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Danté Sampson

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Mexico Population 2017 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)

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Mexico has displayed a positive population growth over the past seven decades. The population has quadrupled between 1933 and 1980 and has had its ups in years like in 1950, where the growth was 4.6%, and in 1970, where it recorded 7.2%.

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Teagan Roberts

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European civilisation is dying. It is dying in plain sight and almost nobody is talking about it. No, our civilisation is not succumbing to onslaught from an external foe. But we seem to be suffering from a pernicious anaemia of the spirit that drags us down from inside. There are many symptoms of this decline but the most deadly is that we are losing the will to breed. Birth rates in all 28 EU countries are now below replacement rates and all indigenous populations are in decline.

What greater sign could there be that our civilisation is dying than the fact that the majority of Europeans have insufficient zest in life to replace themselves? Civilisation can struggle on even in difficult circumstances, but it can hardly survive without people.

Basic biology and simple arithmetic tell us that in order to keep the population of a country constant, it is necessary for each woman to give birth to 2.1 children but, for many years the birth rates in the 28 states that currently constitute the EU have been below replacement rate. The cumulative births per woman in the 28 states are as follows (the first number in the brackets is the 1960 birth rate, the second is the 2014 birth rate; where only one number is noted it is the 2014 birth rate): Belgium (2.54, 1.74), Bulgaria (2.31, 1.53), Czech Republic (2.09, 1.53), Denmark (2.57, 1 .69), Germany (1.47), Estonia (1.98, 1.54), Ireland (3.78, 1.94), Greece (2.23, 1.3), Spain (1.32), France (2.01), Croatia (1.46), Italy (2.37,1.37), Cyprus (1.46), Latvia (1.65), Lithuania (1.63), Luxembourg (2.29,1.5), Hungary (2.02,1.44), Malta (1.42), the Netherlands (3.12,1.71), Austria (2.69, 1.47), Poland (1.32), Portugal (3.16, 1.23), Romania (1.52), Slovenia (1.58), Slovakia (3.04,1.37), Finand (2.72, 1.71), Sweden (1.88), the UK (1.81). The average birth rate in the 28 states in 2014 was 1.56.

European societies increasingly are no longer self-sustaining. For example, if current trends continue, every new generation of Spaniards will be 40 per cent smaller than the previous one. In Italy the percentage of the population over 65 will increase from 2.7 per cent now to 18.8 per cent in 2050. By 2060 the population of Germany is projected to drop from 81 million to 67 million, and the UN projects that by 2030 the percentage of Germans in the workforce will drop by 7 per cent to 54 per cent . In order to compensate for this shortage Germany needs to absorb 533,000 immigrants per year, which puts Angela Merkel's current immigration policy into context.

European civilisation has given the world many cherished values, freedoms and institutions, including the classical legacy of Greece and Rome; the rule of law; separation of church and state; modern science; individual freedom; a fabulous heritage of music, painting, sculpture and architecture; and more.

But despite this wonderful heritage, Europe is losing faith in itself, and birth rates have collapsed. Part of the reason for this is the change in the social role of women, many of whom are now in the mainstream workforce and as committed to career development as men. Many women delay having children until later in life and career pressures limit the number of children per family. This particular pressure on birthrate could be reversed by making resources available to families, but we seem to lack the will to do so.

Some people comfort themselves with the thought that Europe can overcome its demographic problems through the large-scale absorption of immigrants. This is a naive attitude. When birth rates fall to about 1.5, even large scale immigration will not hold the population steady over time. Also, European values are not universal and there is no necessary reason to expect that other civilisations will adopt these values simply because they come to Europe to partake of the technical and commercial fruits of western civilisation.

Apart from the social pressures that depress birth rates, our civilisation is also under internal assault from postmodern intellectual elites and their acolytes in the mass media, who enthusiastically embrace moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism and political correctness and attack our values and weaken our will. We must repulse these attacks, regain our confidence and boost birth rates back up to replacement rates.

William Reville is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at UCC, http://understandingscience.ucc.ie

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European civilisation is dying. It is dying in plain sight and almost nobody is talking about it. No, our civilisation is not succumbing to onslaught from an external foe. But we seem to be suffering from a pernicious anaemia of the spirit that drags us down from inside.

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Is Human OverPopulation killing the planet

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Is Human OverPopulation killing the planet

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Christos Matthews

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By Jody McCutcheon

Is Human Overpopulation Really a Problem?

Facebook pages are full of joyous announcements; gossip columnists live for stories on the subject and economists say we need more to support an ageing population, but the reality is that we should no longer be happy about people having babies.

The twentieth century was a bonanza for the human population, which grew from 1.5 billion in 1900 to six billion by 1999 (and on to seven billion in the twenty-first century's first decade). According to the US Census Bureau, our species has a net gain of one person every sixteen seconds. This seems to be too many.

Unless you're a large corporation that needs unskilled workers, that is. It thought by some economists to be behind global economic injustice to some extent: it's pretty difficult for workers to demand better conditions and higher wages when companies know there are virtually millions of other people waiting to take the place of any employees who start to demand too much.

Urban sprawl and mountains of garbage, industry and industrial agriculture, extinction-inducing levels of hunting, poaching and fishing-these are but a few notorious trademarks of the twentieth century, along with an ever-accelerating human compulsion to consume, consume, consume. Our growing numbers mean this is simply no longer sustainable: as of 2007, we have been gobbling the equivalent of 1.5 Earths a year to support our collective habits, meaning the planet requires eighteen months to regenerate what we consume in twelve.

However, whether this is a problem of consumption habits or sheer numbers is the question. Writer George Monbiot, for example, is passionate on the point that there is no need to reduce human numbers whatsoever, IF we all drastically reduce our consumption. But given the grave economic implications this would have-think unemployment, recession, and a completely different lifestyle to the one that most of us in the developed world are used to-this seems highly unlikely-which means the only realistic solution is to reduce the number of humans on the planet.

Moreoever, even if our consumer habits were curbed, even at a most basic level, an increasing-and increasingly affluent-populations demand ever more food, the farming of which requires more cleared land, which means deforestation, which releases tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere-about three gigatons (three billion tons) annually, according to one collaborative study. Combine this expulsion with the emissions produced by heavy fossil-fuel dependence, and it's easy to see why our atmosphere contains more of the climate change-accelerant carbon dioxide than we as a species have ever experienced. In the next few years, atmospheric CO2 levels will average 400 parts per million. Sure, the blame lies largely at the feet of wealthy countries, which create larger carbon footprints than do developing countries. One Briton, for example, wields the carbon footprint of 22 Malawians, and Qatar has the highest carbon footprint per capita in the world. But the developing world is catching up.

Not the Same Planet

This is a big deal. We have changed the planet, and the implications are grave. Some experts believe warming temperatures could render Arctic summers ice-free as early as 2018. To put that in perspective, that hasn't happened to the planet in three million years. If the Arctic ice melts, the ocean and planet will heat up enough to dramatically alter wind flow, global weather patterns, even the jet stream. We're already experiencing the effects of climate change: extreme weather events are responsible for much of the crop devastation in the last decade or so, including floods in the US, drought in Australia and heat waves in Russia and Europe. The future seems just as grim: a new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that unchecked climate change will exacerbate food and water shortages, and cause further animal extinctions, not to mention human misery and the increased likelihood of war for scarce resources. Why would anyone want to bring a child into such a world anyway?

The heartbreak won't just be human: human pollution and overfishing is bringing oceanic devastation and the climate change we have caused is a main contributor to what is likely to be the sixth major extinction. Scientists are lumping the twentieth century's unprecedented reduction of biodiversity into what they call the Holocene extinction, with as many as 140,000 species disappearing annually, according to the species-area theory.

Overpopulation is already affecting the 750 million people worldwide who have no access to potable water sources, and 2.5 billion are without proper sanitation. Many believe we've passed or are in the throes of a peak-water situation, meaning voracious demand has outpaced renewable supply, and ecological costs outweigh benefits of extraction. Besides industrial pollution, much of the water crisis is due to intensive agriculture designed to feed a growing number of humans: the latter half of the twentieth century saw irrigation systems nearly triple worldwide, from 100 million hectares in 1950 to 280 million hectares in 2000, to feed the burgeoning population.

Hungry, Thirsty

Consequently, many nations have dipped into non-renewable underground aquifers as global water supplies have been polluted or strained. The United Nations states that by 2025, 1.8 billion people may inhabit areas of "absolute water scarcity" (less than 1,000m3 of water available per person per year), while two-thirds of the global population may be living in "water-stressed" regions (less than 1,700m3 of water available per person per year). To put Western water consumption into perspective: sustaining the global population on average European or North American water habits would require water from 3.5 Earths.

