Population Policies and Programs

In the last 200 years, the world's population has increased five-fold, from one billion in 1800 to over five billion today. Every day, that figure increases by over 200,000. In 30 years, our planet will be home to a staggering eight billion people. The pressing nature of this problem has resulted in the formulation and implementation in most developing countries of population policies and programmes, research and training activities, international, national, and regional conferences, and censuses and demographic surveys geared to resolving this urgent dilemma. In this definitive volume, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provides a comprehensive distillation of the information assembled by a diverse population taskforce. A valuable resource to anyone interested in population policy, the work assesses the accomplishments of two decades worth of research and implementation and provides a plethora of prescriptive guidelines. Most significantly, it identifies broad base for joint programming and interagency cooperation so that resources can be more effectively mobilized at the global, national, and regional levels.