Human Population Grows up
A.
- Close to a population of nine billion people
- Humanity will go through a historic change in the balance between you and old, rich and poor, as well as urban and rural
- 2005 is the midpoint of a decade and spans three transitions in history
- Before 2000, young people always outnumbered old people
- 2000 and forward, old people will outnumber young people
- 2007, urban people will outnumber rural people
- 2003 and on, median woman worldwide had, and will continue to have, too few or just enough children during her lifetime to replace herself and the father in the following generation
- Now using 2000 as a mid point, there are also important transitions in human history
- no person who died before 1930 had lived through a doubling of the human population
- any person born in 2050 or later likely to live through a doubling of the human population
- everyone 45 years old or older today has seen more than a doubling of human numbers from three billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion in 2005
- Peak population growth rate is 2.1 percent a year
- the dramatic fall since 1970 of the global population growth rate to 1.1 or 1.2 percent a year today resulted primarily from choices by billions of couples around the world to limit the number of children born
- we will se an enormous shift in the demographic balance between the more developed regions of the world and the less developed ones
- that current levels of global population growth are still greater than any experienced prior to World War II
- Rapid growth has not stopped
- all population growth in the next 45 years is expected to happen in today’s economically less developed regions
- Global increase will be accounted for just by nine nations
- 51 countries or areas, most of them economically more developed, will lose population between now and 2050
- the 20th century was probably the last in human history in which younger people outnumbered older ones
- The crossover in proportions between young and old shows both improved survival and reduced fertility
- all of the world’s population growth will be in urban areas if we continue these recent trends
- Urbanization will interact with the transformation of human societies by aging
B. The rate at which human population is growing has increased immensely. We are becoming increasing the population of humans so much so that in 2050, we are expected to have nine billion people living on this earth. Because of this rapid growth, it is predicted that humanity will go through a historic changed when regarding the balance between young and old, rich and poor, as well as urban and rural. This increase in population is because of poor countries due to their high birth rate. The big issue is that the earth might not be able to sustain that many people with its already limited resources. We are hardly staying a float now as it is trying to conserve everything the earth has to offer us but with more people joining the population, we are going to have a harder time with keeping everybody's living condition at the most, bearable. Another problem is the fact that there is starting to become an abundance in the amount of elderly people when compared to younger people. This is a problem because with less younger people to go and take care of the elderly, the elderly might not be able to survive on their own. This will raise an economic problem because of their health issues and the fact that we dont have enough people that will take care if them. On the other hand, if we try and raise the population of younger people, that will also have a consequence. We must try and find a possible solution to this population problem.
C. After reading this article, it is starting to really open my eyes as to why people are saying overpopulation is starting to become a very big problem not just environmentally, but economically as well as socially. The fact that we are raising our population of people inhabiting the planet is not good. We already have a limited amount of resources at earth and there is not another viable sustainable alternative that we can transfer to. We are rapidly using up these resources, leaving nothing for the future generations to come and this to me is very worrisome. I do not want to become the generation that ends up killing our earth and I would like to find a way to fix this population crisis so that we the humans can all live happy comfortable lives. In my APES class, we are learning about the different countries that have very bad population issues. For example, in Japan, they have an overwhelming amount of elderly people and not enough young people to try and take care of them. Another example is with China, they had a policy where a family can only be limited to one child and this led to the Chinese interested in sex-selective abortions. India is another country that had a gender problem. We need to come together as a society and try to combat these population issues that we ourselves are responsible for.