Friday, April 30, 1965
JEWISH WESTURN BULLETIN
Page Nin©
Population explosion
NOT SOARING BIRTHS BUT DECLINING DEATHS CRUCIAL
least draw back from insisting starkly that the latter alternative be chosen."
"Commentary", a monthly magazine devoted to contem-
porary issues and Jewish affairs, is sponsored as a public service by the American Jewish Committee. Norman Podhoretz, author and critic, is the editor.
NEW YORK—Contrary to a widespread misconception, the rapid growth of world population affects not only the under-developed areas throughout the globe, .but the United States and the Western world as well.
The population growth in the U.S. during the past ten years has equalled or exceeded the increase of many of the countries, in Asia and Africa. In fact, the American rate of increase during the past decade has been as high as that of India and higher than that of Japan.
The population growth in the U.S. "may not threaten us with imminent mass starvation and civil disorder, but it does strain our human and material resources and aggravates our most serious social problems." These problems are: "unemployment due to automation; the piling up of the poor in urban and rural backwaters; the strain on educational facilities; spiralling racial tensions."
These views are set forth by Dennis H. Wrong, Professor of Sociology at New York University, author of "Population and Society", who explores some of the myths of the so-called population explosion in an article in a recent issue of "Commentary" magazine. Professor W^rong is chairman of the Department of Sociology at University College of New York University (Washington Heights Campus).
Another misconception pinpointed in the article is that a **'bai)y-bdbm", sucli as was ex-
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perienced by the U.S. after the war, is the crucial factor in the the population explosion affecting the underdeveloped areas. This is not the case, Professor Wrong says. Rather is it the "sharp drop in the death rate" which is spurring the population increase in Asia and Africa.
"In other words," Professor Wrong writes, "while the level of fertility has remained the same or declined only slightly, a far higher proportion of infants is being kept alive by *death control' in the form of newly adopted medical and public health measures." The article cites as an example Ceylon where the death rate dropped as much in a single year (1947) as it did over a full fifty years in the West when the latter was going through its own modernization process.
Professor Wrong stresses that there have been distortions by botii the pessimists and the optimists in their views of the population explosion, but that in any event ,it remains "a monumentally serious problem even though it is the result of a technical revolution that is beneficial in other respects."
Despite the optimists' expectation of vast advances in productivity, "never ending population growth" the article points out, "would utlimately lead to a shortage of space even if the problem of food supply were solved." In fact, "no matter what science and technology may achieve, the time must come when only
stabilization of numbers will avoid disaster."
On the other hand, alarmist writers forsee the kind of future "in which the entire surface of the earth has been converted into a human anthill." Yet far more probably. Professor Wrong points out, "is the cessation of growth as a result of a rise in the death rate," long before the standard pessimist predictions are reached.
The true nature of the long-range disaster, as Professor Wrong sees it, "is not that we will be one day standing shoulder to shoulder on the earth's surface, but that we will lose our control over death and return to the kind of population stability (based on high mortality and fertility) prevailing in pre-modern societies."
The article warns, too, that the continuation of population growth can heighten the appeal of totalitarian techniques in the form of drastic population surgery, "for totalitarianism is essentially a method of disposing of social problems by eliminating whatever and whoever makes theni."
In clearing up some of the misconceptions about the nature of the population explosion. Professor Wrong emphatically concludes: "It becomes brutally apparent that there is no alternative to a decline in population growth, and that the only ways to achieve such a decline are birth control, or a relaxation of death-control." He adds that "it is a credit.to the absolutists that they at
Erhard Pledges Ties to Israel Will be 'More Than Formality^
German Chancellor Lndwif Erhard this wedc promised Dr. jMcUm Frini^ president •! the AucncaQ Jetwish Gongresa^ that Weat Gennasjr't diplomatio xelationa with Israel would be '*ni6re than a formalitf." Follotdnf • private meetine with Dr. Erhard in Dusseldor^ Or. Frins cziaesMd hope that Bonn's new re&tionship with Israel would havs • moderates afreet on Arab beiiigev> ance toward JsraeL Dr. Frin^ • former labbi of Berlin ezpeOed bjr Hitler for hia anti*Nad tethrities, ^sitod GeimanF aa tht niest of Major Wilqr Brandt «ff West Berlm. Kb his meetinss with German eleials and stadent% Dr. Frins sharply eritidnd fsifam of the Bundestag Is cttsad tbs staialt «l HwJfatfciBS «sllail«Bdmtd^8»thsaBd«f JA^_,__
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