Population And Population Growth

Is rapid population growth a cause of poverty or is poverty a cause of rapid population growth?

It is a life long argument as to whether rapid population growth is caused by poverty of if poverty is caused by rapid population growth. In this essay I will try to analyse both sides of the argument and form a conclusion.

Many people think that poverty is the cause of rapid population growth, there are many reasons for this. Firstly lack of education is a huge problem. It causes lack of knowledge to improve their life, therefore parents end up having loads of children to work and support their family. The parents believe it is better to have five people bringing in income then one person and by the age of six most children in third world countries are forced to work. By the age of twelve most of these children have repaid their parents the cost of their earliest childhood and from then on they are profitable. Also because of lack of education children and adults in these countries are never taught about the dangers of not using contraception. In most third world countries condoms are not available and even if they were most people can't even afford food let alone condoms. There are no family planning clinics or anything like that where they can get them for free. In some cultures it is against their beliefs to use any kind of contraception. People not using condoms can almost double the birth rate in a country. If you look at these population pyramids, it shows the amount of people in Ethiopia of different age groups in the year 2000.

(Find this population pyramid by searching Ethiopia population pyramid year 2000 into google.)

And here is the population pyramid for England in the year 2000

(Find this population pyramid by searching England population pyramid year 2000 into google.)

Because England is more educated we have learnt to have less babies for economic reasons, so our birth rate is going down. We are a richer country because of it.

However it is also a valid argument that population growth is a cause of poverty. The mathematics of over population started in the stone age. The larger the family, (tribe) the harder it became to find food and clothing for everyone. The more people there where the more people there where to feed and clothe. As a result they would have to split to find more resources, and this would happen again to both tribes. Over time they would slowly multiply and in the end there would be no where for them to go. That is how over population happens. During the development of this situation there would be