overpopulation opinion essay

Overpopulation Essay

500 words essay on overpopulation.

Overpopulation refers to an undesirable condition in which the number of existing human being exceeds the actual carrying capacity of the earth. It has many causes which range from a decline in the death rate to early marriages and more. The overpopulation essay will throw light on this issue.

Ill-Effects of Overpopulation

The ill-effects of overpopulation are quite severe. The first one is that natural resources deplete at a faster level. Our planet can produce only a limited amount of water and food . Thus, overpopulation causes environmental damage including deforestation, pollution, etc.

Similarly, there is the degradation of the environment which happens because of the overuse of resources like coal, oil, natural gases and more. As a result, the quality of air also gets affected in this manner.

In developing countries, overpopulation puts a strain on resources. Thus, it gives rise to conflicts and tension. It also causes more diseases that become harder to control. Next up, we have the issue of unemployment.

Moreover, it rises due to overpopulation. There is more number of people than job opportunities. As a result, unemployment gives rise to crimes like theft and more. We also have pandemics and epidemics which happen due to overpopulation.

It is because overcrowded and unhygienic living gives rise to infectious diseases . Another ill-effect is malnutrition and starvation. When there are scarce resources, these diseases will likely to be on the rise.

Most importantly, we have a shortage of water which makes it tougher for people to get access to clean water. Similarly, lower life expectancy also happens because of the boom in population, especially in less-developed nations.

We also witness faster climate change as nations continue to develop their industrial capacities. Thus, they emit industrial waste which gives rise to global temperatures . It will keep getting worse if things are not checked immediately.

Solutions of Overpopulation

There are many solutions which we may take up to prevent overpopulation. The best measure is family planning to keep the overpopulation check. In order to do that, one can ensure proper spacing between the births of the children.

Further, limiting the number of children as per income and resources must also be important. Similarly, it is essential to increase resources. The government must make the horrors of overpopulation reach the public through the use of media.

Moreover, better education can help implement social change which can curb overpopulation. Next up, knowledge of sex education must be made mandatory in schools so students learn young about everything they need to know.

Most importantly, it is essential to empower women so they can break out of poverty. This way, they can learn about reproductive health and make better decisions. Another solution can be government incentives.

Many governments of countries already have various policies which relate to tax exemptions for curbing overpopulation. For instance, some waive a certain part of income tax for married couples with one or two children.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Overpopulation Essay

All in all, overpopulation is no less than a curse that poses a permanent threat to the development of any country. It is essential to stop the flood of population. In order to do that, one must indulge in proper family planning and creating balance in society for a better world.

FAQ of Overpopulation Essay

Question 1: What is the main cause of overpopulation?

Answer 1: It is believed that the main cause of overpopulation is poverty. When there is a lack of education resource which coupled with high death rates, it results in impoverished areas witnessing large booms in population.

Question 2: How is overpopulation affecting the world?

Answer 2: Overpopulation is affecting the world as it is outpacing the ability of the planet earth to support it. It also has environmental and economic outcomes which range from the impacts of over-farming on global warming.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Essay on Overpopulation

Introduction to Overpopulation

Our planet has experienced an extraordinary population increase, highlighting the pervasive challenge of overpopulation. Earth is home to over 8 billion individuals, a staggering number that is continuously increasing. This surge, which reflects an exponential growth trajectory, is pushing us into an era where the implications of overpopulation are looming ominously over our collective future.

The relentless surge in global population poses a formidable challenge to the delicate balance of our planet’s ecosystems and the well-being of its inhabitants. Overpopulation, defined as the condition where the number of individuals in a given area surpasses the environment’s capacity to support them, has become a pressing concern on a global scale. As we navigate the 21st century, the world witnesses unprecedented demographic shifts and exponential population growth. This essay explores the complex issues of overpopulation, analyzing its root causes and significant effects on the environment and society and outlining workable strategies to lessen its effects. Recognizing and treating overpopulation is essential to building a sustainable future for future generations in a world where human footprints are considerably larger than the planet’s natural boundaries.

Watch our Demo Courses and Videos

Valuation, Hadoop, Excel, Mobile Apps, Web Development & many more.

Causes of Overpopulation

Here are some of the primary factors contributing to this global predicament:

• High Birth Rates : In many regions, particularly developing countries, cultural and religious factors often encourage more prominent families. Limited access to family planning and education further maintains high birth rates.
• Decreased Death Rates : Healthcare, sanitation, and medicine advances have significantly reduced mortality rates worldwide. This has increased life expectancy, contributing to a larger overall population.
• Migration : Rural-to-urban migration within countries and international migration from less developed to more developed regions also contribute to population density. Urban centers often attract people for better opportunities and resources, leading to overcrowding.
• Social Norms and Expectations : Societal norms that favor larger families or place value on male offspring can lead to larger populations. In some cultures, having more children is considered a form of security or status.
• Improved Quality of Life : Economic growth and technological advancements have improved living standards, leading to better healthcare and increased food production. While positive, these advancements also contribute to sustaining larger populations.
• Political and Economic Factors : Instability, conflict, and economic disparities can influence population growth. In some cases, political or economic conditions encourage higher birth rates.

Effects of Overpopulation

Overpopulation exerts profound and multifaceted effects on our planet, impacting the environment, society, and economies in ways that demand urgent attention and thoughtful intervention.

A. Environmental Impact

Resource Depletion:

• The surge in population strains water resources, leading to over-extraction from rivers and aquifers, exacerbating water scarcity.
• Expanding urbanization and agriculture encroach upon valuable ecosystems, depleting fertile land and threatening biodiversity.
• Meeting the demands of a burgeoning population places immense pressure on agricultural systems, depleting soil fertility and stressing food production.

Pollution and Climate Change:

• High population density areas often experience increased industrial activity and vehicle emissions, contributing to air pollution and respiratory diseases.
• Rapid population growth results in heightened waste production, challenging waste management systems and contributing to pollution.
• Overpopulation-related increases in carbon emissions speed up the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and harsher weather.

Loss of Biodiversity:

• The expansion of human habitats leads to habitat destruction, threatening the existence of numerous plant and animal species.
• Overpopulation contributes to the illegal wildlife trade, further endangering already vulnerable species.

B. Social and Economic Ramifications

Strain on Infrastructure and Public Services:

• Basic infrastructure, including transportation, healthcare, and sanitation, struggles to keep pace with the growing demands of an expanding population.
• Public services, such as education and healthcare, face challenges in delivering quality services to an increasing number of people.

Unemployment and Poverty:

• High-population-density areas often experience elevated levels of unemployment as job opportunities fail to match the pace of population growth.
• Overpopulation can contribute to a cycle of poverty, where limited resources are stretched thin, hindering social and economic mobility.

Social Unrest and Migration Issues:

• As marginalized people compete for opportunities and resources, social unrest may result as they demand fair access to basic services.
• Overpopulation can drive internal and international migration, strain host communities, and create geopolitical tensions.

C. Impact on Healthcare Systems

Spread of Diseases:

• Living in close quarters with little access to medical facilities fosters an environment that is conducive to the quick spread of infectious diseases. Overpopulation makes it harder to regulate and stop the spread of diseases in both remote rural areas and heavily populated urban centers.
• The repercussions of this extend far beyond the immediate health crisis, affecting societal well-being and economic stability.

Lack of Access to Healthcare:

• In regions grappling with overpopulation, disparities in healthcare access become glaringly apparent. Limited resources and overstretched healthcare infrastructures make it difficult for individuals, particularly in marginalized communities, to access essential medical services.
• This perpetuates health inequalities and poses a formidable barrier to overall societal development.

D. Educational Challenges

Overcrowded Schools:

• The surge in school-aged children strains educational institutions, leading to overcrowded classrooms and overburdened educators. This not only hampers the quality of education but also diminishes the learning experience for students.
• Overpopulation in schools is a barrier to achieving the essential goal of providing quality education for all, hindering intellectual growth and perpetuating cycles of poverty.

Limited Resources for Education:

• Overpopulation places immense pressure on educational resources, ranging from textbooks and classroom space to qualified teachers.
• These resources are necessary for delivering a robust education, hindering the development of critical skills for individuals to thrive in an ever-evolving global landscape. As a result, the cycle of poverty persists, further deepening social inequalities.

Regional Disparities

Regional disparities play a pivotal role in shaping the narrative of this global predicament, influencing and exacerbating the challenges faced by different parts of the world.

1. Population Density in Different Regions

The global population distribution is far from uniform, with some regions grappling with high population density while vast, uninhabited expanses mark others. For instance, mega-cities in Asia and Africa witness a concentration of people that strains urban infrastructure and resources. In contrast, sparsely populated areas in North America and Australia present a stark contrast, raising questions about the equitable utilization of the Earth’s finite resources.

2. Impacts on Developed and Developing Nations

Overpopulation affects developed and developing nations differently, amplifying existing disparities. Developed nations often grapple with aging populations, where declining birth rates and increasing elderly citizens pose economic and social challenges. On the other hand, developing nations face the brunt of rapid population growth, straining limited resources, and hindering efforts to achieve sustainable development goals. To close this gap, one must have a sophisticated awareness of the particular difficulties that every group of countries faces.

3. Migration Trends

Overpopulation prompts migration patterns that further contribute to regional imbalances. Individuals and families from densely populated regions often seek economic and social opportunities by migrating to less crowded areas. Whether internal or international, this movement can lead to challenges such as overcrowded urban centers, cultural clashes, and stress on public services. Examining these migration trends provides insights into the complex interplay between overpopulation and regional dynamics.

Here’s a structured overview of potential solutions:

1. Education and Family Planning

• Importance of Education : When it comes to providing people, particularly women, with information about family planning, reproductive health, and the effects of overpopulation, education is essential. Investing in education, particularly for girls, has proven to correlate with lower fertility rates, contributing to a gradual decrease in population growth.
• Access to Family Planning Services : Education is crucial for educating people, especially women, about family planning, reproductive health, and the repercussions of overpopulation.

2. Sustainable Development

• Renewable Energy and Resource Management : Embracing renewable energy sources and implementing efficient resource management strategies can alleviate resource strain. This includes investing in renewable energy technologies, adopting sustainable agricultural practices, and managing water resources effectively.
• Eco-friendly Technologies : Encouraging the adoption of eco-friendly technologies across industries can minimize environmental degradation. Innovations in waste management, cleaner production processes, and green infrastructure are critical in reducing the ecological footprint of human activities.

3. Government Policies

• Population Control Measures : Governments can implement policies that promote responsible family planning, such as incentives for smaller families, awareness campaigns, and reproductive health services. Additionally, policies that support women’s rights, gender equality, and empowerment contribute to lower birth rates.
• Economic Incentives for Sustainable Practices : Governments can introduce economic incentives for businesses and individuals adopting sustainable practices. Tax breaks, subsidies, and investment in green technologies encourage a shift toward environmentally friendly choices.

Case Study: China’s One-Child Policy

China’s population boom in the late 20th century sparked worries about resource shortages and long-term economic viability. In response to these problems, the Chinese government implemented the One-Child Policy in 1979.

Implementation

Under the One-Child Policy, most urban couples were restricted to having only one child. This policy was enforced through a combination of financial penalties, employment repercussions, and, in some cases, forced sterilizations. While the policy faced criticism for its strict measures and human rights concerns, it significantly impacted population growth.

The One-Child Policy successfully curbed China’s population growth. From 1980 to 2015, China’s population growth rate dropped from 1.2% to 0.5% . The policy prevented an estimated 400 million births. The aging population, gender inequality brought on by the cultural desire for male children, and societal problems brought on by the compulsory implementation were among the unanticipated results that drew criticism for the program.

Revisions and Abandonment

Recognizing the challenges and social implications, the Chinese government gradually relaxed the policy in the late 20th century. In 2015, the policy was officially replaced with a two-child policy, and in 2016, the government allowed all couples to have two children.

Lessons Learned

The One-Child Policy in China serves as a reminder of how crucial it is to weigh population control strategies’ long- and short-term effects. While the policy effectively addressed immediate concerns, its rigid implementation led to unintended social and demographic challenges. This case study emphasizes the need for a balanced and adaptable approach considering population management’s cultural, ethical, and social dimensions.

Current Status

Even after the abandonment of the One-Child Policy, China continues to grapple with demographic challenges, including an aging population and gender imbalances. The experience offers valuable insights into the complexities of implementing population control measures and underscores the importance of a comprehensive and flexible approach.

