1 The statistical basis for this paragraph is taken from Frank W. Notestein, “Population Growth and Its Control,” in Clifford M. Hardin (ed.), Overcoming World Hunger 9-39, table of projections on pp. 16-17 (New York: Spectrum, 1969).

The analysis of this note rests on non-alarmist or conservative statistical predictions. Population projections in the past have almost always turned out to be underestimates. It is a measure of the gravity of the problem that even its understatement makes plain its magnitude and essential characteristic. See, for example, Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future (New York: Viking, 1954), who, on p. 99, predicted dire world consequences for populations of 3.4 billion in 1975, 4.8 billion in 2000, 6.0 billion in 2025, and 6.7 billion in 2050.

2 The recent rate of population growth becomes even more dramatic when statistics for earlier periods are considered. A million years ago the world population was about two and a half million. It took a million years, until 6000 B.C., for this figure to double to five million. In the next several thousand years the population doubled every thousand years reaching 500 million by 1650. It doubled again in two hundred years, or five times more rapidly, reaching one billion by 1850. The next doubling was reached by 1930, eighty years later. At present the doubling time for world population has been estimated to be about thirty-seven years. This account of population growth is taken from Paul B. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb 18 (Ballantine: 1968). Ehrlich shows that any sustained continuation of current population growth rates with a doubling time of 37 years leads to absurd over-population in a relatively short time. Earlier population stability was attained by high death rates resulting from disease, war, and famine, that kept a rough balance between birth and death rates.

3 The material in this paragraph is taken from William and Paul Paddock, Famine 1975! (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967); the quotation is on p. 23. Their analysis is supported by the burgeoning literature on the dangers that arise from population growth trends.

4 That is, even if everyone practiced birth control, the problem would not be solved, although the immediate danger of large-scale famine would be diminished. The problem cannot be solved until the population of the world is brought into better balance with the resources and environment of the earth. Two authors in a recent study of the subject conclude that the maximum human population that the earth can support in stable relationship to the environment is 500 million, or roughly 10 percent of thepresent population of the world. Philip M. Smith and Bichard A. Watson, Man Surviving: The Present World Eevolution (unpublished manuscript, 1968). For an account that is pessimistic and persuasive as to the efforts of family planning to curtail population growth in the main centers of concern about over-population, see Kingsley Davis, “Population Policy: Will Current Programs Succeed!” 158 Science 730 (1967).

5 Paddock and Paddock, p. 23.

6 On this see Davis, note 4.

7 David Simpson, “The Dimensions of World Poverty,” 219 Scientific American 27 (1968).

8 E.g., Paddock and Paddock, Ehrlich; see also Andrei D. Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom 44-47 (New York: Norton, 1968).

9 E.g., Lester E. Brown, “The Agricultural Revolution in Asia,” 46 Foreign Affairs 688 (1968); David G. Aldrich, Jr., “World Food and Population Crisis,” 162 Science 1309 (1968). Sources earlier cited, such as Ehrlich and Paddock and Paddock, are skeptical about the claims being made for dramatic improvements in agricultural productivity for Asian countries.

10 Even at this time 10,000 people per day or 3.65 million per year die of illnesses induced by malnutrition throughout the less developed world.

11 See analysis of population quality in Myrdal, Gunnar, The Asian Drama, Vol. I ll (New York: Pantheon, 1968)Google Scholar.

12 John W. Dyckman, “Some Aspects of Civic Order in an Urbanized World,” Daedalus 797-812 (Summer, 1966).

13 The existence of this correlation was argued very persuasively by Robert S. Me- Namara in his famous address of May 18, 1966, to American Society of Newspaper Editors in Montreal; the text is reprinted in McNamara, The Essence of Security 141- 158 (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). See also Ted Gurr, ” A Causal Model of Civil Strife; A Comparative Analysis Using New Indices,” 62 American Political Science Review 1104 (1968), for experimental proof of the positive connection between the intensity of perceived deprivation by a population and the frequency and magnitude of civil disorder.

14 This conclusion is amply documented by Ehrlieh and Paddock and Paddock; the present strategies of response have been surveyed by Bernard Berelson, “Beyond Family Planning,” 163 Science 533 (1969).

15 Also national governments acting in isolation have mixed motives in relation to the development of rational population policies. Tor a recent illustration in the American context, see the comments of one distinguished demographer, Ansley J. Coale, “Low U. S. Birth Bate Not Entirely Desirable,” University, No. 39, Winter 1968-69, pp. 3-7. National power has been identified, in the past, with the size of territory andpopulation. The attempt to urge poorer countries to undertake self-restraint on population matters often appears to people from these countries as a device by which richer countries hope to maintain the current stratification of international society. The same isaue arises at a sub-national level when population control is directed toward ethnic minorities with high birth rates. There appears to be sufficient merit in this perception to lend strength to the need for general population standards applying throughout the world and uniformly applicable to all population groups.

16 That would also be possible to set up a system of control whereby incentives to refrain from child-bearing were created, such as financial rewards for sterilization and financial burdens, by way of tax obligations, for each extra child. Such approaches seem difficult to implement on a global basis and presuppose a high degree of rationality of behavior. Also any such system based on economic considerations is almost necessarily regressive in its impact, and falls victim to the argument for uniform standards outlined in note 15. Furthermore, the children of poorer parents would tend to suffer most from applications of such an approach.

17 Too often privileged states have exempted themselves from the controls that they sought to evolve for less privileged states. A prime example of this kind of differentiation is found in the current efforts of the principal nuclear Powers to curtail proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction without undertaking to eliminate their own reliance upon these weapons. The principal non-nuclear states are increasingly sensitive to this absence of reciprocity.

18 Such an argument is developed with great power and imagination by Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 162 Science 1243 (1968). See also Alice Taylor Day, “Population Control and Personal Freedom: Are They Compatible?”, 28 The Humanist 7 (1968). There are a series of fundamental questions for which rational choice on the level of individual preference may lead to disaster on the aggregate level of group behavior. The point can be expressed in the idiom of economists: the marginal utility of individual self-satisfaction appears to outweigh the marginal utility derived by an isolated individual through deference to group welfare. Individual decisions tend to be of both isolated and negligible independent effect.