births and deaths leave much to be desired in terms of accuracy and completeness. Fortunately, projections were recently made for Mexico by two competent Mexican demographers, Benítez and Cabrera. In making their projections they took into account the birth rates and death rates over a long period of time, the infant mortality rate, the age and sex composition of the population, life expectancy, immigration, and many other factors. Their preliminary calculations led them to believe that the 1960 population was underenumerated in the census by more than 1 million inhabitants, mostly in the age groups under 5 years. They made adjustments upward in the various age groups to compensate for this underenumeration, thus increasing the reported population of 1960 by a corresponding amount before applying their various formulas to arrive at future estimates. By these methods they arrived at a total population estimate for Mexico in 1970 of 50,826,100 inhabitants. They further estimated a population of 69,268,800 inhabitants for 1980. The authors made similar calculations for each state in the nation.

For the purposes of the present study, we have computed the estimated percentage change by states and regions for 1960-70 as estimated by Benítez and Cabrera and have applied these rates of increase to the enumerated population of 1960. This will give a slightly more conservative estimate than theirs, although the differences will not be great. The results are shown in table 4. According to these estimates, the following observations might be made:

1. Mexico will have an estimated population of 49,561,300 inhabitants by 1970. This would mean an increase of 14,638,200 people, a gain of 41.9 percent from 1960 to 1970. It would give an average annual percentage increase of 4.2, one of the highest in the world (see fig. 2).

2. The U.S. Border States are expected to have a much higher rate of growth than any other region, with a total increase of 56.5 percent for the 10-year period. Baja California would experience the largest percentage of any of the states in the nation, with 112.4 percent, or more than double the 1960 population. Although these Border States are sparsely populated, they now contain seven of the 17 largest cities in the nation having over 100,000 inhabitants. Two of these are located in Baja California (Mexicali and Tiajuana) and two are in the state of Chihuahua, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. Then there is Torreón in Coahuila, Monterrey in Nuevo León and Tampico in the state of Tamaulipas. The city of Monterrey is one of the three largest cities in Mexico and now has over 600,000 inhabitants. It is to these large cities and their metropolitan areas that large numbers of people are now moving from farther south.

3. The Central area containing Mexico City shows the second highest estimated percentage growth for the decade with 42.5 percent. Much of this may be attributed to metropolitan Mexico City. If one deducts the Federal District from this region, the resulting percentage growth would be 37.2 percent. The slowest projected growth in this Central area is in the states of Aguascalientes and Hidalgo. The fastest growth in

• Raul Benítez Zenteno and Gustavo Cabrera Acevedo. Projecciones de la Población de Mexico 1960-1980. Banco de Mexico, S.A., 1966.

FIGURE 2. Growth of population in Mexico 1800-1970. (Dotted line estimated.) Data from Dirección

General de Estadística and table 5.

the region outside the Federal District is estimated for Morelos (56.2 percent) and the state of Mexico with 52.3 percent. As indicated earlier, both of these rapidly growing states adjoin the Federal District and obviously are participating in the rapid expansion of population in that large metropolitan area.

4. The region with the lowest rate of estimated growth for 1970 is that of the South Pacific, with a projected increase of 31.8 percent for the decade. There is no city in this region with as many as 100,000 inhabitants. Communication facilities are poor. The area is mountainous, with relatively little level farm land. This region contains the highest proportion of indigenous inhabitants and the death rate is somewhat higher than in other regions.

5. The Gulf region of Mexico is calculated to have a 37-percent increase in population by 1970. This area contains two large cities: Veracruz and Merida, Yucatán. Much of the area is semitropical and would seem to have good possibilities for future development.

6. An increase of 35.1 percent is estimated for the Other Northern region. The largest percentages of increase for this region are projected for the states of Nayarit and Sinaloa, both situated along the Pacific coast and having excellent agricultural resources where considerable expansion may be possible, provided additional irrigation projects can be developed. Slower growth appears to be likely in Durango and Zacatecas, both of which are old mining centers and areas of extensive cattle raising.

TABLE 4.-Population of Mexico in 1960 and projected population for 1970

Table 5 shows the population increase by decades for each region in 1940–50, 1950-60, and the estimated percentage increase for 1960-70 (see table 5).

Perhaps it should be kept in mind that although the greatest percentage increase for the decade 1960-70 is projected for the U.S. Border States, these states are so thinly populated that the actual increase will amount to only slightly more than 3 million inhabitants as compared with a projected increase of over 7 million in the Central region.

How accurate will these estimates prove to be? For the country as a whole this will depend on what happens to the birth rates and the death rates in the immediate future. Since there has been very little immigration to Mexico in recent years, the explanation

TABLE 5.-Population increase in Mexico by regions: 10-year intervals, 1940–70

TABLE 6.—Annual birth rates, death rates, and rates of natural increase in Mexico, 1940–65 1

for the exceedingly rapid increase in population must be sought in the rate of natural increase, i.e., the excess of births over deaths. What has been happening in this respect since 1940 is apparent from table 6 and figure 2. In 1940, the birth rate was recorded as 44.3 per thousand inhabitants and the death rate as 23.2. This gave a rate of natural increase in population of 21.1 (see table 6). The birth rate has remained at this very high level and was recorded as almost identical in 1940 and in 1965 (44.2). It has fluctuated only by a few percentage points one way or the other for the past 25 years. The death rate, on the other hand, has fallen rapidly and steadily from 23.2 in 1940 to only 9.5 in 1965. The rate of natural increase, therefore, has risen from 21.4 in 1940 to 34.7. The result is clearly evident from figure 3.

Future increase in Mexico's population will therefore depend largely on what happens to the birth rate. Obviously, any evidence of a widespread use of birth control practices has been conspicuously absent until now. Whether or not these will become widely enough accepted to make any great impact on the birth rate in the immediate future remains to be seen. It is interesting to note that a number of national and international conferences have been taking place recently among Latin American scholars, including Mexicans, with reference to the "population explosion" and it seems not unlikely that as these matters are discussed more openly, the population will become increasingly aware of the advantages to be gained in social and economic well-being through family planning.

Although Mexico's population has been increasing rapidly, it is important to note that industrial and agricultural production have more than kept pace with it. Thus, the Nacional Financiera, S.A., of Mexico calculates that the gross national product per inhabitant in Mexico has increased (at 1950 prices) from 1,150 pesos in 1940 to 2,300 pesos in 1965. In other words, the gross national product per inhabitant has doubled since 1940, even taking into account the rather spectacular increase in population.5

Agricultural production has also greatly increased in recent years. There was considerable decline in production during 1930-40 but this has been overcome and the production index per capita rose from 134.9 in 1940 to 598.3 in 1965. This increase in agriculture production has been due to a number of factors, including the development of irrigation projects which have brought new land into production, the improvement of seed selection, the establishment of agricultural experiment stations and extension services.

These improvements are by no means universal in Mexico, however, since a large proportion of the farmland is still tilled on a subsistence basis on tiny plots with techniques that have seen little or no improvement since colonial times.

5 Nacional Financiera, S.A. La Economia Mexicana en Cifras, Mexico, 1966, table 10, p. 53. Nacional Financiera, S.A., op. cit., p. 61.