Future Outlook

Several key elements shape the future outlook:

• Projected Population Growth: As we project into the future, population estimates vary, but most agree that the world’s population will continue to grow. By 2050, estimates suggest a global population nearing 10 billion people. This growth trajectory will significantly impact global resource demands, environmental stability, and socio-economic structures.
• Resource Strain and Environmental Impact: The strain on resources will intensify with a burgeoning population. From food and water scarcity to increased energy demands and heightened pressure on ecosystems, overpopulation will exacerbate environmental degradation and climate change. Addressing these challenges requires immediate action and innovative solutions.
• Technological Innovations and Sustainable Practices: The future outlook is not bleak. Advancements in technology offer promising solutions. From sustainable energy sources to innovations in agriculture and waste management, technological advances provide avenues for mitigating the impacts of overpopulation. Embracing eco-friendly practices and renewable technologies will be crucial for a sustainable future.
• Socio-economic Transformations: Overpopulation will continue to influence socio-economic landscapes. It will shape job markets, healthcare systems, urban planning, and social services. Governments and societies must adapt policies and structures to accommodate the changing demographics and address inequalities exacerbated by population pressures.
• Global Collaboration and Responsibility: The future hinges on global cooperation. Overcoming the challenges of overpopulation requires collaborative efforts among nations, organizations, and individuals. Initiatives focused on education, equitable resource distribution, and sustainable development must be globally embraced and supported.
• Ethical Considerations and Human Rights: Balancing population control measures with ethical considerations and human rights remains paramount. Upholding individual autonomy while addressing the collective challenge of overpopulation necessitates respectful, inclusive, and rights-based approaches.
• Urgency of Action: The urgency to act cannot be overstated. Delayed action will exacerbate the challenges posed by overpopulation, magnifying its impact on future generations. Immediate steps toward sustainable practices, population education, and policy adaptations are imperative.

Overpopulation is a formidable global challenge, intricately weaving its impact through health and education. Urgent action necessitates comprehensive strategies to address overcrowded living conditions, strained healthcare systems, and compromised educational opportunities. As we navigate these complexities, fostering sustainable development requires a shared commitment to equitable access, robust healthcare infrastructure, and educational reforms. Only through concerted efforts can we pave the way for a balanced future where individuals thrive, societies prosper, and the shadows of overpopulation recede.

*Please provide your correct email id. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy .

Valuation, Hadoop, Excel, Web Development & many more.

Forgot Password?

This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to our Privacy Policy

Explore 1000+ varieties of Mock tests View more

Submit Next Question

Early-Bird Offer: ENROLL NOW

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Overpopulation in 500 Words

• Updated on  
• Dec 28, 2023

Essay on Overpopulation: Today, there are a total of 8.1 billion people in the world. This is a result of overpopulation and studies suggest that in the next 25 years, this number will reach 10 billion. This is overpopulation or overabundance, where our environment cannot offer resources to such large amounts of people. Overpopulation is not limited to humans only. It can be of any species living in a particular habitat. 

India, China, and the USA are the three most populated countries in the world, which account for a total of 40% of the global population. Population plays a major role in a country’s development. However, if there is overpopulation, it will hamper developmental activities and there will be fewer resources available. This will eventually lead to higher food prices, making survival difficult for everyone.

Also Read: World Population Day 2023

Also Read: Essay on India of My Dreams

Causes of Overpopulation

There are various causes of overpopulation, such as lack of education, high birth rates, primitive medical facilities, illiteracy, lack of employment opportunities, etc. Most of these factors are prevalent in developing and underdeveloped countries. 

High birth rates contribute significantly to overpopulation. Factors such as lack of access to family planning, cultural norms, and a high infant mortality rate can encourage families to have more children.

Lack of education and poverty lead to higher population growth. People belonging to communities where education is limited, are not aware of or have access to family planning methods.

In many places, cultural and religious beliefs influence reproductive choices. Some families have several children, which is part of their social norm or is encouraged by religious teachings.

Another major cause of overpopulation is migration. People move to areas with better economic prospects, leading to population density issues in those regions.

Also Read: Essay on Education

Also Read: Essay on New Education in 500 Words

Consequences of Overpopulation

In one way or another, all the problems the world is facing today are related to overpopulation. Say it war, overuse of resources, slow developmental activities, carbon emission, global warming, etc. 

Natural resources are depleting at a faster rate than ever. As the population increases, the demand for food and energy resources also increases. Overpopulation contributes to climate change, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental issues. 

As humans, we need houses, which are established by cutting down forests and other natural resources. This results in a loss of biodiversity. Rapid urbanization causes problems such as inadequate housing, insufficient infrastructure, traffic congestion, and increased pollution in urban areas. 

A rapidly growing population can outstrip job opportunities, resulting in high levels of unemployment. This can lead to social unrest and economic instability.

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

The overpopulation myth ~ Make babies, not war 🙏 pic.twitter.com/3JaLbDbHd2 — Oddvin (@enterfx) December 16, 2023

How to Deal With Overpopulation

Educating people about the causes and effects of overpopulation is one of the best ways to deal with overpopulation. Studies show that people who have access to proper medical and healthcare facilities have better family planning measures. 

Promoting and educating women and girls about reproduction is very important. Educated women tend to have fewer children and this will make them socially and economically more empowered. Encouraging women to participate in the workforce and decision-making processes can be another way to deal with overpopulation. 

Offering job opportunities and promoting green sustainable development will allow people to understand the effects of overpopulation on the environment. 

The world is our home and we are its protector. Overpopulation is putting a lot of strain on the natural environment, and it needs to be addressed in a civilised way. We need to make sure there is enough for everyone and that we are fulfilling our duty to Mother Nature.

Ans: The major causes of overpopulation are high birth rate, lack of education and illiteracy, poverty, cultural and religious beliefs, etc.

Ans: Some of the least populated countries are Iceland, Suriname, Mongolia, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Palau.

Ans: Overpopulation is a phenomenon where a particular species exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment. The global population has increased by 1.2 billion in the last 20 years. This was the biggest population boom, putting a heavy strain on the natural environment. Overpopulation is majorly caused in developing countries, because of factors like lack of education and illiteracy, higher birth rates, poverty, etc. Proper government actions are required to address overpopulation, such as educational and family planning programs, women empowerment, job opportunities, etc.

Related Articles

For more information on such informative articles for your school, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

Overpopulation: Cause and Effect

Conversations about overpopulation can quickly become controversial because they beg the question: Who exactly is the cause of the problem and what, if anything, should be done about it? Many population experts worry discussions around overpopulation will be abused by small-minded people to suggest some are the “right people” to be on the planet (like themselves), and some people are “the wrong people” (usually people in poverty, people of color, foreigners, and so on—you get the drift). But there are no “right” or “wrong” people on the planet, and discussing the problems of global overpopulation can never be an excuse, or in any way provide a platform, for having that type of conversation.

Each human being has a legitimate claim on a sufficient and fair amount of Earth’s resources. But with a population approaching 8 billion, even if everyone adopted a relatively low material standard of living like the one currently found in Papua New Guinea , it would still push Earth to its ecological breaking point. Unfortunately, the “average person” on Earth consumes at a rate over 50% above a sustainable level. Incredibly, the average person in the United States uses almost five times more than the sustainable yield of the planet.

When we use the term “overpopulation,” we specifically mean a situation in which the Earth cannot regenerate the resources used by the world’s population each year. Experts say this has been the case every year since 1970, with each successive year becoming more and more damaging. To help temper this wildly unsustainable situation, we need to understand what’s contributing to overpopulation and overconsumption and how these trends are affecting everything from climate change to sociopolitical unrest.

Download our free whitepaper

The causes of overpopulation.

Today the Earth is home to over 8 billion people. By 2100 the population is on track to hit 10.8 billion , according to the United Nations — and that’s assuming steady fertility declines in many countries. Interestingly, if extra progress is made in women’s reproductive self-determination, and fertility falls more than the United Nations assumes is likely, the population in 2100 might be a relatively smaller 7.3 billion.

For now, the world’s population is still increasing in huge annual increments (about 80 million per year), and our supply of vital non-renewable resources are being exhausted. Many factors contribute to these unsustainable trends , including falling mortality rates, underutilized contraception, and a lack of education for girls.

Falling Mortality Rate

The primary (and perhaps most obvious) cause of population growth is an imbalance between births and deaths. The infant mortality rate has decreased globally, with 4.1 million infant deaths in 2017 compared to 8.8 million in 1990, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This is welcome public health news, of course.

At the same time, lifespans are increasing around the world. Those of us who are alive today will likely live much longer than most of our ancestors. Global average life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900 , thanks to advancements in medicine, technology, and general hygiene. Falling mortality rates are certainly nothing to complain about either, but widespread longevity does contribute to the mathematics of increasing population numbers.

Underutilized Contraception 

The global fertility rate has fallen steadily over the years, down from an average of 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.4 children per woman today, according to the UN Population Division . Along with that promising trend, contraceptive use has slowly but steadily increased globally, rising from 54% in 1990 to 57.4% in 2015. Yet, on the whole, contraceptive use is still underutilized. For example, according to the WHO, an estimated 214 million women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not using modern contraceptives.

These women aren’t using contraceptives for a variety of reasons, including social norms or religious beliefs that discourage birth control, misconceptions about adverse side effects, and a lack of agency for women to make decisions around sex and family planning. An estimated 44% of pregnancies were unintended worldwide between 2010-2014. Getting more women the access and agency to utilize family planning methods could go a long way in flattening the population curve.

Lack of Female Education    

Although female access to education has increased over the years, the gender gap remains. Roughly 130 million girls worldwide are out of school currently, and an estimated 15 million girls of primary school age will never   learn to read and write, compared with 10 million boys.

Increasing and encouraging education among women and girls can have a number of positive ripple effects, including delayed childbearing , healthier children, and an increase in workforce participation. Plenty of evidence suggests a negative correlation between female education and fertility rates.

If increased female education can delay or decrease fertility and provide girls with opportunities beyond an early marriage, it could also help to mitigate current population trends. 

The Effects of Overpopulation

It is only logical that an increase in the world’s population will cause additional strains on resources. More people means an increased demand for food, water, housing, energy, healthcare, transportation, and more. And all that consumption contributes to ecological degradation, increased conflicts, and a higher risk of large-scale disasters like pandemics.  

Ecological Degradation 

An increase in population will inevitably create pressures leading to more deforestation, decreased biodiversity, and spikes in pollution and emissions, which will exacerbate climate change . Ultimately, unless we take action to help minimize further population growth heading into the remainder of this century, many scientists believe the additional stress on the planet will lead to ecological disruption and collapse so severe it threatens the viability of life on Earth as we know it. 

Each spike in the global population has a measurable impact on the planet’s health. According to estimates in a study by Wynes and Nicholas (2017) , a family having one fewer child could reduce emissions by 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent per year in developed countries.

Increased Conflicts 

The scarcity brought about by environmental disruption and overpopulation has the potential to trigger an increase in violence and political unrest. We’re already seeing wars fought over water, land, and energy resources in the Middle East and other regions, and the turmoil is likely to increase as the global population grows even larger.

Higher Risk of Disasters and Pandemics 

Many of the recent novel pathogens that have devastated humans around the world, including COVID-19, Zika virus, Ebola, and West Nile virus, originated in animals or insects before passing to humans. Part of the reason the world is entering “ a period of increased outbreak activity ” is because humans are destroying wildlife habitats and coming into contact with wild animals on a more regular basis. Now that we’re in the midst of a pandemic, it has become clear how difficult it is to social distance in a world occupied by nearly 8 billion people.   

Discover the real causes and effects of overpopulation

What can be done about overpopulation.

When addressing overpopulation, it’s crucial to take an approach of providing empowerment while mobilizing against anybody advocating for the use of coercion or violence to solve our problems. The combined efforts of spreading knowledge about family planning, increasing agency among women , and debunking widely held myths about contraception will measurably change the trajectory of the world’s population.

As we carry out our work at Population Media Center (PMC), we see first-hand that spreading awareness about family planning methods and the ecological and economic benefits of having smaller families can change reproductive behavior. For example, listeners of our Burundian radio show Agashi (“Hey! Look Again!”) were 1.7 times more likely than non-listeners to confirm that they were willing to negotiate condom use with a sexual partner and 1.8 times more likely than non-listeners to say that they generally approve of family planning for limiting the number of children.

CELEBRATING EARTH DAY WITH CONVERSATIONS ON OVERPOPULATION

In the spirit of Earth Day, it’s crucial to approach discussions about overpopulation with sensitivity and inclusivity. Overpopulation conversations should focus on the collective responsibility to steward Earth’s resources sustainably, rather than assigning blame or dividing communities. By fostering understanding and promoting access to education and reproductive health services, we can work towards a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

At PMC we harness the power of storytelling to empower listeners to live healthier and more prosperous lives, which in turn contributes to stabilizing the global population so that people can live sustainably with the world’s renewable resources. Discover how PMC is taking action against overpopulation today!

We’re Focused on Making an Impact. Learn More About Our Work.

Global sustainability.

Women’s Rights

More Readings

How do overpopulation and overconsumption damage the environment what you need to know.

