Dangers of Population Growth
Rapid population growth refers to a quick increase in the number of people residing in a country. The issue results from a high number of births than deaths. However, there are some other causes of rapid population growth such as food production increase, good public health, and elimination of diseases. All of them are factors that lead to a natural growth of population. However, population decline is the decrease in the number of people residing in a country or state. The fall results from low birth rates, relocation to other countries, a high number of death rates especially among the young generation and decrease in food production as well as public health. Both rapid and declined population triggers some dangers in the countries causing more negative effects on the economy and increase poverty.
What are the dangers of rapid population growth in some countries?
Rapid population growth presents a high risk of overpopulation population that triggers unemployment in some countries (Ahlburg et al. 215). Less developed countries are the most affected ones. For example, if the population growth increased roughly by two billion in 2011, then in 2016 the population is larger and thrice. As the population grows each day, the economies of the countries face a significant challenge of generating the sufficient number of jobs that has reasonable wages, to absorb the growing population. Due to a high number of people, most of the individuals end up unemployed and become poor or have jobs with low wages. The rapid population puts the country under the pressure of trying to control poverty. However, it also forces some individual to relocate to other countries. The migration may occur frequently living the country with fewer people. Philippine is one of the countries has experienced migration. Many people left the country to work abroad. Some do not follow the correct protocols of working in another country. They relocate to new countries illegally and forced be relocated.
Overpopulation has other consequences such as urbanization. People tend to crowd in the cities looking for jobs. Countries that experience high population have a large number of individuals living in the cities than in the rural causing urban sprawl. However, it also leads to decrease in food production and distribution, as well as better public health. The food production may be destroyed and replaced with modernized farming. The condition forces countries to be under the pressure of encouraging people to practice over-irrigation as well as overusing croplands. It is a problem that undermines the capacity to provide food for a larger population.
Rapid population creates danger on education. The problem leads to classrooms crowded with students since the schools and colleges cannot handle the influx of children. However, the institutes may also hire untrained teachers to help out with lessons (Ahlburg et al. 217). It is an issue that makes the kids to end up with fewer or inappropriate skills required in the working environment, because they are trained with unprofessional personnel. The danger is so severe that some trained individual becomes incompetent in the country. They initiate economic decline since they cannot contribute excellent ideas to boost businesses. However, children may lack education due to insufficient tools to meet their needs in education. Some end up dropping out of schools increasing the level of crime rates. Unemployed young generation is easily influenced into crimes if they lack moral support. They may engage in drugs and gangs to keep themselves busy or provide for their needs.
Quick growth in population triggers environmental degradation and inadequate distribution of wealth that lead to political strife. Some of the affected countries face armed conflict and social disintegration because they are fighting for survival. It is situation that leads to violence, tribalism, discrimination, gender disparity and the creation of dangerous automatic weapons to wipe out others in the society (Ahlburg et al. 217). The poor people are the most vulnerable when fighting to survive. They can do anything dangerous just to make sure they receive good living condition food and social security. They ensure that they are not wiped out of the country by striking hard. Human security cannot be secured unless populated countries try to stabilize a large number of people. Citizens tend to fight to survive by engaging in a civil war that destroys the country’s economy through a high number of death rates, food destruction as well as economy. A country cannot be economically stable if its citizens have internal conflicts. Peace and harmony give people courage energy to work together in boosting business in the public and private sectors. Rapid growth also causes danger to politics. The leaders may create enmity among each other and refuse to cooperate and help the growing population. Some may become bias and try to help their people alone disregarding others.
High population growth poses a danger to the environment. It is responsible for all the environment ills. It exerts pressure on the environment due to increased consumption from industrialization, government policies that are inappropriate, inequality in land distribution and health, inefficient technologies and poverty. All these factors initiates environment decline. However, it also causes globalization due to the carbon footprint. Each child born daily adds some tons of carbon in the environment. With the greenhouse gasses created by the large population, it is hard to control globalization and make the environment a safe place for human life. This situation has caused people to address the issue by using better technology as well as strategies of less consumption of carbon gasses. People living highly populated countries struggle a lot to survive globalization.
