Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess the view that overconsumption is now more of a threat than overpopulation to world development

The sociological study of population is called ‘demography’, sociologists believe that it is important to study demographic trends such as those associated with birth and fertility etc. such trends can produce insights into why societies experience social change, for example, overconsumption and what demographic changes have brought about this change. Sociologist Paul Ehrlich studied the figures for birth rates and death rates of developing countries and compared them with food production and malnutrition rates, he concludes that the birth rate ‘must be brought into balance with the death rate or mankind will breed itself into oblivion’. As item A states ‘the developed world consumes 5/6 of the world’s resources and each person in the developed world consumes around 20 times as much as a person in the developing world’, to understand the causes of such figures claimed in item A and the predictions made by Ehrlich, we must look at the demographic causes linked to both population and overconsumption. This essay will assess whether or not overconsumption has in fact become more of a problem than overpopulation to the world’s development and what such sociological views and perspectives support this view, focusing particularly in dependency, modernization and Malthusian views.

Firstly we look at the Malthusian view of population growth as an issue; we need to consider the effects of famine on the developing world and how this is linked to the growth of the world’s population. Sociologist Malthus argues that populations rise more quickly than the world’s ability to feed them; and that such limits on food supply would lead to natural checks on population such as famine and malnutrition, this suggests that the developing