How Is Population Growth Responsible for the Growing Problem of Water Scarcity

What lies ahead after the world’s population reaches 8 billion , how does overpopulation affect the economy, join us in promoting the equitable, sustainable world we’re all fighting for, one action at a time..

Can We Talk About Overpopulation?

As numbers soar, scholars revisit a thorny debate.

Twenty years ago, farmers looked out at the tropical woodlands and savannahs of Uganda and saw endless virgin territory. A young man, upon starting a family, would clear a patch of wilderness near where he was raised and plant his own fields of sorghum, millet, groundnut, plantains, or cassava.

Now, after decades of unprecedented population growth, the land is running out. In southern Uganda, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farm communities are bumping up against one another and against dry lands, mountains, and rain forests. Pockets of arable land can still be found, but only in malaria-ridden hinterlands where nobody wants to live. Many farmers, rather than relocating long distances, are clearing rain forests near their homes, despite the fact that a tropical forest’s acidic soil is poorly suited to growing grains, fruits, and vegetables. Other farmers are subdividing their parents’ land, reducing the typical-sized farm plot in some parts of Africa to half an acre.

“That’s too small to feed a family,” says economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who directs Columbia’s Earth Institute.

Africans will never be able to grow enough food for themselves, Sachs argues in his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet , unless they start having fewer babies. Subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa today raise an average of six children, which is causing the populations of some nations to double every 20 years. Few of these farmers are able to feed their children properly, let alone afford their education. Children thus grow up desperately poor and have huge families of their own. Shrinking farm plots add yet another burden: Food production on a per-capita basis is declining and malnutrition is worsening, which means that children are likely to grow up even less healthy and less productive.

“The poorest places in the world right now are stuck in a demographic trap,” says Sachs. “A family of subsistence farmers with six or seven kids doesn’t stand a chance.”

The only way to break this cycle of overpopulation and misery, Sachs writes in Common Wealth , is for wealthy nations to provide birth control to the world’s poor. Sachs recommends that rich countries quadruple foreign assistance for reproductive health programs to roughly $25 billion annually. That’s enough money, he estimates, to provide birth control, as well as maternal health care and STD treatment, to some 200 million women who lack it; most of them live in rural Africa.

The prospect of giving poor people contraceptives so they can lift themselves out of poverty might not seem particularly controversial, aside from the opposition that might be expected from some religious conservatives. Yet Sachs is the first mainstream economist in decades to formally propose this idea. Since the 1980s, family planning programs have been promoted strictly as a human right, not as a way to kick-start economic development. That’s because Western family planners in the 1960s and 1970s, in their zeal to slow population growth and to spur development in Asia, supported forced sterilizations, slum demolitions, and other abuses. Women’s rights advocates subsequently wrested control of international family-planning programs and made sure they never again aimed explicitly to lower birthrates.

The days of promoting birth control purely as a way to empower women, however, may be ending. There is a growing sense among scholars that the topic of overpopulation — which has faded from public consciousness as the world’s population growth rate has declined from its mid-1960s peak of 2 percent annually down to about 1.2 percent — is going to reemerge as a hot topic. Recently, the Sierra Club, the Worldwatch Institute, and other environmental groups have offered recommendations similar to those in Common Wealth , in which Sachs urges that we halt world population at 8 billion by 2050, rather than allowing it to grow to 9 billion from today’s 6.7 billion, as the UN projects.

Still, many population experts wonder: Is the marriage bed really the place to address economic and environmental problems? Is it even possible to manage people as numbers while respecting them as human beings?

Don’t blame the victim

Joel E. Cohen, a Columbia demographer, is an expert on population growth and environmental sustainability. He cringes at the term overpopulation .

“I have no idea what that word means, and you’ll never hear me use it,” he says. “It suggests that the size of a population can become so big that it starts causing problems in itself. That’s not the way it works. I’d put the situation this way: Rapid population growth makes it trickier for a poor country to deal with every problem that it faces, from distributing food and water during a drought to providing education and health care in rural areas. But it doesn’t cause these problems.”

There’s wide agreement among economists and demographers today that rapid population growth is troublesome. A report published in April by the UN Population Division concludes that high birthrates are hampering economic development across sub-Saharan Africa, mainly by limiting per-capita investments in education and health care. (Columbia economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin has shown that high birthrates typically stunt economic development.) The UN report also states that population pressure is worsening food and water shortages in the region. Environmental concerns also are real: rain forests in sub-Saharan Africa and in South America are being destroyed primarily by subsistence farming, according to NASA data, and deforestation is reducing local rainfall and exacerbating global climate change.

Cohen’s concern is that people often imagine a direct causal link between population growth and problems like hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. It’s easy to think this way when visceral images of teeming third-world slums and starving masses invite human-scale explanations: Why do these people have so many babies? Cohen says we then may ignore political factors that contribute to these problems. For instance, agriculture subsidies in rich nations contribute to hunger by driving down farm incomes in the developing world; and African governments are famous for mismanaging food and water supplies. “During the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s, cash croppers in that country were allowed to export alfalfa to Japan as cattle feed,” he says. “Is that a population problem? I don’t think so.”

Cohen agrees with Sachs that international family-planning programs are underfunded. But he says that family planning should continue to be promoted — both to Western donors and to government officials in developing countries — strictly as a human right. To advance birth control as a means to slow population growth, Cohen says, implies that poor people need to solve their societies’ problems through private choices of childbearing. Might this cause the West to back away from other aid obligations, or inspire poor countries to implement coercive methods of population control?

Cohen hesitates. “It’s not as if a developing country’s problems are going to vanish if it manages to lower birthrates,” he says. “I would say that until the West has done its utmost to give poor people access to education, health care, job training, and family planning for the purpose of giving them more control over their lives, it’s premature to talk about trying to convince them to have fewer babies.”

Dirt to dust

Sachs insists that we speak clearly about population pressures. The problem of dwindling farmland in sub-Saharan Africa, he says, is insurmountable without a major effort to slow population growth.

As arable land in Africa has vanished, Sachs explains in Common Wealth , farmers have abandoned land-management techniques they used previously to sustain the long-term fertility of their fields, such as allowing one of the fields to lie fallow each season. Three-quarters of all arable land in sub-Saharan Africa today is severely depleted of nutrients because it has been overused, according to a recent study by the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development.

A doubling of the region’s population since the early 1980s helps explain why almost all of sub-Saharan African countries now depend on foreign food aid. Until a few years ago, most were food exporters . “There’s a tyranny of the present at work,” Sachs writes, “and the poor, in their desperation to survive, are often contributing to massive local environmental degradation.”

Population control isn’t the only way to address food shortages, of course. Sachs points out that farmers in sub-Saharan Africa can’t afford chemical fertilizers, high-yield seed varieties, or modern irrigation. He and colleagues at the Earth Institute, as part of the United Nations Millennium Villages project, which Sachs initiated, are helping the governments of a dozen nations in Africa introduce modern farm technologies. They’ve had some remarkable success: The tiny, famine-prone nation of Malawi has tripled its grain yields in the past two years by subsidizing chemical fertilizer for all farmers.

“The problem is that these kinds of agricultural improvements never will produce gains to keep pace with a doubling of population every generation,” Sachs says.

Other types of foreign aid, such as for education or health care, also will bring diminishing returns if population growth rates don’t decline, says Sachs, who is academia’s most influential proponent of aid to Africa. He says that countries in sub-Saharan Africa now must spend huge portions of their budgets providing basic services, which leaves little money for the type of agricultural investment that Malawi is making in its fertilizer program. Economists thus say that countries experiencing explosive population growth must expend their budgets on “service widening,” to deliver basic services to more and more people, rather than on “service deepening,” to improve average services per person.

“If people continue having huge numbers of kids, and if farm sizes continue to shrink,” Sachs says, “I can’t imagine how the next generation is going to make it.”

Sordid history

Back in the 1960s, the populations of many poor countries in Asia, Latin America, and North Africa were growing as rapidly as the populations in sub-Saharan African countries are today. International health programs had gone into former colonies in these areas following World War II with antibiotic drugs, vaccines, and pesticides, which lowered mortality rates dramatically. Farmers in poor countries had always had lots of babies: They needed to, in order to ensure that at least one son grew up to work their fields and to take care of them in their old age. The problem was that while more of their children were surviving, rural people retained a cultural proclivity for huge families. Furthermore, they had little or no access to modern birth control, so they ended up with even more kids than they would have otherwise chosen.

Population growth soon was outpacing food production, especially in Asia, causing Western officials to fear that widespread famine would destabilize the continent, Columbia history professor Matthew Connelly explains in his latest book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population . President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers viewed the situation through a lens of Cold War–inspired paranoia: Johnson, speaking to U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in 1966, warned that hordes of starving Asians might one day “sweep over the United States and take what we have.” His fear didn’t seem so irrational: 19 Nobel laureate scientists in 1960 had issued a public letter decrying how overpopulation could push the world into “a Dark Age of human misery, famine, and under-education, which could generate growing panic, exploding into wars.”

So in the late 1960s, the U.S. government began pouring tens of millions of dollars annually into international family-planning programs. The programs were administered primarily by Planned Parenthood, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which was financed largely by U.S. dollars and which claimed that its programs provided contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortions on a voluntary basis. In reality, American and British economists and demographers had designed these programs to slow population growth by nearly any means necessary, according to Connelly.

South Asian countries with caste systems were willing to push family planning most aggressively, Connelly writes, because many ruling-class Hindus feared social unrest among the hungry lower castes. So Indian officials, under the guidance of Western family planners, agreed to pay famished people small sums of money to be sterilized; they also agreed to fire doctors who didn’t meet sterilization quotas. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka implanted in women a type of intrauterine contraceptive device that was proven to cause infections and the rupturing of the uterine wall. Couples in all of these countries lost medical, housing, and education benefits for having more than a designated number of children. When local health officials balked at implementing aggressive programs, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the UN threatened to shut off Western food aid.

The endgame for this chapter of family planning started to unfold in 1975, when Indira Gandhi’s government bulldozed entire blocks of Delhi slums where large numbers of residents refused to be sterilized. Around the same time, police rounded up at gunpoint all of the men in the Indian village of Uttawar and forced them to get vasectomies. These atrocities drew international outrage and led to Gandhi’s being voted out of power the following year. They also prompted a backlash from feminists and women’s rights advocates who were assuming leadership roles within the NGO community in the 1970s.

International family-planning programs, which by this time had spread throughout Latin America and North Africa, gradually abandoned coercive methods over the next few years. The population control movement would have one last gasp, though, when UNFPA and Planned Parenthood helped China launch its draconian one-child policy in 1979.

Women’s choice

By the late 1980s, the UNFPA and Planned Parenthood had cleaned up their programs so that medical workers on the ground no longer were expected to lower birthrates. Clinicians now concentrated on helping women make informed choices about their sex lives and childbearing. If family planning executives discussed the prospect of slowing population growth in public, Connelly says, it was only as an ancillary benefit of giving women more control over their bodies.

“The term population control has since had a negative connotation, as well it should,” Connelly tells Columbia .

The economic benefits of slowing population growth, though, were apparent: as birthrates plummeted in most of the developing world, prosperity and modernization typically arrived. The governments of many countries in Asia and Latin America, now that they had proportionately fewer poor people to care for, could afford to invest in industry and modern agricultural methods, which boosted grain production 300 percent in some nations between the 1960s and the 1980s. (Connelly, in Fatal Misconception , makes the controversial argument that family planning programs have received too much credit for declining birthrates, and hence for development; see sidebar to the left.)

The good news for women’s rights advocates was that voluntary family-planning programs seemed to have lowered birthrates just as much as had coercive programs. For instance, a UN-sponsored program that had offered birth control pills to all poor women in Thailand in the 1960s, on the advice of a young field-worker named Allan Rosenfield, who later became dean of Columbia’s public health school, helped to halve the number of children born per woman in that country, from six to three, in less than 20 years. Across the developing world, birthrates declined where family planners provided a range of safe contraceptives and taught people the benefits of limiting their family size — not only where they bribed people to be sterilized or threatened tax penalties.

Yet, just as family planning programs were beginning to define a new humanitarian mission, funding stagnated. The trouble started during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, Connelly writes, when the emerging pro-life movement in the U.S. launched a major lobbying effort against international family-planning programs. Abortion opponents called attention to the fact that Planned Parenthood and UNFPA were providing technical assistance to China for its country’s one-child policy, which in the mid-1980s was in its most coercive phase, allegedly requiring some women to have abortions and to be implanted with intrauterine devices. “It was not much,” writes Connelly, “but it was enough of a perch to permit pro-lifers to pile calumny upon calumny on China’s program and all who could be associated with it.” Since then, every Republican president has refused to contribute to UNFPA, which is the primary source of funding for international family-planning services. Partly as a result, financial support for international family planning has remained flat, which means that the funding hasn’t kept pace with increasing demand as populations in poor countries continue to climb.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most women who lack access to birth control today in part because family planning programs arrived to the region late, in the 1980s, when the money had already begun to dry up, say family planning executives. Family planning came to Africa late, they say, because international health programs, with their ensuing population boom, had arrived late, too.

