APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
FIGURE 11. Vital rates, Poland and five European Communist countries, 1950 to 1969 (U/OU) (chart/graph)
levels of living, rapid urbanization with an attendant weakening of the Roman Catholic ethic among the urban population, an endemic housing shortage, and since 1956, the government's policy of encouraging family planning through both the legalization of abortion and encouragement of contraceptive practices. Contributing factors also include the decreasing fertility coefficient of rural as well as urban women of childbearing age, the significant if apparently temporary decrease in the marriage rate during the 1956-65 decade, and the divorce rate which more than doubled between 1955 and 1970.
FIGURE 12. Age-sex distribution, Poland and the United States, December 1970 (U/OU) (chart/graph)
Until 1963 the combined effects of wartime deaths and migrations and the trends in birth and death rates produced a population structure with a rising percentage of persons either under or over the working-age group of 15 to 64 years, i.e. a society with a sharply rising dependency ratio (Figure 13). In 1960 nearly 40% of the population fell in this category. Since 1963, however, the radio of persons under 15 years of age has been decreasing and by 1990 is expected to constitute about one-fourth of the population in contrast to more than one-third in 1960. Although the number of persons over 65 eras of age will continue to rise, reaching an expected 9.9% of the total population in 1990, the increasing percentage of persons within the working-age group will contribute to a slowly declining dependency ratio. By 1990, this ratio is expected to be the same as it was in 1950.
The median age of the Polish population has remained relatively low compared with other European countries, advancing only slightly, from 23.4 to 26.2 years between 1931 and 1950, and even more slowly, to the figure to 27.3 in 1970. According to the 1970 census, exactly one-half of the Polish population had been born since 1913. Life expectancy at birth has slowly risen in conjunction with a declining infant mortality rate, and in 1968 registered 66.9 years for males and 73.8 years for females. Poland continues to have one of the lowest overall sex ratios of males to females in Europe, about 93 males per 100 females in 1970. This represents an
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