Dangers of decline in population growth in some countries?
The decline in population growth also has a lot of danger to some countries. The first danger is it causes in economic growth. When the population is low and not stable, it shrinks availability of labor reducing growth (Chand & Rosalie 409). The level of productivity decreases and innovations falls too. However, the decline in population leads to a high number of the old people as compared to the young generation. Productivity decreases when the people age. The condition forces a country to spend money in form of pensions and better health care for the old, instead of investing in long-term projects. However, the elderly population shrinks the level of labor by raising wages; leading to slow economic growth. The decline in economic growth comes as a result of businesses catering more for the needs of the aging consumers. Another effect of low the population is insufficient of labor supply. It is an issue that can only be solved by increasing the retirement age.
Decrease in the labor force to raise productivity increases labor costs; making the country have a high level of inflation and experience less spending power from the consumers. Inflation is a very dangers problem that may throw a country a deep ditch of economic crisis. It is something that needs excellent solutions. Many companies suffer from inflation because they demand more physical labor for manufacturing construction. The condition comes as result of old individuals not working full time. Consequently, their monthly expenses may be higher than the revenues increasing poverty. Poverty among the old is worse in developing countries that have no pension systems. Decline population growth also leads to decline in fertility rate. Most of the countries have a high number of old people who cannot give birth. However, some face a lot of miscarriages because trying to have a family at a late stage.
Low population makes the country experience a threat of competition (Chand & Rosalie 410). Lack of stable population means there are less talents in business from the citizens. Countries with stable population have an advantage over a nation with fewer people. It is because they can receive all the talents they can from its citizens and boost its economy. It is so hard to compete with strong players in the economy. The depopulated countries always lose edge over other states since their outputs are no longer needed in other states. The investors may as well back off from investing in the state if it has declined in population growth. Less populated countries face shame and withers since they cannot compete with other nations. In the eyes of successful nations, a depopulated country is a week one and capable of doing little things. The threat of competition is what triggers countries to allow a high level of migrants in the country; which another danger since it may lead to overpopulation in future.
Decline in population growth creates a danger to age and genders. It creates gender disparity since countries tend to favor one gender compared to the other. You may find that a nation may prefer female newborns over males. Even when it comes to working, the women may receive some favor because they are meant to give birth and raise the population of a country. However, the favoring may be extreme to a point where some group such as unmarried and barren are uneducated, neglected and subjected to poverty. The disparity may lead to violent crimes, drug abuse as well as collective oppression. The country may direct its attention to population increase and forget other things that matter for the nation.
Another danger is some countries tend to cut off spending on the aging individuals and focus on curbing depopulation (Chand & Rosalie 409). There might be some sentiments whereby the government mostly focus on population increase and underperform in developing some regions. It may cause people to start feeling that they are alienated and initiate an internal conflict in the country. However, underperformance in some areas triggers urbanization. People may start to move to regions that are more developed abandoning rural places. They may rush to cities where there is plenty food and better living conditions. The migration to the substantially attractive places in return causes overpopulation in cities. As crowding increases, class inequality also increases. For instance, crowding in the growing cities tend to be a recipe for disaster if they lack precaution measures. The young cities may experience disasters such floods and earthquakes.
Population decline also weakens defense against foreign invasion. It is because countries with fewer people lack enough man superpower. The issue puts the citizens in danger since they lack full protection of the country. In times of war, the countries lose quickly and even retreat because of fear of losing more of its citizens. Consequently, because of other dangers on the economy, it becomes difficult to provide enough support to the army. They may lack enough food, funds as well as weapons to withstand war against foreign invasion. As for countries with a high population, they have a strong defense over foreign invasion because of high number of man superpower. When they lose their armies in the battle, they have a chance of recruiting others again to continue fighting. They have a large number of people to train over and over again.
Are there connections between population growth and poverty?
