse
Freshman
University of Pennsylvania
**
The most important demographic development in the next 50
years will be that the demographic transition will be complete
and world population may begin to decline with below-
replacement fertility levels. The dependency burden will shift
from children to aged and ultimately reach a balance.
Will the landing from high fertility-mortality to low fertility-
mortality for humankind be soft or hard? It will be ard for
some countries_marked by famines, epidemics, water shortages,
ecological disasters, or civil unrest.
We can, acting globally, make it a soft landing. Governments
no longer have to persuade couples on smaller families. Most
couples all over the world want smaller families than in the
past, and desired family size is declining. Women's education
and empowerment, gender equality, and availability of
affordable quality reproductive health services is the answer.
With increasing globalization and migration flows, it is in
the interest of everybody to make a soft landing.
Jay Satia
Professor, International Council on Management of Population
Programmes, Malaysia
*****
PRB's Population Bulletin
By Mary Mederios Kent
The golden anniversary of PRB's Population Bulletin provides
an opportunity to reflect on how the Bulletins have changed
since 1945 and to speculate about what they might become. The
Bulletins of the 1990s are a far cry from the free-wheeling,
in-house opinion pieces produced during the first few years of
the publication. The typical Bulletin manuscript of today is
written and reviewed by experts outside PRB. Today, we strive
to treat topics in a balanced and comprehensive manner. The
creation of a Bulletin often requires substantial revisions
and numerous exchanges between author and editor to produce a
piece that is up-to-date, accurate, balanced, and yet easy to
understand.
The first Bulletins were written by Guy Irving Burch, editor
from 1945 until his death in 1951. The manuscripts were not,
as far as we know, peer-reviewed, nor did they reflect our
current resolve to present opposing sides of an issue. They
cited few references. Early Bulletin titles demonstrate the
editor's main concerns: "Needed_Higher Birth Rates Among
Scientists," "World Food Crisis: Temporary or Chronic?," "Is
American Intelligence Declining?" Burch's Bulletins were cited
as authoritative sources by Look and many other publications.
One was condensed in Readers Digest, reaching an audience few
population specialists do.
Robert Cook, the Bulletin's second and longest-serving editor
(1951 to 1969), immersed the Bulletin in population and
development issues. He began to solicit outside authors and
reprinted published articles, but the publication clearly
reflected Cook's interests and views.
Cook dealt with most of the major international trends of the
1950s and 1960s_a time of extraordinary economic and
demographic growth in many world regions. This era also marked
the beginning of widespread public interest in the "population
explosion," signaled by the success of Paul Ehrlich's
Population Bomb, published in 1968.
Cook published a Bulletin about the U.S. baby boom in 1957
(six years before it ended) and in the same year did an issue
on the problems of an aging society. He reported on UN and
Census Bureau projections, and events in the population field,
such as the founding of the Population Council in 1952 and the
first world population conference in 1954.
A 1958 Bulletin included an article by Senator John F.
Kennedy, who argued that uneven world population growth was a
national security threat. (See page 8.) In 1965, Alaska
Senator Ernest Gruening read the entire text of a Bulletin_
"The Vatican and the Population Crisis"_ into the
Congressional Record.
Cook's Bulletins offered readers the most recent facts on
contemporary topics and issues, which assured the Bulletins'
entry into American university classrooms. By 1960, Bulletins
included a tear-out order form for the convenience of
teachers.
During the 1970s, under several editors and changes in PRB
leadership, the Bulletin assumed its current look and
structure. Color graphics were introduced. The manuscripts
were often written by current or soon-to-be luminaries in the
field, such as Donald Bogue, Thomas Espenshade, and Lester
Brown. They were used widely by educators and the media.
Counting membership distribution and sales, the circulation of
a single Bulletin is typically 6,000 copies. But some of our
best sellers_such as Population: A Lively Introduction, and
New Realities of the American Family, reach 8,000 or 9,000.
Bulletins have been translated into French, Spanish,
Vietnamese, Japanese, and Arabic.
Most long-time friends of PRB associate the Bulletin with Jean
van der Tak, who was editor from 1975 to 1989. Jean had (and
has) an extraordinary devotion to PRB's basic mission_to
inform people about the importance of population trends in the
United States and the world. The Bulletins flourished under
her tenacious zeal for quality and accuracy_and her 70+ hour
work weeks. I have edited the Bulletin since 1989, dealing
with topics as diverse as American minorities, international
water supply, and the U.S. baby boomers.
