So Big

Except for uniformed police and soldiers, some 3,000 shivering high-school and university students were the only figures moving on the streets of Quito one morning last week. The students were there to take the first scientifically organized census in Ecuador's history. The police and soldiers were there to keep all other Quitenos in their homes until the census was completed.

Promptly at 6 a.m., the boy & girl census takers fell to their task. Some housewives, expecting a complete checkup of their homes, proudly showed results of thorough housecleanings; some thought that the Government should want to know whether their husbands contributed enough to household expenses. Others brought blushes to schoolgirl faces by detailed accounts of marital unhappiness. The canvassers were welcomed with coffee and cakes; the only grumbling came from businessmen who lost trade and had to give their employees full pay for the day. One thorough census taker waited in front of a maternity hospital to find out the sex of a child due to be born at the deadline.

When sirens blew the "all clear" after eight hours, people rushed from their homes in holiday mood, greeted each other with Que tal del censo? (How did the census fare with you?).

The city of Quito fared well. Provisional figures released at week's end showed a population of 211,174; the estimated population in 1941 was 142,440. The census for all Ecuador, to be taken in 1950, is also expected to show surprising gains.

Latin America is the fastest-growing region in the world, according to Demographer Kingsley Davis, a member of the Department of Economics and Social Institutions of Princeton University. Recent census results seem to indicate that he is right. Last week Argentina announced the results of its May count: its population now stands at 16,107,930. Estimates in 1941 placed it at 13,318,320; at the last official census, in 1914, it was 7,903,662.

With three times the area of the U.S., Latin America has long lagged behind in population. In 1900, Latin America had an estimated 63,000,000 to the U.S.'s 75,000,000. But now, Davis estimates in the July issue of Foreign Affairs, Latin America has a population of 150,000,000, or about 8,000,000 more than the U.S.

Industrial progress, Davis explains, brings a drop in the death rate before it causes a drop in the birth rate. So by 1970, he estimates, Latin America's population will be between 200,000,000 and 225,000,000. By that date the U.S. is expected to have only between 150,000,000 and 170,000,000. In little more than half a century, by Davis' calculations, U.S. population may be only half of Latin America's.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.