Overwhelming Evidence

Global: Health Outcomes

Whereas: From 1970 to 2004, the proportion of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa fell slightly from 35% down to 32%. However, since the regional population more than doubled during that time, the number of hungry people has actually increased 43% from about 93 million to 214 million.

Whereas: 380 women become pregnant every minute -- half of them do not plan or wish the pregnancy.

Whereas: Over 100 million women in developing countries would prefer to avoid pregnancy but are not using any form of family planning or birth control. Worldwide, over 350 million couples lack access to a full range of modern family-planning information and services.

Whereas: Over 24 developing nations still have fertility rates, or average number of children per woman, of 6.0 or higher, -- while another 24 have fertility rates of 5.0-5.9

Whereas: Wherever high-quality contraceptive services have been made available with supporting information, the birth rate has fallen, even among low-income populations.

Whereas: Between 2007 and 2025, cereal production must increase from the present 2.2 billion tons to three billion tons, to keep up with population growth.

Whereas: As the result of growing human numbers and over cultivation of ecologically fragile lands, per capita grain yields in Africa have fallen by as much as 30% since 1970.

Whereas: Of the estimated annual 200 million pregnancies on Earth, about 40% or 80 million of them are unwanted or mistimed.

Whereas: In 1984, the year of the infamous famine, the population of Ethiopia was 42 million. Today it has reached 75 million and by 2050 the country is projected to have a population of 145 million.

Whereas: In Nigeria, the growing population will push the cost of vaccines from $20 million annually in 2000 to $70 million in 2015.

Global: Stability

Whereas: In 1900, there were 21 acres of land per person in the world (including tundra, desert, etc.). In the year 2000 there were 5. That amount is shrinking every year as population grows.

Whereas: By the year 2020, the combined populations of Asia and Africa will be 6 to 8 billion people – equal to or greater than the number that now lives on the entire planet.

Whereas: China, its population expanding at about 7 million people per year as of 2006, appears to be advancing economically along the same path as did Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. If it does this to the point of achieving the same level of fish consumption as these nations, the entire sustainable wild fish production of all the world's oceans would be required just to supply China's fish needs.

Whereas: If human population grows as projected over the next fifty years, more food will have to be produced worldwide than has been produced during the past 10,000 years combined.

Whereas: The Middle East, besides having the world's highest rate of unemployment, also has the world's highest rate of population growth, and the largest portion of the world's armed conflicts. Africa, besides having the world's second-highest unemployment rate, also has the world's second-highest rate of population growth and the world's second-largest portion of armed conflicts.

Whereas: In the politically unstable and conflicted countries shown in the table below, not a single country is at replacement level fertility – instead, the region is growing rapidly.

Nation	Total Fertility Rate	Doubling Time
Afghanistan	6.8	26 years
Iraq	5.1	25 years
Saudi Arabia	4.5	27 years
Pakistan	4.8	20 years
Palestine	5.6	19 years

Whereas: The U.S. CIA concluded that a key driving trend for the Middle East in the next 15 years will be population pressure. They point out that, even now, in nearly all Middle Eastern countries, over half of the population is under age 20.

Whereas: The world's fishing fleet doubled in number of large boats and in total capacity during 1970-90. In 1998, this fleet had a fishing capacity twice that of the sustainable yield of the world's wild fisheries

Whereas: Pakistan is short of educational infrastructure and lacks as many as 60,000 middle schools. The average Pakistani boy completes 5 years of schooling, the average girl 2.5 years. Pakistan's female literacy rate is 42%.

Whereas: Violence at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists has its origins in the combination of the world's highest population growth rate and some of the world's most degraded environments. Economies in which per-capita GDP has fallen 60% during the past two decades cannot afford the cost of the infrastructure growth (44% of GDP) needed to accommodate these high population growth rates.

Whereas: Only 33% of developing-world population growth comes from unwanted fertility. About 49% comes from momentum caused by the population age structure, and this requires at least two generations to eliminate. Only about 18% of population growth comes from high desired family size.

Whereas: A thousand billion dollars are spent annually around the world on military spending but only around $60 billion on development and humanitarian aid.

Whereas: High population growth rates result in a dire scarcity of financial capital since any financial capital creation is absorbed in the costs of the infrastructure needed to accommodate population growth. At the same time, large family size in low-income countries causes people to spend most of their income on immediate survival needs of food, housing and clothing, leaving little left over for investment and capital formation. The scarcity of financial capital translates into scarcities of transportation systems, communication systems, electric power systems, human capital, and sound legal systems – all of which are essential for attracting capital from external sources. The lack of capital, external or internal, thus translates into a lack of jobs, which translates into high unemployment rates. The resultant desperate poverty produces desperate struggles for the basic necessities. The result is high levels of armed conflict and decreasing levels of safety for capital investments of all types.

Whereas: The projected four billion people living in cities by 2030 will be more than those who lived on the entire planet in 1975.

Whereas: One-half of the world's population is currently under age 24. To put that in perspective, there are more young people in the world today, than all people living in 1960.

Whereas: Approximately 350,000 humans are born each day and 150,000 die each day, resulting in about 200,000 additional humans on the planet each day.

Whereas: A CIA study covering more than 50 years reported that the primary predictor of a country's instability was its infant mortality rate. Afghanistan's infant mortality rate is 154/1000 births, nearly three times higher than the worldwide rate of 56/1000.