Text 4 (課外閱讀)
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 per cent) and Africa (2.6 per cent). Asia comes third (2.1 per cent) but because its present population is so large it is there that by far the greatest number of people will be added before the end of the century.
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 till 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 are having to run faster and faster in their economic activity in order to stay in the same place, but 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 the 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 that they have nothing to spare for savings. As 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(計劃生育) and this, in turn, will mean basic changes in attitudes. (458 words)
Note: not so much … as … 與其說是 …，倒還不如說是 …。
1. Asia will add to itself the greatest number of population in the next decade because it has the ______________.
A. highest birth rate B. lowest death rate
C. fastest growth rate D. largest present population
2. According to paragraph 2, the rapid growth of population is mainly due to ______________.
A. the decline in death rates across the world
B. the sharp increase in birth rates all over the world
C. the prolonged lives of old people in developing countries
D. the improvement of people's living standard in developed countries
3. In the sentence "... populations are being added to at both ends" (Paragraph 2), the words "both ends" refer to both _______________.
A. birth rate and death rate B. babies and old people
C. developed and developing countries D. poor and rich people
4. According to the statistics from the developed countries, ______________.
A. birth rates will not fall until people's living standards begin to rise
B. the death rate in America began to fall only after the Industrial Revolution
C. the developing countries are running faster and faster in their economic activity
D. only when the people's living conditions begin to improve will the world population stop growing
5. It can be concluded from the last paragraph that ______________.
A. people in developing countries have smaller families as a rule
B. there is no way to ease the population problem in poor countries
C. rich countries are helping poor people improve their living conditions
D. family planning is essential to the final solution of the population problem
