The world population increased by 3.2 billion within 45 years, from 1950 to 1995, split as 0.4 billion in the developed nations, and 2.8 billion in the developing nations. Thus, the world population increase after the second world war has mainly occurred in developing nations.
When we look at the increase rate over each five years [Table 1] to understand the situation in more detail, although we see some change in the overall percentage increase from 1950-55 to 1990-95, it is not particularly large. However, if the developed and developing nations are separated, there are some more obvious differences and changes to be seen. The rate of increase in the developed nations gradually declined annually from 1.20% in 1950-55 to less than one percent (0.82%) in 1965-70, and fell to 0.40% in 1990-95. In the developing nations, the rate of increase has been constantly above two percent annually, from 2.05% in 1950-55 to 2.06% in 1985-90, with the increase rising to 2.52% in 1965-70. However, after recording 2.37% in 1970-75 it started dropping, and the rate of increase fell remarkably especially after 1975. Then it fell under 2% for the first time in 1990-95 (1.88%).
There where periods of population increases in the developed nations by demographic transition after the Industrial Revolution, but it rarely exceeded two percent as an annual rate of increase even at that stage. Also, those population increases were induced by economic development, which in turn had the reciprocal effect of further accelerating that same economic development, and it has never been a hindrance in the same way as the current population increases in the developing nations. By comparison, the existing population increases by external causes before economic development got on the right track, and the remarkable increase of two percent annually are the current problems of the developing nations.
The world population situation needs to be considered in more detail by splitting it up into separate areas. The world population is far from level, for as you can see when the population is split up into the five continents [Table 2], in 1995 there were 3.5 billion people (61%) in Asia, 0.8 billion (14%) in America, 0.7 billion (12%) in both Africa and Europe, and only 30 million