Many sources (such as here) suggest enough food exists for ten billion people, a number that's close to the UN's estimated 2050 population of 9.6 billion. Yet in the last decade, many factors-including climate change and water scarcity-have already ruined crops, causing rising food demand to outpace production, especially of a quartet of global staples, namely wheat, rice, corn and soy. Resulting food shortages and price spikes have contributed to political instability in places like Haiti, Uzbekistan and nations involved in the Arab uprising.

Keep in mind the average worldwide daily caloric availability per person of 2790 is twenty-three percent more than what was available in 1961. Food production has clearly increased, so the problem isn't scarcity. The problem is unequal distribution, with the affluent, developed world housing twenty-five percent of the world's population, yet drawing forty-nine percent of global agricultural products. Yet with quickly diminishing potable water supplies, this agricultural bonanza is likely to wither soon, and the numbers of people undernourished worldwide (currently set at 900 million) is likely to grow, especially in developing countries.
Earth: the Next Generation
It bears mentioning in an article about saving the planet that we're saving her from ourselves, for ourselves. Earth doesn't actually need us to save her. We may sully her enough to prohibit her from supporting us, but in the long run Earth will be just fine. On the other hand, if we don't take responsibility for and clean up the mess we've caused, Earth will perform that task herself. And we won't like it one bit.

So how can we protect our interests? Must we simply consume less, collectively, while spreading consumption more equally across the population-or is it crucial to control population size?

Considering that educated, empowered women in developed countries display lower fertility rates than their developing-country counterparts, it can safely be said that developed countries lead in consumption while lagging in population. It stands to reason that sheer numbers aren't the main problem, that reducing consumption would be the way to go. But is this a viable option? Not likely. Those most equipped to lead such an ambitious undertaking are also those with the most to lose. Which doesn't mean we can't try. Start small, like foregoing meat once a month, or taking public transit to work once a week instead of adding another car to the highway snarl.

So we're back to the idea of population control. It's certainly possible, through re-education, the championing of women's rights and changes to government policy. Some 220 million women worldwide lack access to family planning, with forty percent of pregnancies unintended. It's encouraging to know the promotion of family planning and gender equality leads to more sustainable birth rates.

Furthermore, governments should nix childbearing incentives, like baby bonuses, rent and tax breaks, and instead increase the tax burden on childbearing families. And what about tax breaks for childless couples?

Solutions exist, but we must act yesterday, before climate change hits a tipping point, before food and water crises snowball into global conflicts. The transition to more sustainable behaviour won't happen quickly or easily, but it must happen-for the double-helixed sakes of our planet and all life on it, including ours.

For a very erudite discussion on overpopulation, please click here: http://youtu.be/1sP291B7SCw
Do you have an opinion on this article? We'd love to hear from you!
Images: 1. Wikicommons 2. Seppo.net 3. World Resource Institute

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Is Human Overpopulation Killing the Planet? - Eluxe Magazine

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By Jody McCutcheon Facebook pages are full of joyous announcements; gossip columnists live for stories on the subject and economists say we need more to support an ageing population, but the reality is that we should no longer be happy about people having babies.

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Megan Evans

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Global population hit 7.3 billion midway through 2015, an increase of 2 billion since 1990. It will continue to climb steadily, according to forecasters, reaching 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100.

But there is more to the population story than unprecedented numbers. The rate of growth is continuing to slow - the overall growth rate has been falling since the 1970s - and demographics are shifting.

Here is what the data shows beyond top line projections.

Globally, women are having fewer children than ever before

"The number of births has peaked, or has levelled off globally," says John Wilmoth, director of the population division in the UN's department of economic and social affairs. "Some countries still have increasing numbers of births but for the world as a whole, we're not adding people to the population through births. We're mostly adding to the population because people are living longer."

Almost all countries have experienced reductions in family size, with 46% of the world's population (pdf) now living in countries with low levels of fertility, where women have fewer than 2.1 children on average. This includes all countries in Europe and Northern America and significant parts of Asia and Latin America.

Eight percent of the world's population live in high-fertility countries that have experienced limited reductions in fertility and where the average woman has five or more children in her lifetime. As the graphic below shows, low-income countries have the highest fertility rates as a general rule, with Niger the highest at an average of 7.6 children per woman.

Fertility rates have dropped

In contrast to those countries facing consistently high fertility rates, more than 40 countries are expected to decrease their population between 2015 and 2050. The UN says fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for "full replacement of the population in the long run".

Birth rates are dropping, but death rates are dropping faster

Even if global fertility rates were to drastically reduce to replacement levels, populations would continue to grow for some time due to what experts refer to as the population momentum - the increasing number of people surviving to reproductive age and beyond.

Since 1960, the birth rate has dropped considerably in countries of all income groups, but this has not translated into a decline in the global population because the death rate has dropped even faster, especially in low-income countries, as the graphic below shows.

Birth rates are dropping, but death rates are dropping faster

In 2015 global life expectancy rose to 71.4 years, a five-year increase since 2000. Africa experienced the highest increase in that time, partly due to improvements in child health and increased access to HIV treatments.

While rising life expectancy presents a new set of challenges, Wilmoth said it was important not to lose sight of the good news. "The narrative around these issues is often negative, but when you think about the increase in life expectancy and the overall improvement in health conditions that has made population growth happen, this is an enormous reduction of human misery that has led to longer life," he says.

Wilmoth says it is the world's poorest countries, where the bulk of the population growth is taking place, that have the biggest challenges ahead. "It's the countries that are growing very rapidly, 3% or 4% per year, and therefore they are doubling in size over 25 years - that is a pace of increase which is difficult to sustain," he says.

"It's just very challenging when a country is trying to improve the level of healthcare and education, and at the same time they're having to constantly chase after population growth and increase the size of everything at a rather significant pace. The challenge is scaling up."

Africa has the most rapid population growth

More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to take place in Africa. The UN estimates that 33 countries in Africa have a high probability of tripling their populations, this includes Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Uganda. The most notable growth is expected in Nigeria, where the population is estimated to surpass that of the US by 2050, making it the third largest nation on earth.

Most populous countries

But within this diverse region there are African countries and cities bucking the trend - Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, has a fertility rate of 1.7. Some experts tout the possibility for Africa to follow trends in many parts of Asia, where lowered fertility rates and a slowdown in population growth rates took place from the 1960s, including in Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. As the graphic below shows, fertility is projected to decline in Africa too, but the pace with which this happens will have important implications for development.

Fertility rate in Africa

Education and family planning can influence fertility rates

There are a number of factors that can play a role in a country's fertility rates, including its investment in education, the availability of family planning services, the status of women's rights and the prevalence of early and forced marriage.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) argues that addressing these key issues is fundamental to slowing population growth. "Population dynamics are not destiny," the UNFPA's population matters report says. "Change is possible through a set of policies which respect human rights and freedoms and contribute to a reduction in fertility, notably access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, education beyond the primary level, and the empowerment of women."

While more women are using contraceptives than ever before, globally there are still 225 million women who would like to avoid or delay pregnancy but are unable to access a modern form of contraception. Campaigners say an important step in slowing population growth is addressing this gap and recognising women's rights to choose if and when they have children.

Research has also shown the impact of education on lowering fertility rates - educated girls are more likely to marry later and have fewer children. The UN estimates that in sub-Saharan Africa, women with no education have an average of 6.7 births, women with primary education have an average of 5.9 births, and women with secondary education have an average of 3.9 births.

Also important is the provision of maternal and child health services. Many researchers and campaigners support the theory that increased child survival rates can lead to lower fertility rates, as parents choose to have fewer children when they know there is a higher likelihood the ones they have will survive into adulthood (pdf).

Hans Rosling, statistician and co-founder of data foundation Gapminder, echoes this sentiment in his work, arguing that ending population growth starts by saving the poorest children.

Wilmoth agrees, saying that while the link between improved maternal health and reduced fertility can be difficult to demonstrate empirically, historical studies show that parents have family size goals in mind. "They're less likely to have an additional birth because the current children are less likely to die."

Reframing the debate

The challenges of population growth are clear, not least the threats to biodiversity from increased pollution, deforestation, intensive agriculture and urbanisation. Because the stakes are high, there is a heated debate over how to tackle the issue. There are growing calls for less of a focus on overpopulation and more on overconsumption, including those outlined in Stephen Emmott's book Ten Billion, which calls for drastic behavioural change to curb an unprecedented environmental crisis.

Wilmoth argues the key to meeting some of these challenges lies in reframing the conversation, putting human rights at the fore. "The use of the term overpopulation portrays a certain bias, that you're focusing on the number of people rather than the level of development," he said. "Is a country overpopulated or is it under-developed? I think sometimes the discussion is exaggerated, and there's not enough conversation about the possibility for development to keep pace with population growth.

