POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Richard J. Estes
University of Pennsylvania
Second only to the threat of nuclear war, uncontrolled population growth
continues to be the most serious obstacle to further development worldwide.
The threat is threefold:
1. Rapid growth in population size places increasing demands on the
scarce resources of developing nations, which already find it
difficult to provide for the needs of their existing populations.
2. Population growth contributes to and exacerbates the high level
of political instability that characterizes the majority of
developing nations.
3. Rapid increases in population size erode - and in many cases
negate entirely - the modest gains that some poorer countries have
been able to achieve during previous decades of development.
Conversely, reductions in fertility make it possible for developing nations:
1. to commit a higher share of national resources to meeting the
basic needs of children;
2. to increase the range of educational and career opportunities
for women;
3. to enlarge the pool of total resources that can be used to
develop improved social infrastructures, especially in the areas of
health care, education, transportation, communications, and
agricultural development; and
4. to reduce considerably the level of intra-national conflict that
results from competition between groups for resources in short
supply.
Unfortunately, the prognosis worldwide is for even sharper increases
in the rate of global population increase. The rate of increase is
expected to be greater in the early part of the next century, given the
exponential population growth projected for the planet by the end of the
century. The global population reached 5 billion people sometime during
1986, for example, and is expected to exceed 6 billion by the end of the
century. The most conservative estimates project a global population size
exceeding 10 billion by the middle to end of the next century. In the
future, as now, more than 90 percent of all net population increases will
take place within developing nations. Even more rapid increases are
expected to occur in the "poorest of the poor" nations of Africa and Asia.
The demographic trends reported in Table 4 for Asia illustrate these
trends.
Population Growth in Asia and the Pacific
On the positive side, population growth in China, the world's most
populous nation, is beginning to come under control, although not without
periodic setbacks and considerable international controversy concerning the
involuntary nature of some of China's fertility control methods. During
the 15-year period 1965 to 1980, for example, the average rate of natural
population increase for China was 2.2 percent, resulting in a projected
population doubling time (PDT) for the period of 31 years. For the period
1980-1985 the rate of population increase declined to 1.2 percent; between
1985 and the year 2000 the rate is expected to stabilize at about 1.3
percent with a projected population doubling time of more than 53 years
- a favorable PDT increase of some 70 percent in just six years. China's
population is expected to level off at about 1,683 million by the year
2000, by which time a net reproduction rate equal to 1 percent is expected
to be achieved.
The current population situation in India, the second most populous
nation, is quite different from that found in China. Like China, India has
been able to slow the rate of natural increase of its now 810 million
people. Between 1965 and 1980, for example, the rate of populatio increase
in India averaged 2.3 percent, with a PDT of 30 years. For the period 1980-
1985 the rate of natural increase dropped slightly to 2.2 percent and is
expected to continue to decline gradually until the year 2000, when an
average of 1.8 percent is expected to be achieved. A population growth
rate of 1.8 percent is expected to be achieved. A population growth rate
of 1.8 percent will lengthen India's PDT from 30 years to somewhat more
than 39 years. The progress is impressive. But still, India has a very
long road to travel if it is to succeed in achieving a level of population
stability that will make possible dramatic moves forward in its overall
levels of social and economic development.
Chart 27 summarizes fertility control and contraceptive policies of
selected countries in
Asia and the Pacific.
Other developing nations with high rates of population growth include
(the first figure is the yearly percentage increase, the figure in
parentheses is the PDT): Ivory Coast, 5.0 (14 years); Kenya, 3.9 (18 years);
Oman, 3.6 (19 years); Rwanda, 3.3 (21 years). The global disparities that
result from extraordinary population trends such as these, especially
given the low levels of socioeconomic development that exist in the
majority of developing nations, was noted by futurist Lester R. Brown,
President of Worldwatch Institute. Writes Brown, "[T]he projected growth
for North America, all of Europe, and the Soviet Union is less that the
additions expected
in either Bangladesh or Nigeria."
Action Steps For the Near-Term
To halt the present trend of a substantially more populous world by the
year 2000--especially given the global unwillingness to meet the basic
needs of the planet's current 5.3 billion inhabitants--existing efforts at
fertility control must continue and new ones need to be implemented. A
significantly strengthened program of international fertility control
directed at developing countries should contain at least the following
elements:
1. Public education and increased awareness concerning safe and reliable
methods of fertility control must be the centerpiece of any effective
program. The need for such programs is all the more apparent when one
recognizes that, ultimately, lasting choices about family size rest
with individual couples and not with the state.
2. A great variety of incentives must be developed that will encourage
couples to either remain childless or, at a maximum, to limit the
number of their children to two, that is, the net population
replacement rate (NRR). Incentives for reduced fertility may take
many forms, including financial rewards, preferential access to
scarce goods and services (e.g., housing, education, employment,
etc.), public recognition, higher social status, etc.
3. Governmental ensured systems of social welfare and income security
must be developed, or expanded, that will provide for the long-term
care of childless couples who become physically or economically
dependent, as well as the needs of those who choose to limit the size
of their families to the NRR.
4. At a minimum, safe and effective forms of contraception must be made
available on an affordable or free basis everywhere. Voluntary
abortions, sterilization, and other dramatic forms of population
limitation that present a broader range of fertility control for
couples need to be expanded.
5. Research on new, more effective and convenient forms of contraception
must be undertaken.
6. Governments must recognize that reductions in fertility contribute
significantly over both the long and short terms to improvements in
living standards and national economic development.
The need for new initiatives in defusing the global populations bomb
is self-evident. Certainly, no blueprint for improving the social
conditions of people can ignore this important dimension of national
development.
RESOURCE MATERIALS ON
POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
BASIC BOOKS
Brown, Lester R. 1991. _The State of the World, 1991_. (New York: W. W.
Norton).
Ehrlich, Paul and Anne Ehrlich. 1990. _The Population Explosion_. 2nd
Edition. (New York:
Simon and Shuster).
Ehrlich, Paul and Anne Ehrlich. 1992. _Healing the Planet_. (forthcoming).
United Nations. 1986. _The Methodology of Measuring the Impact of Family
Planning
Programmes on Fertility_. (New York), Sales No. E.86.XIII.4.
United Nations. 1990. _World Population Monitoring, 1989--Special Report on
the Population in the Least Developed Countries_, No. 113 (New York), Sales
No. E.89.XIII.12.
United Nations. 1989. _Trends in Population Policy_. (New York), Sales No.
E.89.XIII.13.
United Nations. 1991. _World Population Prospects, 1990_. (New York), Sales
No. E.91.XIII.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 1991. _The
Least Developed
Countries 1991 Report_. (New York), Sales No. E.91.11.D.
DATA SETS
World Bank. 1991. _World Development Report, 1991_. (Washington: World
Bank).
World Game. 1992. _Data Manager_. (Philadelphia).
UNICEF. 1991. _The State of the World's Children, 1991_. (New York: United
Nations).
United Nations. 1991. _The Population Policy Data Bank_. (Population
Division).
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
International Planned Parenthood Federation
UNICEF (New York)
United Nations, Population Division
United Nations Development Programme
World Bank
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Excerpted from Richard J. Estes (1992) _International Social Work
Education: A Guide to Resources For a New Century_ (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania School of Social
Work).
Permission is granted to disseminate this document so long as proper
credit has been given to the source.