Perhaps even more critical, population growth hinders our ability to alleviate the tragic poverty that is the portion of too many of the world's citizens - poverty whose effects are compounded by the political violence, ethnic strife and uncontrollable migration that it engenders. The magnitude of the world's population growth is one of the largest in history, increasing by 90 million persons per year. The current population of 5.8 billion is projected to reach 6 billion by the turn of the century, 7.6 billion around 2020 and 9 to 10 billion around 2050. There is a need for sustained national leadership, not only because of the scope and magnitude of the problem in developing countries but also because the population problem is most acute in countries that lack the human and financial resources they require. Countries with population problems may have insufficient professional capacity to conduct policy analysis or to design, manage, and evaluate programs - skills critical to establish and maintain interventions that work.
Human investment pays the greatest premium.
The capacity to build and innovate, to influence and teach, to learn and adapt, endures for a lifetime. The knowledge base needed to build new policy and the skills to develop new programs are the finest investments we can make in social change.