Population increases

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32851, 26 February 1972, Page 7

Population increases

New Zealand and Australia have one of the lowest birth and death rates in the world, according to statistics prepared by the United Nations Population Commission for 1970.

The statistics, which group the two countries together for the purpose of the survey, appear in a supplement in the International Planned Parenthood News. Australia and New Zealand, with a total population (1970) of 15.4 million, have

a rate of increase of 1.9 per cent. The birth rate is 2 per cent and the death rate .9 per cent. Lower rates of population increase have been recorded in North America, temperate South America, Eastern Asia, Mainland Asia, Japan, all oi Europe, and the U.S.S.R. Death rates in all these countries, with the exception of Eastern and Mainland Asia, are low, too. The highest birth rate is Western Africa’s 4.9 per cent. Western Africa also has the highest death rate of 2.4 per cent. The region with the lowest birth rate is Western Europe with 1.7 per cent.

However, it has only a moderately high death rate. Japan, with .7 per cent, has the lowest death rate. In a summary of the figures, the division says, “In general, it has been estimated that world population will grow at an almost constant rate of about 2 per cent annually until the middle of the 1980 s, when the rate should gradually decrease until it reaches 1.7 per cent by the end of the century. “If this decline occurs there will be 6494 m people in the world by the year 2000. All these figures are based on the medium variant of four alternative projections made by the Population Division.