Highlights of the population debate
1. The population debate has been with us for a very long time dating as far back as classical Greece and Rome. It has evolved overtime and now includes population explosion and implosion as well as women’s reproductive health and rights.
2. At the global level population dynamics is a function of changes in births and deaths. However, at the national level (e.g. Uganda) total population is a function of births – deaths + in-migrants – out-migrants.
3. The world population change has gone through three phases: the first phase occurred in the Neolithic Revolution caused by shifts from nomadic hunter/gatherer communities to crop production and animal domestication making more food available to feed more mouths in settled communities and reduced deaths; the second phase from the Industrial Revolution that started around 1750. Improved transport systems and cold storage facilities connected food surplus to deficit regions and public health including general hygiene, safe drinking water and sanitation that lowered mortality; the third phase began in the late 1950s and is characterized by medical and technological advances that too lowered death rate. Thus, all these phases from the first through the third have one thing in common: they saved lives and increased life expectancy. Thus, during these three phases the increase in population was not because couples were having more babies. It is because people were living longer due to a reduction in mortality.