1. Current Human Population Growth and Implications

2. Human Population History

3. Factors Contributing to Population Explosion
Agricultural advances
Advances in medicine
Industrial revolution

4. Reasons for exponential growth of human population
Increased food supply
Improvements in medical and public health and technology
Improvements in sanitation and personal hygiene
Safer water supplies

5. Thomas Malthus
Studied the decline of living conditions in 19th century England
Blamed this decline on:
Too many children
Inability of resources to replenish at levels with increased population
Irresponsibility of lower class
Proposed regulating family size of lower class to limit it to a level they could support

6. Malthus continued
He said “positive checks” like food shortages and disease kept population at appropriate levels
He said population growth was exponential but food production could not keep growing exponentially.
As of today, he was wrong due to GM foods.

7. Current Stats World Population: 6.6 billion people
U.S. Population: 295 million people
Kentucky Population: 4.1 million people
Louisville Population: 500,000 people
The U.S. is only 5% of the world’s population, but we use ~ 1/3 of the Earth’s natural resources!!!

8. Crude Birth Rate and CDR
CBR= the number of live births per 1000 members of the population in one year.
CDR= the number of deaths per 1000 members of the population in one year.
When calculating population change you must take into account total population size when using CDR and CBR.

9. Population change= (CBR+ immigration) – (CDR + emigration)
Example: If the population is 50,000 and the number of births is 14 per 1000 and the number of deaths is 5 per 1000, what was the population change assuming no net immigration or emigration?

10. Alarming Facts…
The human population is currently growing at a rate of 260,000 people per day!
Every 3 years, the global environment must support another 285 million people

11. As a result of rapid growth…
1.3 billion people are impoverished
841 million people are chronically malnourished
Supplies of water for irrigation are declining
Nearly half of the Earth’s land mass has been changed by human activity
Ocean fish stocks are depleting
Species are going extinct faster than ever

12. Earth’s Carrying Capacity (2billion-30billion)
Determined by
Food production
Living space
Waste assimilation
Resource availability
Can be expanded through advances in
Agriculture
Industry
Medicine

13. Accomodations
To accommodate greater populations, many policies would have to be implimented:
Massive recycling
Driving restrictions
Restrictions on the transport of food
Prohibitions against cutting trees on one’s property
Limitations to burning of fossil fuels

14. Fertility rates
Replacement level fertility (RLF)= having enough kids to replace yourself
Slightly higher than 2 (2.1) b/c some kids die
Total fertility rate (TFR)= average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime
Many factors affect like urbanization, education, contraceptives and abortion availability

15. Indicators of overall human health:
Life expectancy
Infant mortality rate

16. Other factors that affect population growth
Policies to encourage immigration
Environmental refugees
Religious persecution
Baby boom generation in US
Why they are waiting to retire
How their retirement will affect the rest of us

17. Demographic Transition
Pre-industrial= little to no growth (African nations)
Transitional= rapid growth (Mexico, Pakistan)
Industrial= stable growth (china)
Post-industrial= declining growth (Japan, Russia, Germany)

18. Why are developing countries like India not moving toward Industrial stage?
Most people are poor. Money is kept to few in the country.

19. Age Structures and what they tell us about future population growth:
What would a stable population age structure look like?
What would a declining population age structure look like?

20. Ways to lower population growth:
Provide economic incentives for having fewer children
Empower and educate women
More education means more money for work which mean less children are needed to take care of parents
More education usually means having children later in life which usually means having less children

21. Cont. Family planning including contraceptives, legal abortions
Improve prenatal and infant health care (need less kids if they survive)

22. China and India as case studies on family planning
What do you think of these interventions?

23. What do you think?
What is the US’s role (thus the taxpayers role) in other country’s population control?