Group Cites Administration Cuts in Family Planning : Billion More People Seen by Year 2000

Because of better food distribution and improved health care, the world’s population has reached 5 billion--more than triple the level at the turn of the 19th Century--and is likely to grow by another billion by the end of this century, the Population Crisis Committee reported today.

Growth rates are highest in Third World countries, where more than 75% of the world’s population lives and nine out of 10 infants are born, according to a study by the committee, a Washington-based group that works to slow population growth. At current rates, it said, populations will double in Africa, Latin America and Asia in 24, 31 and 37 years, respectively.

By contrast, the committee said, it will take 101 years for the populations of the United States and Canada to double. In addition, the group predicted that the number of Western Europeans will not double for another 620 years at current birth rates.

The report noted ruefully that policy changes adopted by the Reagan Administration in response to criticism by conservatives have reduced U.S. foreign aid programs for family planning. It specifically cited the end of funding for overseas organizations that sanction abortion, among them the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the U.N. Fund for Population Activities.

The Third World’s explosive growth “puts unmanageable pressures on government institutions, national economies and natural resources,” the report said. It predicted that 540 million new jobs will be needed to take care of Third World population growth by the end of the century, while the developed world will need to add fewer than 50 million jobs.

Moreover, runaway population growth leads to overexploitation of such basic resources as soil, fuel, water and forests, the report said, adding that political side effects can lead to turmoil in burgeoning cities.

It estimated that by century’s end, 15 cities around the globe will have reached populations of at least 12 million each, 13 of them in the Third World. It forecast that Mexico City’s population will rise from today’s 15 million to 26 million by the year 2000.

Even though U.S. aid for international population programs has fallen from $288 million in fiscal 1985 to $213 million today, the United States is still the largest contributor to international population programs, the report said.

Its contribution is nearly double those of the World Bank and the U.N. population fund, about four times that of Japan and about eight times those of West Germany and Norway, the next-largest contributors, according to J. Joseph Speidel, vice president of the Population Crisis Committee.

Despite the intractable problems linked with too-rapid growth, Speidel said, population control is not a popular issue with politicians because “it touches so many sensitive areas: religion, ethics, sex, economics, even military power.”

About $40 billion a year is contributed by developed nations to the Third World, he said, but only about $500 million of the total goes to family planning.

Although Third World nations clearly need to do more, he said, voluntary family planning is showing results around the globe in such countries as China, Bangladesh, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand.

There has been some reduction in African birth rates over the past decade, Speidel said, but the continent still faces “a very difficult situation,” primarily because it is the only continent on which food production, now increasing at a rate of 2% yearly, has failed to keep up with its 3% yearly rate of population growth.