Overpopulation

Overpopulation indicates a scenario in which the population of a living species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment (the planet Earth). (For a discussion on species other than humans, see the article on animal overpopulation.)

Effects of overpopulation

The world's current agricultural production, if it were distributed evenly, would be sufficient to feed everyone living on the Earth today. However, many critics hold that, in the absence of other measures, simply feeding the world's population well would only make matters worse, natural growth will cause the population to grow to unsustainable levels, and will directly result in famines and deforestation and indirectly in pandemic disease and war.

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Some other characteristics of overpopulation:

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• Child poverty
• Birth rate is high
• Life expectancy is low
• Low level of literacy
• High rate of unemployment in urban areas (leading to social problems)
• Rural people are not gainfully employed (caught in cycle of poverty)
• Insufficient arable land
• Little surplus food
• Poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets)
• GDP per capita is low (under US$765 per annum)
• Many live in unhygienic conditions
• Government is stretched economically
• High crime from people who steal resources to survive
• Mass extinctions of plants and animals as habitat is used for farming and human settlements

Carrying capacity: In ecology, carrying capacity is the measure of an environment, or habitat, to indefinitely sustain the population of a particular species in a steady-state population density....

Ecological niche: In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in an ecosystem. More formally, the niche includes how a population responds to the abundance of its resources and enemies (e. g., by growing when resources are abundant, and predators, parasites and pathogen...

Human population: REDIRECT world population...