A lack of money isn’t the only thing that has kept family planning from many Africans, though: “There is mistrust in some nations about family planning programs because of their checkered past,” Connelly says. “In African countries where there are ethnic tensions, for instance, it can be politically difficult for leaders to implement family planning programs because many people fear that they’ll be used to reduce the populations of some groups, and not others.”

Counting backward

Today, UN-backed family-planning programs operate in nearly all developing countries. If the UNFPA were better funded, say its proponents, birth control would be more available in rural Africa as well as in many Muslim and Catholic countries, where Western family planners must work hard to educate local leaders about the benefits of reproductive health services.

How to raise the money? Advocates for family planning are doing a lot of soul-searching these days. Many leaders in the NGO community believe that family planning organizations would be better financed if they once again promoted their work as a way to slow population growth, says Suzanne Petroni, a researcher who monitors funding for reproductive health programs at the Summit Foundation, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit that promotes environmental sustainability.

“The sense among many family planners is that they’re getting less money than they used to from Western donors, in part because their programs are no longer connected to a practical purpose,” says Petroni. “They believe that the human rights pitch hasn’t worked.”

Particularly tempting to some family planners, Petroni says, is the prospect of exploiting public concerns about global warming. The sales pitch would go something like this: if we limit the number of people on earth, we limit the number of carbon footprints. (Sachs validates this logic in Common Wealth , warning that decades from now, when the crowded nations of sub-Saharan Africa modernize — and Sachs is optimistic that they will modernize eventually — energy consumption on the continent will skyrocket.)

Many women’s rights advocates fear that if family planning programs are positioned once again as a means to combat overpopulation, the door will open for more human rights abuses, Petroni says. This debate within the aid community is contentious because there remains distrust between feminists and some older environmentalists who backed the original population-control movement.

Matthew Connelly sides with the women’s rights advocates. He was convinced in writing Fatal Misconception , he says, that family planning programs that aim to lower birthrates are bound to commit abuses. He found, for instance, that crimes occurred in the 1960s and 1970s even when Western family planners tried to operate their programs ethically: medical workers in several South Asian countries strong-armed patients into accepting sterilizations because they thought that lowering birthrates was good for their own careers, and family planning programs inevitably devoted more resources to sterilization procedures and to abortions than to follow-up care.

Connelly worries that Western nations, if their aid programs once again were promoted as a means to slow population growth, would be tempted to withhold other forms of development aid from countries if they don’t lower birthrates to specified levels.

Lynn Freedman, a Columbia public health professor and an attorney who is an expert on population issues, concurs. “The idea that foreign aid could be linked to a country’s success at lowering birthrates is not wildly unlikely,” she says. “Aid agencies today are in the habit of designing all sorts of performance targets in order to account for the efficiency of their programs, and these targets can easily be misused in a way that violates people’s rights. The ’60s weren’t that long ago.”

Sachs doesn’t see that happening. “The worst I could imagine is that an agency might attempt to link a country’s family- planning money to birthrate reductions,” he says, “but I don’t think that other kinds of foreign aid would be linked in this way.” He also dismisses as unrealistic the possibility that international family-planning programs could once again employ coercive methods. Family planning programs must, and will, remain voluntary, he believes.

The greater moral danger today, Sachs argues, is that large numbers of women will continue to want for birth control, and populations will continue to grow rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa and in places like Haiti, Bolivia, Venezuela, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Myanmar, in part because Western scholars and aid workers insist on tiptoeing around the subject of overpopulation for fear of being seen as insensitive to the abuses of the past. In Common Wealth , Sachs even advances the term population control, which has long been considered impolitic among scholars, because he says he wants to break the taboo.

“For years people have been telling me, ‘Don’t talk about population, talk instead about access to reproductive health services,’” Sachs says. “And I’ve said, ‘No, I want to talk about population, because it’s a serious problem.’ I think it’s time we take this subject out of the whispers.”

Birth control, under audit

Columbia professor Matthew Connelly’s Fatal Misconception, a history of the population-control movement of the 1960s and 1970s, is shocking for its parade of morally compromised scholars and diplomats who spread birth control around the world. There’s Planned Parenthood head and ecologist William Vogt, who thought that starving people in the developing world should be left to die and therefore opposed food aid; there’s Robert McNamara, who, as head of the World Bank, resisted funding healthcare programs in poor countries because they saved lives and contributed to overpopulation; there are the Planned Parenthood doctors who at a 1963 UN conference decided that a female contraceptive’s tendency to pierce the uterus, causing sterilization, was to be considered a side benefit.

Fatal Misconception was among the most controversial scholarly monographs of 2008, not just because Connelly calls out early family planners as xenophobic and racist, however. His most startling critique is that these programs didn’t even lower birthrates as designed: he says that between 1950 and 2000, the dozen or so developing nations that employed the most aggressive family- planning tactics reduced birthrates little more than did other countries. Relying on UN data, Connelly notes that China, for instance, reduced the number of children per woman from 6.2 to 1.7 during that 50-year period. In Brazil, where little effort was made to encourage family planning, the numbers fell from 6.2 to 2.3 children during the same period. Connelly lists half a dozen such examples to make his point. He then argues that girls’ education, women’s employment, and other social factors affected birthrates more so than did family planning programs.

“In many poor countries where birthrates declined dramatically,” Connelly tells Columbia, “the declines actually started before family planning programs even showed up.”

How could people have managed to have fewer babies without contraception? The same way they did in early-19th-century Europe, where birthrates plummeted a full century before modern birth control became available, Connelly says: They used traditional forms of birth control like the rhythm method.

Connelly charges that UN and Planned Parenthood officials who administered most family-planning programs in the 1960s and 1970s knew that data on the ground weren’t validating their efforts. They soldiered on, he says, because of institutional inertia. “These programs gave jobs to millions of people, and administrators weren’t interested in scrutinizing the numbers,” he says. “They were interested in making payroll.”

Many contemporary family planners are apoplectic over Connelly’s assertion that birth control programs don’t lower birthrates. Steven Sinding, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and past director-general of Planned Parenthood International, has blasted Connelly over his book’s conclusions. Sinding claims that about 50 percent of birthrate declines in poor countries are attributable to family planning programs.

Columbia called T. Paul Schultz, a Yale economics professor who has spent his career studying birthrate dynamics. This subject invites confusion, he says, because no long-term controlled studies have ever been conducted. That’s partly because there are a multitude of factors that influence birthrates, so aid agencies whose programs target any one of these areas are reluctant to fund expensive, long-term studies to showcase the relatively small impact that their work likely has on fertility. The dearth of data, Schultz says, allows both advocates and opponents of family planning to cherry-pick statistics.

But the most sophisticated data available, collected over two decades in Bangladesh, Schultz says, suggest that the availability of free contraception accounted for about 20 percent of the region’s birthrate decline. That’s a strong relationship, considering how many variables were tested, he says. “The intuition of development experts has always been that family planning must slow population growth,” Schultz says, “and I’ve never seen any good data that suggest otherwise.”

More From Health & Medicine

The Benefits of Donating Your Body to Medical Science

Columbia’s Anatomical Donor Program gives students the education of a lifetime — and donors some posthumous perks

The Magic and Mystery of Psychedelic Therapies

As new trials show that psilocybin and LSD may help treat depression and anxiety, mental-health providers get ready for a revolution

Hot Weather Is More Dangerous than You Think. Here Are 6 Things You Need to Know

Christopher Tedeschi, a Columbia emergency physician, discusses the warning signs of heat stroke and related conditions

Stay Connected.

Sign up for our newsletter.

General Data Protection Regulation

Columbia University Privacy Notice

Essay on Overpopulation 1000+ Words

Overpopulation is a pressing issue that warrants our attention. It refers to a situation where the number of people in a given area exceeds the available resources and the environment’s capacity to support them. In this essay, we will delve into the complexities of overpopulation, examining its causes, effects, and potential solutions.

Causes of Overpopulation

Overpopulation is driven by various factors, including high birth rates, improved healthcare, and increased life expectancy. In many regions, cultural and social norms favor larger families, contributing to population growth.

Environmental Stress

The environmental consequences of overpopulation are significant. As more people require food, water, and shelter, forests are cleared, habitats destroyed, and ecosystems disrupted. This leads to deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and habitat degradation.

Resource Depletion

Overpopulation places immense pressure on finite resources. Water scarcity, soil degradation, and the depletion of non-renewable resources like fossil fuels become more pronounced as the population grows. This can lead to resource conflicts and competition.

Food Security Challenges

Feeding a growing global population is a daunting task. Overpopulation strains agricultural systems, leading to unsustainable farming practices, land degradation, and food shortages. It also exacerbates hunger and malnutrition in vulnerable communities.

Urbanization and Infrastructure

Rapid urbanization is a consequence of overpopulation. Cities expand to accommodate the influx of people, straining infrastructure and services such as housing, transportation, and sanitation. Slums and overcrowded living conditions become prevalent.

Healthcare and Education Challenges

Providing adequate healthcare and education to a burgeoning population becomes increasingly difficult. Overcrowded schools and inadequate medical facilities can lead to disparities in access to essential services.

Global Impact on Climate Change

Overpopulation contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating climate change. The demand for energy and transportation leads to higher carbon emissions, which in turn affect weather patterns, sea levels, and the overall health of the planet.

Economic Implications

Overpopulation can strain economies by creating high unemployment rates and income disparities. It becomes challenging to provide employment opportunities and a decent standard of living for all citizens.

Potential Solutions

Addressing overpopulation requires a multi-faceted approach. Encouraging family planning, educating communities about the consequences of high birth rates, and promoting gender equality can help control population growth.

Sustainability and Conservation

Conservation efforts are crucial to mitigating the impact of overpopulation on the environment. Protecting natural habitats, implementing sustainable agricultural practices, and reducing waste are essential steps.

Education and Empowerment

Promoting education, particularly for women, empowers individuals to make informed choices about family size and reproductive health. Educated women tend to have fewer children, contributing to lower birth rates.

Conclusion of Essay on Overpopulation

In conclusion, overpopulation is a complex and pressing global issue with far-reaching implications. It affects the environment, strains resources, challenges infrastructure, and impacts the well-being of communities worldwide. However, through collective efforts, education, and sustainable practices, we can address the challenges posed by overpopulation.

As responsible global citizens, it is our duty to seek solutions that balance population growth with environmental sustainability and social well-being. Encouraging responsible family planning, supporting conservation efforts, and promoting education and empowerment are essential steps toward achieving a more balanced and sustainable world.

Overpopulation reminds us of the delicate balance between humans and their environment. By taking proactive measures and fostering a sense of global responsibility, we can work toward a future where people and the planet can coexist harmoniously, ensuring a better quality of life for all.

Also Check: Simple Guide on How To Write An Essay

Essay Service Examples Sociology Overpopulation

Overpopulation Essay: Causes and Solutions

Table of contents

100 words essay on overpopulation, 250 words essay on overpopulation, 400 words essay on overpopulation, 500 words essay on overpopulation.

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

• Overpopulation

ASEAN countries are some of those who suffer the most from overpopulation in the world. The...

As the beautiful child was born, the man looked utterly repulsed. His face changed to anger as he...

An alarming number of prisoners are placed into custody around the world every day. There are over...

Most loves animals; at least the ones attending veterinary technician school. But they do have...

The phenomenon of overpopulation represents a critical juncture in the trajectory of human...

California is changing, and not always for the better. water is becoming scarce, open spaces are...

The society is now facing an extremely serious issue. It is considerable and it can lead to the...

• Critical Thinking
• Problem Solving

As we grow old people tend to ask himself or herself. “Am I an economic asset or a burden to my...

• Perspective

Many believe that there are way more serious problems than overpopulation, but have any stopped...

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

• Ideas for Action
• Join the MAHB
• Why Join the MAHB?
• Current Associates
• Current Nodes
• What is the MAHB?
• Who is the MAHB?
• Acknowledgments

A Brief on Overpopulation – Why it Matters and What You Can Do About It

Erin Brown | April 4, 2023 | Leave a Comment

Photo by Candace McDaniel on StockSnap

As humanity has surpassed the 8 billion people milestone, it is more important now than ever to talk about population. What will we do if we continue to grow at exponential rates? What are ethical, viable strategies to decrease population?

“First off, let me get this straight, discussing addressing overpopulation does not mean discussing killing people. The goal is actually to prevent it.” – Dr. Jane O’Sullivan

Current world population in January 2023: 8 billion

The current rate of population growth is around 80 million people per year. There are over 8 billion people on the planet, the last billion added in less than the last 12 years. 

