Four Billion, and Counting

With the help of electronic calculators and data from all parts of the globe, the Population Reference Bureau of Washington, D.C., reached a disturbing conclusion: last Sunday, probably sometime in the evening, the world's population reached 4 billion. "If you want to go a step further," said the bureau's chief demographer, Leon Bouvier, "the odds are that the 4 billionth person is a boy born in China."

The bureau reached its conclusions by taking world population totals for July 1, 1975, projecting ahead to July 1, 1976 at the established growth rate of 1.8%, and running backwards, fixing March 28 as the birth date of No. 4 Billion.

What is most disturbing about the statistics is that it took millions of years of human existence to reach the 1 billion mark in 1850. But by 1930, a mere 80 years later, a second billion had been added, and by 1960 a third. The 5 billion mark is estimated to be only 13 years away, and by 2012 world population could be 8 billion. The country with the world's fastest-growing population in terms of annual percentage increases is Kuwait at 5.9%, the slowest, East Germany at --.3%. The U.S. growth rate: .8%.

These statistics follow some others that are every bit as unsettling, but in a different way. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, death rates are reportedly rising in some nations, mainly in central Africa and southern Asia, suggesting that an inevitable equalizer--famine--has begun its macabre work. Plainly, the U.S., which produces and consumes a disproportionate share of the world food supply, will come under ever increasing pressure to share more of its agricultural bounty.

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