[Spyro7]

Overpopulation is a hard problem. There are complex socioeconomic reasons for why some countries have higher fertility rates than others. This is a heavily studied topic in health economics, but I am unwell right now and do not feel like digging through research papers. Instead, I will point you to a wikipedia article that talks about one (popular with economists) take on overpopulation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

Sorry for the wikipedia link, but it is not a half bad article on the subject and it was easy to find. Basically, this theory suggests that increased income per capita is correlated with a decrease in a country's fertility rate.

There are arguments on both sides regarding the flow of causality, but if you wanted to know what was being done to address the challenge of overpopulation then that article above is a good starting point for your own inquiries.

(Also, just as a side note, it is probably the case that you were down-voted for being off-topic and not due to some overwhelming sentimentality. Maybe if you want to talk about overpopulation you should have written a blog post and posted it up, I bet that would have probably got a much better reception.)

[wisty]

You can subtract death rate from birth rate, and the world looks screwed. For China, this is (13.1 - 7.1) per 1000. For India, it's (21.76 - 6.23) per 1000. So for the world's middle class, that's about 2% population growth per year. Yikes.

But the you realize, that China and India have very few really old people. Now that they have decent medical treatment, the older Chinese and Indians live longer, pushing the population up. But they aren't having any babies, so in the long term we might not be growing like lemmings.

So you look at the fertility rate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territori...

For China, it's 1.54, and it's 2.6 for India. Anything under 2 (plus a bit for the ones who don't reach fertility) means a declining population, in the long term.

[nknight]

And then you leap from the frying pan into the fire: Too many old people relative to the number of young people.

As far as I can tell, "health" isn't keeping up with "life", so we are screwed, just the other way around.

But now we also have to divine the state of robotics and AI, say 100 years out, and my brain begins to strangle itself.

[aymeric]

Thanks.

I didn't think the topic of overpopulation was that far from finding a vaccine to a top disease.

I thoroughly enjoyed the replies I got so far so the few karma points I lost were definitely worth it.