EDITORIAL:  The Six Billion Mark

The world’s population reached six billion this week, by United Nations estimates. The news is daunting, given that the figure has doubled since 1960. Yet six billion actually represents significant progress made in the past 30 years in reducing birth rates, improving health care and giving women greater access to education and economic opportunities. Without such modernization, population growth would have been higher than it is now.

In a single generation, fertility rates have declined in virtually every nation. Industrialized countries have seen birthrates fall from 2.8 children per woman in the 1950’s to roughly 1.6 today. In the developing world, birthrates have dropped from 6.2 children per woman to slightly less than 3. Over the next several decades the world’s population will continue to grow, but more slowly, reaching 8.9 billion in 2050, and stabilizing at about 10 billion in 2200.

This scenario is a far cry from the dire predictions about the population explosion commonly made in the 1960’s. Even so, population growth will occur mostly in the poorest nations that are least prepared to deal with worsening population pressures on the environment, water supply, food production and social infrastructure.

One of the great lessons learned in the past three decades is that controlling population growth is inextricably tied to development strategies that improve gender equity, expand education for women, increase access to reproductive health care and give women more economic power. All these factors help enable women to choose to have smaller, healthier families.

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo set a broad agenda focused on these objectives, which were agreed to by 179 countries. Many nations are now trying to put these population development goals into practice. But financial support from the industrialized nations has been lacking.

The Cairo Conference estimated that $17 billion would be needed annually for population and health activities, with about two-thirds coming from the developing countries themselves and one-third from international donors. But total funding from international donors in 1997 was less than $2 billion, far short of the goal. The United States remains the leading donor in family planning programs, but its support has been declining in recent years. Anti-abortion rhetoric continues to be used in Congress to limit aid for international family planning programs.

The challenges facing developing nations are enormous. Even now, nearly 600,000 women die annually during pregnancy, more than 350 million women do not have access to a range of effective contraceptive methods, and 600 million women cannot read or write. These conditions remain big obstacles in achieving population stabilization. Unless international funding increases, the next billion people may be consigned to lives of privation in countries where resources are already stretched to the limit.

Source:  The New York Times, October 13, 1999