ABSTRACT
Everyone born before 1950 has witnessed a doubling of world population, the first generation ever to do so. This unprecedented growth is destroying agriculture’s environmental support systems at record rates, reducing the living standards of hundreds of millions. The annual addition to world population has increased from 38 million at mid-century to nearly 90 million in the mid-nineties. During the first stage of the demographic transition, which characterizes premodern societies, both birth and death rates are high and population grows slowly, if at all. In the second stage, living conditions improve as public health measures, including mass immunizations, are introduced and food production expands. Except for the United States, population growth in the more populous industrial countries has essentially stabilized, with no significant change in prospect during the next four decades. As populations grow, the effect of population growth changes.
