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FIGURE 14. Vital rates, Poland and selected countries, 1969 (U/OU) (chart/graph)
in these and other factors, however, resulted in a lowered projection from the same sources of 39.9 million in 1985, and a population of 42.1 million by 1990. By mid-1972, Western estimates were adjusted still further downward, and posited a population of only 37.3 million by 1985.
Polish demographic sources have long been even more markedly pessimistic. An official projection of October 1969 estimated that Poland's population would not reach the figure of 40 million until the year 2000. This study reportedly was based on the most favorable of three assumptions concerning operative vital factors. By contrast, the least favorable set of assumptions produced projections of 34 million by 1975, about 36 million in 1985, and no more than 38 million by the year 2000. These latter figures were predicated largely on the assumption of a considerable slowdown of the natural increase of the population, not exceeding about 133,000 annually in the last 10 to 15 years of this century. Assuming that the declining fertility of women, especially in rural areas, observed in the late 1960's will continue, Polish demographers indicate the possibility that by the first or second decade of the next century the rate of natural increase in Poland will be zero. The latest available projections by Polish demographers indicate a further adjustment, in which two assumptions concerning vital factors resulted in a projected population in the year 2000 of only 39.4 million and 38.6 million respectively. These projections reportedly will be subject to further change as a result of detailed study of the 1970 census data.
There was no indication, however, that these projections might impel the Polish Government to revise its population policies, although a decline in publicity for family planning has been noted. The government apparently feels that, in the short run, measures to encourage larger families are unwarranted. Some Polish authorities argue that the natural trend towards smaller families in industrializing societies is often reversed when a specific level of material affluence has been reached.
D. Societal aspects of labor (C)
1. The industrializing society
In post-World War II Poland, as in other rapidly industrializing societies, the social—and by derivation, economic and political—impact of changing occupational trends has been marked, and has presented the Communist rulers with a constant challenge to the theoretical underpinning of their system. The regime's drive during the postwar period to mold a large class of skilled industrial workers conscious of its role in society has, perhaps, been only too successful. In December 1970, this class—favored in theory but ignored in practice—ousted an inept and top-heavy regime and, though within the context of the Communist system, opted for efficiency, consumer welfare, and a role for itself in national life.
The process of growth that transformed a predominantly conservative peasant society ruled by a thin crust of various elites—the military, clergy, aristocracy—into a postwar society predominantly nonagricultural—but still ruled by a similarly
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