World Population

Past, Present, & Future

World Population: Past, Present, & Future uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate in depth on important aspects of the evolution of world population not well addressed previously. The authors from the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid (Spain), professors Julio A Gonzalo, Manuel Alfonseca, and Félix-Fernando Muñoz, point out that the recent pronounced growth in world population (accompanied by an even more pronounced growth in agricultural production) was due mainly to the increase of life expectancy and not to the (inexistent) growth in fertility rate. Using a "rate equations" approach for the first time, they describe population trends and forecast the possibility of steps up (or down) in population rather than the exponential growth predicted by UN demographers around 1985 and thereafter. This book provides a new perspective that our planet is not overpopulated and could, in fact, house a considerably larger population.

Contents:

• Foreword

• Contents

• Population, the Economy, and the Environment:

  • Introductory Considerations
  • The Earth as a Privileged Planet
  • Mathematical Descriptions of Population Trends
  • World Population Growth: 1900–2010: The UN Data
  • World Economic Expansion: 1945–1990
  • Energy, Population and the Environment

• Is the Earth Overpopulated?:

  • Abortion and Population Control
  • Government Family Planning Now and in the Future
  • The Rhetoric of Population Control: Does the End Justify the Means?

• Rate Equations Approach and the Future of World Population:

  • Using a Rate Equations Approach to Model World Population Trends
  • Prospects of World Population Slow Down
  • Falling Birth Rates and World Population Projections: A Quantitative Discussion (1950–2050)
  • Quantitative Estimates of the Future World Population Decline
  • Malthus's Mistake

Readership: Undergraduates and graduates interested in demography and those who are keen to examine demographic trends, population theories and policy interventions.
Key Features:

• Up-to-date overview of population trends
• New application of the "rate equations" approach in understanding population trends
• Showcase of important works on population issues by Colin Clark, Jacqueline Kasun and Julian Simon, which were previously neglected on ideological grounds