The Population Problem

By Dr. B. K. Tandon

Summary

In this Forum of Free Enterprise booklet, Dr. B. K. Tandon, Professor and Head of Economics at the University of Udaipur, lays out the dimensions of what he calls the population problem. He opens with the arithmetic of compounding growth — a population rising at 1% doubles in 70 years, at 2% in 35 years — and quotes World Bank and UN authorities to argue that the world’s population is set to double within roughly three decades, with India’s crossing one billion. He situates the explosion historically in the Industrial and agricultural revolutions, which expanded resources and lowered death rates while traditions, religious attitudes, the premium on cheap labour, and the restriction of women to child-bearing kept fertility high.

Tandon then surveys the global awakening to the problem: the UN’s designation of 1974 as World Population Year and the Bucharest conference, the spread of official anti-natalist policies across the developing world, and the grim toll of illegal abortions. He devotes attention to dispelling ‘myths’ that becloud population planning, and argues that economic development alone cannot quickly cut birth rates — Europe took seventy years to do so under far more favourable conditions, and the youthful age structure of developing societies builds in decades of momentum. He closes by stressing that the relationship between development and fertility cannot be reduced to a precise formula, only better understood. Across the booklet’s roughly sixteen printed pages, the argument is data-driven and policy-oriented, framing population not as an isolated demographic fact but as a question of poverty, survival, and deliberate human choice.

Key points

• A population growing at 1% doubles in 70 years, at 2% in 35 years, and at 3.5% in only 20 years.

• World and UN authorities (McNamara, Salas) project world population doubling within 30-35 years; India’s to exceed one billion by ~2006.

• The Industrial and agricultural revolutions lowered death rates and expanded resources while traditions, religion, demand for cheap labour, and women’s restriction to child-bearing sustained high fertility.

• Illegal abortions, estimated at 30-50 million a year, are a leading cause of death among women in their child-bearing years in many countries.

• 1974 was designated World Population Year, with the first inter-governmental conference at Bucharest adopting a world Plan of Action.

• Economic development alone cannot rapidly cut birth rates — Europe took 70 years under more favourable conditions.

• Because ~50% of people in developing countries are under 16, a built-in momentum guarantees continued expansion for decades even with family planning.

• The development-fertility relationship cannot be defined in precise mathematical terms; modern research only identifies its ingredients.

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