What are the key causes and effects of world population growth - Essay Example

Today World Population is equal to 7.289 billion people. This is a significant increase compared to the years 10 000 BC (when population was estimated to be in the range of 1-10 million people) and 1 AD (when population was estimated to be in the range of 170-400 million people). The main checkpoint years of population growth for the past 2 000 years are: 1804 (population reached 1 billion people), 1927 (2 billion), 1960 (3 billion), 1974 (4 billion), 1987 (5 billion), 1999 (6 billion), 2012 (7 billion) (Current World Population 2015, World Population.

Historical Estimates of World Population 2013, Population growth (annual %)) n.d.). The average growing rate of population is almost 1.15% per year, the highest rate of 2-2.2% was observed in 1960s. 60% of population live in Asia, 15.5% - in Africa, 10.4% - in Europe, 8.6% - in Latin America and Caribbean islands, 5% - in Northern America, 0.5% - in Oceania (Current World Population 2015). Population growth is caused by different factors. One of the first and most significant factors is decrease of death rates, which is accompanied with increase of birth rates (Overpopulation n.d.).

According to (Current World Population 2015) todays ratio of deaths and births is approximately 1:2.4. Ability of people to take care of themselves and provide themselves and their children with food and nutrients led to constant increase of population. Improved medical treatment and facilities contribute to decrease of death rates and thus to increase of the world population. Medical research and improvements made new medicine and treatment available to population, decreased the number of epidemics due to created vaccines, made some of the fatal in the past diseases easily cured today (Overpopulation n.d.).

Another cause of world population growth, which is related to medical research, but should be examined separately from improved medical treatment, is advances in sterility, fertility and