"There is a real opportunity here. But that opportunity can only be grasped if the growing number of young people today are empowered with education and employment, and have access to contraception, so that the generation that follows them won't be bigger still."

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Over-populated or under-developed? The real story of population growth

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Global population hit 7.3 billion midway through 2015, an increase of 2 billion since 1990. It will continue to climb steadily, according to forecasters, reaching 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. But there is more to the population story than unprecedented numbers.

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world's population will reach 9.8 billion in 2050

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world's population will reach 9.8 billion in 2050

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Rahil Patel

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Gulzar Khan in Pakistan has 36 children from three wives [AFP]

The world's population of 7.6 billion will balloon to 9.8 billion by 2050 and India will overtake China as the most populous country in just seven years, a United Nations report has said.

The report, released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs on Wednesday, forecasts that from now to 2050, half of the world's population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the US, Uganda and Indonesia.

Those nations are listed in the order of their "expected contribution to total growth".

At that rate, the world's population will reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, the report titled The World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision said.

By 2050, Nigeria will overtake the US to become the third most populous country.

"With roughly 83 million people being added to the world's population every year, the upward trend in population size is expected to continue, even assuming that fertility levels will continue to decline," the report's authors said.

"The population in Africa is notable for its rapid rate of growth, and it is anticipated that over half of global population growth between now and 2050 will take place in that region," John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division, said at a news conference.

"At the other extreme, it is expected that the population of Europe will, in fact, decline somewhat in the coming decades."

The projections also forecast that China, which currently has 1.4 billion inhabitants, will be replaced as the world's most populous country around 2024 by India with a current population of 1.3 billion.
READ MORE: US ends funding for United Nations Population Fund
Nigeria, currently the world's seventh largest country, is growing the most rapidly, and the populations in 26 African countries are likely to "at least double" by 2050.

The report also said fertility has been declining in nearly all regions in recent years.

Between 2010 and 2015, Wilmoth said "the world's women had 2.5 births per woman ... but this number varies widely around the world".

"Europe has the lowest fertility level, estimated at 1.6 births per woman in the most recent period, while Africa has the highest fertility, with around 4.7 births per woman," said Wilmoth.

In addition to slowing population growth, low fertility levels lead to an older population, the report noted.

The number of persons aged 60 or above is expected to more than double by 2050 and more than triple by 2100.

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UN: World population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050

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The world's population of 7.6 billion will balloon to 9.8 billion by 2050 and India will overtake China as the most populous country in just seven years, a United Nations report has said.

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What are the effects of Human Overpopulation 

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What are the effects of Human Overpopulation 

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Antoinette Pretorius

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Human overpopulation is an animal rights issue as well as an environmental issue and a human rights issue. Human activities, including mining, transportation, pollution, agriculture, development, and logging, take habitat away from wild animals as well as kill animals directly. These activities also contribute to climate change, which threatens even the most remote wild habitats on this planet and our own survival.

According to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in April of 2009, overpopulation is the world's worst environmental problem. Dr. Charles A. Hall went so far as to say, "Overpopulation is the only problem."

Definition

Overpopulation occurs when a population has exceeded its carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals of a species that can exist in a habitat indefinitely without threatening other species in that habitat. It would be difficult to argue that humans are not threatening other species.

Current Estimates and Projections

According to the U.S. Census, there were six billion people in the world in 1999. On October 31, 2011, we hit seven billion. Although growth is slowing, our population continues to grow and will reach nine billion by 2048.

Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, authors of "The Population Explosion," explain:

The entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly being depleted-and that implies that its carrying capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and water resources and contributing mightily to the destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and other rich nations are overpopulated because of their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, among many other reasons.

More than 80% of the world's old growth forests have been destroyed, wetlands are being drained for real estate development, and demands for biofuels take much-needed arable land away from crop production.

Life on earth is currently experiencing its sixth major extinction, and we are losing an estimated 30,000 species per year. The most famous major extinction was the fifth one, which occurred about 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. The major extinction that we are now facing is the first that is caused not by an asteroid collision or other natural causes, but by a single species-humans.

Effects of Conservation

Consuming less may be a way for us to live within the carrying capacity of the planet, but as Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich explain, "Overpopulation is defined by the animals that occupy the turf, behaving as they naturally behave, not by a hypothetical group that might be substituted for them." We should not use the hope or the plan to reduce our consumption as an argument that humans are not overpopulated.

While reducing our consumption is important, worldwide, per capita energy consumption increased from 1990 to 2005, so the trend does not look good.

Lesson from Easter Island

The effects of human overpopulation have been documented in the history of Easter Island, where a human population with finite resources was nearly wiped out when their consumption increased beyond what the island could sustain. An island once lush with diverse plant and animal species and fertile volcanic soil became nearly uninhabitable 1,300 years later. The population peak on the island has been estimated between 7,000 and 20,000 people. Trees were cut down for firewood, canoes, and wooden sleds for transporting the carved stone heads for which the island is known. Because of deforestation, the islanders lacked the resources necessary to make ropes and seaworthy canoes. Fishing from shore was not as effective as fishing out on the ocean. Also, without canoes, the Islanders had nowhere to go. They wiped out sea birds, land birds, lizards, and snails. Deforestation also led to erosion, which made it difficult to grow crops. Without adequate food, the population crashed. A rich and complex society that erected now-iconic stone monuments was reduced to living in caves and resorted to cannibalism.

How did they let this happen? Author Jared Diamond speculates

The forest the islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn't simply disappear one day-it vanished slowly, over decades... In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation. Our Pacific Northwest loggers are only the latest in a long line of loggers to cry, "Jobs over trees!"

Potential Solutions

The situation is urgent. Lester Brown, President of Worldwatch, stated in 1998, "The question is not whether population growth will slow in the developing countries, but whether it will slow because societies quickly shift to smaller families or because ecological collapse and social disintegration caused death rates to rise."

The most important thing we as individuals can do is choose to have fewer children. While cutting back on your personal consumption of resources is laudable and may reduce your environmental footprint by 5%, 25%, or maybe even 50%, having a child will double your footprint, and having two children will triple your footprint. It is virtually impossible to compensate for reproducing by consuming less yourself.

Although most of the population growth over the next few decades will take place in Asia and Africa, global overpopulation is as much a problem for "developed" countries as it is for third world countries. Americans constitute only five percent of the world's population, but consume 26% of the world's energy. Because we consume so much more than most people around the world, we can have the most impact when we choose to have fewer children or no children.

Internationally, the United Nations Population Fund works for gender equality, access to birth control, and the education of women. According to the UNFPA, "Some 200 million women who would like to use contraceptives lack access to them." Women should be educated not only about family planning but also generally. World Watch has found, "In every society where data are available, the more education women have the fewer children they bear."

Similarly, the Center for Biological Diversity campaigns for "the empowerment of women, education of all people, universal access to birth control and a societal commitment to ensuring that all species are given a chance to live and thrive."

Additionally, raising public awareness is essential. While many environmental organizations focus on small steps with which few can disagree, the topic of human overpopulation is much more controversial. Some claim that there is no problem, while others might see it as solely a third world problem. As with any other animal rights issue, raising public awareness will empower individuals to make informed choices.

Potential Human Rights Violations

The solution to human overpopulation cannot include human rights violations. China's one-child policy, though arguably successful in curbing population growth, has led to human rights violations ranging from forced sterilizations to forced abortions and infanticide. Some population control proponents advocate offering financial incentives for people not to reproduce, but this incentive would target the poorest segment of society, resulting in racially and economically disproportionate population control. These unjust results cannot be part of a viable solution to human overpopulation.

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Human overpopulation is an animal rights issue as well as an environmental issue and a human rights issue. Human activities, including mining, transportation, pollution, agriculture, development, and logging, take habitat away from wild animals as well as kill animals directly.

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Kopano Phage👑✨

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The following inquiry came from an eighth-grader in Pennsylvania.

Q. In science class, we learned that one day there will be too many people to produce enough food and shelter for all of them. I asked my science teacher two questions that he wasn't sure how to answer. What will happen when the world becomes overpopulated? Will there be limits in the future on how many children people are allowed to have? I would appreciate a response to share with my classmates and teacher.

A. Your questions are ones that people everywhere should be asking. Because of space constraints, my answers will be short, but you can find in-depth coverage of overpopulation issues in publications at a library or bookstore.

Use the Internet to find names of relevant publications as well as to conduct research on the topic. A good starting place for gathering information is www.populationconnection.org/site/PageServer. Founded in 1968 (as Zero Population Growth or ZPG), Population Connection's mission statement begins with this sentence: "Overpopulation threatens the quality of life for people everywhere."

