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Though governments of underdeveloped countries are under constant pressure to achieve economic and social gains, they cannot realistically hope to match in a few years the living standards built up by Western nations over the centuries. In Mexico, for example, noted Dr. David McCord Wright, professor of economics and political science at Montreal's McGill University, the value of goods and services produced per capita in 1955 was $187, v. $2,343 in the U.S. Even to increase the per capita gross national product to the present U.S. level by 1980−when Mexico's population will have doubled−Mexico would have to boost national output 2,500% (to $156 billion) and invest the astronomical sum of some $400 billion in capital. In Burma the same goal would take an 8,900% boost in G.N.P.
Functionless Fertility. To achieve any lasting solution for poverty, underdeveloped nations must thus not only race to create enough jobs for the expanding work force but must succeed in boosting per capita gross national product at least 5% annually (v. 2.5% for the U.S. in 1957), with up-to-date machinery and management methods, hydroelectric energy, nuclear power, research to find substitutes for earth's dwindling resources. This means also, as Economist Staley urged, that governments must be prepared to make a "deep-going transformation in methods of work, in education, in administration, even in social institutions like the family and religion."
In Japan, which supports 91 million people in an area the size of Montana, a nine-year-old birth-control program has already cut the birth rate almost in half (to 1.2% annually). The free world's most extensive contraception campaign is expected to achieve similar results in less industrialized India. A major problem facing underdeveloped nations is what scientists call "functionless fertility"−the peasant's tendency to continue having large families even when he no longer has to insure himself against a high death rate. India's economic planners say their biggest problem is still to convince the agrarian population that with smaller families and more efficient production they can greatly increase their standards of living.