Why has the human population increased so much in the last few centuries, although we actually invented effective birth control methods?

Question

Why has the human population increased so much in the last few centuries, although we actually invented effective birth control methods?

In: 211

Answer 1

Humanity hasn’t increased insanely in the last few centuries, it’s increased insanely in the last CENTURY, from 1.6 Billion in 1900 to the current 7.7 Billion.

Simply put: Humans are no longer dying as we used to. Preventing births would imply that human population growth would slow, not increase. The element that caused growths to naturally slow was the fact that life on earth is normally very brutal and humans in particular are not well adapted to survival, especially early on in life. The primary cause of populaiton growth is in fact NOT food (that’s actually a result) but medicine.

From birth we are stunningly likely to not only kill ourselves during the process but kill our mothers (historically 20% of women would die at some point from childbirth alone)The medical practices developed in the mid 1800s started a progression that when combined with succesful germ theory massivey increased the survival rate of new borns and young children.

Further, the development of the antiobiotic in the early 20th century combined with the viral vaccine in the mid 20th century saw yet further normal causes of deaths eliminated.

In short, humans normally die at very high rates when you remove our advanced technology and medicine, and that’s not even taking into account events like war/famine/crime.

Not requested but added: People don’t need to worry too much about population growth. The increased rate of population has already been observed to be stabalizing as the initial generations of “lots of children” generations are now dying off and the current populations have stunningly (destructively so) low birthrates. It needs to be remembered that for a population to remain stable, every woman needs to have at least TWO children survive to have children of their own, which means when you include the normal deaths that occur before that happens, the actual birthrate needs to be HIGHER. The current birthrate of the USA alone is 1.64 children, which means that the population of the USA at the moment is technically in a self-destructive phase…yet more evidence for the fact that the population “Crisis” many golbalists have touted for decades is already stabalizing.