the need for birth control methods has developed fairly recently, with the desire among many women to be able to deide when they want to have a baby. at the same time there is a growing awareness of the problem of a rapidly increasing world population.

　　this problem of a rising world population is largely the result of improved medical skills, which have lowered the death rate and, at the same time, raised the birth rate by increasing live births and the number of babies who survive early childhood. there is a growing realization that food production cannot keep pace with these increases, the result of which is that in some countries people are already starving to death while many millions more suffer from malnutrition. this problem is further complicated by the fact that in places like america and europe we obtain by trade and consume far more food and resources like oil than, say, the average indian, thus leaving even less for the people in the underdeveloped areas to survive on.

　　world population is rising at a rate of two per cent a year;this means an addition of 70 million people a year to the present population of more than 3,500 million. there are strking regional differences in the population growth trends.the fastest growing region is latin america which includes south and central america and the caribbean, while africa and asia closely follow latin america. however, the largest absolute addition to the world population is in asia which at present contains about three-fifths of the people of the world.