a's population policy has brought the average number of children per woman down from 5.01 in 1970 to 1.84 in 1995. But the Chinese population is still growing. This is because the children born during the previous period of high fertility are having children of their own. China did not achieve its goal of stabilizing population at 1.2 billion in the year 2000. Instead, it grew to 1.3 billion in 2000 and will inevitably increase to about 1.5 billion by 2025. China has come under heavy criticism for its heavy-handed approach to population control, and for its liberal use of abortion as a method of birth control. In India, where family-planning efforts have been less aggressive, the population is growing much faster. With 947 million inhabitants today, India may overtake China as the world's most populous nation, surpassing the 2 billion mark in 2025 (Leisinger, 1996).With an impending crisis looming over the horizon, the outlined steps must be followed to ease the population problem and the many other problems that are directly related to it. The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the Earth to produce subsistence for man. Food security for a growing world remains an unsolved problem also 200 years after Malthus. But we can realistically expect food security to be improved for an increasing number of people if sustained social and political reforms in the countries with deficits in food security are implemented. They can lead to economic development that will also benefit the lower strata of the poor nations. No problem is more urgent, but none is more complex because human reproduction is related to so many variables, including cultural and religious beliefs, family patterns, health services, and economic and educational policies. When people are educated to the benefits of limiting family size, they respond with lower birth rates. Education, coupled with economic pressure, will end the overpopulat...
