Overview:

Human population is a topic that has been discussed in many forums pertaining to academic, social, economy, health…etc and is still a topic with enormous scope which attracts controversy and debate each time we take up the issue. According to world authorities in population statistics, the rate of growth in the human population represents a ‘J’ shape curve which indicates the probability of exponential growth of the population in the years to come. In fact, certain agencies are expecting the human population which stands at around 6.5 billion to cross the 10 billion mark by 2055 and some even predict this would arrive much sooner as millions of population is still unaccounted for in the most dense parts of the world such as China, India…etc.

The factors:

In population studies, it is imperative to identify the factors which govern the population growth in order to make remedial action to curb the explosion or else to manage resources to provide the population with necessary physical, social and mental well being. At the same time, these factors would vary from country to country and from region to region within the country as well. Thus, let us take a look at some of the broader factors which will influence the human population growth which is true to most parts of the world.

Economic situations

Although the economies of many parts of the world would encourage smaller families, it is evident from the developing world that, the size of the family although declined is still at a relatively higher number than in the developed world.

Cultural involvement

Culture does play an important role in the population growth as certain cultures promote increasing the number of family members exponentially whereas another may do the opposite. Such decisions would be dependent upon social norms and values which would be hard to change with implementation of regulations or policy decisions.

Improved mortality rates

With the advancement of health sciences, the mortality rates in relation to many aspects of life have reduced although it can be argued that, violence related deaths is seeing a steady increase in many parts of the world although its effect in the overall population is still not so significant.

Migration

Certain regions of the world derived its population through migration and this is still taking place due to various reasons. Thus, it is a factor which would influence, not the entire world population, but the population density of different parts of the world.

Agricultural developments

With the green revolution of 1970s, the increase in the population growth have yet to slow down and the sustained increase in agricultural developments would be vital to provide resources to these numbers and would have a reciprocal influence on the same as a maintaining factor of the human growth.

Apart from the factors mentioned above, there may be other factors which influence the population growth and with time, priority of these factors would also change with the rising demand, scarcity of resources as well as due to natural selection of the fittest.