The World Population: The Problem Of Overpopulation

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Overpopulation describes a condition where the number of people uses the resources in a closed environment so that it can no longer maintain that population (Elliot Institute). Around the early 1900 's, the world population had grown to a billion people, and English scholar, Thomas Malthus and partner economists predicted that mankind would outgrow its available resources because a limited amount of land wouldn 't be able to support a population with a limitless potential for growth. Today our population is more than 7 billion. Despite the fact that better health care and medicine along with advances in food production and easier access to freshwater and sanitation have given us the ability to feed ourselves and fight many sickness 's, some …show more content…

In their book "The Population Explosion", Paul and Anne Ehrlich explain the problem of overpopulation could be solved with no change in the number of people, but by advencements of industrial production and changes in consumption, however difficult it might be (Avilés). According to the US Census Bureau, a total of 83 countries and territories are now thought to encounter below-replacement fertility (Eberstadt). Below-replacement fertility primarily means that the rate of people being born is less than the rate of people dying. Those places have nearly 2.7 billion people that are about 37% of the world population (Eberstadt). Global population growth is predicted to decelerate over the next generation. In fact, slightly fewer people will be born around the globe in the year 2025 than at any point over the last four decades (Eberstadt). A quantity-quality of correlation was discovered by Willis and Becker Lewis in 1973 discussing how the quantity and quality of children is related (Shah). They explained how the marginal cost of a child is higher the greater the cost is per child (Shah). On the other hand, the marginal cost of child quality is higher the more children there are. This pertains to why most poverty-stricken people who live in developed countries have much higher birth rates than higher-income people in more western countries because the impoverished parents tend to lean toward the quantity approach (Shah). Figure 2 demonstrates the quantity-quality tradeoff curve. The curve illustrates how as quantity increases past the maximum utility curve, the quality quickly decreases. This means when the people of developing countries begin to have increases in income, the quantity of children should decrease and birth rates should

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