
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 12, 1993                   TAG: 9305120051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WORLD POPULATION GROWS AT RECORD PACE

World population is growing at the fastest pace ever and virtually all growth is in the Third World, according to a survey of released Tuesday by a research group.

The annual survey by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau, said, "We are at a point where, except for the United States, population growth is essentially a Third World phenomenon."

The survey predicted world population will reach 5.5 billion by mid-1993, 40 percent of it in China and India. The bureau said population is growing each year by 90 million, roughly the population of Mexico.

Carl Haub, a demographer who worked on the study, said that world population will grow to 8.5 billion by the year 2025, "only if birth rates continue to come down as expected. If they don't, growth will be even faster."

In an interview, Haub said the world population took 15 years to increase by 1 billion to its 4 billion total in 1975, 12 years to increase to 5 billion in 1987 and is expected to take 10 years to rise to 6 billion in 1997.

The survey showed the United States with a growth rate of 0.8 percent a year. This rate "and the world's highest amount of immigration will now produce unexpectedly high growth," it said.

"With a net immigration of about 900,000 per year, the United States effectively absorbs 1 out of every 100 people added to world population each year."

Haub said that most of the immigrants to the United States are from the Third World.

Europe's population is virtually stagnant with a growth rate of 0.2 percent a year. "This virtually guarantees population decline by the turn of the century," Haub said. Several former Communist countries, including Hungary and Bulgaria, already show negative growth rates.

States of the former Soviet Union have been growing at 0.6 percent. But there was a wide gap between Russia/Ukraine, where population is declining, and the Muslim republics of central Asia, which are growing at more than 2 percent.

The world's fastest growing area is the poorest: sub-Saharan Africa with a population growth rate of 3 percent a year, meaning that population will double in 20 years. Latin America is growing at 2.5 percent.

by CNB