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Essay on World Population

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World Population
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Population causes a heated debate among many people. The world's population has exceeded 6.5 billion and continues to increase about another 76 million each year. The three most populated countries are China, India, and the United States. Scientists have become worried that the population will double within the next 50 years, exceeding 12 billion people. With scarce natural resources and the strain that a doubling in population will cause on food availability, people become more wary about population control. What is population control? Population Control is the practice of limiting population increase, usually by reducing the birth rate (www.wikipedia.org).

The first country to adopt a …show more content…

Samuel states in his article, "The Development of India's Policy of Population Control": "This policy has not yet received the attention merited by its importance for India's development."

China leads India in population by about 2 million people, putting China at the top of the list with 1.3 billion people, roughly 20 per cent of the world's population (www.wikipedia.org). What has China done in the effort to slow the ever growing population? In 1979, China introduced a policy limiting one child per family. This was unprecedented. In 1986, the limit increased to two children per family, as long as the family was non-Han. (Han is the ethnic majority in China). Some rural Han families were also allowed to have two children, as long as the firstborn child was a female. The goal in doing this was to limit the population to below 1.37 billion by the year 2010. Some families refused to adhere to the family limitation policies. For example, they sabotaged government mandated contraceptives and paid doctors to claim to have performed abortions.

It has been 28 years since the policy was set, and there have been some gender fluctuation within the Chinese population. At first, the Chinese families only wanted male children in order to carry on the family name and honor. Many families with daughters born wanted abortions or simply killed the females after birth. In 1995, 1,166 male children were born for every

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