Converging social trends, emerging social problems.

  • United States. Welfare Administration. Division of Research.
Date:
1964]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Converging social trends, emerging social problems. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/100 (page 7)
    Nine million more people were added to the population between 1930 and 1940; in the next decade, nineteen million; and twenty-eight million between 1950 and 1960. In 1964, the population reached 190 million. Even if the growth rate is leveling off — and some evidence indicates that it is — the population will continue to expand and is expected to pass the 300 million mark before the year 2000. As long as Americans get born faster than they die, the Nation will grow. For several years now, there have been slightly less than 10 deaths a year among every 1,000 Americans, but there are more than 20 births. Although the birth rate has dropped from a high of about 25 per 1,000 people in the 1952-1957 period to about 22 per 1,000 now, there have been about 4 million babies born each year since 1955. If so spaced, that would mean about seven new babies arriving every minute. And they can expect to live 20 years longer than the babies born in 1900 —to 70 (on the average) if they are boys, to 73 if they are girls. Immigration, which brought 14.5 million people to our shores in the first 20 years of this century, has accounted for less than 4 million in the past two decades. CHART 2 EACH YEAR—MORE BIRTHS THAN DEATHS 50 NET IMMIGRATION WM BirRTHS [1 peaTHs 40 30 NATURAL INCREASE POPULATION GROWTH 20 10 MILLIONS OF PERSONS 0 1931-40 1941-50 1951-60