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Costs of Rapid Population Growth

Rapid population growth impedes economic development, helping to keep a country poor, and thus further promoting rapid population growth

Rapid population growth reduces health and welfare, especially of women and children.

Rapid growth implies women giving birth from a younger age, experiencing more pregnancies throughout their lives, and bearing children well into their later years.

All three are known to cause higher rates of infant and maternal mortality.

Costs of Rapid Population Growth

The first impact of reducing fertility is increasing the health and welfare of women and children.

Rapid population growth increases number and proportion of young people in the society.

This increases the demand for education and jobs. Where education and jobs are not available, young people, especially young males, who constitute a highly volatile population, can easily be swayed to violence by demagogic leaders.

Growth of the World’s Population

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, February 02, 2009 4:20 PM PT Climate Change: A member of Britain's government says couples should be limited to two children to save the Earth from global warming. It's discouraging that such muddle-headed people are in positions of power.

Last year, the government issued a news release that noted: "The proportion of live births to mothers born outside the United Kingdom continued to rise. In 2007, 23% (160,358) of live births were to mothers born outside the United Kingdom compared with 22% (146,956) in 2006."

Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the government's Sustainable Development Commission, doesn't have the power to set a two-child limit on British couples — at least not yet. But he's nevertheless "unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.""I think we will work our way toward a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible,“;Porritt, favors contraceptionand abortion

Some Britons don't seem to be at all concerned about the bleak future of the English way. There are, though, a few who understand what is occurring around them. Irish-born British reporter Ruth Dudley Edwards worried in the Daily Mail nearly two years ago that "we have a large Muslim population with a high birth rate.“

"Indeed," she wrote, "Muslims are outbreeding non-Muslims throughout Europe.“

Before writing off her recitation of the facts as an ugly example of Western hegemony or racism, consider that in 2007 a Norwegian imam gloatingly noted that in Europe "the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Population PyramidKendall, pg. 636

Population Pyramid

FertilityFecundity is the potential number of children

who could be born if every woman reproduced at her maximum biological capacity.

The most basic measure of fertility is the crude birth rate - the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population in a given year.

Country Summary: United States

Demographic Indicators 2008 1995 2005 2015 2025

Population

Midyear population (in thousands)

304,228 266,5

57295,5

83325,5

40 357,452

Growth rate (percent) 1.0 (NA) 0.9 1.0 0.9

Fertility

Total fertility rate (births per woman) 2.1 (NA) 2.1 2.1 2.1

Crude birth rate (per 1,000 population) 14 (NA) 14 14 13

Births (in millions) 4 (NA) 4 4 5

Mortality The incidence of death in a population. The simplest measure of mortality is the crude

death rate - the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year.

In 2004 the U.S. crude death rate was 8.3 per 1,000.

Country Summary: United States

2008 1995 2005 2015 2025

Crude death rate (per 1,000 population)

8 (NA) 8 8 9

Deaths (in millions) 3 (NA) 2 3 3

(NA) Data not available.

Migration

Two types of movement: Immigration is the movement of people into a geographic area to take up residency.

Emigration is the movement of people out of a geographic area to take up residency elsewhere.

Country Summary: United States

2008 1995 2005 2015 2025

Net migration rate (per 1,000 population)

4 (NA) 4 4 4

Net number of migrants (in millions)

1 (NA) 1 1 2

(NA) Data not available.

U.S. Population

If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.

Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.

Among the other key population projections: Nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight (12%) in 2005. By 2025, the immigrant, or foreign-born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last great wave of immigration a century ago. The major role of immigration in national growth builds on the pattern of recent decades, during which immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren accounted for most population increase. Immigration’s importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women dropped sharply before leveling off. The Latino population, already the nation’s largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.

Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.

The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.

The nation’s elderly population will more than double in size from 2005 through 2050, as the baby-boom generation enters the traditional retirement years. The number of working-age Americans and children will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a share of the total population.

The Center’s projections are based on detailed assumptions about births, deaths and immigration levels—the three key components of population change