In the past, infant and childhood deaths and short life spans used to limit popula-tion growth. In today's world, thanks to improved nutrition, sanitation, and medical care, more babies survive their first few years of life. The combination of a continu-ing high birth rate and a low death rate is creating a rapid population increase in many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and people generally lived longer. Over-population is defined as the condition of having more people than can live on the earth in comfort, happiness and health and still leave the world a fit place for future generations.1 What some people now believe that the greatest threat to the future comes from overpopulation.
It took the entire history of humankind for the population to reach 1 billion around 1810. Just 120 years later, this doubled to 2 billion people (1930); then 4 billion in 1975 (45 years). The number of people in the world has risen from 4.4 billion people in 1980 to 5.8 billion today. And it is estimated that the population could double again to nearly 11 billion in less than 40 years. 2 This means that more people are now being added each day than at any other time in human history.
Looking ahead, world population is projected to exceed 6 billion before the year 2000. And according to a report by the United Nation Population fund, total popu-lation is likely to reach 10 billion by 2025 and grow to 14 billion by the end of the next century unless birth control use increases dramatically around the world within the next two decades.3
Both death rates and birth rates have fallen, but death rates have fallen faster than birth rates. There are about 3 births for each death with 1.6 births for each death in more developed countries ( MDCs) and 3.3 births for each death in less de-veloped countries( LDCs). The world's population continues to grow by 1 billion people every dozen years.4
On one hand, some politicians call for countries, especially MDCs to increase their population size to maintain their economic growth and military security. On the other hand, critics denote that one out of five people living here today is not properly supported and believe that the world is already limited in resources.
These critics maintain that slowing world population growth is one of the most ur-gent issues Those who believe that the world is overpopulated argue that if we don't sharply lower birth rates, we are raising death rates by default5