Population Problems in a Contracting World **

The population problem has been a popular theme for a decade or more. About every possible medium from scientific and literary journals to the daily press and television, has had a hand in presenting its multiple details and controversies. The result is a familiarity so universal that a summary satisfies present purposes. The main objective is to state the particular obligations of medicine and public health in a difficulty that engages all of society, and involves most of its interests and agencies. The present rapid growth of population, the responsible factors, and the resulting imbalance between people and resources create a critical social and economic problem of today. It has its health component' as do most such difficulties; in this instance especially so, because medical progress is frequently responsible for the situation of too many people. In many countries birth rates continue high while death rates decline; the demographic gap widens and the additions to numbers accelerate. Overpopulation too often is resolved into a question of food supply, the food chain concept of ecologists. The precept is that a species cannot permanently exceed its food supplies, that these fix an upper limit of numbers. This is an oversimplification. Man has other important values such as the need for clothing, shelter, and adequate medical facilities; the desire for education, employment and recreation; the demand for cultural and spiritual growth as well as physical well-being. By such criteria is the existence of a population problem determined defining an unsatisfactory balance between population and all resources. Numbers of people do not of themselves produce a population problem. The important consideration is the relation between the two variables of people and resources. India, a country with recognized difficulties has 402 million people in an area of 1,221,880 square miles. Greenland in 1957 had a population of 28,206 with an area two-thirds that of India, and yet its population problem was of relatively greater moment. Because of climate