823 



TABLE 5— THE 15 MOST POPULOUS COUNTRIES* 

 [In millionsl 



Rank Country Population Cumulative 



(1) Mainland China 



(2) ^ India 



(3) U.S.S.R 



(4) United States of A met ica . 



?5) Pakistan 



(6) Indonesia.. 



(7) Japan 



«)-........ Brazil 



(9) L West Germany 



(10) Nigeria 



(11) United Kingdom 



(12) , Italy 



(13). w.^ Mexico 



(14). ." France. 



(15) Philippines 



'Source from "1971 World Population Data Sheet — Population Reference Bureau, Inc." (Washington, O.C., 

 Population R^erence Bureau, 1971.) 



By virtue of current high birth rates and short life expe(5tancy, the 

 underdeveloped world has a very high percentage of young people. 

 Some 42 percent of the population of the LDCs consists of people 

 under the age of fifteen.®^ As these young people move into their re- 

 productive decades a progressive baby hoovci can be anticipated at the. 

 very time when, in the view of the great majority of development ex- 

 perts, there should be a maximum effort to cut back population growth. 



It is jperhaps the greatest irony of the development process that 

 success m driving down the death rate, has helped produce the popula- 

 tion explosion. In a sample of .18 underdeveloped areas, for instance, 

 the average decline in death rates between 1945 and 1950 was 24 

 percent.** Some other figures— if the period from 1920-1924 is taken 

 as a base and compared with 1957 — give the following percentages 

 of decline in death rates : Chile, 57 percent ; Taiwan, 67 percent ; Japan, 

 64 percent; British Honduras, 56 percent; El Salvador, 40 percent; 

 Jamaica, 65 percent.^^ Perhaps the most spectacular decline in the 

 death rate took place in Ceylon, where it was cut in half in approxi- 

 mately three years, an accomplishment which had taken decades in 

 Europe.^^ These spectacular results were the products of victorious 

 campaigns against such diseases as malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, 

 and cholera. The decline in the death rate was highest among young 

 adults and children. 



Their very success has put some health workers in the LDCs on 

 the defensive, as if the cutbacks in death rates, through adding to 

 the population, were somehow responsible for impeding economic de- 

 velopment. No one seriously contends, however, that the less developed 

 countries should let their health care slide in order to deal with the 



•^U.N. Working Paper No. 30. (December 1969), page 1. 



™Ehrllch and Ehrllch. "Population, Resources, and En\tlronment," op. cit., page 22. 



» Quoted from William Vogt. "The Arithmetic of People." In U.S. Ongres.«, Senate 

 Committee on Government Operations. "Population Crisis." Hearings on Forp<"n Aiil 

 Expenditures on S. 1676. By the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the . . . 

 89th Congress, Ist session. Part 3-A (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965) 

 page 1.509. 



•0 "The Popnlation Explosion," Department of State Newsletter, op. cit., page 23. 