The mission statement goes on to say that Population Connection is a "national grassroots population organization that ... advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth's resources."

Earth already has too many human inhabitants, and the world's population continues to increase. Many people do not want to acknowledge the problem, but a head-in-the-sand attitude will not change the inevitable consequences of overpopulation.

No animal species can exist without adequate food, water, shelter and other essential resources. Humans are not exempt from this rule.

So what happens when the human population exceeds the resources needed to sustain it? The same thing that happens to any overpopulated species: nature will reduce the population through famine, disease, intraspecies fighting or a combination thereof.

That reality is already playing out for people in some Third World countries. And don't think it can't happen here. It can - and will - unless we address the issue of overpopulation.

Because of cultural, political and religious attitudes, almost no world leader is willing to acknowledge the problem, much less take the necessary steps to resolve it.

The Chinese government did impose a limit on the number of children a couple could have. But people used various strategies to get around the restriction, and there were outcries from social rights groups around the globe asserting that couples' rights were being violated because they were not allowed to decide how many children to have.

Though a thorough study would be necessary to determine the program's level of success in controlling population expansion, one fact is indisputable: China's natural resources cannot support a billion people. A one-child policy may not be the best approach for reducing the world's population, but something needs to be done. Soon.

Will world politicians and religious leaders ever reach accord on appropriate and effective measures to control human population growth? No one can say for certain, but prevailing attitudes are not encouraging.

Many prominent authority figures dismiss the idea that overpopulation is a problem; some even promote programs to increase the population rather than encouraging people to limit the size of their families. You cannot solve a problem if you refuse to recognize that it exists. But you have only to look at the number of starving people in the world to realize that we do indeed have a problem. Not all the agricultural enterprises in the world can produce enough food to feed Earth's 7 billion human inhabitants.

The underlying cause of almost every environmental problem in the world today is human overpopulation. Air pollution, water shortages, habitat loss, extinctions, invasive species: all are caused or exacerbated by having too many people in the world. We are unique among all animal species in having the ability to solve even a monumental problem like overpopulation. But if we do not solve it ourselves, nature will solve it for us. And we won't like that solution.

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What will happen when Earth is overpopulated?

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The following inquiry came from an eighth-grader in Pennsylvania. Q. In science class, we learned that one day there will be too many people to produce enough food and shelter for all of them. I asked my science teacher two questions that he wasn't sure how to answer.

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more than 1,000 people killed by animals 

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more than 1,000 people killed by animals 

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Nomakhosi Neko

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A deadly conflict is under way between India's growing population and its wildlife confined to ever-shrinking forests and grasslands. Data shows that about one person has been killed on average every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants.

Statistics released this week by India's environment ministry reveal that 1,144 people were killed between April 2014 and May 2017. That figure breaks down to 426 human deaths in 2014-15, and 446 the following year. The ministry released only a partial count for 2016-17, with 259 people killed by elephants up to February of this year, and 27 killed by tigers through May.

"Conflict is already one of the biggest conservation challenges," said Belinda Wright, founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India based in New Delhi. "In India it is particularly acute because of the high human population."

India's population of 1.3bn is still growing, and as it does it is increasingly encroaching into the country's traditional wild spaces and animal sanctuaries, where people compete with wildlife for food and other resources. The growth of human settlements is often seen as economic development. But for some who are living on the edge of wildlife borders, this development can come at a high cost.

Of the 1,052 lives claimed by elephants in the last three years, many had simply been in the way when the pachyderms wandered out of jungles in search of vegetation and raided farmers' crops. Wildlife experts say these conflicts have increased as elephants increasingly find their usual corridors blocked by highways, railway tracks and factories.

"The shrinking of good quality habitats and access of the animals to movement corridors are absolutely critical for India's conservation efforts and the future of its iconic mammals," Wright said.

The human conflict with tigers has gradually increased since the 1970s, when India launched a nationwide tiger conservation project that carved out sanctuaries in national parks and made it a crime to kill a big cat. Though methods for counting tigers have changed, census evidence suggests the number of tigers has since gone up, from about 1,800 then to 2,226 in 2014.

But the increase in tiger numbers has not been met with a proportional increase in habitat, activists say. "Tigers need space for breeding as they move across wildlife parks and sanctuaries," Wright said.

Meanwhile, India's elephants and tigers are also some of the most hunted animals in the country sought for their ivory tusks or bones that are sold on the black market for use in traditional Chinese medicine without any evidence that they have an effect. Elephants are also threatened by speeding trains.

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More than 1,000 people killed in India as human and wildlife habitats collide

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A deadly conflict is under way between India's growing population and its wildlife confined to ever-shrinking forests and grasslands. Data shows that about one person has been killed on average every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants.

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Population Growth Is Still The Biggest Problem Facing Humanity

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Population Growth Is Still The Biggest Problem Facing Humanity

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Andrew Britz

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This is a guest post by Gary Peters, a retired geography professor with a long time interest in population issues.
Earth's population is approaching seven billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day. Rich nations have long assured poor nations that they, too, would one day be rich and that their rates of population growth would decline, but it is no longer clear that this will occur for most of today's poor nations.

Resource scarcities, especially oil, are likely to limit future economic growth; the demographic transition that has accompanied economic growth in the past may not be possible for many nations today. Nearly 220,000 people are added to the planet every day, further compounding most resource and environmental problems. The United States adds another person every eleven seconds. We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now.

Much has been written about population growth since the first edition of Malthus's famous essay was published in 1798. However, an underlying truth is usually left unsaid: Population growth on Earth must cease. It makes more sense for humans to bring growth to a halt by adjusting birth rates downward in humane ways rather than waiting for death rates to move upward as the four horsemen reappear. Those who think it inhumane to control human fertility have apparently never experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns, where people struggle just to stay alive for another day.

In 1970 Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on developing new plant strains that formed the basis for the Green Revolution that began in the 1960s. However, in his Nobel acceptance speech Borlaug perceptively commented that "There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind." That was four decades ago. During that time the world's population increased by more than three billion and the struggle to feed, clothe, house, and educate ever-growing numbers of people continues. "Temporary skirmishes" seem persistent, if not permanent.

Writers sometimes confuse population issues. For example, in his post, The Population Bomb: Has It Been Defused?,", Fred Pearce wrote that "The population bomb is being defused at a quite remarkable rate." He conflates rates of growth with actual numbers. It is true that the rate of population growth worldwide has declined since 1970. However, the base population has grown by more than three billion; thus we currently add 80 million or more people to the planet each year. That is hardly "defusing" population growth!

Writers may sometimes have short memories when they write about population growth. Fred Pearce's post at "Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat," is one example. George Monbiot's post on "The Population Myth," is another. Both authors seem to have discovered that our rate of consumption is an issue, so both play down population numbers and focus on our consumption habits. Neither mentions the work of Paul Ehrlich and his I = PAT equation, where I represents our impact on the Earth, P equals population, A equals affluence (hence consumption), and T stands for technology.

Both population and consumption are parts of the problem--neither can be ignored and both are exacerbating the human impact on Earth. More distressing, however, is that many among us don't even see that there are problems created by both growing populations and increasing affluence bearing down on a finite planet. To pretend that another 80 million people added to the planet each year is not a problem because they are all being added to the world's poor nations makes no sense at all. Many of them will end up in rich nations by migrating, legally or illegally, and all will further compound environmental problems, from strains on oil and other fossil fuel resources to deforestation and higher emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. As Kenneth Boulding noted decades ago, "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

Population, consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow until we either face up to the fact that there are limits on our finite Earth or we are confronted by a catastrophe large enough to turn us from our current course. If Chinese, Indians, and others in the poorer world had consumption levels that rose to current western levels it would be like Earth's population suddenly increasing to 72 billion, according to Jared Diamond, who then wrote that, "Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies--for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy--they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people."

This promise is often made by people who believe that that alone will stop population growth via the demographic transition, conveniently forgetting about such exceptions as China. As Tom Athanasiou argued, in Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, "In a world torn between affluence and poverty, the crackpot realists tell the poor, who must live from day to day, that all will be well in the long run. Amidst deepening ecological crisis, they rush to embrace small, cosmetic adaptations."

The widespread acceptance and political influence of modern neoclassical economics is a central part of our global problem. In one widely used economics textbook, Principles of Economics, Greg Mankiw wrote that "A large population means more workers to produce goods and services. At the same time, it means more people to consume those goods and services." Speaking for many neoclassical economists, Tim Harford concluded, in The Logic of Life, that "The more of us there are in the world, living our logical lives, the better our chances of seeing out the next million years." The absurdity of Harford's statement must be recognized and challenged.