Population growth is connected to poverty in different ways. For instance decline in population growth slow down economic investments leading to poverty (Espenshade & Wiliam 2). As the number of people decline, the labor force also decreases. Instead of the countries focusing on investments, they shift the priories and concentrated on population increase. However, countries with low population have high number of old people than young generation. The old people are incapable of working full time and boost the economic standards for the country. In fact they are a burden since the country may spend a lot of money for their pension, as well as provide them with better public health. All the finances required from investments are sent to help the old people. These are the things that increase poverty in some countries.
Lack of investments and reduced labor force increases poverty. It may as well hinder the people from developing their nation. Countries need young power since youth have energy to work hard and boost food production, distribution as well as the economy. They also work full time since they are still young and there are full of energy. Nevertheless, the young generation has excellent skills to contribute to the growing business. In general decline in economic growth drives countries to poverty since they depend on the old population to increase the economy and food production. The old population has no enough energy to be productive and remove the country from poverty.
Rapid increase in population also impact poverty. The first cause of poverty is high mortality rate that cause overpopulation (Espenshade & William 7). Rapid population growth outpaces economic development. Countries experience difficulties to invest in human capital required for the well-being of the people. As the population increases the country fails to have sufficient number of jobs that has reasonable wages to absorb the growing population. The condition forced people to be dragged to poor life since they do not have jobs to sustain themselves. In some circumstances, individuals may idle with their degrees since the labor force has become limited. Some tend to work as casually workers just to find little money for their basic needs. However, poverty increase due to unemployment may cause people not acquire proper medication due to insufficient funds. Internal conflicts from the overpopulated countries also trigger poverty. The citizens may fight destroying a lot of property drugging the whole country into poverty.
Internal fighting in the country does not create enough time for investments as well as new business ideas to boost the country’s economy. Most of the people may swift their energy to fighting and forget about the businesses. Some of the business may also be closed down until the conflict is over. Apart from that, most of the finances may be directed to public health to help the injured instead of the investments and food production. There is no country that can avoid poverty if its funds are used to control internal conflict within the nation. After the conflict is over is when it is able to maintain the economic state of the nation. In most countries the rate of population growth occurs in the poor regions. The more the rate increases in those areas the more poverty increase too.
Kids from the poor populated regions do not finish school contributing to poor economic conditions. It is because of poverty and dropping out to work and support their families. The extent to which young individual contributes to the economy has a huge impact on the future of the country (Espenshade & William 12). It shows that increase illiteracy leads to unemployment creating more poverty. It is the reason why young people from overpopulated regions in countries live a very poor life. They cannot afford to provide basic needs from themselves. It is a condition that forces governments to chip in and remedy the situation by reduces finances required for other economic purposes
There are some concepts that can help manage population growth. The first thing is setting up a good number of birth rates depending on the population growth of the country. The number of birth rates would be in a way that it creates balance between young generation and the old generation. This will help the country know how much to invest on government, industry and education, so as to improve productivity. In countries with high population especially in poor regions there should be enough contraceptive services, so that people may have families that are manageable. In fact the services should be free since many of them do not afford paying for it.
The population increases rapidly because contraceptives services are not perfect. Effective and sufficient family planning will initiate population stabilization because of people having desirable number of children. However, it can also help boost the level of education and remedy overcrowding in classrooms. The students will be able to study in schools with sufficient facilities in order to contribute to the future economy of the countries. There are some people who refuse contraceptive services because they do not understand its importance. In this case it is important for countries to use broadcast media or any means possible to make sure that understand them.
Conclusion
Both population increases and decline has lots of danger so it is important for countries to keep number of people in a stable. As discussed above, increase in the number of people has several effects such as unemployment. The countries face a great challenge generating sufficient number of jobs to absorb the growing population. It also leads to urbanization. People get crowded in the cities looking for jobs. Other effects include danger to education, environmental degradation and inadequate distribution of wealth. Decline in population on the other hand lower economic growth, leads to inflation, makes the country to experience a threat of competition and creates danger to age as well as gender. Population growth in general has connection to poverty. Unstable number of people destroys the economic state in countries increasing poverty. What countries need is good strategies to keep the population stable without endangering the economy.