EPTIt doesn't take much to grow up children if you give them the bare minimum. China is like that, where most of the population are in poverty.
There's other issues like unprotected sex and prostitution.
Why is there Overpopulation and Population Growth - Page 2
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Lokian
United States699 Posts
It doesn't take much to grow up children if you give them the bare minimum. China is like that, where most of the population are in poverty. There's other issues like unprotected sex and prostitution. | ||
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sqrt
1210 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:17 Kirameki wrote: As for overpopulation, if we had way way less people we would all be a lot richer. The earth is limited. Why do we need even 1 billion people? Would we really be worse off with only 20 million world wide? What would be the problem of that? With less than 2 billion people we won't have enough workers/specialists to produce the goods we need at the rate we need. | ||
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Phenny
Australia1435 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:33 jstar wrote: Overpopulation is a myth. I double checked the math, it's true. The population of the earth is going to peak in 30 years, then start declining. Then everyone would start freaking out. Problems about poverty and world hunger is another issue, not due to "overpopulation". Why would population magically start to decline in 30 years? That vid just says "it's not true lol, just a myth guys" without providing any evidence whatsoever. | ||
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Neivler
Norway911 Posts
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4347 Posts
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SexyHyung
42 Posts
there are too many reasons for this. it's like basically asking for one reason why rome fell. people, at least men, like to have sex. people in third world countries don't have condoms or birth control, so once they have sex, chances are they are going to get knocked up alot sooner than say some urban american socialite who sleeps with dozens of men a month. why do people have children? well because if you live in a third world country, some of your children are probably going to die off from starvation of disease or something like that, so if you have more, the more chances that some will survive. THE biggest change in birthing rates was because of feminization and invention of birth control. you can just google any graph and see the drop in birth rates around that time. well still if you are asking why people in undeveloped countries aren't progressively thinking on how to limit their birth rate, it's because they don't give a shit and honestly they are right to not give a shit. i highly doubt it's a economic burden for them too. the more children you have, especially boys, they can work on the farm or whatever and take care of you when you get old. there are too many reasons for them to have kids. if you really want people to stop having as many kids, the only way is to modernize their country. the more first-world their country is the less kids they will have. | ||
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Comeh
United States18919 Posts
However, to tackle the issue of high population growth in lower income countries a very very simple way of thinking about it is from the very very simplified economic thought - Children in high income countries are very expensive and provide very little labor. Children in third world countries provide extensive labor for (comparatively) very little cost. Being stuck in a cycle of poverty means that there is an incentive to have more children thereby greatly increasing the population. Unfortunately, it gets a lot more complicated from there, and there are countless factors you can add in, but its a good stepping stone I suppose. I'm curious to see the opinions of those with more knowledge of a more specific trend of growth though - its clearly very interesting. | ||
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Tosho
Australia498 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:05 don_kyuhote wrote: I think the main problem is not so much the number of people that are on Earth but the fact that people are using up so much energy and resources to a point where sooner or later, we (and certainly our grandkids and so on) will not be able to live like we are now. This is the correct issue. Overpopulation is not our world defining issue, over consumption and waste will be what makes or breaks our stay on Earth. We have far more than enough room for many times the population we have now, just not the means to sustain ourselves with our currently resource and energy usage. | ||
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HeadhunteR
Argentina1258 Posts
And yeah as many people said Poor means more children cause there is less contraception and a bigger need for a big or numerous family. | ||
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munchmunch
Canada789 Posts
On February 08 2011 16:56 spkim1 wrote: So my question is: Why do we have overpopulation ? And furthermore, will that really bring us all to doom ? You'll find out the answer to the first question when you hit puberty, and the answer to the second question about 30 years after that.  More seriously, I think there is a problem in your analysis in comparing the cost to support a child in the industrialised world and the non-industrialised world. Also, most cultures in the world have social mechanisms to encourage procreation. While these mechanisms don't benefit the individual, they are obviously necessary for biological reasons. | ||
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Poonchow