The Bulletin has been redesigned twice in the past decade, to
remain current with the changing needs of educators and
policymakers. We continue to experiment with new ways to
communicate with authors, to make the Bulletins visually
appealing, and to produce printed versions efficiently.
What will the Bulletin become during its next 50 years? PRB
will use more time-saving advantages of new technologies. We
can already send manuscripts and graphics via Internet.
Perhaps facts will be checked and updated on line. Maybe we
will be able to customize Bulletins for different audiences.
Eventually Bulletins may no longer be printed on paper_they
will exist only on disk or in some yet-unknown format.
Whatever the future form of the Bulletin, this venerable
publication will no doubt continue to fulfill the function
that evolved over the last half century: comprehensive,
accurate analysis in a language and style nearly everyone can
understand.
Mary Kent is editor of PRB's Population Bulletin. Note: We
thank Fairfield University professor Dennis Hodgson, who
helped enormously with this retrospective by reading through
the entire span of Bulletins and sending us his impressions.
*****
News and Resources
A long-standing debate
This rhymed encapsulation of the long-standing debate between
slow-growth conservationists and optimistic technologists was
printed in the August 1955 edition of PRB's Population
Bulletin. According to an introductory note, it was originally
presented to the Warner-Gren International Symposium on "Man's
Role in Changing the Face of the Earth," Princeton, June 16-
22, 1955.
The poem, which appeared under the title, "Man's March to `The
Summit,'" is a historical document, which has not been
updated for gender- sensitive language. Kenneth Boulding, who
died in 1993, was an educator and economist.
The Conservationist's Lament
The world is finite
Resources are scarce
Things are bad
And will be worse
Coal is burnt
And gas exploded
Forests cut
And soils eroded
Wells are drying
Air's polluted
Dust is blowing
Trees uprooted
Oil is going
Ores depleted
Drains receive
What is excreted
Land is sinking
Seas are rising
Man is far
Too enterprising
Fire will rage
With man to fan it
Soon we'll have
A plundered planet
People breed
Like fertile rabbits
People have
Disgusting habits
moral
The evolutionary plan
Went astray
By evolving Man
The Technologist's Reply
Man's potential
Is quite terrific
You can't go back
To the Neolithic
The cream is there
For us to skim it
Knowledge is power
And the sky's the limit
Every mouth
Has hands to feed it
Food is found
When people need it
All we need
Is found in granite
Once we have
The men to plan it
Yeast and algae
Give us meat
Soil is almost
Obsolete
Man can grow
To pastures greener
Till all the earth
Is Pasadena
moral
Man's a nuisance
Man's a crackpot
But only man
Can hit the jackpot.
_Kenneth Boulding
JFK: On population and the prosperity gap
The June 1958 Bulletin printed an October 9, 1957 speech by
then-Senator John F. Kennedy. Here is an excerpt.
"In the midst of this age of plenty, the standard of living
for much of the world is declining, their poverty and economic
backwardness are increasing and their share of the world's
population is growing. In the world community of the nations,
the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer
"The gap between the developed and the under-developed
countries is growing greater, instead of less_and continued
increases in productivity, scientific know-how, plant
investment and consumer demand in the wealthier countries all
promise to widen this gap still further, not only in terms of
living standards, consumption and income, but production,
trade and expansion
"First among [the] causes [of the gap] is the recent rapid,
overwhelming and utterly unprecedented world population
explosion. We are already adding more inhabitants to our globe
each year than now constitutes the entire population of
France; and this still-rising rate threatens to double the
world population before the 20th century is out. Unlike
previous increases, the greatest gains have come in the
poverty stricken, under-developed countries least able to
support them_in Latin America, East Asia and the Middle East"
_John F. Kennedy
New: PRB's home page
The Population Reference Bureau has launched a home page on
the World Wide Web. Spread the word! The Internet address is
http://www.prb.org/prb/. On-line resources include: Last
month's Population Today, a guide to on-line population-
related information resources, a population jeopardy game, and
a soon-to-be-launched queriable 1995 World Population Data
Sheet.