petemurphy.wordpress.com (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/openid-profile.gif){kind=small} petemurphy.wordpress.com) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} starsong24, |
Population Explosion
Starwind, you're actually underestimating the rate at which the human population has exploded. In the year 0 A.D., the global population was about 250 million. By 1500, it had doubled to about 500 million. It took only 300 years to double again to about 1 billion people around the year 1800. Then it took less than 100 years to double again to 2 billion. In 1950, we had about 3 billion people. Today, the figure is about 6.7 billion.
Population growth in the U.S. has been even more dramatic. The U.N. ranks the U.S. with 8 other countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as countries that will account for fully half of the world's population growth by 2050. We are the only developed nation that continues to experience 3rd world-like population growth.
For the U.S., addressing this problem requires a two-pronged approach:
1. Immigration needs to be dramatically scaled back to match the rate of emigration, removing it as a factor in population growth.
2. The fertility rate (children per female) needs to be reduced from the current rate of about 2.1 to about 1.79. Why less than 2.0? Because of the steady increase in life expectancy. This reduction in the birth rate could be accomplished fairly easily through economic incentives for people to choose smaller families. (I'm thinking here of tax incentives, primarily.) Such incentives would have to be made income neutral - that is, wealthy families should be just as motivated to choose smaller families as poorer ones.
For more information, I encourage you to visit either of my web sites and consider my book, which advances a new economic theory that is rooted in overpopulation.
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
http://OpenWindowPublishingCo.com
http://petemurphy.wordpress.com
Starwind, you're actually underestimating the rate at which the human population has exploded. In the year 0 A.D., the global population was about 250 million. By 1500, it had doubled to about 500 million. It took only 300 years to double again to about 1 billion people around the year 1800. Then it took less than 100 years to double again to 2 billion. In 1950, we had about 3 billion people. Today, the figure is about 6.7 billion.
Population growth in the U.S. has been even more dramatic. The U.N. ranks the U.S. with 8 other countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as countries that will account for fully half of the world's population growth by 2050. We are the only developed nation that continues to experience 3rd world-like population growth.
For the U.S., addressing this problem requires a two-pronged approach:
1. Immigration needs to be dramatically scaled back to match the rate of emigration, removing it as a factor in population growth.
2. The fertility rate (children per female) needs to be reduced from the current rate of about 2.1 to about 1.79. Why less than 2.0? Because of the steady increase in life expectancy. This reduction in the birth rate could be accomplished fairly easily through economic incentives for people to choose smaller families. (I'm thinking here of tax incentives, primarily.) Such incentives would have to be made income neutral - that is, wealthy families should be just as motivated to choose smaller families as poorer ones.
For more information, I encourage you to visit either of my web sites and consider my book, which advances a new economic theory that is rooted in overpopulation.
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
http://OpenWindowPublishingCo.com
http://petemurphy.wordpress.com
