Topic #1:Population Change

POPULATIONS IN TRANSITION #1

Subtopic 1: WORLD POPULATION GROWTH

Global population is now...7,251 billion people, according to the United States Census Bureau (UCSB)

On November 31st, 2011, Danica Mae Camacho, a filipino baby girl, was born.She is considered to be “BABY 7 BILLION”:

Population Change

GRAPH OF POPULATION PROJECTIONS TO 2100

DISTRIBUTION OF WORLD’S POPULATION

When studying populations, it is important to distinguish between the concepts of POPULOUS and POPULATED;

POPULOUS: Refers to a large population;POPULATED: Refers to a high population density (a space which is shared by a great amount of people)

POPULOUS VS. POPULATED

Paul Ehrlich is an american biology professor from Stanford University.In 1968, he wrote a book called “The Population Bomb”, alerting authorities and readers to a need of population control, once no one country would be able to meet the demand for food and resources of its ever growing populations. According to him, starvation will be a constant and evolving plague until the world starts taking the matter of population control seriously. Ehrlich actually made predictions that were an updated version of the thories of 18th century english demographer Thomas Malthus. Thus, Ehrlich is a “neo-malthusian” thinker, ] one that advocates in favor of a new look upon the Malthusian original

theory. What is this???I

1) NEO-MALTHUSIAN THEORY

2) THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY

In 1798, Malthus took mathematical knowledge into consideration and developed the basis to his theory: His central idea was that human population could only grow until a certain point, once food supply on Earth is finite.

According to Malthus, population grows in geometric progression (1>2>4>8>16>32>64>128 etc.)

and food supply grows in arithmetic progression

(1>2>3>4>5>6>7>8)

Malthus argued that when population growth outstripped food supply, then some sort of correction

could happen in one of two ways:

- Preventative checks would lower the fertility- rate of people; (So, if food prices rose given that- food became scarcer, couples had to delay marriage- or reduce the number of children they had)- If this method proved unsufficient, then positive- checks would reduce the population by famine, disease or war.

- At the time Malthus wrote he believed that Britain

could not, ever, have a population of more than 10 million people.

Today, Britain’s population is 58 million people and the

standards of living is much much higher than at the time

Malthus lived, and way beyond anything Malthus dreamed of;- - Malthus’s error was underestimate the- extent to which technology would improve

farming yields;- In the past 200 years since Malthus wrote his works, food production has increased more than

population, and the vast food surpluses inmany developed

countries show that there’s still room for food production to

increase.

- Indeed, the world currently produces enough

food for every man, child and woman to be obese.

- The fact that many millions of people are still

malnourished is a problem of distribution and

capacity to pay, not a problem of production.

3 ) BOSERUPIAN THEORY

It was first developed by Danish economist Ester Boserup in 1965 as a counterpart to both the malthusian and neomalthusian theories. Boserup's idea was a challenge to the assumption dating back to Malthus’s time (and still held in many quarters) that agricultural methods determine population (via food supply). Instead, Boserup argued that population determines agricultural methods. A major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention". It was her great belief that humanity would always find a way and was quoted in saying "The power of ingenuity would always outmatch that of demand"; Although Boserup's original theory was highly simplified and generalized, it proved instrumental in understanding agricultural patterns in developing countries. By 1978, her theory of agricultural change began to be reframed as a more generalized theory. The field continued to mature in to relation to population and environmental studies in developing countries

4) REFORMIST THEORY

Many scholars – economists and geographers and demographers – from developing nations elaborated this theory based on Boserup's studies. Like the boserupian theory, the Reformist theory was a response to Neomalthusians. But the focus was not agricultural production – as was Boserup's – but instead, economic development.

Reformists believe that countries aren't poor because they are populous (like Malthus' original idea, and neomalthusians), but, on the contrary, that countries are populous because they are poor.

Once countries get richer, its population starts to shrink naturally. It is the theory – along with Boserupian – that has proved to be closer to reality.

5) MARXIST POPULATIONAL THEORYKarl Marx was contrary to Malthus's views on population growth. According to Marx, population increase must be interpreted in the context of the capitalistic economic system. A capitalist gives to

labor as wage a small share of labor's productivity, and the capitalist himself takes the lion's share. The capitalist introduces more and more machinery and thus increases the surplus value of

labor's productivity, which is pocketed by the capitalist. The surplus is the difference between labor's productivity and the wage level. A worker is paid less than the value of his productivity. When

machinery is introduced, unemployment increases and, consequently, a reserve army of labor is created. Under these situations, the wage level goes down further, the poor parents

cannot properly rear their children and a large part of the population becomes virtually surplus. Poverty, hunger and other

social ills are the result of socially unjust practices associated with capitalism.

Thus, Population growth, according to Marx, is therefore not related to the alleged ignorance or moral inferiority of the poor, but is a

consequence of the capitalist economic system.