FOREWORD
The estimate of the world population in 2050 has been revised downward from 10 billion to 8.9 billion merely in the past six years. The projection was amended in 1998 and the correction has been announced recently by the United Nations. This denotes a 1.1 billion reduction of forecast, and can be regarded as remarkable progress on the part of the human species in its efforts to solve the population problem.
There is still however a critical element in the issue which must be seriously considered. This is the fact that the massive population of baby-boomers - born during the high birth-rate period -is now approaching marrying age. This means that a corresponding volume of population, which could be more than 80 million at its high, will be added annually over the next several decades.
Total fertility rates have declined so markedly that they are already below replacement level in not only most of the developed countries but even in some developing countries in Asia, including Singapore, China, Korea and Thailand.
Even the issue of population explosion, the species' greatest crisis, has begun to seem more hope. On the other hand, however, destabilizing factors of a global magnitude expand increasingly as if to cancel out that hope. These factors include the food problem, environmental deterioration, and the world political disorder.
One of our strategies has been to attempt to find a clue to the solution of such multiple global crises in Asia, especially in China and India, to get a grasp of the Asian situation. The global impact of a 1.2 billion of population in China and 1.0 billion in India, each of which are expected to rise to 1.5 billion to make a total of 3.0 billion, is not only a matter of population size itself. These nations' activities in terms of conversion to population replacement level and economic growth are considered as having a crucial influence on trends in Asia as well as in the rest of the world.
