Prospects for Reducing Natality in the Underdeveloped World

The prospects for reductions in birth rates in the less industrialized countries are improving owing to the increas ingly favorable climate of opinion relating to birth control, the invention of better contraceptives, and the adoption of national family planning programs. Some twenty-three countries, in cluding over half the population in the developing countries, now have such programs. These are too new to have had a measurable effect on the birth rate in most countries. Never theless, the birth rate is already falling in a few of the eco nomically more progressive countries in East Asia such as Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. These reductions in the birth rate may be expected to deepen and spread, accelerated by national family programs operating within the context of rapid socioeconomic change. In two decades the solutions to the world population problem may well be in sight, though not yet fully achieved. But these changes will not occur fast enough to forestall massive population growth and continuing critical problems of population at least through the next decade.