Contemporary Research
It is generally accepted that overpopulation is aggravated by poverty and gender inequality with consequent unavailability, and lack of knowledge, of contraception. Third world evidence usually bears this theory out. However, first and second world fertility rates, in the Depression era United States, modern Russia, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Estonia and France suggest that these populations are responding inversely to poverty and economic pressures, especially on women. Thus, France is increasing social and women's services, like childcare and parental leave, expecting the policy to stop the aging of its population. Italy is regarded as alleviating overpopulation more rapidly than Sweden as a result of less gender equality and fewer children's services.
Newer research has been done by the U.S. National Security Council, in a study entitled National Security Study Memorandum 200, under the direction of Henry Kissinger in 1974. This report stressed that only 13 countries are projected to account for 47 percent of the world population increase by the year 2050. This, it is argued, (due to its impact on development, food requirements, resources and the environment) adversely affected the welfare and progress of countries concerned. It further argued that this would undermine the stability of countries friendly to the US and therefore harm the "national security" of the US as well.
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study. A more recent study by Pimentel and colleagues (2010) suggests that the Earth can support a population of two billion individuals, but only if all individuals are willing to live at a European standard of living and use natural resources sustainably. These researchers state that reducing population from today's level of over 6.8 billion to the suggested 2 billion would take slightly longer than 100 years if every couple, worldwide, agrees to produce an average of only one child.
Pimentel and Giampietro believe that agricultural crises will develop, but they will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level never experienced before.
Another study has been done by the National Audubon Society which recently released a 16-page document called "Population and Habitat: Making the Connection." In this study, population control is widely supported.
Read more about this topic: Human Population Control
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