Should the Population Growth of a Country Be Controlled in

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Should the population growth of a country be controlled in anyway? FIL | | | The rate at which population of the world is growing is alarming; the world’s population growth rate is 1.17 percent and total world population is closing on 7 billion people in 2010. The world’s population will soon reach a level where there will not be enough resources to sustain life. Growth must be checked to avoid this catastrophe. Along with it, the population of a country should be controlled as it brings about social problems, thwarts the economic condition of a country, causes the predicament of housing and degrades the balance in the environment since the earth’s resources are finite. However the use of irrational methods to control population which impede human rights is to be condemned and cautious must be taken as control of population acts contradiction to religious belief, causes ageing problem and brings social and cultural dispute. The paramount reason population growth is controlled is to maintain the optimum population of a country. Optimum population refers to the number of population that will produce the highest per capita economic return given the resources available and their full utilization. If the population of a country is above its optimum, negative effects of overcrowding (pollution, robbery, crime) and environmental damage reduces welfare and there will be too few resources to maintain the population. On the other hand, if the population is below the optimum, the country will lack the required manpower to harness the resources. In Nigeria, its population is the ultimate resource and not an economic burden. The following factors arise when there is ebb and flow in the optimum population of a country. The population growth is controlled to its optimum due to the lack of space and resources to sustain the population that crops up with increase in
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