The Earth’s first billion people milestone took from the beginning of human history until the 1800s to be achieved. Then, due to the industrial revolution, humanity reached the second billion mark by 1930 (taking only 130 years), reached the third billion in 1960 (only took 30 years), then reached the fourth billion by 1974 (only took 14 years), and the fifth billion by 1987 (only took 13 years). We hit 6 billion in 1999 (which took 12 years) and hit 7 billion in 2011 (which took about 12 years). At the current growth rate, the world population will reach 9 billion by 2037 and 10 billion by 2057.

The growth rate is declining, but not at a fast enough rate to combat the exponential compound growth. The growth rate was 2% in the 1970s. Now it is 1.05%. Any growth rate above 1% means we are still adding more people to the planet every year. 

What is overpopulation? 

Overpopulation is a human population in numbers high enough to cause environmental deterioration, impaired quality of life, or population crash. 

Why is overpopulation an issue? 

Overrun natural resources can only lead to death by starvation, conflict, and disease, and the only viable alternative is voluntary restraint on human births.

What is carrying capacity?

Carrying capacity is defined as the maximum population of a species that an area will support without undergoing deterioration. 

Paul R. Ehrlich and other scientists estimate the world’s optimum population for carrying capacity (at a comfortable standard of living – editor’s note) to be less than two billion people – 6 billion fewer than on the planet today. “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction” – Paul Ehrlich says.

How do we revert population overshoot to a sustainable population level? 

Geologist Art Berman explains population overshoot this way: “Overshoot means that humans are using natural resources and polluting at rates beyond the planet’s capacity to recover. The main cause of overshoot is the extraordinary growth of the human population made possible by fossil energy. Concerns about overshoot and population raised more than 40 years ago were dismissed. Climate change has captured public awareness more recently although many doubt that it is an emergency. Overshoot is more difficult to dispute; it destroys rainforests, leads to the extinction of other species, the pollution of land, rivers, and seas, the acidification of the oceans, and the loss of fisheries and coral reefs. People understandably want to know the solutions. Overshoot is the problem we must address. Any plan that includes continued growth is doomed to fail.”

What can we do?  Jane O’Sullivan outlines the two options for addressing population overshoot – i ncrease the Earth’s carrying capacity or decrease population.

Increasing Earth’s carrying capacity

We are already doing this by (a) using fewer natural resources per person, or (b) increasing productivity by finding more ways to use resources. This only defers the problem and creates collateral damage. 

Decreasing population numbers

If we talk about this now, the hope is to increase our options for solutions. One of the biggest challenges to facing overpopulation head-on and discussing a decreasing population are the stigmas and myths associated with reducing human population numbers. An elaborate set of myths has emerged in opposition to reducing population levels. These myths may prevent even environmentalists from viewing overpopulation as an issue.  Jane O’Sullivan elucidates on the following six myths that make inaction a virtue.

Myth 1 – The human population is stabilizing, and birth rates are decreasing

Truth – Birth rates started declining in the 1970s-90s due to family planning, but not low enough. The number of mothers is still increasing faster than family planning is decreasing the birth rate .  We are still having more births per year than ever before. The total fertility rate has decreased, but as fertility decline has slowed to a trickle, the number of total births has continued to increase. 

Myth 2  – China is the only one with the problem and they used cruel methods (one-child policy)

Truth – Family planning programs have helped many countries successfully reduce births through voluntary means, including China, before the one-child policy.

Myth 3 – Poverty causes population growth, therefore development is the best contraceptive

I.e., family planning is unnecessary and inefficient as long as there is development.

Truth – If this was true, we would see the population decline as development increases. However, it is the decrease in fertility rates that drove economic development, not the other way around. This myth is therefore “correlation implying causation” in the wrong direction. The poorest countries could lower their population by family planning just as quickly as rich countries if they choose to prioritize it.

Countries of families with four or more children, on average, have the lowest level of development; in families with 3 children or fewer the level goes up by some degree, and with two or fewer children development soars. The current focus should be on expanding provisions for teachers, doctors, equality, etc. instead of just giving people what they need. 

Myth 4 – Educating girls is the key to ending population growth

Truth – Another indirect approach that excludes a discussion on the benefit of small families and ending population growth. Educating girls helps but not much unless it is also flanked by family planning efforts. Family planning has a stronger effect on women regulating their fertility, decreasing the fertility gap between the educated and uneducated, and with family planning, girls are more likely to stay in school.

Myth 5 – Population growth is good for the economy

Truth – This makes people poorer as shown under Myth #3. 

Myth 6 – Population growth in poor nations does not matter because of their “tiny carbon footprint”

Truth –  Population growth is a greater threat than climate change. The best way for anyone to decrease their carbon footprint is to have one less kid.

Therefore, family planning is the most economical way to a sustainable future.

What action can each of us take?

1. Discuss smaller family sizes with your partner, family, and friends – how do we aim for birth rates lower than two children per couple?

2. Share information about the environmental impacts of population growth with friends and family. Advocate for action to reduce and reverse population growth.

3. Reassess concerns about aging   – how can we shift away from worshipping eternal youth, to accepting and valuing the entire life cycle? 

4. Celebrate population decline – what are possible depopulation dividends? 

5. Support organizations and efforts that support family planning and women’s education.

Damien Carrington, an environmental editor at The Guardian, interviewed Prof. Paul Ehrlich about the solutions:

“The solutions are tough,” Ehrlich says. “To start, make modern contraception and backup abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay, and opportunities with men. Focus on overconsumption and equity issues. Specifically women’s rights and the explicit countering of racism.”

Ehrlich also says that an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen…Too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources… It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as the perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems. As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”

If cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources, how can the rich and the poor come together across the world to solve this issue?

Anne and Paul Ehrlich expand on their “vision for a cure” :

“Rich white people love to hold meetings to discuss the ‘population problem’ which always ends up focusing on the very real demographic difficulties of those with darker skin tones, especially people who live in Africa and Latin America. But isn’t it really time for the poor people of the world, especially those not in need of tanning beds, to extend a helping hand to the major villains of the destruction of humanity’s life-support systems? Could they not hold an educational conference in Washington, D.C. to explain why civilization is going down the drain, to the per-capita most environmentally destructive giant nation on the planet? Leaders from the “South” could both organize the event and supply experts to educate the wealthy and middle class on their ethical responsibilities and ways to meet them. We envision learning sessions on topics such as:

• Avoiding the second child.
• The population problem beyond numbers: inequality and waste of talent. 
• Are borders ethical?
• Population shrinkage for politicians.
• GDP shrinkage for economists.
• Do Trump and his colleagues prove that the lighter your skin, the lighter your brain?
• Citizens United: It’s time for euthanasia for corporations.
• Redistribution and survival.
• Disbanding “Murder Incorporated”: gun manufacturers and big pharma.
• How to end plastic production.
• The historical contributions of the global South to the food enjoyed by the North.
• How biodiversity loss is accompanied by the loss of human cultural diversity.
• We know our populations are growing too fast; how to help us help ourselves?
• Why anti-abortion laws kill poor women.

You can doubtless think of others. The possibilities are endless”.

References: 

Berman, Art. The Climate-Change Trip to Abilene. July 13, 2022.  https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/the-climate-change-trip-to-abilene/

Carrington, Damien. Interview with Paul Ehrlich: Collapse of civilization is a near certainty within decades. July 9, 2020.  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich

Ehrlich, Anne H.; Ehrlich, Paul R. Overpopulation In America -And Its Cures. November 14, 2019.  https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/overpopulation-america-cures/

O’Sullivan, Jane. The tenth presentation at the Delivering the Human Future Conference. Titled: The Future of the Human Population. March 21, 2021.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shUNJPLpXpQ

Population Statistics.  https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

The MAHB Blog is a venture of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere. Questions should be directed to [email protected]

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

A Plus Topper

Improve your Grades

Essay on Overpopulation | Overpopulation Essay for Students and Children in English

February 14, 2024 by Prasanna

Essay on Overpopulation: One of the biggest threats to our planet is overpopulation and this has become a rising concern over the years. It is a global crisis that we are facing and it is important that people become more aware of it as soon as possible. The problem is that it is increasing at a very fast rate and this causes concern for everyone. Overpopulation is causing economic, social, and environmental issues. The problem just doesn’t lie in people having more children but with the low mortality rate which is because of the advancement in health care. In this essay, we will address all the issues that cause overpopulation. This article contains three sets of essays that is a 150-word essay, a 300-word essay, and a 500-word essay.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Overpopulation for Students and Kids in English

We provide children and students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic “Overpopulation” for reference.

Short Essay on Overpopulation 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Overpopulation is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Overpopulation is growing at a very fast rate and the only way around this is to create awareness with people. The problem isn’t that we are running out of space but the standard of living is being affected, the resources we have on our planet are already so scarce and with this growth rate of a population, the only way to live a good life is by moving to a different planet.

The world population is set to double by the year 2050 which means we will run out of resources really fast and this means that our living expenses by then will be a lot and not affordable for a lot of people. 3500 humans are born almost every minute around the world and this could change so much in the 100 years. With overpopulation, our lives could be extremely different. Because of the growing wealth gap, this means poor people will have the worst standard of living in the next 100 years.

Long Essay on Overpopulation 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Overpopulation is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Citizens in developing countries like India are already living in a very overpopulated country. Over 50 per cent of the population struggle to find means to survive, they struggle to get just the basic necessities that include shelter and food.  A lot of these third world countries barely get any funding on birth control. In a lot of families, the girls leave school at an early age and then try to make a family. A lot of the studies have proven the lower the education the higher the birth rate. We must also consider the supply of food, we won’t have much supply to meet the demand for the overpopulation and this is cause for concern. The farmers won’t get enough land to grow their crops and this creates more issues with the supply of food.

A lot of the third world countries face a lot of difficulty in growing and this mainly because of overpopulation. The problem is that even if these countries were to develop faster and have a better economy even that wouldn’t solve the problem as the damage is already done. So it is very important that we take action now and make sure we create awareness for the future. This is highly important as we can avoid many issues such as the depletion of resources and avoid scarcity of resources. The educated must seriously consider their choices because there are already so many children in the world and we must really take a step back to think.

Overpopulation is a rising concern especially in developing nations, we must try and look forward into the future and try to save the best for future generations. The issue now is that people don’t think about the future consequences. We must try to create a world that is more sustainable to live in and no harm comes to the quality of life.

Overpopulation is a huge problem in the current global scenario today. Overpopulations requires immediate solutions as it has reached alarming rates. This problem can be solved easily with some family planning but only the educated know about this and we need to inform the set of the population that isn’t aware of this problem. Family planning basically means trying to create a balance between the resources we have left and the population. The difference in this family planning balance is what gives us problems. When family planning we must consider the welfare of each individual and their overall happiness at the same time we must factor in humanitarian crisis and the country as a large.

Every human being has the right to get the most basic necessities to live and this includes employment, education, housing, healthcare,  clothing, food, and water. We must factor in all of this so that we can live a prosperous life. The problem with overpopulation is that the government and the higher authorities find it difficult to supply the required means to everyone. Countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan require the most amount of family planning as most of the population are struggling to make ends meet.

The world population is set to double by the year 2050 which means we will run out of resources really fast and this means that our living expenses by then will be a lot and not affordable for a lot of people. A lot of the third world countries face a lot of difficulty in growing and this mainly because of overpopulation. The problem is that even if these countries were to develop faster and have a better economy even that wouldn’t solve the problem as the damage is already done. So it is very important that we take action now and make sure we create awareness for the future. This is highly important as we can avoid many issues such as the depletion of resources and avoid scarcity of resources. The educated must seriously consider their choices because there are already so many children in the world and we must really take a step back to think.

One of the main reasons for overpopulation is the difference between the death rate and the overall birth rate in the population. The only way to find balance in this by equalizing the number of deaths per birth but this hasn’t happened in a long time because of improved healthcare people are living longer. Technological advancements have made it easier for people to have children if it wasn’t physically possible before and at the same time the death rate is so low because of the improved health facilities which help people live longer lives. While all this is good for mankind, it isn’t good for the environment and the future. We have to create policies that help people get a better understanding of the overpopulation crisis and create stricter laws on birth control. People should consider adoption when having children as there are so many unwanted children in the world and this is a more fulfilling process.

Overpopulation Essay Conclusion

So to conclude we must make weaker sections of society more aware of the problems that people face so that people can get a more structured understanding of the issues at hand. By creating awareness only can people get informed on the various issues at hand. In this essay, we saw many of the factors that create overpopulation and how people in third world countries are at stake. We must tell people to make more conscious efforts so that we can reap the benefits of later without future generations.

