ABSTRACT
Population may be ranked with climate as one of the key variables affecting the world food balance. There is general agreement that the world's population increased at a very gradual rate over the course of dozens of centuries and that a population "explosion" occurred as a result of the economic impact of the Industrial Revolution. Some of the more optimistic futurists perceive the growth curve more as an aberrant blip on an otherwise relatively straight line and predict future population stabilization, although at a higher level. The phenomenon of two population spheres—the underdeveloped and the developed worlds—requires further examination from the perspectives of distribution statistics, age factors, and urban-rural growth patterns. Statistical forecasts for the developed world, which enjoys far fewer problems in terms of population pressures, suggest that growth is a factor to be reckoned with as well.
