C H A P T E R   1
Overview and Introduction

Since 1969, countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have improved health care and education, and made them available to a wider population.

One result is that in most countries women and men want fewer children and families are smaller than in earlier generations; more newborns are surviving the risky first year of life, and older people are living longer than ever before.

In developing countries, fertility has fallen by half since 1969, from almost six children per woman to under three. As a result, population growth has begun to slow.

On the negative side, the poorest countries often have the highest population growth rates. In 62 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, over 40 per cent of the population is under age 15. The poorest countries also have the worst reproductive health, the highest rates of maternal mortality and the lowest rates of family planning use—often under 15 per cent, a level the average developing country had already reached by 1969.

Since 1969, when UNFPA (the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, later renamed the United Nations Population Fund) began operations, population has grown from 3.7 billion to 6 billion. But annual rates of population growth have slowed from 2.04 to 1.33 per cent, and should fall further. Annual additions peaked in 1985-1990 at 86 million. They should fall gradually in the next 20 years and more rapidly thereafter.

Continued slowing of population growth is not inevitable.
It will depend on choices and actions in the next 10 years.

This slowing of population growth is not inevitable. The work of many people over the last 30 years made it possible. Whether it continues, and whether it is accompanied by increasing well-being or increasing stress, will depend on choices and action in the next 10 years.

It will depend on the success of population and development policies, and in particular on universal exercise of the right to health including reproductive health.

We are still far from achieving this goal.

For example:

• More than half of the days of healthy life that women lose in their reproductive years are related to pregnancy, complications of pregnancy and reproductive disorders 1 ;

• 350 million women — nearly one third of all women of reproductive age in developing countries — still do not have access to a range of modern, safe and acceptable methods of family planning; 120 million more women would use family planning now if it were more widely available, better understood, supported by communities and families, and backed by quality programmes;

• 585,000 women in developing countries die every year as a result of pregnancy, and many times that number of women suffer infection or injury;

• 70,000 lives are lost each year to unsafe abortions;

• Women are nearly two thirds of the world’s 960 million illiterates, and women and girls make up three fifths of the world’s poor;

• Violence against women is endemic in all countries, and many countries lack legal sanctions, or power to enforce them. As many as half of all women may be subject to gender-based violence at some point in their lives. Each year, 2 million girls and women are at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM);

• HIV/AIDS is shortening lifespans in the worst-affected countries; women are more vulnerable than men to HIV infection; half of new infections are to young people;

• International assistance for development has fallen from a peak of around $61 billion in 1992 to just over $48 billion in 1997. While population assistance is taking a larger share of donor funds (3.1 per cent compared with about 1.3 per cent), it is a bigger slice of a smaller pie, and still far short of agreed goals.

Poverty is not confined to the poorest countries. Over a billion people are still deprived of basic needs. Of the 4.8 billion people in developing countries, nearly three fifths lack basic sanitation. Almost a third have no access to clean water. A quarter do not have adequate housing. A fifth have no access to modern health services. A fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5. About a fifth do not have enough dietary energy and protein. Micronutrient deficiencies are even more widespread. Worldwide, 2 billion people are anaemic, including 55 million in industrial countries.2

The poor are most exposed to fumes and polluted rivers and least able to protect themselves. Of the estimated 2.7 million deaths each year from air pollution, 2.2 million are from indoor pollution, and 80 per cent of the victims are rural poor in developing countries.

FIGURE 1
World Population Growth, Actual and Projected, 1950-2050
For a complete version of this graph, please click here.

Needs for the future

For the future, food security will be critical. For example, to feed a population of 8.9 billion adequately would require nearly twice the basic calories consumed today. Access to water will also be critical.

Evidence has accumulated since world population passed 5 billion in 1987 that wasteful and unbalanced consumption patterns together with growing human numbers have profoundly affected the global climate. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 acknowledged that demographic factors, along with income levels, production technologies and consumption patterns, influence environmental outcomes. Gradual warming of the earth’s atmosphere is a fact; the question remains what effect it will have. Large-scale global climate change could occur very rapidly if adverse trends reinforce each other.3

Possible changes, such as a rise in sea level, increased rainfall in some places or higher temperatures in others, will affect billions of people. For example, a rise of 50 centimetres in sea level would inundate 11 out of 13 of the world’s major cities. More than half (3.2 billion) of the world’s people live within 200 kilometres of a sea coast.

The growing number of poor people in poor countries is a rebuke to everyone concerned for social justice, the environment and development. Governments and the international community must acknowledge their responsibility to end extreme poverty. Rapid population growth is only one among many concerns, but it contributes to environmental damage, pressure on land and water resources, and political instability.

The cumulative effect of continuing poverty, malnutrition and ill health on a massive scale; gender discrimination and inequities in key areas such as education and health, including reproductive health; new threats such as HIV/AIDS; environmental change; and shrinking international resources for development have the potential to wipe out the benefits of lower fertility over the past generation, with global consequences.

| MAIN MENU | CONTENTS | NEXT |

For more information:
United Nations Population Fund
Information and External Relations Division
220 E. 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, U.S.A.
Tel. 212-297-5020; fax: 212-557-6416
E-mail: ryanw@unfpa.org. Web site: www.unfpa.org