Economists do not deserve all the blame. As Thomas Berry noted, in The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, "Western civilization, dominated by a cultural arrogance, could not accept the fact that the human, as every species, is bound by limits in relation to the other members of the Earth community." On his Archdruid blog, John Greer added his observation that "Our culture's mythology of progress envisions the goal of civilization as a utopian state in which poverty, illness, death, and every other aspect of the human predicament has been converted into problems and solved by technology." We don't want to hear about limits.

Nowhere is acceptance of the twin towers of economic growth and increased consumption more apparent than in the United States, where "growing the economy" is still paramount, despite the leftovers of a financial meltdown created by banking and shadow banking systems run amok and a Gulf fouled by gushing oil. As Andrew Bacevich noted, in The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, "For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors." Yet evidence that modern economics has let most people down is abundant.

More than two decades ago Edward Abbey wrote, in One Life at a Time, Please, that "[W]e can see that the religion of endless growth--like any religion based on blind faith rather than reason--is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease," adding that "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." He expressed his concern about modern economics as follows: "Economics, no matter how econometric it pretends to be, resembles meteorology more than mathematics. A cloudy science of swirling vapors, signifying nothing." Similarly, Nassim Taleb wrote, in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, that "Economics is the most insular of fields; it is the one that quotes least from outside itself!" Gus Speth argued, in The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, that "In the end, what has to be modified is the open-ended commitment to aggregate economic growth--growth that is consuming environmental and social capital, both in short supply." Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, in This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, that "The economists' odd fixation on growth as a measure of economic well-being puts them in a parallel universe of their own. . .the mantra of growth has deceived us for far too long." Whether in local areas, the United States, or the world, no problem that I can think of will be more easily solved with additional millions of people.

Future oil production will come at an increasing cost, if it comes at all. As Bill McKibbin noted, in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Comunities and the Durable Future, "Cheap and abundant fossil fuel [mainly oil] has shaped the farming system we've come to think of as normal; it's the main reason you can go to the store and get anything you want at any time and for not much money." More expensive oil will eat into world food production, especially if we continue to use foodstuffs to help fill gas tanks.

Scientists need to encourage a deeper and more realistic interest in population growth on a finite planet and its effect on many of the major issues of our time. We ignore the implications of further population growth at our peril. In 1971 Wilbur Zelinsky, in an article entitled "Beyond the Exponentials; The Role of Geography in the Great Transition," fretted that "The problem that shakes our confidence in the perpetuation and enrichment of civilized human existence or even our biological survival is that of growth: the rate, volume, and kinds of growth, and whether they can be controlled in intelligent, purposeful fashion."

Continued population growth is unsustainable, as is continued growth in the production of oil and other fossil fuels. As Lester Brown argued, in PLAN B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, "If we cannot stabilize population and if we cannot stabilize climate, there is not an ecosystem on earth we can save." As Alan Weisman wrote, in The World Without Us, "The intelligent solution [to the problem of population growth] would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would henceforth limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one." Started now, such a policy would reduce Earth's population down to around 1.6 billion by 2100, about the same as the world population in 1900. Had we kept Earth's population at that level we would not be having this conversation.

Discussion Questions

1. Are there things we can do to get the population issue more into public discussion?

2. Are there other approaches to limiting population that might be more salable?

3. If Social Security is not sustainable, having fewer children will increase the likelihood that older adults will have no way of taking care of themselves. How does one deal with this issue?
Let us know what you think or check out the(This guest post previously appeared at The Oil Drum. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.) epic discussion at The Oil Drum >>

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Population Growth Is Still The Biggest Problem Facing Humanity

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This is a guest post by Gary Peters, a retired geography professor with a long time interest in population issues. Earth's population is approaching seven billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day.

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Increase in population, will we have enough resources to go by?

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Increase in population, will we have enough resources to go by?

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Kirsten Lawrence

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As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us?

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As world population projections soar, there are rising concerns about the impact billions more people will have on the planet.

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Dominique Bruttomesso

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Mei Fong tells the routine story of a girl who managed to conceal an illegal pregnancy until the baby was almost due, when family planning officials surrounded her hiding place at night. 'She ran and ran and ran until she came to a pond. Then she ran in, until the water was at her neck. She stood there and began to cry.'

Through her tears she explained that she needed the baby to stop her husband and his parents abusing her for not producing a son. This was the mid 1990s, but the same thing could have happened in rural China at any point in the past 1,000 years, except for the dénouement. Officials dragged the girl from the water, and hauled her off to hospital where the baby was killed. Even if it had been a boy, the only way the family could have kept him would have been by paying a fine of between two and ten times their annual income.

If it was a girl, she would have been strangled at birth in the traditional way. Mei Fong herself was born in Malaysia to Chinese parents who already had four unwanted daughters. 'Be glad you're not in the old country,' her family told her as a child: 'You'd never have been born.' Sons are essential to carry on the family name as well as to support ageing parents, and bury them when they die. Infanticide, always a standard solution to the problem of surplus girls, meant that the one-child policy was skewed by gender imbalance from the moment it became law in 1980.

It originated with military planners specialising in rocket science, the only body of government technical advisers to survive Mao's purges intact. Their recommendation appealed precisely because its drastic simplicity took no account of human behaviour or feelings: 'The country had been so beaten and demoralised, its intellectual capital so sapped by the Cultural Revolution, the idea of rationing children, in the same way as coal and grain were rationed, made sense.'

But a decision at the highest level that seemed scientifically incontrovertible caused havoc among ordinary people, most of them still living in the countryside. Wives like the girl in the pond, and husbands who saw sons as their prime source of self-esteem, found themselves caught between two opposed and implacable systems as the imperatives of China's ancient family-based social structure were brutally dismantled by the new rules.

Legally prevented from marrying until they were 20, girls were traditionally considered too old for marriage by 25. The law further stipulated that no mother should give birth before the age of 24, not always easy to arrange, especially for those whose reproductive systems had already been damaged by multiple abortions. Women were subjected to regular pregnancy checks, sometimes as often as every other week, and forbidden to travel without a certificate guaranteeing they were not pregnant.

Birth control spies, one to every ten households in even the tiniest village, could call on teams of young men to enforce late-term abortions, oversee sterilisation and extort payment for illicit children by threats, raids, arrests, the imprisonment of relatives (usually elderly parents), and the confiscation of household goods. 'Sometimes we would climb up the roofs,' an administrator told Mei Fong, 'and make a hole, to show we meant business.' Wages depended on quotas being met.

The policy worked if anything too well. Rapid economic expansion owed much to a predominantly male workforce, but a corresponding shortage of women meant that a high proportion of men had no realistic prospect of finding a mate. Women imported to fill the gap were commonly kidnapped and trafficked from neighbouring Asian countries. Up to 100,000 North Korean refugees (who face death in their own country if they attempt to return) are thought to be mainly women, sold to sex-starved Chinese men for $1500 a head.

Factories making full-sized sex dolls provide an alternative. The costliest are life-like imitations of soft-porn stars with real human hair and eyelashes as well as virtually indestructible nipples. The author sees these dolls as both cause and symptom of an increasingly hostile objectification of women by lonely, alienated men brought up with little or no first-hand experience of the opposite sex.

Any hope of securing a bride, even supposing a prospective husband could find one, depends on how much he and his parents are able to pay for her, and whether or not he has managed to acquire a home for her to live in. One young man whose parents had bankrupted themselves to buy him a practically empty flat, with a mortgage currently swallowing 80 per cent of their combined monthly income, found it hard to visualise the kind of wife who might be induced to live in it. 'She must obey my parents,' was all he could say, adding after much thought, 'and obey me.'

The current situation seems at any rate in theory an almost fairytale reversal; 'poetic justice' as Mei Fong points out - 'payback for hundreds of years of systemic discrimination.' Anyone who has talked to the current generation of educated, independent young urban women in China will know that, for them, the one-child policy represents liberation and unbridled opportunity. Freed for the first time in history from the repetitive drudgery of child-bearing and rearing, they see the future as theirs.

But confidence, autonomy and earning power are not necessarily plus points when it comes to marriage. 'You don't want a wife who is smarter than you, and earning more than you,' said Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister of Singapore, explaining what went wrong when his country experimented in the 1990s with equal education and jobs for women. In the past decade Confucian workshops, set up to teach women how to boost male egos by practising deference and obedience, have become increasingly popular all over China.

The Chinese government has already made tentative, not entirely successful attempts to modify a policy beginning to produce unforeseen consequences. A steep, artificially induced decline in the birth-rate coincided with the increased longevity brought about by modern medical advances. By 2020 there will be 30 to 40 million superfluous Chinese men - as many as the entire population of Canada.

