In the 1980s, Bangladesh faced no greater problem than population growth. Census data compiled in 1901 suggested a total of 29.1 million in East Bengal, the region that became East Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh. By 1951, four years after partition from India, East Pakistan had 44 million people, a number that grew rapidly up to the first postfreedom census, taken in 1974, which reported the national population at 71.3 million. The 1981 census reported a population of 87.2 million and a 2.3 % annual growth rate. Thus, in just 80 years, the population had tripled. In July 1988 the population, by then the eighth largest in the world, stood at 109,965,000, and the average annual growth rate was 2.6 %. According to official estimates, Bangladesh was expected to reach a population of more than 140 million by the year 2000.