In the Future - Population Implosion or Explosion?

545 Words3 Pages
The world's population is over 7 billion. It has been rapidly growing since the latter part of the 1850s, where the first large-scale growth in the population can be seen. But will the population continue to grow, or decline in the future? To answer this question properly, it should be note that population growth in the developing world and the developed world are different. The first area of growth to consider is in the developing world (LEDCs). It can be said that here, the fastest increase in the population has been seen, so consequently the greatest fall in fertility rates is expected to be here also. Excluding China, the average growth in an LEDC's population is 1.8% per year. This number is, however, falling for all bar around 50 LEDCs, mostly in Africa and the Middle East whose growth rate is increasing up to as high as 2.3%. India is rapidly catching up with China as the most populated country on Earth. It is expected to catch up with China by 2050 (assuming the current population growth rates remain constant – 0.9% for India and 0.4% for China). However, in some regions of India such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, education levels are high, so as a result fertility rates have dropped, because the people in these regions have higher aspirations and better understanding about family size and birth control. Although the opposite can be seen in poverty-stricken regions such as the Hindi belt, India's fertility rate has dropped by more than 50% as a whole. Religious reasons, which are usually considered a barrier to low fertility, largely seem to have been ignored, since fertility rates are dropping in a range of countries that are LEDCs, from Asia to South America. The other aspect of the population to consider is those living in MEDCs. Population growth here has been slow for several decades, even to the extent that some countries such as Russia, Italy and
Open Document