Demography is the study of the human population (Macionis, 2013). One part of demography is looking at the effects population growth has, and figuring out how we can control them. The first factor in population change is fertility. Fertility is measured by the crude birth rate, which is an equation determining how many live children are born annually per 1,000 people in a population. While the crude birth rate does not take individual factors of a specific population into account, it is easy to use and gives a rough estimate. The second factor is mortality. The crude death rate is used to calculate this, and is the same formula as the crude birth rate – how many times it occurs in a year per 1,000 people in a population. The infant mortality …show more content…
Growth is important in a society. If all the people meeting specific needs get too old to work or dies, there would be no one to take over that particular function. However, extreme growth could be a major problem and would be considered a latent dysfunction. The same could be said for environmental effects – some are to be expected and cannot be avoided, but too much would cause problems in the functioning of the population. Social conflict theory would view the problem with population growth as lying in the distribution of goods and unequal consumption. If everyone were using energy, water, food, and the like with the same careful consumption, there would be no problem with a larger population. However, some people, particularly those living in poverty, consume less and will still face the environmental issues that can arise, while the rich and powerful use too much and cause more problems. If the people that use more would act more socially responsible, there would be enough to sustain a population growth. Symbolic interaction theory would focus on the perception of the people in society and their views on things that affect the population growth and environmental changes. One example would be the contribution of having a large family to population growth, which could be prevented by birth control. However,
There are many problems that occur when the population of a community gets too big. When there are a lot of people in a community, they rely on crops and farms to make more food to feed all the hungry people. But if there is a bad harvest or a natural disaster that happens and destroys food. Then a lot of the overpopulated community can die of starvation. Another thing that happens with a higher population is there is more crime.
As a result, the community growth intensifies to a point where the income per capita will be so low that its maintenance would turn into untenable; hence the population suffers and contracts, occasioning a new cycle again. Therefore, the theory emphasizes a rigid dependence of population growth upon the food supply.
Oded Galor and David N. Weil’s work, From Malthusian Stagnation to Modern Growth describes three different regimes on society including population, GDP per capita, family, and lifespan. They are the Malthusian model, the Post Malthusian model, and the Modern Growth Era model. The first of these three was the Malthusian model, developed by Malthus in the late 18th century, the Modern Growth is what we have today, and the post Malthusian model is the transition between the two ends of the spectrum.
In many of the developing countries perhaps, another factor that they relate to population is poverty. If the number of population is high then there is the existence of poverty which ultimately leads to resource scarcity. But this is barely true, studies shows that there is no direct link between population growth and poverty. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in the United States concluded in its 1986 report, titled Population Growth and Economic Development as cited by Jan (2003) that it is misleading to equate poverty with population growth per se. It found that the claim that population growth led to resource exhaustion was mistaken and it pointed out that to a great extent environmental problems could be resolved by appropriate government policies designed to correct market failure. This study was later confirmed by the Independent Inquiry Report in to Population and Development (IIRPD) commissioned by the Australian Government in 1994. It acknowledged a positive correlation between population growth and sustainable development (Jan, 2003).
Life expectancy in many parts of the world has increased since 1800 (Life Expectancy by Age, n.d). To understand these changes we can study the demographic transition, the changes in birth and death rates over extended periods of time. The industrial revolution has significantly improved the conditions of humans and in 20th century death rates declined but the birth rates remained unchanged. In many of today’s developed countries both rates have declined; however, in developing countries, while death rates have declined due the improvements of living conditions, the birth rates are still high which has caused a record high population growth (HAUB & GRIBBLE, 2011).
In, The Population Bomb by, Paul R Ehrlich, he explains the problem of population increase, and how there are people everywhere! The feeling of feeling over populated. He talks about how if there are more people then there is more food that needs to be produced then ate. He explains on the rich people becoming wealthier and the poor are going to be even poorer and there is going to be a starvation. Population is doubling every year and how our energy is turning into
2. Infant mortality rate: the number of death of an infant in a year per 1,000 live birth in the same year.
Thesis statement : Since the population has grown rapidly since in the past Fifty (5) years, how did the Chinese government deal with the population explosion in the past and how will they deal,with it in the future?
Symbolic Interactionism could be applied to this topic because it could help explain why people fail to engage in activities to help stop environmental changes or actively engage in these activities. For example, if someone buys the organic stuff or makes sure they buy the special groceries that are all about saving the rainforest or spends time recycling, they may be branded as hippies or tree huggers in a way that has a negative connotation. People often don’t like to stand out so if something like that happens or they are the only person in their neighborhood putting out that green bin on recycling days, chances are that they will stop. Symbolic Interactionism also highlights people’s perceptions of environmental issues they form from public attitudes, so if half of our country says environmental changes aren’t a problem, not a lot is going to change. Building off of this, if people and organizations are not united and vocal about what they consider a problem and a way to address it, action will again fail. I feel that functionalism is also a fitting theory for this topic because it can suggest that two things are related, population growth and environmental issues. I think the functionalism theory suggests that in a society as industrialized, advanced, and large as ours environmental problems are to be expected, but they have become
This problem of population growth leads to a number of solutions that could have significant implications on the quality of life. Taking no action and allowing population to grow unchecked could possibly risk the entire human species if food or clean water were to become unavailable worldwide. Aiming for zero population growth would in theory maintain the existing quality of life since a stable population would not increase their use of resources. However not all resources are renewable, so scarcities could still occur with a fixed population size. In an extreme case permanent resource depletion under zero population growth could have the same extinction effect that unchecked growth can lead to. Despite the escalating risk of unchecked population growth, technological advances necessitated by the increase in population will at least maintain the quality of life and could possibly improve conditions.
Population growth is a huge problem today. A lot of people know what population growth is and some people don’t,
Human population growth was relatively slow for most of human history. Within the past 500 years, however, the advances made in the industrial, transportation, economic, medical, and agricultural revolutions have helped foster an exponential, "J-shaped" rise in human population (Southwick, Figure 15.1, p. 160). The statistics associated with this type of growth are particularly striking: "Human beings took more than 3 million years to reach a population of 1 billion people...The second billion came in only 130 years, the third billion in 30 years, the fourth billion in 15 years, the fifth billion in 12 years..." (Southwick, p. 159). As human population has grown, there has been simultaneous growth within the industrial sector. Both of these increases have greatly contributed to environmental problems, such as natural resource depletion, ecosystem destruction, and global climate change. Also linked with the increasing human population are many social problems, such as poverty and disease. These issues need to be addressed by policy makers in the near future in order to ensure the survival and sustainability of human life.
Human population growth is becoming a huge issue in our world today. The population is increasing rapidly. The reason that it is becoming a concern is because it has affected the economic, environmental, and social aspects of our world. In the film Frontline: Heat, we can see how there might not be a future for our planet unless we are able to reduce the emissions and make our world a safe place. Not only for the present but also for future generations so that they are able to live long and healthy lives.
Population growth may be defined as the increase in the number of individuals in a population. In general a population will tend to increase in number when the available resources are greater than that required by the members of the population present at that particular time. As long as resources are available, every population has the tendency to grow exponentially.
Our world is too small for our ever rapidly growing population. One day resources will run dry and vanish, which will bring death and loss to all nations on this planet. Many researchers and scientists have confirmed that the population will reach 10 billion by the end of the century and will continue to stream upward. There are many different ways in trying to decrease population to contain global warming and assist our environmental changes. The only way to steadily succeeding, families must be the regulators of their fertility and future. Environmentalism can head in a negative direction, which may result in population control and even anti-immigrant policies. Can the developing effort of ‘population integrity’ protect our world while recognizing birth moralities?