The possibility of disturbing side effects was publicly raised at the time by only one man, an insignificant economics instructor called Liang Zhongtang, who pointed out that, where China currently has five working adults to every pensioner, the ratio would inevitably shift to something more like two adults struggling to support one child and four elderly parents. Ten million more people will retire each year while the workforce shrinks annually by seven million.

The kind of transition that occurred over half a century in the West will overtake China quite suddenly in about 15 years, when one in four of the population will be an unskilled worker with no future, no children and little or no pension provision. The response of those involved is hard to foresee. All that can be said for sure is that, as Mei Fong makes clear in her gripping, balanced and well-documented book, this unprecedented demographic explosion will produce a powerful impact not only on China, but on the rest of the world.

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China's brutal one-child policy will be catastrophic for us all | The Spectator

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Mei Fong tells the routine story of a girl who managed to conceal an illegal pregnancy until the baby was almost due, when family planning officials surrounded her hiding place at night. 'She ran and ran and ran until she came to a pond. Then she ran in, until the water was at her neck.

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Labour Q&A with Terry Bell

Fin24 user Glyn Morgan says there is one subject that is NEVER broached and that is overpopulation.

She writes:

The Chinese had their "One Child Policy" from the 60's till it was amended recently. It was a very heavy-handed policy that was started just after the "Great Leap Forward" which caused the deaths by starvation of around 30 million Chinese. What would China be like if they had not had that policy? What would the Chinese population be now? What would be the state of their economy?

I believe that South Africa is showing the effects of overpopulation now. There should be checks on "un-earned income" for the super rich (The rich giving themselves huge bonuses while the economy is going down. Government politicians acting like they actually earned their fat incomes.) as well as efforts to raise the level of the poor. If the poor had only as many children as they could afford it would help immensely in reducing poverty.

What would be the effect of the government offering incentives to people to have fewer children? I am not saying we should have a "One Child Policy" but we should have as many children as we can afford. Maybe offer a once-off cash incentive for people to have "the snip" after full consultations?

This is NOT a race thing but an economics thing. There will be objections by people saying that if or when we can up-lift the poor they will naturally have fewer children so there is no need for a family planning policy.

Which comes first, prosperity or smaller families? I say both must be seriously worked on at the same time. One will aid the other.

What are your views on this contentious issue? Right now it is being swept under the carpet.

Just for interest sake, I have been to China numerous times and have spoken about Mao's population policy. Mostly they seem to be positive about it but acknowledge that it was heavy-handed. They welcome the changes.

Terry Bell responds:

Hi Glyn

Thanks for your comment, but I beg to differ. This is a topic that arises from time to time and has done ever since the economic philosopher Thomas Robert Malthus first wrote in 1798: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Several people have raised it with me over the past week, but none used your very interesting example of China's population policies.

Of course, more than a century after Malthus, Mohandas - Mahatma - Gandhi noted: "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

Those two quotes, for me, sum up the opposing poles of the population argument. I think the facts favour Gandhi.

It is certainly true that there is a population explosion on a global basis. But this is occurring in poor, less developed - and so-called developing - regions of the world.

In established, relatively wealthy and therefore better educated regions, there are declining populations, with the rate of births not keeping up with the rate of deaths.

Contrary to the theories of the Reverend Malthus, population does not "invariably increase when the means of subsistence increases". In fact, where the means of subsidence increases and is more fairly shared, the population growth slows down, sometimes quite dramatically.

In any event, we still now face a surplus of both production and capacity, even of food. But this is rapidly being eroded as a result of the waste, pollution and pillage demanded of the existing and brutally competitive economic system.

Policies such as China's one child, Sweden's earlier involuntary sterilisation and the "transistor radio for the 'snip'" offered on railway stations in India give too much authority to elite minorities.

Let the debate continue.

*Have a question for Terry? Drop us a line.

- Fin24

* Terry Bell is an independent political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.

Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on Fin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views of users published on Fin24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.

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Labour Q&A with Terry Bell Fin24 user Glyn Morgan says there is one subject that is NEVER broached and that is overpopulation. She writes: The Chinese had their "One Child Policy" from the 60's till it was amended recently.

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Japan is shrinking at a record pace. The country lost 244,000 people in 2013 as births plunged and deaths soared. It faces the prospect of losing a third of its population in the next 50 years, raising fears about its economic prospects and labor market.

But while Japan may be grabbing headlines, with its alleged aversion to sex and a sudden need for more eldercare robots and adult diapers, its predicament is one that much of the world will soon have to face. According to the United Nations, some 48% of the world's people lives in a country where birthrates are not sufficient to sustain existing populations: All of Europe except Iceland, BRIC mainstays Brazil, Russia, and China, and even some emerging markets like Vietnam.

That means that Japan may be ahead of the curve in dealing with the problems of an aging population (40% of Japanese will be over 65 by the year 2060) and not enough babies (there were 6,000 fewer births in 2013 than the previous year), but is not alone.

The exception to this demographic trend is the United States, which has similarly low birthrates, but is taking in more than a million immigrants a year. Because of that factor-which could change dramatically depending on the fate of long-stalled US immigration reform-the US is one of eight countries that are expected to account for half of all population growth between 2013 and 2100. The other seven are Nigeria, India, Tanzania, Congo, Niger, Uganda and Ethiopia.

It's no surprise that African countries make up the bulk of the list: The continent contains 29 of the 31 "high fertility" countries highlighted by the UN (pdf), which is why Africa's population is expected to roughly double in the next 36 years, reaching a projected 2.4 billion in 2050. Excluding Africa, the world's population is only expected to grow by just over 10% by 2100. China, by contrast, will peak at 1.4 billion people in 2025 and fall back to just over 1 billion by 2100.

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Japan is rapidly losing population-and half the world is about to join it

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Japan is shrinking at a record pace. The country lost 244,000 people in 2013 as births plunged and deaths soared. It faces the prospect of losing a third of its population in the next 50 years, raising fears about its economic prospects and labor market.

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Shelbaeee💦👑

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Announcing the figures at a media conference in Pretoria on Thursday, statistician general Pali Lehohla said migration is an important demographic process in shaping the age structure and distribution of the provincial population.

The largest share of South Africa's population (24%) lives in Gauteng accounting for 13.5 million people. KwaZulu-Natal is the province with the second largest population, with 11.1 million people (19.9%).

With a population of approximately 1.19 million people (2.1%), Northern Cape remains the province with the smallest share of the South African population.

The figures also showed that about 30.1% of the population is aged younger than 15 years and approximately 8% (4.47 million) is 60 years or older.

Of those younger than 15 years, approximately 23% (3.86 million) live in KwaZulu-Natal and 20.4% (3.43 million) live in Gauteng. The highest percentage of people (26.1% or 1.17 million) aged 60 years and older live in Gauteng.

Like elsewhere in the world, the proportion of elderly persons aged 60 and older is increasing over time.

Migration

For the period 2011-2016, it is estimated that approximately 247 437 people will migrate from the Eastern Cape. Limpopo is estimated to experience an out-migration of nearly 305 030 people. During the same period, Gauteng and the Western Cape are estimated to experience an inflow of migrants of approximately 1 216 258 and 363 114 respectively.

Life expectancy

Life expectancy at birth for 2016 is estimated at 59.7 years for males and 65.1 years for females.

The life expectancy for males dropped marginally from 60.6 years compared to 2015, but increased somewhat for females from 64.3 years.

The infant mortality rate for 2016 is estimated at 33.7 per 1 000 live births, slightly lower than the 34.4 per 1 000 births in 2015.

The estimated overall HIV prevalence rate is approximately 12.7% of the total South African population - up from 11.2% in 2015.

The total number of people living with HIV also increased from 6.19 million in 2015 to 7.03 million in 2016. For adults aged 15-49 years, an estimated 18.9% (up from 16.6% in 2015) of the population is HIV positive.
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Announcing the figures at a media conference in Pretoria on Thursday, statistician general Pali Lehohla said migration is an important demographic process in shaping the age structure and distribution of the provincial population. The largest share of South Africa's population (24%) lives in Gauteng accounting for 13.5 million people.

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JOHANNESBURG - Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says the sector is concerned about the rate of pregnancies in South Africa's schools.

The minister has given an update following a meeting of the Council of Education Ministers.

According to the 2015 annual school survey, over 15,000 pupils fell pregnant during the academic year.

Motshekga says the rate of pregnancies at schools has become a major social challenge not only for the education sector, but also more importantly for national development.

"We need to ensure that our learners are educated and know what they're getting into when it comes to sexual activity."

The minister adds her department has developed a national policy for the prevention and management of pregnancy in schools.

