Critical Masses: 2the Global Population Challenge

Texts on world demography risk being every bit as dry as the numbers underlying explosive population growth. Moffett, diplomatic correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, avoids that pitfall by placing this critical global quandary within the context of individual lives. From the slums of Mexico City to villages of Bangladesh, he brings into stark relief the effects of overpopulation on the lives of ``real people'' he has interviewed. He demonstrates that family planning initiatives will be successful only when implemented within a holistic social setting, including broad improvements in women's health care and an increase in women's social status and economic options. In locales where this has been largely accomplished, such as Thailand and South Korea, birthrates have fallen. Yet Moffett also stresses that the actual number of births each year has been steadily rising worldwide. We are, he argues convincingly, at a crossroads where appropriate action must be taken. (Sept.)