The American baby boom after the war made the U.S. advice unconvincing to poor countries that they restrain their births. However, there has hardly been a year since 1957 in which birth rates have not fallen in the United States and other rich countries, and in 1976 the fall was especially sharp. Both East Germany and West Germany have fewer births than they have deaths, and the United States is only temporarily able to avoid this condition because the children of the baby boom are now an exceptionally large group of married couples.
It is true that Americans do not typically plan their births to set an example for developing countries. We are more affected by women's liberation: once women see interesting and well-paid jobs and careers available, they are less willing to provide free labor for child raising. From costing nothing, children suddenly come to seem impossibly expensive. And to the high cost of children are added the uncertainties introduced by divorce, couples are increasingly unwilling to subject their children to the terrible experience of marital breakdown and themselves to the difficulty of raising a child alone.
These circumstances-women working outside the home and the instability of marriage tend to spread with industrial society and they will affect more and more countries during the remainder of this century. Along with them goes social mobility, ambition to rise in the urban world, a main factor in bringing down the births in the nineteenth century.
Food shortage will happen again when the reserves resulting from the good harvest of 1976 and 1977 have been consumed. Urbanization is likely to continue, with the cities of the developing nations struggling under the weight of twice their present populations by the year 2000. the presently rich countries are approaching a sable population largely because of the changed place women, and they incidentally are setting an example of restraint to the rest of the world. Industrial society will spread to the poor countries, and aspirations will exceed resources. All this will lead to a population in the twenty-first century that is smaller than was feared a few years ago. For those anxious to see world population brought under control, the news is encouraging.
During the years from 1957 to 1976, the birth rate of the United States ______.
A. increased
B. experienced both falls and rises
C. was reduced
D. remained stable
The sentence "From Costing nothing, children suddenly come to seem impossibly expensive."
A. food and clothing for babies are becoming incredibly expensive
B. prices are going up dramatically all the time
C. to raise children women have to give up interesting and well-paid jobs
D. social development has made child-raising inexpensive
The striving of countries in Central Europe to enter the European Union may offer an unprecedented chance to the continent's Gypsies (or Roman) to be recognized as a nation, albeit one without a defined territory. And if they were to achieve that they might even seek some kind of formal place—at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union's present and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents of Gypsy rights go as high as 15m.
Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their language is related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be born on the moon. Other Europeans (wrongly) thought them migrant Egyptians, hence the derivative Gypsy. Most probably they were itinerant metal workers and entertainers who drifted west from India in the 7th century.
However, since communism in Central Europe collapsed a decade ago, the notion of Romanestan as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained ground. The International Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, is fostering the idea of "self-rallying". It is trying to promote a standard and written form. of the language; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as the united Bations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, The Czech capital. Where President Vaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.
At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer, Emil Scuka, was elected president of the International Tomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members of parliament, mayors and local councilors from all over Europe (OSCE), to discuss how to persuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.
The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speak for Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at its congress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsies are perhaps the world's best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councils there. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how it would actually be elected was left undecided.
So far, the European Commission is wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as a nation. The might, it is feared, open a Pandora's box already containing Basques, Corsicans and other awkward peoples. Besides, acknowledging Gypsies as a nation might backfire, just when several countries, particularly Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are beginning to treat them better, in order to qualify for EU membership. "The EU's whole premise is to overcome differences, not to highlight them," says a nervous Eurocrat.
But the idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition as Europe's largest continent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on. Gypsies have suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has the largest number of them (more than lm), in the 19th century they were actually enslaved. Hitler tried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.
"Gypsies deserve some space within European structures," says Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutchman in the European Parliament who suggests that one of the current commissioners should be responsible for Gypsy affairs. Some prominent Gypsies say they should be more directly represented, perhaps with a quota in the European Parliament. That, they argue, might give them a boost. There are moves afoot to help them to get money for, among other things, a Gypsy university.
One big snag is that Europe's Gypsies are, in fact, extremely heterogeneous. They belong to many different, a
A. Gypsies Want to Form. a Nation
B. Are They a Nation
C. EU Is Afraid of Their Growth
D. They Are a Tribe