• Picture Dictionary
• English Speech
• English Slogans
• English Letter Writing
• English Essay Writing
• English Textbook Answers
• Types of Certificates
• ICSE Solutions
• Selina ICSE Solutions
• ML Aggarwal Solutions
• HSSLive Plus One
• HSSLive Plus Two
• Kerala SSLC
• Distance Education

Overpopulation - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Overpopulation occurs when the number of people living in a certain area exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment. Essays could delve into the causes and effects of overpopulation, its impact on resource scarcity and environmental degradation, or the policies and strategies for managing population growth. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Overpopulation you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Overpopulation – Global Issue

Overpopulation is becoming a global issue because over the years we have created more lives than resources. there will not be enough food for everyone.7 billion people on Earth now,and roughly one in eight of us don't have enough to eat(Dimick, 2014). The population will keep on getting bigger by the time and we will have to be prepared to struggle or see others struggle. People have different opinions about populations like some say the population is getting bigger by […]

Overpopulation in the World

Introduction The current world population stands 7.6 billion as per the United Nations Statistics, while the human population is projected to clock 10.5 billion in the year 2040 and 12 billion by the year 2050. The current human population growth rate per year 70 million. China has got the highest number of people per unit area, with the total population being 1.2 billion. The African continent has reached the highest population growth rate, which is 6 percent while the lowest […]

World Population Growth

The human population in the world has been growing a an extremely fast rate, but with a growing rate of population, comes with it a potentially fatal problem: overpopulation. Overpopulation is when the environment, or in this case Earth, can no longer support a species due to it not having a sufficient amount of resources to handle the population. While overpopulation is always ultimately going to be a problem, the real issue is when overpopulation is really starting. There are […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

How Big of a Problem is Overpopulation?

Overpopulation has become a much larger and larger problem as the years go on. There are many causes for overpopulation such as a decline in death, improved medical facilities and immigration. Some of these problems that come with overpopulation are increase of wars, increased global warming, the depletion of natural resources and much more. Some of the reasons why overpopulation has become a problem due to how the discrepancies in the birth rate to death rate. There are many more […]

Overpopulation Effects on Health and the Environment

Overpopulation effects all other aspects of our health and the environment in which we live. There has been more human-caused environmental disgrace in the last few thousands years than ever before, and with the population increasing five times its size in the last 300 years it is no wonder overpopulation has such a staggering impact in all areas of our health. Chronic disease is directly impacted by overpopulation. With the advancement we have in our medicine today compared with past […]

It has to a Boy: Another Dimension of over Population

First of all, we would like to thank our Allah Almighty who made us capable to put our efforts in the project. In performing our assignment, we had to take the help and guideline of some respected persons, who deserve our greatest gratitude and respect. The completion of this assignment gives us much Pleasure. We would like to show our gratitude to our course instructor Ma’am Sana Ashraf Chatha, for giving us a guideline for assignment throughout numerous consultations. We would also […]

Overpopulation in World

The world today has a total population of 7.6 billion people, inhabiting 195 countries and 7 different continents. As of 2018 there have been no issues regarding overpopulating the planet, but this subject worries many scientists and scholars. The rapid increase in population is the main concern, the projected population in 2050 is estimated to be 10 billion people (John C Caldwell). No one knows when overpopulation is going to happen, but the scary part is not knowing what happens […]

Overpopulation and its Effects on Human

Approximately 200 years ago, the total population of the Earth was less than one billion. According to the UN, as of 2017 the human population has reached a staggering 7.7 billion. (UN, 2015) Between 1900 and 2000, humanity saw a dramatic increase in its population from 1.5 to 6.1 billion. As the global population continues to balloon, one major issue that is looming overhead the human species is overpopulation. By 2050 the world population will reach to 10 billion people; […]

Overpopulation: not what you Think

Overpopulation, a word plastered on every headline and sowed into our very vocabulary. A word that brings fear, uncertainty and concerns to those who hear and/or read it, but why? How does this one word hold so much power? The very meaning of the word is how the number of existing humans exceeds the capacity of the Earth and in the recent centuries, that number has skyrocketed. Overpopulation is not something that humanity can sweep under the rug but it […]

Overpopulation: the Underrecognized Epidemic.

According to “How Many People Can Our World Support?” an article from World Population History, for the first time in human history, the number of people who go to bed hungry is more than one billion (“How Many”). Overpopulation is an underrecognized epidemic. An Epidemic that is leading to overwhelming amounts of preventable humanitarian and political issues and at the end of the day our earth cannot continue to support it. Our planet is now over seven billion people, and […]

Overpopulation and Climate Change

In the article Overpopulation and Climate Change Arthur H. Westing tells us that the in 1970, the greenhouse gas emission was beyond the sustainability level of the atmosphere and at that time the worlds population was 3.7 million and today it is 6.9 million. In the mean time emission from fossil fuel increased from 14 billion tons to 29 billion tons. Despite the growing awareness of climate change. In the article, Arthur H. Westing gives us the idea to divide […]

Overpopulation in US Prisons: a Result of Punishing Nonviolent Offenders

Releasing prisoners is never a good thing, right? Due to the over abundance of US incarcerations for several reasons, over 18 state prisons are overpopulated. Thus causing several major issues within the prison, the communities around and the overall justice system in the United States. Reforms should be brought to the government to solve the insane amount of incarcerations for non violent offenders which populate our prisons by 41%. It is an act that is necessary in order to solve […]

Overpopulation in Asia: Manila

Manila is the thriving capital of the Republic of the Philippines. It's also the densest city on Earth. However, just because Manila is extremely dense doesn't mean the whole country is overpopulated- but what effects are felt from the overpopulation of cities like Manila, and to the country as a whole? How did this city/country get so dense in the first place? And what can we do about it?One effect of the overpopulation in the Philippines is the enormous trade […]

The United States: Future Contributions to Overpopulation

The Earth currently holds 7.53 billion humans. The maximum supporting capacity of the Earth is estimated to be 9-10 billion. According to the United Nations Population Division, the human population will hit 9 billion by 2050, and 10 billion by 2100 (Wolchover, 2011). As one of the most powerful, knowledgeable, and resourceful countries in the world, the United States is on track to provide medical advancements that will contribute to overpopulation. Advancements such as the development of positive eugenics and […]

Overpopulation Hoax or True Concern

As a society, we live our lives day by day worrying about small things that might not matter focusing on wanting more and more as the days go by. Yet we never stop for a moment to think about the planet. The place that lets us create life and breathe in all the beautiful things that it provides for us. Letting us make a home surrounded by the people we love and things we desire. Now if we take a […]

Urbanization: the Transformation of Human Habitats

Urbanization isn't just about more folks moving to cities; it's a whole transformation that changes how we live, work, and connect. Let's break it down. Back in the day, urbanization kicked off big-time during the Industrial Revolution. People left farms for cities with promises of jobs and a better life. Factories were like magnets pulling folks in from the countryside. This trend hasn't slowed down—it's actually sped up, making cities the heart of where we live now. Money matters here. […]

Related topic

Additional example essays.

• Dogs Are Better Than Cats Essay
• Personal Narrative: My Family Genogram
• Reasons Why I Want to Study Abroad
• Comparison Of Introverts VS Extroverts
• A Class Divided
• Failures and success in business
• Arguments For and Against Euthanasia
• Does the Death Penalty Effectively Deter Crime?
• Why do you want to be a leader ?
• The Girl (Jig) Character Analysis in Hills Like White Elephants
• Behavior Changes
• The Story of Odysseus Moral Lessons

Essay About Overpopulation We have heard it all that every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding around him but the same doesn’t happen with a human. All they know is how to keep multiplying from one area to another. I came across this interesting topic from BBC and as I read more the more, I realized that Human Overpopulation is one of the biggest global issues we are facing at present. It is not only an environmental issue but also associated with the social and economic sustainability aspect. With increased pressure on our planet, we don’t realize the problems we are facing related to the scarcity of natural resources, high-low consumption fluctuations, fertility rates, poverty, global climate change, women rights, gender equality, lack of education and changing technology policy. It is predicted that the planet will have a growth in population by the end of the century which is estimated to be 11 billion. So, the question arises with this much higher population growth will it be possible to live on the planet or some ramifications will be added to sustainability in the long-term? Social Problems Overcrowding of humans on the planet can have some serious social problem to demonstrate some they are: Fertility rates The fertility rate among many nations is decreasing the reason being women end up aborting the babies at a very young age and in a later part of their life it becomes difficult to become pregnant. Also, there is high access to contraception’s in many countries due to this babies don’t end up living. For instance, if we take China’s example the country has the largest population in the world but it is facing the fertility rate issue reason being out of 100 children 60% are boys and rest 40% are girls’ and the reason for this discrimination is they do the gender detect and once they know it’s a girl they end up aborting the baby girl. They are also moving away from one child policy and encouraging adults to have the second baby. Women Rights One of the main suffering areas is when women are not treated well in society as compared to a man. Even in many developed countries, women are paid less than men, they face violence, abuse, and racial discrimination. As there are no rights given to women there comes a fall in education and fertility rates. Poverty Overpopulation is directly linked to poverty which is another very big social issue. There is a lack of education, a decline in the standard of living and poor contraception methods. Also, it was highlighted in class that the global population may not peak this century’’ which is actually doubtful. Now the question arises how will the status of women affect the overpopulation concern? Positive social aspects Education Education plays a very important role in society dealing with the overpopulation problem. It is simple with education there is more knowledge of having fewer kids, less child mortality and understanding the latest technology. With education, the fertility rates will decline. Since with the proper education poverty can also be curbed. This addresses to our SDGs Goal 1 – “NO POVERTY’’ and Goal 4- “QUALITY EDUCATION’’ Gender Equality Giving women equal rights will not only raise the standard in society but also women can generate employment opportunities. Gender Equality correlates with self-protection from diseases, birth control, and better child care. This addresses to our SDGs Goal 5- ” GENDER EQUALITY” These SDG goals in social aspect is to remove poverty, provide quality education and Gender Equality by 2030. Environmental Problems The relationship between a growing population and environmental implications is interlinked and very complex. In the class also it was mentioned about the ‘’environment stress continues to intensify’’ which is disastrous for all of us sharing the same planet. Global warming As there are more people there is a high demand for fossil fuels, oil, mines, and coal when burned there is high emission of CO2 in the atmosphere to trap warm air like greenhouse gases. Mostly the consumption of fossil fuel in developed nations is much higher than in developing nations. Deforestation is another component in greenhouse gases. When the trees are cut or burned approximately 25% CO2 of total greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere making the air toxic to breathe. It was highlighted in class that ‘’ Three years of flat global emissions ended in 2017 as rates jumped by 2% and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by the largest amount since measurements began. This basically means the CO2 has increased in the atmosphere and this will impact climate changes which will have an adverse effect on our planet. This can be addressed with the SDGs Goal 13- “CLIMATE ACTION’’ and also it is necessary to take urgent actions to combat climate change. Farming impacts Agriculture is solely responsible for deforestation across the globe. Intensive farming to create new farmlands has a negative outcome. As intensive farming increases there are chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in crops and this can cause soil erosion. Water pollution Water pollution is not only a huge concern for humans but also for other natural habitat. Due to the high wattage of plastics, toxic chemicals that enter the oceans we are losing the most valuable resource of our planet. Even though we know that we don’t have sufficient water supply in many countries then also we don’t take action against any damage to water resources. This addresses to Goal 6- “CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION’’ and the target by 2030, is to have access to clean water is affordable across the globe. Now the question arises, is it possible to reverse climate change and prevent global warming? Let’s find out in our next learning. Environmental solution Sustainable Infrastructure In order to lessen the emission of CO2 from buildings, it is important to renovate the old buildings. This plan will not only reduce infrastructure cost but also a long-term economic analysis of infrastructure. Clearly, sustainable infrastructure improves socio-economic factors like environmental degradation, energy and renewable conservation and remedy to protect soil from soil erosion. Economic Implications When there is an increasing rise in the population then it is definitely not good for economic development. Reduction in the rate of capital A huge population reduces the per capita availability of capital in underdeveloped and developing countries. Due to the rapid growth of the population, there is a decline in the availability of capital per labor which means there is low productivity. In developing nations, the population is determined to increase the rate of capital. This means since most people are dependent on others all they do is only consume and do not produce anything. Whereas, in developed nations, overpopulation shortens the availability capita per person for which there is a decline in labor. Their income reduces which indirectly affects capital formation. Reduction in unemployment Unemployment results in too many people having very few jobs. To be more descriptive, overpopulation leads to unemployment. For instance, there are two workers one is highly qualified and the other is not so qualified but the not so qualified candidate does not mind working at less pay. This means there will be tougher competition for a job employer would hire a person with minimum wage demand. This addresses to SDGs Goal 8- GOOD JOBS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH’’ by 2020 it is a global strategy to provide jobs to youth and take immediate action against forced labor. To conclude undertaking from this article, I have learned that Overpopulation is one of the major problems in humanity. Overpopulation affects natural resources, poverty, pollution, global warming and the wellness of a person. More than 7.3 people are on this planet and it's not easy to solve social, economic and environmental problems. But to gain a sustainable future in which everyone has a good standard of living we all need to come together and take efforts to tackle such a global issue. Recommendations

The government must increase the age of marriage in some specific countries and should put a complete stop to child marriage. Population factor has a significant impact on the attainment of development objectives, international strategies should be taken into consideration as there is an interrelation between the resources, environment, population, and growth. Health improvement programs should be taken up by the government for the masses as health plays an important role in the growth of a country.

