POPULATION: Turning Point?

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The growth slows

Next to a nuclear holocaust, none of the horrors forecast by contemporary doomsdayers have seemed more threatening than the population bomb. As this bomb ticked away and the world's population mushroomed, so the prediction went, an explosion would be inevitable. Resources would be depleted, agricultural lands overtaxed, fuel reserves exhausted, and soon—some Cassandras said by as early as the mid-21st century—global calamity would occur.

Now this gloomy prospect seems less likely. In what is apparently the first such reversal since the Industrial Revolution, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, there has been a slight yet important decline in the rate of the world's population growth. Said Samuel Baum, the chief demographic statistician on the project: "This is really a major turning point in world history."

The bureau estimates that the overall rate by which world population has been increasing annually declined by about 5% in the past decade, from an average hike of 1.98% a year in the 1965-70 period to 1.88% in the 1975-77 interval. Significantly, there were slowdowns not only in Western countries, where birth rates have long been declining, but also in such Third World countries as Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and apparently China. Even India seems to have achieved a slight slowdown. By contrast, Kenya, Algeria, Tanzania and Nigeria had increased growth rates.

Even if the trend continues, zero population growth cannot be achieved for decades. World population is still increasing by about 80 million people a year, and the bureau estimates that the family of man, some 4.25 billion strong in 1977, will double in only 30 years.