ABSTRACT
Population trends form the basic substrate of concerns about resources and international comity over the coming decades. Present trends have no precedent in human experience in terms of current population size, percentage rates and absolute size of increase and ultimate projected population size. Recent trends in urban growth suggest future urban concentrations unprecedented in human experience. The most recent effort to project population trends in relation to global resources is the Global 2000 Report to the President, produced by the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State. It must be freely admitted that population projections do not predict but, rather, represent the logical implications of assumed future trends in fertility, mortality and migration. Population trends, however, are relatively stable compared with the political and economic, due to a three-part, built- in inertia in demographic change to the year 2000.
