Drop In Population Growth Predicted

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30055, 13 February 1963, Page 13

Drop In Population Growth Predicted

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK, February 12. The Soviet delegate told the United Nations Population Commission yesterday that world population growth would slow down without national birth-control programmes.

The delegate, Mr Peter Podyachikh, said it was difficult to forecast exactly when the drop wopld take place or how great it would be. “But it is important to stress that this drop indisputably will take place,” he said. Speaking in a debate on world population problems, Mr Podyachikh discounted attempts to reduce population growth through birth-control programmes.

Families would naturally tend to become smaller as countries became more industrialised and living conditions improved, he said. India had built many clinics for sterilisation and other birth-control measures, he noted, but “if Indians increased their expenditure 10 times it would still be doubtful if they achieve better results.”

The growth rate would drop, he said, as urban populations increased) with an accompanying growth in the material and cultural wellbeing of the people. The granting of equal rights to women and the increasing number of women working in industry would also have the effect of reducing the growth rate, he said.

Once women were granted equal rights throughout the world, the birth rate would

be reduced, since “women would cease to be machines for producing children,” he said.

Improvements in education would also affect this trend. “History shows that an increase in literacy brings with it increased use of contraceptives and a drop in the growth rate of the population,” Mr Podyachikh said. The Soviet Union regarded Government programmes to control the population as “inhuman" and “insulting” to humanity, he said. “There is no need to put a brake on the population, but to increase its well-being.” The Indian delegate, Mr A. B. Bhadkamkar, said that the relationship between fertility rates and economic and social development was not clear. Improvements in education did seem to have an effect on fertility rates, but the relation might be a complex one. He suggested illiteracy was widespread in India 250 years ago, yet population growth was not great at that time.

Comparisons between town and country fertility rates had sometimes shown that little or no differences existed, he said. A recent United Nations report on world fertility patterns did not show whether there was any direct relation between the granting of voting rights to women and to rates of fertility, Mr Bhadkamkar said.

The British delegate, Mr Bernard Benjamin, asked other delegates not to “deride the very great efforts made by countries such as India” in population - control programmes.

He said there were no contradictions in the views put forward, since all delegates agreed that the size of families usually changed with economic developments in a country. Commenting on birth-con-trol programmes, Mr Benjamin said families were “surely not to be denied the help and advice of a medical nature which they required to decide on the number of children they might have.” African Animal “Massacre*’ (N.ZJ’^t.-Reuter — Copyright) PARES, February 12. There are almost no more elephants, buffaloes or antelopes in Africa, a French zoologist. Mr Jacques Bouillault, has told journalists after returning from a visit to Equatorial Africa. He said African fauna, “a victim of too many African and European guns,” would disappear in five or six years unless the “massacre" ceased.

Hair Falls Out— Health authorities here are trying to trace a mysterious germ which has caused 218 chi'dren to suddenly lose their hair. Doctors have assured thousands of anxious parents that the children’s hair will grow again.—Duisburg. Wost Germany, February 12.