The interrelationship of population growth, food production, and death rates is explored. Birth rates in China, Western Europe, and North America have significantly decreased in the five-year period from 1970-75. This is largely due to widening availability of family planning services and the growing desire to use them. Four European countries have reached stability in population growth: East and West Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg. Reasons for this stability include high levels of income, high levels of education and employment for women, and easy access to contraceptives. Death rates, however, have increased due to hunger and nutritional stress in areas such as Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia, and the Sahelian countries of Africa. Even in cases where food crises arise from civil insurrection, the groups most vulnerable to the stresses of starvation are children and the elderly. Food production in many countries has been so hampered by weather changes and abuse of ecological factors that current production cannot keep up even with limited population growth. Governments can try to reduce population growth by providing family planning services, satisfying basic social needs, educating all social groups about the effects of rapid population growth, providing alternative careers to motherhood, and reshaping national social and economic policies to encourage small families. (AV)