Question

Article on 'Increasing Population' in about 120-150 words.

Answer 1

The total number of people inhabiting this planet as of July 1993 has been estimated to be 5.57 billion by the United Nations, with 1.23 billion (or 22.1% living in economically more developed countries of Europe, North America, Oceania, former Soviet Union and Japan, and the remaining 4.34 billion (or 77.9%) living in the less developed countries.

The average density of population per square kilometre of land area in 1993 is 55 in the less developed countries compared to 21 in the more developed regions. In 1950, when the total population of the globe was 2.516 billion or only 45% of its present size, the less developed countries had a lower percentage of the world’s population, 66.9% or 1.684 billion people.

The number of people that were added to the less developed countries since 1950, that inhabit less than 60% of the land area of the globe, is slightly more than the 1950 world’s total population. Three people every second or more than 250000 persons are added to this planet, and about 95% of this addition is occurring in developing countries.

While the annual addition was 93 million at the beginning of this decade, it will increase to 100 million per year by the last year of this decade, 1999-2000, despite a moderate decline in the fertility levels of the population because of large increases in the population base of all the developing countries.

There is no doubt that the world is getting to be an extremely crowded planet, getting worse in the already over-crowded less developed regions.

In terms of rates of growth, presently the world population is growing at 1.7% per year, being the difference of a birth rate of 26 and a death rate of a per thousand population per year. In the more developed countries, the growth is 0.5% per year, being a difference of a birth – rate of 14 and a death rate of 9, while in the less developed countries it is growing four times higher, or 2.0% per year, the difference of a birth-rate of 29 and a death rate of 9 in their populations.