The Negative Effects Of Population Growth

Population growth is the increase in the number of people residing in a country over a given period of time. It has been proven that the growth in population is exponential as the numbers have doubles significantly worldwide over the pass decades. On the other hand, improvement in economy, moves at a slower rate in terms of Gross Domestic Product, GDP. Population growth does have a direct impact to the progress of a certain country. Growth in population has two adverse effects to a country’s economic growth and standard of living. One of which is creating a larger pool of workforce that diversifies and increases the amount of knowledge and talent available. This in turn provides an opportunity in the advancement of economy and increases

This could be due to the ‘Stop at two’ campaign being introduced by the government back in 1970s which had been a great success when Singapore was under developed and had a high level of birth rate. The slow growth in population is one of the factors that has help pave the way in allowing the economy in Singapore to prosper. This is because the focus had been shifted to the existing amount of population available to improve the country’s overall infrastructure with reduced pressure of feeding and taking into account extra numbers of people back then. However, the success of the campaign had led to controversial effects to the current future of Singapore as it now faces a decreasing replacement rate of those exiting to those entering the workforce due to the declining birth rate and aging

This is because, there will be an increasing need for more land space to develop more facilities to cater to the growing population as well as more resources would be required to be imported from other countries Singapore to sustain the population. Furthermore, overpopulation would cause overcrowding everywhere as the square metre of space per person will drastically be reduced. Overtime, the growth in Singapore would eventually reach a limit where the country can no longer provide resources to sustain the population causing the infrastructure to decline. In this stage, Singapore would be faced with a similar vicious cycle as India with the exception of having insufficient sources as the land space would have been intensively used preventing possible expansion in business activities to create jobs. Hence, resulting in the decline in economy and lowered standard of