History of Population
Overpopulation wasn’t really a problem until the 20th century. Thousands of years ago, when we were hunter-gatherers, if there wasn’t enough food the old and the very young would die. When we were hunter-gatherers we rarely had any population explosions. If we didn’t learn how to farm we would still be hunter-gatherers. When we first started using animal domestication, hunting became less important so people started to settle down and build villages. Farming started population explosions because life was more stable and people had more children.
War,
famine and disease kept the human population in check. Some wars are caused
because a country’s population is too high and they need more room. Wars in
history have always been common and had a great affect on the population at the
time. Famine became a
bigger
problem because we became really dependant on the
food that farming produced. Diseases were quite significant in keeping the
population
down.
The “Black Plague” killed 1/3 of the population between
India
and Iceland. These three factors kept the population down when people started
moving to cities.
The population of the world really started to change around the mid 1600’s. The population has grown faster since 1650 because people are healthier. One of the reasons we have become healthier is because of better nourishment. Other reasons we have gotten healthier are better personal hygiene, cleaner drinking water, and better sanitation. Medical advances such as vaccinations prevented a lot of deaths. In 1750 the average lifespan was 25 years. Today it’s about 75 years in more developed countries. These advances brought the death rate down and allowed people to live longer, healthier lives.
The
industrial revolution caused people in Europe and North America to have a higher
standard of living. If you were to have a higher standard of living you had
fewer children, and more money. This was because children were an expense, not
really helping out as much as they did on the farm. This caused a gap to form
between the poor and rich people of the world. This gap has only continued to
increase. 
After the Second World War, health organizations improved the qualities of life in poor countries. They improved the water and sewage treatment. They also made people have vaccinations to avoid disease and they used antibiotics to treat diseases. The death rates went down but the birth rates stayed the same. This caused a population explosion. Between 1930 and 1990 the population in developing countries tripled from 1.3 billion to 4.1 billion.
