Managing Rapid Population Growth

Services like healthcare and education can't cope with the rapid population growth, so not everybody has access to them. 

Children have to work to help support their large families, so they miss out on their education. 

There aren't enough houses for everyone, so people are forced to live in makeshift houses in overcrowded settlements. This leads to health problems because the houses aren't always connected to sewers or they don't have access to clean water. 

There are food shortages if the country can't grow or important enough food for the population. 

There aren't enough jobs for the number of people in the country, so unemployment increases. 

There's increased poverty because more people are born into families that are already poor. 

Most of the population is made up of young people so the governement focuses on policies that are important to young people, e.g. education and provision of things like childcare. 

There are fewer older people so the government doesn't have to focus on policies that are important to older people, e.g. pensions. 

The government has to make policies to bring population growth under control, so the social and economic impacts of rapid population don't get any worse. 

Countries need to control rapid population growth and they also need to develop in a way that's sustainable.

This means developing in a way that allows people today to get the things they need, but without stopping people in the future from getting what they need.

On the next few cards are a couple of examples of population policies and how they help to achieve sustainable development. 

Birth control programmes aim to reduce the birth rate.

Some governments do this by having laws about how many children couples are allowed to have. Governments also help couples to plan (and limit) how many children they have by offering free contraception and sex education. 

This helps towards sustainable development because it means the population won't get much bigger. There won't be many more people using up resources today, so there will be some left for future generations. 

Immigration laws aim to control immigraton (people moving to a country to live there permanently). 

Governments can limit the number of people that are allowed to immigrate. They can also be selective about who they let in, e.g letting in fewer people of child-bearing age means there will be fewer immigrants having children. 

This helps towards sustainable development because it slows down population growth rate.