Question: What are the impacts of a declining population in the modern world?
Over the past century the world population has risen exponentially, climbing from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.4 billion in 2016 (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/). This population explosion is largely due to increased life expectancy, which in turn is the result of more accessible food, water, and health care. But within the past several decades, the total fertility rate of developed countries has been steadily declining. Max Singer of The Atlantic cites changing modern values for this new trend. More precisely, the falling TFR of developed nations can be attributed to better education and resources for women, a desire to focus on career as opposed to child rearing, and the fact that a new child no longer means another field hand on the family farm. The decline of fertility rates below the 2.1 children per woman replacement rate has caused a growing concern that the world will be faced with an elderly population for whom it cannot adequately care. But this concern is hardly warranted. In fact, declining fertility rates can largely be seen as a positive trend. As Anne H. Ehrlich of the Center for Conservation Biology writes, declining populations help to offset the tremendous environmental detriments of unprecedented industrialization. Furthermore, a reduced population ensures less competition for resources such as clean drinking water. Ehrlich goes on to explain that the problem of dealing with an aging population is inevitable as population growth tapers off, and that it is better to start dealing with it now than to delay any resolution for another few generations. While the world does need to face the challenge of taking care of an older population than ever before, the recent reduction in birth rates is not one of the more pressing issues of our times.
Image source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7KG1vmWDWQ0
The people of Dhaka wanted clean drinking water, but their population is too dense, so their water supply will likely be contaminated with arsenic within the next ten years.
Countries in Africa with a TFR Above 5.0
World Population
Model obtained from www.populationedcation.org
The first stage represents the time in human history prior to any industrialization. Birth rates were only slightly higher than death rates, and the world population total was relatively static. During the second stage, once some countries had begun to industrialize, death rates started to fall steadily while birth rates remained high. This caused a massive influx in the population total. In stage three, birth rates began to decline dramatically while death rates declined by only a small margin. Some developing countries, such as Nigeria, are currently experiencing these levels of births and deaths. Most developed countries are in stage four, where birth rates have decreased significantly but remain higher than death rates. The total population of the countries is leveling off somewhat. A few nations such as Japan are in the fifth stage, where birth rates have dropped below death rates and the total population is shrinking.
A cartogram is a map which retains the relative shape of a country but distorts its size to reflect a certain trait (e.g. population, amount of arable land, percent of population who are malnourished, etc.). They are used to show the difference between countries regarding a particular characteristic. This cartogram displays countries' sizes relative to their populations. Each square represents five million people, though distribution across each country is not shown. East Asia and South Asia are by far the largest regions, with 1.2 billion and 1.3 billion people inhabiting China and India respectively. Continents apart from Eurasia are far more sparsely populated, particularly in areas of Africa and South America.
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