"It addresses the high rate of pregnancy among learners and the context within which this occurs and options for unwanted pregnancies."

The guidelines were withdrawn by a court in 2012 because some schools were found to have misinterpreted the measures.

(Edited by Shimoney Regter)

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basic education minister angie motshekga

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JOHANNESBURG - Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says the sector is concerned about the rate of pregnancies in South Africa's schools. The minister has given an update following a meeting of the Council of Education Ministers. According to the 2015 annual school survey, over 15,000 pupils fell pregnant during the academic year.

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Simon Brits

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The Asian dining boom driving Australia's agriculture exports is expected to be accentuated by a future spike in demand for aged services.

Consultancy group Deloitte on Monday forecast that by the 2030s Asia will be home to more than 60 per cent of the world's population aged over 65 - from 365 million people now to more than 520 million.

While Australia's ageing population is predicted to weigh on economic growth over the next decade, the challenge will be even greater for the likes of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand and New Zealand.

Together with Japan, these countries take up almost half of Australia's merchandise exports.

"Changing demographics will have a big impact on the backdrop for Australian businesses and what they are selling into," Deloitte Australia economist Chris Richardson told AAP.

He says while many ageing Australians will have money, their spending is likely to be domestically orientated, especially for health care.

Deloitte also predicts the size of the Australian workforce will shrink by four per over the coming decade, slightly less than New Zealand and China at 4.2 per cent.

But Singapore will contract by 8.4 per cent and Hong Kong by a hefty 13.8 per cent.

"They are going to get a hell of a lot of retirements and not necessarily heaps of new workers," Mr Richardson says.

India, Philippines, Indonesia

However, at the other end of the scale, Deloitte expects workforces in the Philippines, Indonesia and India to expand.

Deloitte forecasts India's workforce will grow from 885 million to 1.08 billion by 2037 and to 1.12 billion in 2050.

Mr Richardson said Australian businesses and governments aren't ready for an "Indian summer set to last for half a century".

"At some stage, they will require that wake-up call," he says.

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The Asian dining boom driving Australia's agriculture exports is expected to be accentuated by a future spike in demand for aged services. Consultancy group Deloitte on Monday forecast that by the 2030s Asia will be home to more than 60 per cent of the world's population aged over 65 - from 365 million people now to more than 520 million.

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As of Oct. 31, 2011, there were 7 billion people on Earth, according to the United Nations. This latest milestone was part of the rapid rise in Earth's population over the course of the 20th century - there were just 2.6 billion people in 1950 and 5 billion people in 1987. The population explosion has its roots in the decrease in mortality (because of a better understanding of disease and new treatments) that began in the 19th century and continued through the 20th, moving from the developed world into the developing world, to some extent. In June 2013, the United Nations released a new report on estimates of population rise through the 21st century. It found through a new statistical analysis that the world's population could hit 11 billion by 2100, faster than it had previously predicted, in part because birthrates in Africa were not declining as quickly as predicted. The rapid rise in the human population presents a set of challenges in terms of straining Earth's resources, from putting pressure on other species, to providing enough water, food and basic sanitation to all populations.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved.

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As of Oct. 31, 2011, there were 7 billion people on Earth, according to the United Nations. This latest milestone was part of the rapid rise in Earth's population over the course of the 20th century - there were just 2.6 billion people in 1950 and 5 billion people in 1987.

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Amarachi article👑💅🏾

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I feel for Laurie Penny, who is caught between pressure to have children and pressing reasons not to have them ('Women shouldn't apologise for the pitter-patter of tiny carbon footprints', Review, 29 July). However, a solution is staring her in the face: respond to the pressure by citing the pressing reasons. Various global disasters are plausibly likely to occur in a few decades - see The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. Even if Wallace-Wells' article overestimates and only half of those disasters really occur, humans will be in for a rough time starting around mid-century. Thus, any man or woman who thinks of having children now should ask perself whether it is right to condemn them to go through that. Each baby not made is a step away from those disasters.Richard StallmanCambridge, Massachusetts

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The unborn children that could help save the planet | Letters

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I feel for Laurie Penny, who is caught between pressure to have children and pressing reasons not to have them ('Women shouldn't apologise for the pitter-patter of tiny carbon footprints', Review, 29 July). However, a solution is staring her in the face: respond to the pressure by citing the pressing reasons.

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Kayla Büchner

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Evidence from India's last Census in 2011, confirmed by data from the recent National Family Health Survey 2017 (NFHS-4), shows that fertility in India is fast approaching replacement levels. This means that couples will have children who will essentially replace their number, to stabilise population growth. The NFHS-4 shows that in the past decade, the average number of children per family has come down from 2.7 to 2.2. With replacement fertility being 2.1 children per woman, this is good news for the land and the people.

Even after fertility rates drop to replacement levels, the total population will still grow, and is likely to reach 1.7 billion by 2050. The thrust of this growth will come from the youth bulge, with 365 million (10-24 years old) already in, or soon to enter, their reproductive ages. Even if they have children only in numbers that replace themselves, the resultant growth due to such a large base of young people will drive the growth momentum for population. For India as a whole, 75% of population growth in the coming decade will be due to this momentum.

In States like Assam, Gujarat and Haryana, which are about to reach replacement levels, it would be more effective to adopt policies for delaying childbearing rather than limiting births. Fertility reduction, where it still needs to take place, must come from increased availability and use of quality family planning services.

When States are clustered in terms of fertility levels, one foresees a predominantly youthful north and an ageing south. Most of the current and future demographic potential is locked in the northern States and largely located in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. In the south, there will be a dearth of young working people to keep up and expand the level of economic development. Investing in young people in the north to realise the demographic dividend will be a win-win situation for all India, north and south.

From the policy perspective, this means that for India as a whole, it is time for the emphasis to be on momentum-focussed policies and programmes.

Several newspapers reported that the Prime Minister will soon chair a meeting of the National Population Commission, in order to take stock of the situation and chart out the path ahead, especially keeping population stabilisation in mind. This is welcome news indeed. The National Health Policy 2017 emphasises quality of care and commitment to sustainable development, and positions improved access, education and empowerment as the basis for population stabilisation. It is now for States to align their own health and population policies to the national ones.

Diego Palacios is country representative, India, and country director, Bhutan, for the United Nations Population Fund

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Evidence from India's last Census in 2011, confirmed by data from the recent National Family Health Survey 2017 (NFHS-4), shows that fertility in India is fast approaching replacement levels. This means that couples will have children who will essentially replace their number, to stabilise population growth.

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Chloe' Erasmus

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Childbirth in SA at a proportional record low

Childbirths as a proportion of the total South African population are at a record low for the first time in more than two decades.

Childbirths as a proportion of the total South African population are at a record low for the first time in more than two decades, the SA Institute of Race Relations said.Read: Childbirth risky for Jehovah's witnesses
"Women are choosing to delay childbirth and ultimately have fewer children, so that the number of babies born per 1000 people in a given year is shrinking," SAIRR researcher Thuthukani Ndebele said in a statement.

"A shrinking proportion of births, coupled with better life expectancy, will result in the proportion of young people dropping while that of older persons will grow."

The SAIRR sourced the data from Statistics SA. The birth rate (births per 1000 people) declined by about 16% between 2002 and 2013, Ndebele said.

Births recorded in 1991 accounted for almost 3% of the country's population.
Read more: Why childbirth is hard for rape victims Women with fear of childbirth endure longer labour Birthing fears predict postpartum depression
"By 2010, that proportion had fallen to 2% and subsequently dropped to 1.8% in 2011," Ndebele said.

Read: Childbirth risky for Jehovah's witnesses Childbirths as a proportion of the total South African population are at a record low for the first time in more than two decades, the SA Institute of Race Relations said.
"Women are choosing to delay childbirth and ultimately have fewer children, so that the number of babies born per 1000 people in a given year is shrinking," SAIRR researcher Thuthukani Ndebele said in a statement.

"A shrinking proportion of births, coupled with better life expectancy, will result in the proportion of young people dropping while that of older persons will grow."

The SAIRR sourced the data from Statistics SA. The birth rate (births per 1000 people) declined by about 16% between 2002 and 2013, Ndebele said.
Read more: Why childbirth is hard for rape victims Women with fear of childbirth endure longer labour Birthing fears predict postpartum depression
Births recorded in 1991 accounted for almost 3% of the country's population.

"By 2010, that proportion had fallen to 2% and subsequently dropped to 1.8% in 2011," Ndebele said.

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Childbirth in SA at a proportional record low

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Childbirths as a proportion of the total South African population are at a record low for the first time in more than two decades, the SA Institute of Race Relations said.Read: Childbirth risky for Jehovah's witnesses "Women are choosing to delay childbirth and ultimately have fewer children, so that the number of babies born per 1000 people in a given year is shrinking," SAIRR researcher Thuthukani Ndebele said in a statement.

