Why has population growth changed?

The population growth has doubled during the 20th century for a number of reasons:

Unprotected sex results in more children being born accidentally. Many third world countries experienced a great rise in population, as shown by the graph below. This is because there was less access to contraception and protection in those countries. However, as you can see from the graph, there was not such an increase in industrialized countries. This is due to the fact that people living in these countries not only had more access to contraception and protection, but were likely to have more education as well.

Medicine has improved greatly in the past few decades. A cure for malaria has been discovered, as well as a vaccination for measles. Advancements such as these have resulted in less spread of these diseases, and therefore less deaths, leading to an increase in population. Antibiotics have also been invented, preventing limbs from having to be cut off due to infections, and leading to less deaths.

It is a well known fact that unsanitary situations are ideal for diseases to spread. It is due to the uncleanliness of the towns in Europe that the Black Death was able to spread so fast and kill off so many people. Due to the modern world being much more sanitary, people are at much less risk of getting infected or contracting a disease of some kind.

Having better technology, such as cars and planes that are able to transport produce and resources around quickly, tools to build large apartment blocks to provide housing to people and structures that are able to generate large amounts of energy. All of these things provide more availability to resources such as energy, food and other shelter, which in turn enable to population to increase.

Due to humans evolving bigger brains and more understanding of the world around them, they had an advantage over other animals and so spread across the globe and eventually dominated the planet.

Vaccinations prevent diseases such measles from spreading by injecting a patient with the pathogen that causes the disease, but a malformed version, or not a whole one. This enables to body to fight off the disease easily, and remember it if the pathogen were ever to contract the disease a second time. This is because the body remembers pathogens, and learns how to kill them off, remembering how if the pathogen were ever to infect the body again.

Agriculture is a crucial tipping point in the development of humanity. It enabled the people to have a year round source of food and have less chance of running out of food during the weekend.

Editors

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