Population Growth in the Third World

Abstract

For some years now it has been customary to talk of the population explosion. However, as we saw in chapter 5, in the developed countries birth-rates have declined and, in general terms, the situation is one of population stability and retarded growth; hence the explosion is occurring in the underdeveloped countries. Since 1900 the world’s population has more than doubled and, incredibly, the increase in the past seventy-five years has equalled the increase in the previous 100 000 years of mankind’s existence. But this astonishing proliferation of the human species has been due primarily to the expansion of the population in the countries of the Third World — in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The overall rate of increase is now of the order of 20 per cent per decade and if this is maintained, and there is little evidence as yet to suggest that it will not be, we can expect to see by the end of this century a total world population of between 6½ and 7 thousand million.