World population

“ The population is here, a billion and three quarters of men, women, and children, and this vast population is increasing on itself by leaps and bounds.
A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going on; yet Europe, whose population a century ago was 170,000,000, has to-day 500,000,000. ”

“ The question of population – of population pressure, of population and human rights – and the links between these related issues and poverty, environment, and development proved to be one of the more difficult concerns with which we had to struggle. ”

“ Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions, for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent. ”

“ The census of the population is found to keep an invariable equality in the sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor of the male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily increased exposure of male life in war, navigation, and other accidents. Remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at somewhat better than the actual creatures: amelioration in nature, which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. The population of the world is a conditional population ”

“ But those convulsions have now ceased, and our population has reached nearly ten millions. A new epoch has arisen; and it becomes us deliberately to contemplate our own actual condition, and the relations which are likely to exist between us and the other parts of the world. The actual state of our population, and the ratio of its progressive increase, when compared with the ratio of the increase of the population of the countries which have hitherto consumed our raw produce, seem, to me, alone to demonstrate the necessity of diverting some portion of our industry from its accustomed channel. ”

“ A GERMAN geographer has estimated that the world contains 1,700 million people, and that they are increasing at the rate of twelve million a year. During each succeeding decade, therefore, provision must be made for feeding a new population greater than the present population of the United States. ”

“ But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low is a matter of little moment. {3219} Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. ”

“ In round numbers the population of the world is about 1,600,000,000, and, according to an estimate by Ravenstein, [48] the maximum population which it will be possible for the earth to maintain is 6000 millions, a number which, if the average rate of increase in 1891 continued, would be reached within 200 years. ”

“ Now our country is not only a very large one, but compared to its vast territorial extent it contains a very small population. If we go on increasing at the present rate, so that a century hence we number four or five hundred millions, our country will be hardly more crowded than China is to-day. ”

“ A continuance of the rate of increase in population which prevailed in the early nineteenth century would have resulted, in the near future of the western world, in an over-population problem as serious as that now confronting China or India. ”

“ We have decided in particular that unlike the civilized community of the immediate past which lived either in sharply-defined towns or agriculturally over a wide country, this population will be distributed in a quite different way, a little more thickly over vast urban regions and a little less thickly over less attractive or less convenient or less industrial parts of the world. ”

“ I do not believe that there is a country in the world where, in proportion to the population, there are so few uninstructed and at the same time so few learned individuals. ”

“ IF any reader of these pages thinks, with a recent writer, that "population is a vast and wandering theme," we shall have no quarrel with him. No doubt the problem has a keener interest in such a country as Great Britain or France, where population approaches capacity or is perhaps beyond the permanent limit of resources. ”

“ The most important limiting condition on the status of human societies is the ratio of the number of their members to the amount of land at their disposal. It is this ratio of population to land which determines what are the possibilities of human development or the limits of what man can attain in civilization and comfort. ”

“ Our hemisphere is more remarkable even for extent of population than for the quantity of land. Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the principal theatre of human history and human civilization.
The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries more contiguous—the entire population of America at the highest computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth part of the whole. ”

“ Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase of the human species? An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to answer this question, and to say, that a foresight of the difficulties attending the rearing of a family, acts as a preventive check; and the actual distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a positive check, to the natural increase of population. ”

“ If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of twenty-five years; and we shall see twenty-eight millions of human beings without the means of support; and before the conclusion of the first century, the population would be one hundred and twelve millions, and the food only sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving seventy-seven millions unprovided for. ”

“ An observing demographer in the first half of the last century thus expressed himself, 'Population does not so much increase because more are born as because fewer die.' Yet the population of nearly every country has increased wonderfully during the past century, and in view of the new conditions of its expansion what a fine commentary upon the advance of modern civilization and the practical efficiency of government this tremendous fact has been! ”

“ They are considered as very correct, and if such tables were general, they would throw great light on the different ways by which population is repressed and prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country. ”

“ When the working members of Section F get hold of a report of the census, or any other document containing the numerical data of Economic and Social Science, they begin by distributing the whole population into groups, according to age, income-tax, education, religious belief, or criminal convictions. The number of individuals is far too great to allow of their tracing the history of each separately, so that, in order to reduce their labor within human limits, they concentrate their attention on a small number of artificial groups. ”

“ In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years.
This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population, yet as the result of actual experience, we will take as our rule, and say, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years or increases in a geometrical ratio. ”

“ So that, in 500 years, there would be more than thirty thousand times as many as at present: and in 1000 years, upwards of a thousand million times as many human beings as at this moment: consequently, one single pair, if suffered to increase without check, would, in 551000 years, increase to more than double the present population of the globe. ”

“ You have been deploring the decrease in the birth-rate in your country, apparently because it places you, as regards population, in an inferior position to other countries, the inhabitants of which may at some time become your enemies. Yet, at the same time, you have told us that a very large number of your people are living in poverty and misery, that the population is too numerous for work to be found for all, and that many, being unable to find a living in their own country, have gone out, or been sent out, to distant lands. ”

“ In every century the total number of men would have increased sixteen-fold; whereas we know that the total number of human beings increases but slowly, and that the increase of population is very different in different countries. ”

“ With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known. ”

“ DENSE POPULATION.—OVER-POPULATION.
The nation's economy attains its full development wherever the greatest number of human beings simultaneously find the fullest satisfaction of their wants.
A dense population is not only a symptom of the existence of great productive forces carried to a high point of utilization ”

“ By this method of calculation every decline in the total number of the people will show an increase in their individual wealth until the maximum national wealth coincides with the complete extinction of the nation! In the second place, it assumes that the "sufficient" population for a country is the maximum number for which it could provide a bare living. ”

“ In the last division of the work, which treats of the future progress of man towards perfection, he says, that comparing, in the different civilized nations of Europe, the actual population with the extent of territory: and observing their cultivation, their industry, their divisions of labour, and their means of subsistence, we shall see that it would be impossible to preserve the same means of subsistence, and, consequently, the same population, without a number of individuals who have no other means of supplying their wants, than their industry. ”

“ Ten years ago, the non-temps will tell you, the population of Earth was one billion, far smaller than it was in the past because of a sensible policy of eugenics. Today the population is somewhat short of a billion, they say, and the census verifies it. ”

“ It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers, that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is a view of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle in the way to any very great future improvement of society. ”

“ It is computed that there are more than eighty millions of inhabitants in our land. This is about one-twentieth part of the entire population of the globe, which, at this time, is calculated at one billion five hundred millions. ”

“ The nation which was peopled by nine millions of men in 1820 now numbers eighty millions—an immense demographic power; in the space of ten years, from 1890 to 1900, this population increased by one-fifth. ”

“ But though improvement may during a certain space of time keep up with, or even surpass, the actual increase of population, it assuredly never comes up to the rate of increase of which population is capable: and nothing could have prevented a general deterioration in the condition of the human race, were it not that population has in fact been restrained. ”

“ Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries are populous, according to the quantity of human food which they produce; and happy according to the liberality with which that food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries ”

“ Whether it is well to rejoice that the population of our planet has grown so fast during the last century, even as the inhabitants of a city rejoice when a decennial census reveals a rapid growth in their city, is a question which may be deemed a branch of the larger one whether life is worth living. ”