Population Control

Report Outline
World-Wide Upsurge of Population
Birth Control: Progress and Practice
Population Control and Foreign Aid

World-Wide Upsurge of Population

Every two seconds three children are born somewhere on this increasingly crowded planet. The frequency of these “blessed events” is causing headaches for leaders of underdeveloped countries, where four out of five births occur. It is a source of worry also for United Nations officials and officials of the United States and other countries who are seeking to help those leaders to achieve better conditions of life for their people. World Bank President Eugene R. Black told the U.N. Economic and Social Council in April 1961 that “Population growth threatens to nullify all our efforts to raise living standards.”

President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic said last May: “This year we have added to our number 800,000 persons, may God bless them. We cannot go on at this rate.” Nasser's statement was echoed two months later by spokesmen for other countries whose efforts to improve living standards are being nullified by rapid population growth. A conference in Cairo of representatives of 31 underdeveloped and non-aligned nations declared, July 18, that countries suffering from overpopulation must take “appropriate legitimate measures to deal with their population problem.”

Prime Minister Nehru of India, a country which is adding eight million to its numbers each year, has complained that “Our five-year plans have no meaning if the population grows at a rate one can never catch up with.” Pakistan's President Ayub Khan told President Kennedy during a state visit in July 1961 that “If we continue to increase at the present rate, it will ultimately lead to a standard of living which will be little better than that of animals.” And Kennedy himself observed in his 1961 foreign aid message to Congress that in some parts of Latin America living standards were actually declining because of population growth.