World Population
World population increased from about 1.6 billion people in 1901 to 6.1 billion at the century's end. Some believe that a significant driver of many of the problems of the 20th century was overpopulation. Overpopulation has been a fascination of many, including economic theorist Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus whose "An Essay on the Principal of Population" was first published in 1798. Some demographers have predicted that the population will reach a plateau of 9 to 10 billion around 2100.
Read more about this topic: 20th Century, Developments in Brief
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or population:
“She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)