Explain the causes and consequences of the rapid growth in the world's population during the twentieth century.

The causes of the rapid growth in the world’s population are as follows:

• The improvement in medical facilities and hygiene techniques resulted in falling of infant and child mortality rate. Deadly diseases like small pox, malaria and typhoid were brought under control
• The people did not paid attention to population control either due to their incapability to buy contraceptives or ignorance. The Roman Catholic church said that using contraceptives were against their religion so the population in countries like Central and South America doubled in thirty years.
• The tradition in third world countries to have as many as children to combat high infant mortality rate.

Consequences of rapid population growth:

• The increasing populations fuelled the economic development as more labour was available. But it created the problems feeding and educating the population along with the population was turning old due low birth rate and low death rate in European countries.
• Due to rise in population the people residing in rural areas started moving towards towns and cities which were already crowded this can be seen in Third world countries like India. This created new problems of slum.
• Feeding the population became difficult, the effects of green revolution started fading and countries in Africa faced severe food shortages due to drought and civil wars during 1980s and 1990s.
• The focus from economic growth shifted towards providing food, shelter and education of the growing population. Access to health services reduced as expenditure on basic health services reduced and led to the spread widespread epidemics like Meningitis and AIDS in Africa.

Topics: GS-I: World Wars, Cold War and Other Major Events of 20th Century