Almost all of the world’s rapid population growth, about 99 percent, is happening in poor, less developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Many sociologists speculate that this population growth is due to a lack of education and practice in birth control methods in these regions.
About 4.9 billion of the world’s 6.1 billion people, or about five of every six people on the planet, live in those areas.
An important example of mandated population control is People’s Republic of China’s one-child policy, in which having more than one child is made extremely unattractive.
Due to medical advances and an increase in agricultural productivity, the rate of population growth in the last 50 years have seen an even more rapid increase.
