Transcript Current Human Population Growth and Implications

CURRENT HUMAN
POPULATION GROWTH AND
IMPLICATIONS
HUMAN POPULATION
HISTORY
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO
POPULATION EXPLOSION
 Agricultural
advances
 Advances in
medicine
 Industrial
revolution
REASONS FOR EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF
HUMAN POPULATION
• Increased food supply
• Improvements in medical and public health
and technology
• Improvements in sanitation and personal
hygiene
• Safer water supplies
THOMAS MALTHUS
• Studied the decline of living conditions in 19th century England
• Blamed this decline on:
 Too many children
 Inability of resources to replenish at levels with increased
population
 Irresponsibility of lower class
• Proposed regulating family size of lower class to limit it to a level
they could support
MALTHUS CONTINUED
• He said “positive checks” like food shortages and disease kept
population at appropriate levels
• He said population growth was exponential but food production
could not keep growing exponentially.
• As of today, he was wrong due to GM foods.
CURRENT STATS
World Population: 7 billion people
U.S. Population: 314 million people
Kentucky Population: 4.3 million people
Louisville Population: 250,000 people
The U.S. is only 5% of the world’s
population, but we use ~ 1/3 of the
Earth’s natural resources!!!
CRUDE BIRTH RATE AND CDR
CBR= the number of live births per 1000 members of the population
in one year.
CDR= the number of deaths per 1000 members of the population in
one year.
 When calculating population change you must take into account
total population size when using CDR and CBR.
POPULATION CHANGE=
(CBR+ IMMIGRATION) – (CDR + EMIGRATION)
Example: If the population is 50,000 and the number of
births is 14 per 1000 and the number of deaths is 5
per 1000, what was the population change assuming
no net immigration or emigration?
Pop. Change= 14(50) - 5(50)
= 450 added
OR 50,450
ALARMING FACTS…
The human population
is currently growing at a
rate of 260,000 people
per day!
Every 3 years, the
global environment
must support another
285 million people
AS A RESULT OF RAPID
GROWTH…
1.3 billion people are impoverished
841 million people are chronically malnourished
Supplies of water for irrigation are declining
Nearly half of the Earth’s land mass has been changed by human
activity
• Ocean fish stocks are depleting
• Species are going extinct faster than ever
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EARTH’S CARRYING CAPACITY
(2BILLION-30BILLION)
Determined by
Food production
Living space
Waste assimilation
Resource availability
Can be expanded through advances in
Agriculture
Industry
Medicine
FERTILITY RATES
Replacement level fertility (RLF)= having enough kids to replace
yourself
 Slightly higher than 2 (2.1) b/c some kids die
Total fertility rate (TFR)= average number of children a woman will
have in her lifetime
FERTILITY RATES
DECLINES
INCLINES
•Urbanization- cost
more to live
•Post war- baby booms
•Contraception
•Abortion
•Education for women
•Postponing marriage
•Limited women’s
rights
•Underdeveloped
countries
INDICATORS OF OVERALL HUMAN HEALTH:
 Life expectancy
 Infant mortality rate
OTHER FACTORS THAT AFFECT POPULATION
GROWTH
 Policies to encourage immigration
 Environmental refugees
 Religious persecution
 Baby boom generation in US
Why are they waiting to retire?
How their retirement will affect the rest of us?
DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
1) Pre-industrial= little to no growth (African nations)
2) Transitional= rapid growth (Mexico, Pakistan)
3) Industrial= stable growth (China)
4) Post-industrial= zero growth or declining growth (Japan, Russia, Germany)
WHY ARE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES LIKE INDIA
NOT MOVING TOWARD INDUSTRIAL STAGE?
AGE STRUCTURES
WAYS TO LOWER POPULATION GROWTH:
 Provide economic incentives for having fewer children
 Empower and educate women
 More education means more money for work which mean less
children are needed to take care of parents
 More education usually means having children later in life which
usually means having less children
 Family planning including contraceptives, legal abortions
 Improve prenatal and infant health care (need less kids if they
survive
CHINA AND INDIA AS CASE STUDIES ON FAMILY
PLANNING
 What are the policies on family planning in China?
India?
 What do you think of these interventions?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
 What is the US’s role (thus the taxpayers role) in other
country’s population control?
WHY SHOULD P0PULATION GROWTH BE
CONTROLLED/MONITORED?
o Poverty
o Droughts
o Populations have surpassed the carrying capacity
o Political instability
o Pestilence
o Foreign investors
o Resource depletion and habitat destruction