Two hundred years ago, Thomas Robert Malthus predicted that population growth would outrun the food supply. Today, the fear is that job creation in the U.S. and some other high-tech countries is outstripping the population of available workers. In fact, the U.S. is having to import skilled immigrant workers just to help satisfy the voracious demands of its high-tech sectors.

Declining fertility rates in developed nations is today's problem -- not an over-abundance of mouths to feed.

• By 2050, the United Nations estimates, Italy's population will have fallen by 16 million, Japan's by 22 million and Russia's by 26 million.

• While the U.S. population will continue to grow in the short term -- mainly owing to immigration -- it is expected to start declining sometime after 2025.

• Citing the looming nationwide labor shortage, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has called for an increase in the number of visas for skilled foreign workers -- and endorsed a bill sponsored by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) to triple the number of high-tech workers admitted annually.

Source: Tom Bethell (American Spectator) "Malthus's Big Error: Population Control Endangers Stability of World Economies," Investor's Business Daily, April 20, 2000.