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

• IELTS Scores
• Life Skills Test
• Find a Test Centre
• Alternatives to IELTS
• General Training
• Academic Word List
• Topic Vocabulary
• Collocation
• Phrasal Verbs
• Writing eBooks
• Reading eBook
• All eBooks & Courses
• Sample Essays
• Overpopulation Essay

IELTS Overpopulation Essay

This model essay is about  overpopulation in cities . You specifically have to talk about the  problems  of overpopulation, and suggest some  solutions  to this problem.

Note that this question specifically asks you what governments and individuals can do.

Here is the question:

Overpopulation of urban areas has led to numerous problems.

Identify one or two serious ones and suggest ways that governments and individuals can tackle these problems.

Organising a Problems & Solutions Essay

Note that this overpopulation essay question specifically asks you what governments and individuals can do.

You MUST, therefore, write about what both of these can do in order to fully answer the question.

Note as well that you must talk about  serious  problems.

The easiest way to organize a problems and solutions essay is as follows:

Body 1: Problems

Body 2: Solutions

In this essay, a separate paragraph has been written about government and individual solutions, so it is organized as follows:

Body 2: Solutions - Government

Body 3: Solutions - Individuals

Model Essay

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

IELTS Overpopulation Essay - Sample Answer

Many countries of the world are currently experiencing problems caused by rapidly growing populations in urban areas, and both governments and individuals have a duty to find ways to overcome these problems.

Overpopulation can lead to overcrowding and poor quality housing in many large cities. Poorly heated or damp housing could cause significant health problems, resulting in illness, such as bronchitis or pneumonia. Another serious consequence of overcrowding is a rising crime rate as poor living conditions may lead young people in particular to take desperate measures and turn to crime or drugs.

In terms of solutions, I believe the government should be largely responsible. Firstly, it is vital that the state provides essential housing and healthcare for all its citizens. Secondly, setting up community projects to help foster more community spirit and help keep young people off the street is a good idea. For example, youth clubs or evening classes for teenagers would keep them occupied. Finally, more effective policing of inner city areas would also be beneficial.

Naturally, individuals should also try to address these problems. One way is to put pressure on the government to ensure they tackle the problems by, for instance, forming action groups to lobby the government and request intervention and adequate funding. They could also form Neighbourhood Watch areas to try and help reduce the high levels of crime.

Therefore, it is clear that the problems caused by overpopulation in urban areas are very serious. Yet if governments and individuals share a collective responsibility, then it may well become possible to offer some solutions.

(260 words)

<<< Back

Next >>>

More Problems & Solutions Essays:

IELTS Problem Solution Essay Example: Why is immigration problematic?

This problem solution essay example is about the increasing number of professionals who are leaving their own poorer countries to work in developed countries

Competing for Jobs Essay

Competing for Jobs Essay: This is a model essay about the problems arising when older people have to compete with younger people for jobs. you need to write about the problems that arise if older people have to compete for jobs with younger people.

Any comments or questions about this page or about IELTS? Post them here. Your email will not be published or shared.

Band 7+ eBooks

"I think these eBooks are FANTASTIC!!! I know that's not academic language, but it's the truth!"

Linda, from Italy, Scored Band 7.5

Bargain eBook Deal! 30% Discount

All 4 Writing eBooks for just  $25.86 Find out more >>

IELTS Modules:

Other resources:.

• All Lessons
• Band Score Calculator
• Writing Feedback
• Speaking Feedback
• Teacher Resources
• Free Downloads
• Recent Essay Exam Questions
• Books for IELTS Prep
• Useful Links

Recent Articles

IELTS Essay: Living with Climate Change

Aug 23, 24 02:37 AM

Grammar in IELTS Listening

Aug 22, 24 02:54 PM

IELTS Line Graph: Governments Expenditure on Research

Jul 23, 24 01:27 PM

Important pages

IELTS Writing IELTS Speaking IELTS Listening   IELTS Reading All Lessons Vocabulary Academic Task 1 Academic Task 2 Practice Tests

Connect with us

Before you go...

30% discount - just $25.86 for all 4 writing ebooks.

Copyright © 2022- IELTSbuddy All Rights Reserved

IELTS is a registered trademark of University of Cambridge, the British Council, and IDP Education Australia. This site and its owners are not affiliated, approved or endorsed by the University of Cambridge ESOL, the British Council, and IDP Education Australia.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Overpopulation — Education’s Impact on Overpopulation: Strategies and Perceptions

Education's Impact on Overpopulation: Strategies and Perceptions

• Categories: Overpopulation

About this sample

Words: 746 |

Published: Mar 25, 2024

Words: 746 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, role of education in population control efforts, impacts of education on public perception and behavior, strategies for effective education on overpopulation.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 602 words

4 pages / 1781 words

3 pages / 1510 words

2 pages / 1132 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Overpopulation

Overpopulation poses a significant threat to the sustainability of the planet. To address this challenge comprehensively, an interdisciplinary approach is required. By incorporating insights from sociology, economics, [...]

This essay has explored the various dimensions of the relationship between colonialism, overpopulation, and resource allocation. By examining the historical context, political dynamics, socioeconomic factors, and postcolonial [...]

Cultural norms surrounding family size and childbearing have a profound impact on population growth. Gender norms, religious beliefs, economic factors, educational attainment, and government policies all interact to shape [...]

Living in overcrowded environments can have profound psychological effects on individuals and society at large. The impacts range from increased stress and anxiety to reduced social cohesion and impaired cognitive functioning. [...]

Overpopulated regions face numerous health challenges, including limited access to healthcare services, the spread of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and mental health issues. To address these challenges, a multi-faceted [...]

In conclusion, the cultural responses to overpopulation vary significantly across diverse societies. Western cultures often prioritize technological and economic solutions, focusing on innovation and economic development. [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples

Looking for interesting overpopulation topics for an essay or research paper? The issue is hot and definitely worth writing about!

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics to Write About
• 🏆 Best Essay
• 📌 Most Interesting Topics to Write about
• 👍 Research Questions & Topics

Here we’ve gathered a list of overpopulation essay examples, title ideas, and research questions related to the field. Get inspired with us!

🔝 Top 10 Overpopulation Topics to Write About

• Population dynamics in the world
• The role of medical advancements in human overpopulation
• Overpopulation: causes and effects
• Overpopulation and poverty: the correlation
• Does overpopulation threaten democracy?
• Social conflict and population growth: is there a connection?
• Overpopulation and pandemics today
• Population growth and human impact on environment
• Do we need to fight overpopulation?
• Human population planning

🏆 Best Overpopulation Essay

• Overpopulation: Causes, Effects and Consequences The primary objective is to highlight the deplorable consequences of overpopulation and thereby persuade people not to overpopulate. In the past, poor people gave birth to a lot of children to make up for high […]
• Impacts of Overpopulation on the Environment Other primary causes of deforestation are construction of roads and residential houses to cater for the increasing population. As the natural habitats are destroyed, many wildlife species have been displaced and many died due to […]
• Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions Advances in industry and production provide clothes and items for the growing population to use, thus creating and maintaining a higher standard of living.
• Overpopulation and Limit on Number of Children Another supporting factor of limiting the number of children is that it allows for more resources to be dedicated to each child both within microenvironments of the family and the macro considerations of the national […]
• Human Population and the Environment The fertility rate of a given species will depend on the life history characteristics of the species such as the number of reproductive periods in the lifetime of the species and the number of offspring […]
• Overpopulation and Homelessness in the Modern World According to the United Nations, more than half of the population resides in urban areas, making the problem of homelessness visible: cities cannot keep up with the high demand for housing, resulting in people living […]
• Overpopulation Benefits With this in mind, this paper shall set out to evaluate the impacts of overpopulation to the political, cultural, anthropological and economical perspectives to various economies and societies.
• How Overpopulation Affects Our Economy These are: population dynamics and the demographic concept, reasons for the increase in the size of the population, effects of overpopulation in the economy, food production per capita index, lower national income, increasing burden on […]
• Overpopulation Effects on the Environment In comparison to the population in 2000, the population in 2050 is predicted to rise by 47 percent. The aim of this research is to describe the effects of overpopulation on land, air, and food […]
• The Problem of Overpopulation The purpose of this paper is to examine the causes and effects of overpopulation, potential threats to society, and the ecosystem, as well as the ways to overcome the problem.
• Utilitarian View on Overpopulation and Life Quality Despite the various foundations of utilitarianism, it involves the association of actions based on the good will of the majority, hence the subjective nature to individualized domain.
• Global Issues, Climate Justice, and Human Overpopulation On the one hand, globalization has many positive aspects: the mutual enrichment of the world community, the exchange of best practices, and the availability of goods.
• The Issue of Overpopulation and Human Population Growth Control The consequences of overpopulation include the depletion of natural resources and climate change which have hindered the conservation of natural resources such as water and animals.
• Overpopulation: Is the Small World Getting Smaller? Nevertheless, despite the legitimacy of the concerns raised over the slow availability of numerous resources and the seemingly drastic and steep increase in the number of people worldwide, the issue of overpopulation is likely to […]
• Managing Overpopulation in India and Caused Problems The death of the aged reduces the population by 10. Employment to the youth reduces poverty.
• Overpopulation and Food Production Problem Therefore, the issue explored in this paper is the decrease of Earth’s natural resources and capacity to produce food re decreasing, while the problem of hunger remains and the population continues to increase. 3% of […]
• Problem of Overpopulation: Proenvironmental Concerns It is necessary to find the ways to solve future problems as the situation is likely to worsen over time. The mentioned quotes prove that it is possible to correct people’s thinking about overpopulation and […]
• Human Overpopulation and Its Global Impact Overpopulation presents a huge threat to the future of the planet, as the resources of the Earth seem to be at the breaking point because of their overexploitation caused by enormous rates of population increase.
• The Problem of Overpopulation and How to Fix It It can be stated the confidence that the solution to this global challenge is the primary duty of present and future generations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the overpopulation phenomenon and propose […]
• The Issue of the Overpopulation Particularly, the proponents of fertility control support their position by the fact that the degrading environment is no longer able to provide for the needs of so many people, and with the duration of time […]
• Environmental Problems From Human Overpopulation The significant movement of the population to the suburbs, coupled with economic prosperity and the technological improvement that made it possible, began to take its toll.
• Birth Control Against Overpopulation Based on the information presented, it can be seen that the current growth of the human population is unsustainable in the long run due to the finite resources on the planet.
• The Impact of Overpopulation on the Global Environment In support of the motion that the global population is too large and that the United States and other industrialized countries should support active measures to control population growth in the developing world, it is […]
• Prison in the USA: Solutions to Reducing Overpopulation First of all, it is necessary to improve the justice system which is the reason of overpopulation in prisons. Secondly, it is necessary to rethink the life of inmates in prison.
• Overpopulation Challenges in China The population crisis in China has become a global issue, owing to the numerous contributions that the country makes towards the activities of the international community.
• Overpopulation as a Challenge to Management’s Ethos It is based on this that when it comes to the threat of overpopulation as a challenge to management’s ethos of mass-production and mass-consumption, the problem lies in the fact that the ethos of companies […]
• The Challenges of Overpopulation: Vertical Cities The design of the building assumes that the structure will have a longer and sustainable life as compared to the degrading city and surroundings.
• The Problem of Global Overpopulation Insights gained from the chapters reveal that the main reason behind the problem of resource overconsumption which threatens the very future of the planet is the rampant overpopulation of humanity which threatens to drain the […]

