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Not too many people

Not too many people global population growth is slowing down contrary to the expectations of the propagators of demographic disaster, says a study published in the British science journal Nature . The study shows that the world's population will not double in the next century.

Population will increase from 580 crore at present to 790 crore in 2020, and 1000 crore in 2050. It will peak around 2070-2080 and then begin a slow decline. The study was conducted by a team of researchers including Wolfgang Lutz of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria; Warren Sanderson of the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and Sergei Scherbov of the Population Research Centre, The Netherlands.

The researchers say that the number of elderly people will increase around the world. The proportion of the world's population above the age of sixty is likely to increase from 9.5 per cent at present to 20 per cent in 2050.And by the end of the 21st century, more than a quarter of the world's population will be over 60 years old. By 2100, it could be as much as 27 per cent. The focus of public, political and scientific concern in the next century will shift from global population growth to population aging.

Shripad Tuljapurkar of the Moun-tain View Research at Los Altos, California, says that the findings support the view of many experts that human fertility will continue to fall, trailing a decline in mortality. He says that Lutz and his colleagues make a persuasive case that population growth is slowing down.

The analysis of projected population growth in 13 broad regions reveals that population growth is likely to be most rapid in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa, with a tripling of population by 2050 and a four-fold increase by 2100. The Indian subcon-tinent will be the most populous region in the world, and by 2050 it will have doubled its population due to relatively high fertility rates.

In eastern Europe (including parts of the former Soviet Union), population is likely to decrease. By 2050, the populations of the Pacific oecd countries (Organization of Economic Coopera-tion and Development) and western Europe are unlikely to change much. However, those over 60 years of age could constitute as much as 40 per cent of the populations in the regions.

In North America, populations are likely to increase as a result of higher fertility and migration. The researchers also say that the population of central and east Asia is likely to increase by 37 per cent with a substantial increase in the over-60 population.

Another study published in the Economic and Political Weekly challenges the common belief that it is the poorest of the poor who are responsible for the increase in India's population. Mohan Rao of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, conducted a small study in Karnataka's Mandya district in primarily agrarian villages. He found that the proportion of smaller families was higher among the poor. The village landlords had the largest families and the landless labourers had the smallest families on an average.

The size of a family is normally dependent on fertility, mortality and migration. The last is discounted as a reason for the small family size among the poor because the 1991 population census reveals that migration to the cities has decreased and the dependence on agricultural employment has increased over the last decade, Rao explains.

He says that women among the poorer classes - the landless labourers and poor peasants - have lower levels of fertility. Infant and child mortality is also very high. Consequently, the poor that constitute about 40 per cent of the Indian population have the smallest families.

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