How Population Grows

What happens can be illustrated by the anecdote about a man who agreed to work for one cent the first week if his employer would double his income every week thereafter: 2c, 4c, 8c, and so on. At the end of three months he would have only about $80. But, due to the “doubling” effect, from this deceptively slow start the man would have made over $45,000,000,000,000 by the end of a year, if the world’s money supply were not exhausted!

Population grows in a similar fashion, though many other factors enter as well. It took thousands of years for earth to gain its first billion humans, in about the middle of the last century. Yet it took less than a hundred years to double that population! Just thirty more years brought another billion into the world, and fifteen years will have produced the fourth billion, in 1975! The fifth billion? Experts estimate little more than a decade​—barring a “miracle”—​or a disaster.

Currently, the “doubling time” of earth’s population is under thirty-five years, but that time has been shrinking! The 1974 edition of The Encyclopædia Britannica points out that certain parts of the world are now experiencing a young population “endowed with both a high birthrate and a low deathrate. Such a condition if it lasted very long would result in earth’s population being multiplied 32,000 times in only 500 years.”​—Vol. 14, p. 816.

Imagine! Over 200 persons have been added to the world since you started reading this article, about 150 a minute. A city of some 200,000 since this time yesterday, a metropolis of over six million every month, or a nation the size of West Germany every year could be populated! Just think what it takes to feed, shelter, clothe, educate and provide jobs for 78 million people in one year!

Can the World Absorb Them?

The world’s ability to meet these demands grows, but not as rapidly as the population. Shortages now jolting the world are said to prove that mankind is falling behind in the race. Snowballing demands on agriculture, education, housing and other needs have brought the world from abundance to scarcity in just a few short years. Unprecedented inflation even in the wealthy “developed nations” testifies to these shortages.

Further aggravating the situation is the fact that population is now growing more than twice as rapidly in the poor “less developed nations” as it does in the rich industrial ones. Since there are already nearly three times as many people in the poor countries, they must absorb most of the overall population increase. And the half of the world’s population under twenty years of age are living primarily in those countries. Think what a baby boom could lie ahead for them!

[Graph on page 4]

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POPULATION GROWTH SINCE 1600 C.E.

BILLIONS

1975 4

1960 3

1930 2

1850 1

1600 .5

[Picture on page 3]

7 Births Every Minute: Bangladesh’s Biggest Long-Range Problem

THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 1, 1974

Population Growth a Threat

THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN, November 6, 1973

DEPOPULATE OR PERISH

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, October 21, 1973

Globe Is Overabundant in One Item: Population

LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 9, 1973

The Next Crises: Population and Resources

THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 22, 1973