We are all affected by the tragedy that is sweeping across much of Africa. The children and adults dying of starvation in Ethiopia, Chad, and the Sudan have called forth an outpouring of humanitarian relief from all quarters of the globe. That is a gratifying but belated response to a desperate crisis that has been building for a long time. The immediate cause of the tragedy is the prolonged drought afflicting a broad swath of nations south of the Sahara. A more fundamental cause, however, is the pressure of increasing population on food supplies and economic resources in that region. Rapid population growth has compounded the effects of drought, civil war, poor land use, desertification, and pricing policies that destroy farmers' incentives to produce. While aid from the world's food-surplus nations is a necessary response to this crisis, it is equally important to join the region's leaders in their search for ways to address underlying population, resource, and governance problems.

The countries of the sub-Sahara have the highest population growth rates in the world. In Kenya, for example, population is growing at 4 percent per year, with the result that its population will double within seventeen years. If these rates of growth continue, Africa's current population of 530 million will grow to 875 million by the year 2020. Europe, with roughly the same population, will add about 20 million people over the same period.

In recent years countries in other parts of the developing world have made impressive gains in reducing fertility. Mexico, with a 3.4 percent rate of population increase in the early 1970s, has brought that rate down by introducing family planning, by reducing infant mortality, and by adopting other measures. Birth rates have fallen by more than 25 percent in India, Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. China, with a billion people and a quarter of the world's population, reduced its birth rate by 54 percent between 1965 and 1982. These and other successes suggest that countries can improve the circumstances of their people by working simultaneously to accelerate economic growth, to distribute the fruits of economic progress more equitably, and to limit family size.

A Scenario of Hope

Enough evidence has now accumulated to provide guidance for policies directed toward those ends. Countries that have implemented strong family-planning programs have achieved the greatest gains in limiting population growth. Fertility has fallen faster, for example, in Colombia, where family planning received public support in the late 1960s, than in Brazil, where the central government has only recently