The population is growing more quickly in some parts of the world than others. The continents with the fastest growth rates are Latin America (2.9 percent) and Africa(2.6 percent), Asia comes third(2.1 percent), but because its present population is so large it is three that by far the greatest number of people will be added in the next decade. The main reason is not so much a rise in birth rates as a fall in death rates as a result of improvements in public health services and medical care. Many more babies now survive infancy, grow up and become parents, and many more adults are living into old age so that populations are being added to at both ends. In Europe and America the death rate began to fall during the Industrial Revolution. In the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America the fall in death rate did not begin until much later and the birth rate has only recently begun to fall. This sudden increase in the population of the developing countries has come at a difficult time. Even if their population had not grown so fast they would have been facing a desperate struggle to bring the standard of living of their people up to the point at which there was enough food, housing, education, medical care and employment for everyone to have a reasonable life. The poor countries have to run faster and faster in their economic activity in order to stay in the same place, and the gap in wealth between rich and poor countries grows wider every year. Statistics show that rapid population growth creates problems for developing countries. So why don’t people have fewer children? Statistics from developed countries suggest that it is only when people’s living standards begin to rise that birth rates begin to fall. There are good reasons for this. Poor countries cannot afford social services and old age pensions, and people’s incomes are so low they have nothing to spare for savings. At a result, people look to their children to provide them with security in their old age. Having a large family can be a form of insurance. And even while they are still quite young, children can do a lot of useful jobs on a small farm. So poor people in a developing country will need to see clear signs of much better conditions ahead before they will think of having smaller families. But their conditions cannot be improved unless there is a reduction in the rate at which population is increasing. This will depend on a very much wider acceptance of family planning and this, in turn, will mean basic changes in attitudes. 16. Which continent has its fastest growth rate of population?