That the world pop­u­la­tion is es­ti­mat­ed to have reached sev­en bil­lion peo­ple a cou­ple days ago is not sig­nif­i­cant in it­self, but rather the pop­u­la­tion ex­perts are say­ing the is­sue sur­rounds how coun­tries, re­gions and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty are plan­ning for the in­creas­ing num­bers. But hav­ing said that the sev­en bil­lion fig­ure should not push the but­ton for dooms­day pre­dic­tions, the ex­po­nen­tial rate of in­crease in peo­ple over the last 200 years should give us cause for con­cern. For in­stance, the first bil­lion was on­ly reached in 1804. How­ev­er, the fig­ure dou­bled with­in 123 years, and it on­ly took an­oth­er 32 years for an­oth­er bil­lion to be added.

There­after one bil­lion was added in 25 years, an­oth­er bil­lion in 13 years and at 12-year in­ter­vals there­after to reach the sev­en bil­lion this year. The ex­perts are say­ing that the dra­mat­ic in­creas­es have to do with sex­u­al re­pro­duc­tive rights of women, pover­ty, ig­no­rance, and the oth­er fac­tors as­so­ci­at­ed with pop­u­la­tion growth. Trinidad and To­ba­go, with a pro­file of a mid­dle in­come de­vel­op­ing coun­try, has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing quite a slow growth rate in its pop­u­la­tion over the last ten years. Us­ing CSO fig­ures, the Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2011 shows an in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 peo­ple since 2004 with an­nu­al in­creas­es av­er­ag­ing 5,000. What is in­ter­est­ing how­ev­er are the changes in the de­mo­graph­ics: The num­ber of peo­ple over 60 and be­yond is in­creas­ing at the same time that the youth pop­u­la­tion, both in the un­der-15 and 15 to 24 group­ings, is al­so grow­ing in num­bers.

Such in­creas­es have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the abil­i­ty of the coun­try to pay pen­sions to an in­creas­ing num­ber of peo­ple, pro­vid­ing health­care ser­vices and for hous­ing and se­cu­ri­ty, as old­er peo­ple be­come more vul­ner­a­ble. At the same time though, large num­bers of old­er peo­ple con­tin­ue to be in good health and with enough de­sire to con­tin­ue work­ing. But at the same time there is need to make room in the work­place for the larg­er num­ber of young peo­ple. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance did not give an­swers to the query on how in­creased NIS pen­sions are to be sus­tained and whether or not ac­tu­ar­i­al stud­ies have de­ter­mined what will be af­ford­able in­to the fu­ture.

What is se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing are de­mo­graph­ic stud­ies with re­gard to how young peo­ple are fit­ting in­to the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my and what is the re­turn rate of young peo­ple who go abroad to study. On the sur­face of it, faced with crime and eco­nom­ic prob­lems at home, there could be quite a brain drain go­ing on with the coun­try los­ing ac­cess to a large num­ber of its po­ten­tial­ly most pro­duc­tive and in­no­v­a­tive minds. Now while fe­males are clear­ly ad­vanc­ing in great num­bers in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and in the work­place, even up the cor­po­rate lad­der, large num­bers of young women re­main de­pen­dent, with­out pow­er, trapped and vi­o­lat­ed in sex­u­al re­la­tions.

The lat­ter has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for pover­ty, crime and sex­u­al re­pro­duc­tive rights. In the case of sex­u­al re­la­tions, the con­trac­tion of HIV is a night­mare for young women es­pe­cial­ly and al­so for the es­ca­la­tion in health­care costs to in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and for the State. In a coun­try with a per capi­ta in­come GDP av­er­ag­ing US$16,000, that an es­ti­mat­ed 17 per cent is liv­ing be­neath the pover­ty line is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able. One pop­u­la­tion phe­nom­e­non of great con­cern is ur­ban­i­sa­tion. Pop­u­la­tion cen­tres are grow­ing up with­out se­ri­ous plan­ning and so lack­ing in es­sen­tial ser­vices. At the same time though, gov­ern­ments are en­gag­ing in hodge-podge con­struc­tion of com­mu­ni­ties based main­ly on elec­toral pol­i­tics. The need is for se­ri­ous at­ten­tion to be paid to these and oth­er as­pects of pop­u­la­tion growth, with the need for de­mo­graph­ic stud­ies to tease out and guide de­vel­op­ment plan­ning.