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.
