Why has the human population increased so much in the last few centuries, although we actually invented effective birth control methods?
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The life expectancy still grows thanks to the better medicine and healthcare.
Additionally, the birth control is available in the most developed countries where as in third world/developing countries it still either out of reach or outright forbidden.
Probably the biggest contributor is antibiotics and germ theory. The life expectancy estimates of like, 30 years are a bit misleading because they usually include infant mortality, which skews the average. If you manage to live past 5ish, you were likely to live to 60ish. But you were *not* likely to live past 5 years old. Many cultures didn’t (or don’t) name children properly until they are several years old. Sure, your great great grandparents probably had like eight kids, but only three of them may had lived to adulthood.
The introduction of germ theory, antibodies, vaccines – the beginnings of what we would recognize as modern medicine – changed that infant mortality rate *drastically*. In Western countries, you are actually quite likely to live to be at least five.
That’s changing in developing countries, too. Historically, there is a transition period where developing countries get access to modern medicine and the infant mortality drops, but their fertility rate lags behind and they keep having kids as if half of them will die. After a few generations, the county is more industrialized and they have more access to family planning, and the culture changes so that women join the work force and aren’t just baby factories. Fertility drops and more families start just having “replacement” kids, ie: just two.
Right now, a significant chunk of the world is stuck in the transition – namely India and rural China. So the population there is still growing. But the last 200 years or so has seen all the western nations go through that transition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
Over the past century, we’ve made huge strides in agriculture, specifically chemical fertilizers that can significantly increase crop yields. More food means cheaper food, which means less starvation/better nutrition, which (combined with similarly huge advances in medicine) means healthier people and fewer deaths. That makes the population grow rapidly.
Birth control is typically not mandatory, and is not as widely distributed/available as the agricultural benefits and other medical benefits, so its impact will be limited.
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First, I’d point out that reliable, medicine-based birth control has not been available for centuries. In the US, hormone-based birth control pills only became an RX in 1965. And to this day, BCPs are still only available through prescription from a doctor, not over the counter (OTC). In fact, for about 15 years (maybe more) women could not obtain a prescription for BCPs WITHOUT HER HUSBAND’S PERMISSION. Let’s just not think about *single women* trying to get BCPs.
Second, before medicine-based / hormone control BC (the pill, rings, sponges, IUDs, implants, etc), the only other semi-reliable BC was condoms which are centuries old. And it takes the condom-using people to commit to using condoms. Which is not a given.
Third, you are discounting the whole, huge, centuries- (if not millenia) long subjugation of women. I’m not going to explain it all to you (do your own homework) but the fact is, birth control for women and by women has been a struggle to establish since…any attempt by women FOR women to control their own reproduction.
Countries where it is an insult for men to even consider using a condom. Women beaten for asking to use a condom, women *killed* for not only saying No to sex, but not giving birth – or not giving birth to male babies (even though it is the man who supplies the male chromosome).
Check out a few beheadings/banishments/put into asylums, by Kings of Europe and England for their Queens and Mistresses etc due to not producing an heir with the preferred sex bits.
You’ve touched on an issue that is far bigger than ‘Hey we have birth control, what’s the deal?’
Fewer children are dying in infancy due to medical advances.
Adults are living longer due to medical advances.
The human brain is garbage at understanding exponential growth. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem
We’re only built to understand linear growth, but human population is in a terminal exponential curve now.
Flush toilets.
Penicillin.
Cheap power.
It changes the number of people dying young – instead of lots of kids dying from disease and accidents, and then only a small percentage making it to old people, we now have almost all the kids making it to adulthood and becoming old people.
eventually people stop having lots of kids, but that takes anywhere from 40-100 years to catch up.
Kids don’t drop dead like flies anymore.
People used to have huge families not just because of a lack of birth control, but also to offset all the children dying. Once we got better medical care, and food to sustain a higher population, the big family sizes lead to a huge jump in population.
Now with better medical care the population is still growing (more generations alive at a time) but at a alower rate as people are having fewer kids.
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