According to United Nations, the global population has crossed 8 Billion last week. This is an important landmark in Human history, since 1927 when the human population had crossed the 2 billion mark.
Humanity owes this achievement to the rapidly evolving education, and healthcare systems. Modern medicine has boosted the life expectancy of a regular man. But this incredible feat also presents many challenging problems for the decades and centuries to come.
According to the latest data from the United Nations, global fertility rates are faltering in high-income nations while in poorer nations, the fertility rates have remained largely obstinate. This is brought about by the lack of necessary reproductive health care, like contraceptives as well as the lack of proper sexual education in third-world nations.
In nations like China and the United States, the low birth rate has caused panic, as their entire societal structure is under threat. While in poorer nations, the uncontrolled rise in population, threatens to overload systems, that are already inadequate.
According to United Nations, Countries like Egypt, India, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania will have the most to contribute to the rise in global population in the coming years. In order to address the increase in population, essential services like public education, health care, sanitation, water and employment – will all need to be enhanced extensively.
The higher population has brought about many changes in today’s society, but it has also accelerated climate change, global carbon emissions and deforestation. Although Lower-income nations have not contributed much to these problems, as time passes by, these lower-income nations will have to significantly increase their energy production to meet the growing needs.
Labour forces will outnumber employment opportunities in poorer nations, and may also trigger mass migrations into other higher-income nations for employment. Prosperous but sparsely populated nations can use this to their advantage, by making changes in their current immigration policies as this can help to even out the imbalance in growth.
Many high-income nations like Japan and some other European countries are facing the effects of extremely low birth rates along with societal ageing, thus threatening their societal structures and bringing about economic and demographic stagnation.
Despite the growth rate being mostly uneven, many nations have made smooth demographic transitions already, thereby increasing productivity and dropping mortality rates. It is of crucial importance that Lower-income nations follow suit, or else public welfare and sustainability systems in place will be overwhelmed by the increase in population.
China’s birth rates have declined significantly in 2021, and as time goes by, this will cause labour shortages and hamper economic prosperity. It is expected that India will surpass China, in terms of population by 2023.
Although the global population is expected to cross 9.8 billion by the 2050s, rapid changes can be brought about by the advance of innovation, to tackle the problems the rapid growth of the population will bring along.
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