SOC 2280 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Demographic Transition, English Poor Laws, Doubling Time
19 Nov 2013
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Document Summary
The earth"s rapid growing population makes more demands on all kinds of natural resources and increases the amount of waste and pollution. Human populations have the capacity to grow at exponential rates. Took over a million years to reach 1 billion people. Doubling time - the number of years it takes a population to double. Poorer nations tend to have higher doubling times. Thomas malthus essay on population, world"s most influential work on social consequences of population growth. Malthus argued that that human population would increase exponentially, supply of land, food and material resources would increase arithmetically. Instead of limited natural resources and labour causing limits to population, population growth caused resources to be overused and the market of labour to decline. Population growth caused poverty and human misery. Overpopulation would force wages down and with such low wages, landowners and business owners would employ more labour, thus increasing the means of subsistence.
