The world population reached 7 billion people in either 2011 or early 2012 (according to which stats you look at). Either way, that's a lot of people on this planet. Right now there is enough food to feed all of those people -- if the planet's governments could work together. But how much longer can that be done -- especially with the changing climate (which bring with it both food and water problems).
The truth is that the exploding population is a problem for the world (including this country). And as the charts above show, the people of the United States know that. Note that they believe both the world's and the United States' population is growing too fast.
But while they see this huge population growth as a problem, it seems to be a problem they don't want to solve (or think it will magically solve itself). As the chart below shows, they don't want the government to encourage people to have smaller families.
Any reasonable person knows this problem is not going to magically solve itself. That makes it strange that people don't want the government to encourage smaller families -- especially since the word used was "encourage" and not "force". The government could easily come up with policies to encourage people to have smaller families, without forcing them to do that.
What do you readers think? Is population a problem? Should the U.S. (and the world) enact policies to encourage smaller families?
These charts were made using information from a new YouGov Poll -- done between October 29th and November 2nd of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4.3 point margin of error.
Thing is, in most of the world, the "population explosion" is winding down. Birth rates in Latin America, the Middle East, and a lot of the rest of the developing world are at or even below replacement level, or moving in that direction -- the same as what happened in Europe, the US, and Japan a generation or two ago. Education and access to birth control have the same effects everywhere, it seems. What growth is still occurring is the result of demographic overhang from the earlier era of high birth rates -- there's still a disproportionate percentage of the population in the young-adult age range where people most often have children. That too will pass.
ReplyDeleteIt's likely that in the decades to come the main driver of population size will be anti-aging technology further extending the lifespan. There's no reason to think birth rates will go up again.
The exception is Sub-Saharan Africa, where birth rates are still very high due to economic underdevelopment -- which also means the region is all the less capable of coping with population growth. This is the one place where population-explosion alarmism is still valid. It's hard to see what can be done about it, though. There's no evidence from actual experience that exhortation, scolding, or even economic incentives have much impact on birth rates. The only thing that will work in Sub-Saharan Africa is what worked everywhere else -- economic development, education, and access to birth control.
I second what Infidel753 has to say. There is no need to encourage smaller families in the U.S. and other developed countries. Those countries already have smaller families. The fertility rate, the average number of children born to each woman, has been at or below replacement rate in the U.S. for the the past 42 years. As a result, the rate of population growth has been slowing down to record low levels. Instead, what should be discouraged is wasteful use of resources. That's the real problem.
DeleteBesides, the U.S. has its own solution to population issues--restrict immigration and attack immigrants. That's in full force already, as seen by the success of Donald Trump and all the GOP candidates who are against "amnesty."
On another note, I see that African Americans have as much of a problem with population growth as other demographics. I wonder why that is.