As we move forward in time and more and more families decide to have children, it is easy to assume that the population is uncontrollably expanding. This very belief of an "exploding population" was strongly believed by Bob Erlich and was published in his book "The Population Bomb" in 1968. In his book, Erlich predicted that by the mid 70s, the world would experience a mass starvation and millions would starve to death due to a lack of resources. Erlich also stated that we would soon experience extreme environmental degradation which would contribute to this lack of necessary resources for the human race to survive. Because of this predicted "population explosion", Erlich came to the conclusion that the only way to solve this problem would be to stop populating and limit the amount of children each family has. As this belief spread and became more popular, more conclusions and predictions for the future were made such as the assumption that the world would run out of oil by 1985. As a result, the simple message that was taught was that if you have more than two children per household or family unit, you will ruin the world and contribute to the population bomb theory.
Now in 2020, we have realized that although the population did grow and expand, it has now since leveled out. Rather than fears such as mass starvation being a threat to the human race, the world's current biggest health threat is over-nutrition because of our expanding available resources. While there were once fears of degrading air quality, is has now been found that in some parts of the world, such as in Los Angelas since 1908, the air quality has actually improved. While more positive changes like this have been discovered, it seems to be that when you develop and further your resources and use them wisely, it turns out that you have more than you thought. This shows that the fear of having more children and therefore increasing the population should not be associated with environmental degradation. As more people are born in tho this world, there is a larger selection of people that have different skill sets and interests. This variety allows for more opportunities to improve our society such as improvements in health care and developing and maintaining our natural and man-made resources.
Although the fears of an exploding population that were addressed above are no longer concerns for the world we live in now, people still fear of a potential population bomb. Once someone is scared, it has been proven that fear influences your decisions more than anything else that can cloud ones judgement. One event in history that added to the concerns of an exploding population was the Baby Boom that took place after World War Two. Although the terms "Baby Boom" make it sound like there was an extremely significant increase to the birth rate, it was later shown that the birth rate during the Baby Boom was only about 3.7 children per woman. This number is not as large as it has been made out to be when re-examining the population and its changes in growth. Since the Baby Boom and past statistical birth rates across the world and in the United States, the numbers have gone down. The current birth rate in the United States of America is 1.8 children per woman. Along with these birth rates, fertility rates have also decreases as they went from 2.1 forty years ago, and are now also at 1.8.
When we combine these findings and see the correlations between population increase and available resources and also look at the numbers associated with past vs current birth and fertility rates, we can conclude that the population is not at risk because of the decision for families to have children. Having children has proven to be beneficial for the world and allows for more opportunities where we can further our resources and work together to make the world we live in a better place.
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