preview

Introduction. In Biology, Human Population Growth Is Defined

Better Essays

Introduction In biology, human population growth is defined as the increase of the number of individuals per a population. Human population growth can be affected by several different factors such as life expectancy and fertility rates. Life expectancy and fertility rates are the driving forces behind the growth of human population. Life expectancy refers to the average period in which an individual is expected to live. Fertility refers to the number of children a woman will bear within her lifetime. A factor that greatly affected the human population growth in China was the one child policy. The one child policy was implemented during the 1970s in an attempt to gain to control over China’s rapidly growing population. A policy such as …show more content…

The medium range proposed by the United Nations has been corrected over the years to slightly above what it was projected to be, meaning that the world population has grown more rapidly than first projected (1). Today, China stands as the most populated country containing 1,386,814,594 individuals, making China 18.47 percent of the world’s total population according to the United Nations most recent estimations (3). Although, China seems to have their population under control now, during the 1960s and 1970s China was faced with the issues that arise from overpopulation. In 1979 China housed 25 percent of the world’s population (4). Two thirds of China’s population was under the age of thirty at that time and the baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s were venturing into the procreative phase of their lives (4). Due to the rapid population growth rate that the baby boomers were causing with their own babies made Chinese government take notice. The Chinese government saw it essential to attempt to contain the rapid growing population. The Chinese government responded to this overpopulation problem by implementing the one child policy. The graph below illustrates China’s population of infancy up until the age of 64 in relation to world in the form percent and years (8).
.
The one child policy was aimed at regulating and reducing the size of a Chinese family. The one child policy stated that families must obtain a birth certificate before the child was born (6).

Get Access