Today high population growth rates represent a common burden and the single greatest obstacle to more rapid development by the poor countries of the world. The consequences of overpopulation are visible in famines and malnutrition. in epidemics and chronic illness. in illiteracy and ignorance. in urban squalor and rural stagnation. in unemployment and underemploymentin the full range of human misery. The depth of the population crisis cannot be understood fully except by those who have seen the children in the barrios of Latin America. in the streets of Calcutta. or in the refugee camps along the Pakistan border. Then the statistics of 3 percent population growth rate have meaning. Then one can understand what will happen as the population of Latin America leaps from 270 to 760 million by the year 2000.