The most disturbing element in the Feb. 17 Page 1 article on the decline in world population growth is that one could easily conclude from it that the population explosion has ended.
Nothing could be further from the truth, though it is a popular theme these days with elitist institutions whose apparent credo is to coddle the comfortable and ignore the afflicted. Ben Wattenberg and his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute have long wept crocodile tears over the decline in population in the industrialized world. Yet the industrialized world continues to thrive. Wattenberg and friends have expressed precious little concern, however, for the plight of the developing world, where an overwhelming proportion of current population growth occurs and where:
– 1.3. billion people live in abject poverty–on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar or less per day.
– 840 million people are malnourished or hungry.
– 1.5 billion people lack access to safe drinking water or sanitation.
– Some 400 million women want no more children, did not want their last child or want to determine the intervals between their pregnancies, but they lack access to family planning–a major reason that 585,000 women die each year of pregnancy-related causes.
Anyone who would make the case that these problems are unrelated to rapid population growth has the world view of an ostrich whose head is snugly submerged in sand.