United States56 Posts
Wikipedia actually has a lot of information on this. Basically the maximum sustainable population of Earth varies widely based on the methods you use for calculation. Are people going to be consuming as much as they are now (ecological footprint) or are they consuming less? We should be focusing on consuming less but maintaining or improving our lifestyle. This means efficiency -- we get more out of the stuff we use and/or can recycle it when we no longer require it. If efficiency improves at a rate higher than we are populating the planet (consuming resources) we effective have no real ceiling for a population max. By the time we take up all the land mass on the planet, we'll likely have technology suitable for colonizing the moon and Mars, it's just a matter of making the way we do things better, faster than we are growing. | ||
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Tosho
Australia498 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:36 Phenny wrote: Why would population magically start to decline in 30 years? That vid just says "it's not true lol, just a myth guys" without providing any evidence whatsoever. The video does not state sources no, but it is on the right track. Many modernised countries are either at the replacement level or in population decline, some dangerously so such as Japan which is at 1.3 children per couple. You can imagine what would happen to society in a country over a 50-100 year period at such a low growth rate, certainly social collapse is on the cards with giant swathes of your countryside abandoned, mass aged demographics with no social security from a vibrant working force taxes to get by. | ||
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Zips
United States146 Posts
Consider that America uses roughly 23% of the worlds oil, but only represents 5% of the total population. You do the math -- can the world's population double every 40 years and actually provide enough resources for all those people? Oh, and we know that there's plenty of physical space to occupy -- that has nothing to do with it -- it's about resources. | ||
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lu_cid
United States428 Posts
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forkleaf
United States75 Posts
The other is fix the socioeconomic problems that people face. This means fixing the third world poverty. Its well known that changing economic policy to fix poverty will reduce birth rates just like you see in industrialized countries. If women have opportunities, birth rates will go down. Its that simple | ||
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chenchen
United States1136 Posts
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jstar
Canada568 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:36 Phenny wrote: Why would population magically start to decline in 30 years? That vid just says "it's not true lol, just a myth guys" without providing any evidence whatsoever. There are sources for everything. Here's one of them: According to the U.N. Population Database, the world's population in 2010 will be 6,908,688,000. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq mi (7,494,271,488,000 sq ft). So, divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft by 6,908,688,000 people, and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person. That's approximately a 33' x 33' plot of land for every person on the planet, enough space for a town house. As for why the population will decline in 30 years: According to the U.N. Population Database, using the historically accurate low variant projection, the Earth's population will only add another billion people or so over the next thirty years, peaking around 8.02 billion people in the year 2040, and then it will begin to decline. Check their online database. http://esa.un.org/unpp/ They have sources for every video here: http://www.overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101 | ||
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RisingTide
Australia769 Posts
Asking what stops population growth is, imo, the best way to figure out why it grows in the first place. You find that in general as a population becomes better educated, afforded better healthcare and in general become wealthier, they stop reproducing as much. | ||
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teh_longinator
Canada725 Posts
There is NO reason to have 20 kids. Imagine how overpopulated the world will be in a few decades if everyone has this many kids. It used to be people had larger families to make up for high mortality rate, but with today's medicine, I really do not believe that it is necessary for any more than two kids.... We're eventually gonna get to a point where the Earth cannot support the amount of people we're pumping out. I mean, look at the vegetables now... there's nowhere near the amount of nutrition in them that there used to be, because we have to use less land to grow more... | ||
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supernovice007
United States29 Posts
On February 08 2011 17:36 Phenny wrote: Why would population magically start to decline in 30 years? That vid just says "it's not true lol, just a myth guys" without providing any evidence whatsoever. For what it's worth, here's the 2004 UN report on long-term population growth: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf Basically, it says that the population is expected to stabilize at roughly 9 billion in 2050 lasting through the next 250 years at which point it will begin to decline. I haven't read the entire report since its over 200 pages long but all the reasoning is in there. Have fun reading!  | ||
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