📌 Most Interesting Overpopulation Topics to Write about

• The Effects Of Human Overpopulation On The Environment
• The Threat Of Terrorism And Overpopulation Concerns
• A Discussion on the Effects of Global Warming and Overpopulation in the World
• The Population of Our Planet and the Issue of the Overpopulation
• The View On Overpopulation: Looking Deeper Into The Hardinian Taboo
• The Growth Population and Problem of Overpopulation During the 20th Century
• The Effects of Overpopulation on the Economy of China
• Pet Overpopulation: Cause And Effect Of Homeless Pets
• The Growing Concerns Regarding the Overpopulation of the World Amid Limited Resources
• Thomas Malthus Overpopulation Theory
• The Importance of Slowing Down the Environmental Consequences of Overpopulation
• The Enviromnetal Degradation as a Result of Overpopulation
• A Comparison of the Insights on Overpopulation in the Media
• Problems Created By Overpopulation Population Growth World
• The United States: Future Contributions to Overpopulation
• The Growing Concerns over Global Overpopulation Relative to the Depleting Resources
• Why the Problem of Overpopulation is a Serious Problem Today
• The World Fastest Gowing Problems: Overpopulation
• Pet Overpopulation: Negative Effects and Prevention
• The Issue of Overpopulation and the Main Reasons Why Capital Cities Become Overpopulated

👍 Overpopulation Research Questions & Topics

• The Cause, Effect, and Solution to Overpopulation in the Philippines
• A Description of the Problem of Overpopulation of Cats in the United States
• The Struggle of Overpopulation: China’s Fight Against Numbers
• We Must Stop Overpopulation and Pollution of Our Environment
• An Analysis of the Big Concern and the Growth and the Overpopulation of Our Planet
• An Overview of the Natural Beauty and the Right to Decent, the Issues of Overpopulation
• An Analysis of Overpopulation and Population Growth
• Poverty Is Not Caused by Overpopulation, Overpopulation Is Caused by Poverty
• The Great Human Tumor : Earth ‘s Human Overpopulation Crisis
• Population Control Measures And Control Overpopulation
• The Cause and Effects of Pet Overpopulation
• An Analysis of the Environmental Degradation as a Result of Overpopulation
• Sociology: Overpopulation and Population Growth
• An Argument in Favor of Stopping the Environmental Problem of Overpopulation
• An Analysis of the Theme of Overpopulation in Population Bomb by Ehrlich
• The Decline of Environmental Conditions Due to Human Overpopulation
• Overpopulation: Unemployment and Possible Solutions
• Prison Alternatives as Possible Solutions to Controlling Overpopulation in American Prisons
• The Worsening Problem of Earth’s Overpopulation
• The Negative Impact of Overpopulation on the World
• Famine Essay Titles
• Ethnographic Paper Topics
• Homelessness Questions
• Pandemic Ideas
• Urbanization Ideas
• Poverty Essay Titles
• Macroeconomics Topics
• Unemployment Essay Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, October 26). 80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/overpopulation-essay-examples/

"80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples." IvyPanda , 26 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/overpopulation-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples'. 26 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples." October 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/overpopulation-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples." October 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/overpopulation-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "80 Overpopulation Topics & Essay Examples." October 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/overpopulation-essay-examples/.

Commentary | Colin Fleming: Adults can also embrace a ‘back…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Clarence Page

Commentary | Colin Fleming: Adults can also embrace a ‘back to school’ attitude

Most of us eventually leave school behind, but I have long believed that the adult who lives life best starts a form of school again and again, and the early days of a fresh new school year for children can be a perfect reminder. 

Recently, I was paid a visit here in Boston by my two nieces, ages 4 and 8, and my nephew, who is 10, from Chicago. We did various Boston activities — Freedom Trail! — and we had chats. Like about the upcoming school year. 

Neither of the two older kids were pleased with the teachers they’d been assigned. They were said to not be fun. Foreboding reputations preceded each of them. 

“Children,” I said, doing my best to make myself sound like some wise man on a hill and also keep things light, “none of us will ever get anywhere with attitudes like these. Let me tell you about a ‘mean’ teacher I had,” at which point I told them about Ms. Ferris. 

She was my third grade teacher. In first grade, I was a model citizen — dare I say, a paragon of behavior. There was a boy in my class from straitened circumstances. Our teacher would give him money out of her own pocket so that he could have something to eat. I’d be assigned to walk with him to the cafe across the street. These were different times. But my point is, I was trusted. 

Come the next year, you’d think I was Marlon Brando in “ The Wild One .” Problem child. My teacher was Ms. Pucci. Everyone raved about her. Best pedagogue in the land. 

Every day, though, I was in trouble. No recess for me. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I thought I was the same kid. I asked Ms. Pucci what I could do better. She answered, “Colin, you give me cold pricklies, and I want warm fuzzies.” 

Ugh. This lady. What are you going to do? 

I got through that year and then learned that my teacher for third grade was to be the dreaded Ms. Ferris, who was talked about like she was the Wicked Witch of the West. I half-expected her to be a tint of green. Happiness went to die in Ms. Ferris’ class. I figured, OK, at least she’s not Pucci. I’ll take my chances. 

That was my attitude going in. Ms. Ferris was spoken about like she was 108, but she was probably 34. She had us write stories. She encouraged our imaginations. I wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more. Every day I wrote a story. 

And each morning I’d share it with Ms. Ferris. Sometimes I wouldn’t even go out for recess, and I was a sporty kid. I’d stay inside, and we’d talk about writing and books. One day, Ms. Ferris said to me, “You have an imagination that other people don’t. It’s a gift. Let it take you places.” 

She wasn’t just the best teacher I ever had; she was one of the most important people who has ever been in my life. She helped introduce me, to me. 

My niece and nephew, both agog, swore to enter the school year with open minds. Because you don’t know until you know. Often, we think we know before we do, and then we never know at all. 

So while the days of a crisp apple in your lunch bag and the smell of freshly sharpened pencils may be behind you, they’re also in front of you in a different manner. We’re always free to have the right attitude that allows us to learn. It’s funny that we think that’s a kid thing. Just as it’s ironic that we must grow up and continue to grow by being, at least in part, our own teachers. 

I think about Ms. Ferris often as I commit myself to learning things that I didn’t know the day before. The classroom abounds. It’s not solely something in a building or back in your past. ‘Tis the season to be reminded of what it can do for you. Don’t rob yourself of what that means. 

The bus awaits, children. And for you adults as well.

Colin Fleming is the author of “Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,” an entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected] .

More in Commentary

Commentary | Stephen J. Lyons: By chipping in a measly $1,000, I can make a difference in this election!

Commentary | Researchers: How to fight racial segregation? End exclusionary zoning in Illinois.

Commentary | Scott W. Patton: My brother’s grave is not a campaign trail

Commentary | Elizabeth Shackelford: Brazil takes on Elon Musk in an effort to regulate a weapon of mass disinformation

Trending nationally.

• 2 San Diego CBP agents accused of working with cartel, allowing drugs through inspection lanes
• Massachusetts store banned from taking SNAP benefits after ‘irregular transactions’ loses federal appeals case
• First snow of the season falls on Colorado mountains — including several ski areas
• Georgia high school shooting suspect was obsessed with prior school shootings
• As DeSantis fears ‘putrid’ pot smell, Trump says Amendment 3 could be ‘very good’

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Blaming a Parent, Again, for Failed Gun Laws

By Megan K. Stack

Ms. Stack, a contributing Opinion writer, previously wrote about the case of Jennifer Crumbley, a Michigan parent who was criminally charged after her son shot and killed four students at his school.

If you’re cheering on the charges brought against Colin Gray, the father of our nation’s latest school shooting suspect, it’s worth asking yourself how, exactly, he broke the law.

His 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, has been charged with opening fire at school on Wednesday, killing four people. The assault-style rifle he was accused of using was reportedly a Christmas gift from his dad.

But the Grays live in Georgia, where giving your son an AR-15-style rifle is not, in itself, a crime. (The laws appear to be stricter about handguns.) Nor does Georgia have a law requiring Mr. Gray to safely lock away his guns. Georgia is notorious for having some of the weakest gun laws in the country.

Mr. Gray rocked back and forth in shackles and prison stripes on Friday morning as the charges against him were read. His son had just been charged with murder for opening fire at Apalachee High School, killing two students and two teachers. Next came the charges against the white-haired Mr. Gray, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for allowing his son access to the gun even though, prosecutors say, Mr. Gray knew the boy was a threat to himself and others.

Now father and son are both sitting in jail.

The United States, desperate to stop mass shootings, has been seized by an increasing zeal to prosecute parents. Jennifer and James Crumbley, convicted of involuntary manslaughter this year in Michigan after their son’s school shooting, hadn’t broken any gun laws, either. Prosecutors introduced lurid testimony about their personal lives and hobbies in trying to convince a jury that the Crumbleys were indifferent to their son’s mental health. When they were found guilty, many Americans were pleased.

These prosecutions satisfy the public desire to blame somebody. If you don’t like guns, shaming and punishing the parents feels like landing a righteous blow against gun culture. If you do like guns, it’s a bit like the predictable invocation of mental health by politicians — diverting attention from the weapons themselves and suggesting, instead, that the problem is a few bad apples among the owners. Most insidiously, though, these prosecutions set a murky legal precedent for questionable parenting while camouflaging the abject failure of the federal and state governments to adequately regulate gun safety and stop mass shootings.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• Latest Latest
• The West The West
• Sports Sports
• Opinion Opinion
• Magazine Magazine

Opinion: For Sweden, Russian aggression is a daily worry

By Jay Evensen

For most Americans, the war in Ukraine takes on a distant hue that makes it easy to talk about in broad terms. For some, distance makes the war easier to dismiss.

To many people in Europe, however, it’s a much more vivid and constant worry.

I just returned from another two-week stay in Sweden, my third within the past 12 months. My wife and her siblings are inheriting property there.

Each time I have visited, Ukraine has been top-of-mind in the media and in casual conversation, in ways that conveyed an emotion Americans have a hard time feeling thousands of miles away. This time was no different.

“Russian plot: ‘Gotland target for nuclear weapons’” was a blaring headline less than a week ago in Expressen , a national daily newspaper I bought off the stand. Gotland is Sweden’s largest island, located in the middle of the Baltic Sea. It has been a tourist destination for many years, and it contains some of the nation’s most intriguing archeological finds (in 1999, the world’s largest collection of Viking silver treasure was discovered in a farmer’s field).

It’s also important militarily, and even more so since Sweden joined NATO earlier this year. Sweden has plans to put more advanced missile defense systems and military equipment on the island.

So when Russian military expert Vladimir Prochvatilov wrote on a Russian website that Gotland would become “target number one” for a Russian nuclear attack in the event of a war with NATO, it got people’s attention.

“It would be better for Sweden to remain a neutral country and for the island of Gotland to remain a tourist mecca, a historical museum and a nature reserve, than to become the number one target for Russian nuclear missiles,” Prochvatilov wrote.

More jarringly, he said, “The hopes of the Swedish authorities that in the event of a direct military conflict with Russia this small country will be able to avoid the total destruction of its mainland infrastructure and mass deaths of the population are illusory.”

At the start of such a war, Russia would launch nuclear weapons at Sweden “to prevent NATO cruise missile strikes on ships of the Baltic and Northern Fleets.”

In response to this, Expressen quoted an associate professor of war science at the Norwegian Defense University, who labeled it a scare tactic, or “diplomacy of intimidation,” aimed at getting Sweden to rethink its plans to militarize the island.

Reports such as these are jarring to a nation that managed to escape any conflict in either world war, and that hasn’t fought a war at all since 1814. But they also are evidence that Sweden’s decision to join NATO, and its plans for Gotland, are the right tactics.

Russia is clearly concerned. A separate story in Expressen said a Russian TV station had devoted considerable time to the militarization of Aland, a Finnish island not far from Gotland.

But perhaps more jarring than these reports are the recent statements of Sweden’s own government and military leaders.

At a conference earlier this year, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson urged people to prepare to defend themselves “with weapons in hand and our lives on the line.”

The nation’s supreme military commander, Gen. Micael Byden , showed photos of destruction and death in Ukraine that were projected against the backdrop of a snowy Swedish field. He asked, “Do you think this could be Sweden?”

Once again, as in earlier visits, the people I spoke with expressed strong support for Sweden joining NATO.

They also expressed worries over whether Americans, and especially politicians, were as committed to keeping Europe free as they are.

On that score, recent opinion polls, such as one by the University of Maryland and SSRS, showed that support for the U.S. staying the course in its support for Ukraine is surprisingly strong. A report on the poll by the Brookings Institution said that, when asked how long the U.S. should continue military aid, 48% said as long as necessary, with another 39% saying one to two years.

When broken out by political persuasion, the poll found 37% of Republicans saying as long as necessary, with 53% saying one to two years.

This, despite statements by former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance in opposition to further military aid.

For those who inevitably will ask, Sweden already spends 2.2% of its annual budget on its military, including an air force that has long been one of the strongest in Europe. That qualifies as exceeding the NATO target level of 2%.

Swedes no doubt would be comforted by the poll results. As I said after earlier visits, defense against Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a theoretical exercise for them, as it often seems to be in this country.

From what I know of history, the same could have been said for the way many Americans felt about belligerent countries before the outbreak of World War II.