Australia's Population Growth: Challenges and Opportunities

With a current population of over twenty three million people, Australia is one of the most multicultural and diverse nation in the world. As such it is quite obvious that its population is expected to grow extensively in the coming years. A population is the total number of inhabitants of a certain area, in this case Australia’s population and its expansion over the next thirty four years. It is projected that by 2050, Australia will have a population roughly thirty five million people, this could be seen as problematic from both a social and economic stand point. As well as effecting a variety of living standards both material and non-material. Population growth can also result positively on these same areas, depending on how it is managed.

Living standards or standard of living refers to the amount of comfort, wealth and material goods available to people in a specific area. This can be broken into two main categories, these are, material which are effected by the true value of goods and services produced each year. They will changing based on the economy and government policies. Non-material living standards are the quality of daily lives and wellbeing, and may be affected by personal happiness, job satisfaction or leisure versus work time. Population growth has led to Australia becoming a multicultural society with a variety of different foods, traditions, fashions and custom, this has therefore improved overall living standards. However this may potentially reduce social cohesion, seeing how previously many cultures and traditions were shared within the majority. Now during a period of international conflict, the people can be divided and breaks appear in the community and weaken it, this can damage many non-material living standards. Population growth can cost the environment, as resources are depleted at a higher rate. Therefore there will also be an increase in carbon emissions as a result of more goods being produced. As well as the cities begin to grow outwards much faster and more land will need to be purchased and cleared for public transport and power station like

It is the view or many business owners and politicians that Australia in underpopulated, and that we have to too few people to fully utilise our resources. However this optimum population size is hard to calculate, as the concept consider are variety of different impacts such as, short term economic impacts on production as well as the non-economic living standards. The lifestyle of Australians would need to change to fulfil its population efficiency, leading to the problem of a changing optimum size. As it continues to change so will the lifestyle of