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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 26 2015, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the On-a-Pale-Horse-vs-Being-a-Green-Mother dept.

The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.

A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.


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  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:54PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:54PM (#188230)

    It is not education, it is attitude. It is when women get the attidude that they can have a say in what lifestyle and how many children they want, and men drop the attitude that they can have sex with women however they like and if she gets pregant then that is not their problem.

    This no doubt loosly correlates with education, but I don't see strong causation. I don't see that a woman having a physics degree should make her any more aware of the impact of childbirth on lifestyle. It is more a matter of common sense, and education does not increase that - it is built in (or not).

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