Population Growth and Population Explosion

Population growth is a global issue of increasing concern in the global age, although the steady expansion of the world's population throughout civilization has been a matter of great interest for centuries. The rise of population figures is undoubtedly one of the most influential events in the history of humankind, especially the booming period since the mid-18th century. Its consequences generate pressure to deal with major political, social, ecological, and economical [Page 1353]challenges that shape the face of current and future societies, globally and nationally.

Both terms—population growth and population explosion—derive from the realm of demography, also called population studies, that combines elements from social sciences, geography, medicine, and economics. Demography as a specific cross-discipline deals with the study of the size, structure, and distribution of human populations. This includes spatial and temporal changes in response to the birth, migration, aging, and death rates of a defined population. The term demography was first used by Achille Guillard, a Belgian statistician, in 1855.

As one key term, population growth is defined as a positive change in a population's size during a certain period of time resulting from a surplus among births, deaths, and net migration. Concepts to measure population growth are mainly according to the formula:

A population growth or decrease usually is expressed in ratios, indicating the growth as a percentage, whereby 100% represents the population at the start date. The term natural population growth refers to native birth surplus within a given population independent from migration. In this face, the term population explosion is often used to describe a booming growth. Although there is no common definition when speaking of an explosion, this term is historically often applied to the industrializing Europe, contemporarily rather than to developing countries.