Population Explosion

The term population is commonly used in the realm of statistics. For a statistician, the term refers to a collection of items. Demographers use the term similarly to refer to the collections of persons alive at specified points in time that meet certain criteria. This definition of the term population connotes the specification of various conditions when referring to a population of a given nation including the specific date or year, place, and the types of individuals who are legal residents, or any person who resides within the boundaries of the nation. At a different level of understanding, the term population is also used to mean a different kind of collectivity, one that persists through time even though its members are continuously changing. From this perspective, the collectivity of an aggregate of persons, those who have ever lived, and those who are not yet even born to live, within a boundary of a given nation represent the concept and notion of a population.

Since the second half of the 20th century, and at the advent of the third millennium, the expression “population explosion” has been associated with the state of the unprecedented rate of growth of the number of humans inhabiting the Earth. A high rate of growth that was witnessed during the 19th century in Europe was considered as an opportunity in terms of a larger labor force and a wider market for commerce. A similar rate of population growth toward the end of the 20th century, however, is viewed as problematic with the rise of consciousness of the limits of the benefits of growth. The optimists, however, challenge this view with the notion that population growth, rather than problematic, has been a condition for the economic development humankind has witnessed.