Tag Archives: causes

What causes population to increase or decrease?

Demographers – population specialists – have concluded that the total population of the whole world will reach 7 billion on October 30, 2011 and will continue to increase thereafter.

There has been confusion about why the global population is increasing. What is causing an increase is not a rise in fertility but a fall in mortality. In other words, mortality is falling faster than fertility.

There is worry that if the global population continues to grow sooner or later the demand for goods and services will exceed their supply, causing all sorts of problems including famines and war over scarce resources. The relatively easy solution is to stop or reduce drastically population increase. This can be achieved in two ways – increase mortality and/or reduce fertility. Since it is morally wrong to recommend mortality increase, the only alternative is fertility reduction to 2.1 children per couple.

At continental, regional or national levels population increase or decrease is due to the difference between fertility and mortality (natural increase or decrease) and the difference between in-migrants and out-migrants (positive or negative migration). For example, when fertility exceeds mortality and in-migrants exceed out-migrants the population will increase. On the other hand when fertility is lower than mortality and in-migrants are fewer than out-migrants the population will decrease.

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Ugandans need to understand the causes of population growth first

Of late there has been a resurgence of writing and debate about Uganda’s population ‘explosion’ or ‘bomb’ that will destroy development efforts because savings are going into feeding unproductive mouths of children instead of investing in productive enterprises. Increasingly we are witnessing people who are not trained in population much less experienced in this complex subject writing and commenting with confidence like they know more than any other Ugandan or for that matter any other expert. Some of these may have had one day or one week’s seminar in population matters and begin to talk with authority.

Population dynamics are very complex in time and space. We have seen the regrettable results of countries that rushed into reducing population growth rapidly by force or couples that did not want children or just one or two. These countries and their governments are now rushing to reverse the trend. Have you heard of “Conception Day” in one of the developed countries where a national holiday has been declared so that the citizens can stay at home and increase their population? Have you heard of a wide range of incentives that are being offered in developed countries so that their populations can have many children? What I am saying is that rushing into curbing population growth can be costly in the long term.

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