THREE decades ago, many pundits were saying that an ever-rising
population could lead to global disaster. They argued that
ecological catastrophe, resource wars and other tragedies were
inevitable unless radical measures were taken to defuse the
coming “population bomb”. Happily, a mixture of technological
innovation, economic dynamism and successful population-control
strategies have helped defuse that bomb, or at least delay its
detonation.  As the United Nations commemorated World Population
Day this week, there was reason for cheer. Population experts
have been busy revising their long-term scenarios downward to
account for falling fertility not only in wealthy Europe and
Japan but also in poor countries like Bangladesh and Kenya. Stan
Bernstein of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) even insists that
“this is one of the great development success stories of the
last 40 to 50 years,” pointing out that the active use of
family-planning techniques in developing countries has shot up
from 10% to 12% in the early 1