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Mrs Brett

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World Population: Past, Present, and Future

(move and expand the bar at the bottom of the chart to navigate through time)

The chart above illustrates how world population has changed throughout history. View the full tabulated data.

At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year.

A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987).

During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.

In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.

Because of declining growth rates, it will now take over 200 years to double again.

Wonder how big was the world's population when you were born?
Check out this simple wizard or this more elaborated one to find out.

Growth Rate

Population in the world is currently (2020) growing at a rate of around 1.05% per year (down from 1.08% in 2019, 1.10% in 2018, and 1.12% in 2017). The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.

Annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at around 2%. The rate of increase has nearly halved since then, and will continue to decline in the coming years.

World population will therefore continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a much slower rate compared to the recent past. World population has doubled (100% increase) in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). It is now estimated that it will take another nearly 40 years to increase by another 50% to become 9 billion by 2037.

The latest world population projections indicate that world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2057.

World Population (2020 and historical)
View the complete population historical table
World Population Forecast (2020-2050)
View population projections for all years (up to 2100)
World Population Milestones

10 Billion (2057)

The United Nations projects world population to reach 10 billion in the year 2057.

9 Billion (2037)

World population is expected to reach 9 billion in the year 2037.

8 Billion (2023)

World population is expected to reach 8 billion people in 2023 according to the United Nations (in 2026 according to the U.S. Census Bureau).

7.9 Billion (2022)

The current world population is 7.9 billion as of February 2022 according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer. The term "World Population" refers to the human population (the total number of humans currently living) of the world.

7 Billion (2011)

According to the United Nations, world population reached 7 Billion on October 31, 2011.
The US Census Bureau made a lower estimate, for which the 7 billion mark was only reached on March 12, 2012.

6 Billion (1999)

According to the United Nations, the 6 billion figure was reached on October 12, 1999 (celebrated as the Day of 6 Billion). According to the U.S. Census Bureau instead, the six billion milestone was reached on July 22, 1999, at about 3:49 AM GMT. Yet, according to the U.S. Census, the date and time of when 6 billion was reached will probably change because the already uncertain estimates are constantly being updated.

Previous Milestones

Summary Table

1 - 1804 ( 1803 years): 0.2 to 1 bil.

1804 - 2011 ( 207 years): from 1 billion to 7 billion

World Population by Region

World Population Density (people/km²)

Population density map of the world showing not only countries but also many subdivisions (regions, states, provinces). See also: World Map

Courtesy of
Junuxx at en.wikipedia [ CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

World Population by Religion

According to a recent study (based on the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion) by The Pew Forum, there are:

2,173,180,000 Christians (31% of world population), of which 50% are Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other.

1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of which 87-90% are Sunnis, 10-13% Shia.

1,126,500,000 No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. One-in-five people (20%) in the United States are religiously unaffiliated.

1,033,080,000 Hindus (15%), the overwhelming majority (94%) of which live in India.

487,540,000 Buddhists (7%), of which half live in China.

405,120,000 Folk Religionists (6%): faiths that are closely associated with a particular group of people, ethnicity or tribe.

58,110,000 Other Religions (1%): Baha'i faith, Taoism, Jainism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Tenrikyo, Wicca, Zoroastrianism and many others.

13,850,000 Jews (0.2%), four-fifths of which live in two countries: United States (41%) and Israel (41%).

World Population by Country

How many people have ever lived on earth?

It was written during the 1970s that 75% of the people who had ever been born were alive at that moment. This was grossly false.

Assuming that we start counting from about 50,000 B.C., the time when modern Homo sapiens appeared on the earth (and not from 700,000 B.C. when the ancestors of Homo sapiens appeared, or several million years ago when hominids were present), taking into account that all population data are a rough estimate, and assuming a constant growth rate applied to each period up to modern times, it has been estimated that a total of approximately 106 billion people have been born since the dawn of the human species, making the population currently alive roughly 6% of all people who have ever lived on planet Earth.

Others have estimated the number of human beings who have ever lived to be anywhere from 45 billion to 125 billion, with most estimates falling into the range of 90 to 110 billion humans.

World Population clock: sources and methodology

The world population counter displayed on Worldometer takes into consideration data from two major sources: the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau.

1. The United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs every two years calculates, updates, and publishes estimates of total population in its World Population Prospects series. These population estimates and projections provide the standard and consistent set of population figures that are used throughout the United Nations system.

The World Population Prospect: the 2019 Revision provides the most recent data available (released in June of 2019). Estimates and projected world population and country specific populations are given from 1950 through 2100 and are released every two years. Worldometer, as it is common practice, utilizes the medium fertility estimates.

Data underlying the population estimates are national and sub national census data and data on births, deaths, and migrants available from national sources and publications, as well as from questionnaires. For all countries, census and registration data are evaluated and, if necessary, adjusted for incompleteness by the Population Division as part of its preparations of the official United Nations population estimates and projections.

2. The International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division also develops estimates and projections based on analysis of available data (based on census, survey, and administrative information) on population, fertility, mortality, and migration for each country or area of the world. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, world population reached 7 billion on March 12, 2012.

For most countries adjustment of the data is necessary to correct for errors, omissions, and inconsistencies in the data. Finally, since most recent data for a single country is often at least two years old, the current world population figure is necessarily a projection of past data based on assumed trends. As new data become available, assumptions and data are reevaluated and past conclusions and current figures may be modified.

For information about how these estimates and projections are made by the U.S. Census Bureau, see the Population Estimates and Projections Methodology.

Why Worldometer clocks are the most accurate

The above world population clock is based on the latest estimates released in June of 2019 by the United Nations and will show the same number wherever you are in the world and whatever time you set on your PC. Worldometer is the only website to show live counters that are based on U.N. data and that do not follow the user's PC clock.

Visitors around the world visiting a PC clock based counter, see different numbers depending on where they are located, and in the past have seen other world population clocks - such as the one hosted on a United Nations website and on National Geographic - reaching 7 billion whenever their locally set PC clocks reached 4:21:10 AM on October 31, 2011.

Obviously, the UN data is based on estimates and can't be 100% accurate, so in all honesty nobody can possibly say with any degree of certainty on which day world population reached 7 billion (or any other exact number), let alone at what time. But once an estimate is made (based on the best data and analysis available), the world population clock should be showing the same number at any given time anywhere around the world.

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World Population Clock: 7.9 Billion People (2022) - Worldometer

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How many people are there in the world? World population has reached 7.7 billion. World population live counter with data sheets, graphs, maps, and census data regarding the current, historical, and future world population figures, estimates, growth rates, densities and demographics

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Mrs Brett

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Since Japan began counting its newborns more than a century ago, more than a million infants have been added to its population each year.

No longer, in the latest discomforting milestone for a country facing a steep population decline. Last year, the number of births in Japan dropped below one million for the first time, the ministry of health, labour and welfare said Friday.

The shrinking of the country's population - deaths have outpaced births for several years - is already affecting the economy in areas including the job and housing markets, consumer spending and long-term investment plans at businesses.

For now, the Japanese economy is growing despite a dwindling number of workers and consumers. Growing global demand for Japanese products is one reason. But the real decline has barely begun.

After Japan's population hit a peak of 128 million at the start of the current decade, it shrank by close to 1 million in the five years through 2015, according to census data. Demographers expect it to plunge by a third by 2060, to as few as 80 million people - a net loss of 1 million a year, on average.

Fewer young people means fewer workers to support a growing cohort of retirees, adding strains to pension and health care systems.

In a speech to business leaders this week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for a "national movement" to address Japan's demographic challenges. The government has taken steps to keep older workers in their jobs longer, and to encourage companies to invest in automation. "The labour shortage is getting serious," he said. "To overcome it, we need to improve productivity."

Official efforts to encourage people to have more children have had only modest results, and there is little public support for large-scale immigration - something that has helped to stabilise populations in other wealthy countries with low birthrates.

Birthrates have, in fact, risen slightly compared with a decade ago. But with women marrying later - in part, specialists say, to avoid pressure to give up their careers - prospects for a more decisive turnaround look remote.

Japan's birthrate has long been lower than what demographers call the "replacement rate". And as the population decline accelerates, economic growth will be harder to pull off. How much the population size will fall is difficult to predict, but the basic trajectory is clear, demographers say.
New York Times
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Japan's sex problem reaches a worrying milestone

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Since Japan began counting its newborns more than a century ago, more than a million infants have been added to its population each year. No longer, in the latest discomforting milestone for a country facing a steep population decline.