Fertility rates: the decline is stalling.

During the 1970s, one of the encouraging developments in population trends was the reduction in the total fertility rate in several key countries, including the world's two largest nations--China and India. (The fertility rate measures the average number of children born to women in their childbearing years.) In China, the rate dropped precipitously, from 6.4 children per woman in 1968 to 2.2 in 1980. In India, the decline was more modest, but still significant: from 5.8 children per woman between 1966 and 1971 to 4.8 children between 1976 and 1981.

These trends helped slow the rate of world population growth from 2.1 percent between 1965 and 1970 to 1.7 percent between 1975 and 1980. At that point, however, the decline in the number of children that women were having in these two population giants stalled.

In China, despite the most aggressive and least democratic population control program in the world, the fertility rate remained around 2.5 throughout much of the 1980s as couples continued to want to marry young and to have two or more children. In India, the overzealous promotion of family planning by the ruling Congress Party through 1977 apparently backfired after the party's defeat, and progress toward lower birth rates ran out of steam.

One important lesson from these experiences is that governments must do more than just supply contraceptives; they need to lower the demand for children by making fundamental changes that improve women's lives and increase their access to and control over money, credit, and other resources.

Many countries still register fertility rates above replacement level, which is generally 2.1 children per woman or basically two children per couple. The total fertility rate for the world as a whole in 1991 was 3.3, ranging from 1.8 in more developed nations to 4.4 in less developed ones (excluding China). In a number of countries, such as Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, and Thailand, fertility rates have been dropping as they did in the 1970s in China and India. At the same time, many developing countries have not yet entered the demographic transition.

POPULATION SIZE, FERTILITY RATE, AND DOUBLING TIME, 20 LARGEST COUNTRIES, 1993

                       Fertility            Rate              Doubling
Country                Population      (average number          Time
                       (millions)        of children           (years)
                                          per woman)

Italy                      58                1.3                 3466
Germany                    81                1.4                    *
Japan                     125                1.5                  217
United Kingdom             58                1.8                  267
France                     58                1.8                  169
Russia                    149                1.7                  990
United States             258                2.0                   92
China                   1,178                1.9                   60
Thailand                   57                2.4                   49
Indonesia                 188                3.0                   42
Brazil                    152                2.6                   46
Turkey                     61                3.6                   32
Mexico                     90                3.4                   30
India                      97                3.9                   34
Viet Nam                   72                4.0                   31
Philippines                 5                4.1                   28
Egypt                       8                4.6                   30
Pakistan                  122                6.7                   23
Iran                        3                6.6                   20
Nigeria                     5                6.6                   23

Source: Population Reference Bureau, 1993 World Population Data Sheet
(Washington, D.C.: 1993).

*At its current mortality rate, Germany's population is shrinking, and at this
fertility rate will never double.

The demographic transition occurs when both birth rates and death rates in a country drop from historically high levels to low ones that translate into a stable population--one that merely replaces itself with each new generation. Traditionally, although not always, death rates have declined first, following the spread of sanitation and improved health care overall. Rapid population growth often follows this first phase of the demographic transition, as the gap between fertility and mortality rates widens for a time. Eventually, however, fertility rates fall too.

At the moment, they remain high in a number of countries. The reasons include unequal rights and opportunities for women, as well as inadequate access to birth control. Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: 67 countries, home to 17 percent of the world population, are at best in the early stages of a transition to low fertility rates. Most of them are in Africa and South Asia, and their populations are likely to double in 20 to 25 years.

This is leading to a two-tiered demographic world that is every bit as worrying as the world of economic haves and have-nots. Countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan are finding it harder to keep up with the demand for food, health care, jobs, housing, and education than countries that are in the middle of the demographic transition.

As Shiro Horiuchi of Rockefeller University notes, "the demographic gap seems to overlap with a growing gap in economic development." This gap has been growing for more than 20 years. In 1970, 34 percent of the world lived in countries with fertility rates below 5.5. Just five years later, thanks to the dramatic declines in India and especially China, the figure was 80 percent. It has not gained much since then, however, reaching 83 percent by 1985. More than three fourths of the significant declines in fertility rates started in the 1965 to 1970 period, and not many have begun since then.

Even when a country does reach replacement-level fertility, its population can continue growing for decades. There is a built-in momentum created by all the people who have yet to enter their childbearing years. Indeed, the decline in the world's population growth rate stalled in the 1980s in part because even in China, India, and other countries where fertility rates had been dropping, large number of people who had been born in the 1960s reached childbearing age. So even if couples had two or three children instead of five or six, as their parents did, the population would grow substantially.

For the world as a whole, even if replacement-level fertility had been achieved in 1990, the population would continue to grow until it reached 8.4 billion in 2150 because of all the young people already alive.

This built-in momentum obviously limits how quickly any country can stop population growth. Nevertheless, reaching replacement-level fertility is an all-important first step. The 67 countries that have not yet begun the demographic transition--nations in which invariably the government believes fertility levels are too high--could move in the right direction by providing the contraceptive and health care services that would help couples have only the number of children they desire.