INTRODUCTION

Population in human biology, the whole number of inhabitants occupying an area (such as a
country or the world) and continually being modified by increases (births and immigrations) and
losses (deaths and emigrations). As with any biological population, the size of a human
population is limited by the supply of food, the effect of diseases, and other environmental
factors. Human populations are further affected by social customs governing reproduction and
by the technological developments, especially in medicine and public health, that have reduced
mortality and extended the life span.

Few aspects of human societies are as fundamental as the size, composition, and rate of change
of their populations. Such factors affect economic prosperity, health, education, family
structure, crime patterns, language, culture—indeed, virtually every aspect of human society is
touched upon by population trends.

As the world’s population rises and demands more access to resources, the issues associated
with the commons become more severe.

The study of human populations is called demography—a discipline with intellectual origins
stretching back to the 18th century, when it was first recognized that human mortality could be
examined as a phenomenon with statistical regularities. Demography casts a multidisciplinary
net, drawing insights from economics, sociology, statistics, medicine, biology, anthropology,
and history. Its chronological sweep is lengthy: limited demographic evidence for many
centuries into the past, and reliable data for several hundred years are available for many
regions. The present understanding of demography makes it possible to project (with caution)
population changes several decades into the future. In demographics, the world population is
the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have exceeded 7.9 billion
people as of November 2021. It took over 2 million years of human prehistory and history for
the world's population to reach 1 billion and only 200 years more to grow to 7 billion.

The global population is still increasing, but there is significant uncertainty about its long-term
trajectory due to changing rates of fertility and mortality.The UN Department of Economics and
Social Affairs projects between 9–10 billion people by 2050, and gives an 80% confidence
interval of 10–12 billion by the end of the 21st century While Other demographers predict that
world population will begin to decline in the second half of the 21st century.

Human population refers to the number of people living in a particular area, from a village to
the world as a whole. A secondary meaning of population is the inhabitants themselves, but in
most uses population means numbers.

No one knows the population of the earliest humans, but there may have been only a few tens
of thousands of individuals when the species Homo sapiens first emerged 200,000 years ago.
Today more than 6 billion human beings inhabit the earth. Three-fifths of them live in one
continent, Asia, with the rest occupying every continent except Antarctica.

The overwhelming bulk of human population growth has occurred since the Industrial
Revolution began, more than half since 1950. All but a small percentage of the roughly 80
million people added to world population each year live in the world's developing countries,
which are home to 80 percent of humanity and more than 95 percent of world population
growth. In Europe and Japan, small average family size and relatively modest immigration levels
are leading to a leveling of, and even decreases in, population. In the United States, Canada,
and Australia, slightly larger families and higher levels of immigration make for continued
population growth.

World population grows because births significantly outpace deaths on average. This imbalance
occurs not because women are having more children than they once did—quite the reverse—
but because improved sanitation and health mean that many more children than in the past
survive to become parents themselves. Human reproduction is such a success story that some
analysts believe that today's large and ever-increasing population growth threatens the earth's
support systems and contributes to global poverty.

Debate on this question has raged since at least the 1800s. Some economists and other social
scientists argue that higher populations provide more human resources for solving problems
and producing wealth. Most physical and biological scientists, by contrast, argue that key
natural resources—fresh water, cropland, forests, and fisheries, for example—are increasingly
strained by burgeoning human demands. Rising natural resource consumption by individuals
also boosts these demands. The long-term growth of human population clearly has been an
especially significant factor in human-induced climate change, species extinction, the loss of
forests, and other environmental problems. But scientists and other analysts have been unable
to agree on population's exact role in environmental change. Many other factors, from
consumption patterns to government policies to the unequal distribution of power and wealth,
also influence the environment.

One clear trend in human population is that its growth is slowing down. Women and men
increasingly want to have later pregnancies and smaller families than did their own parents.
Governments increasingly provide the health services that allow couples to plan their families.
For some countries, this trend raises questions about how societies will cope with lower
proportions of young and working people. For the world as a whole, however, births are likely
to outnumber deaths for decades to come, and human population will continue to grow.

BASIC COMPONENTS OF POPULATION CHANGE

At its most basic level, the components of population change are few indeed. A closed
population (that is, one in which immigration and emigration do not occur) can change
according to the following simple equation: the population (closed) at the end of an interval
equals the population at the beginning of the interval, plus births during the interval, minus
deaths during the interval. In other words, only addition by births and reduction by deaths can
change a closed population.

Populations of nations, regions, continents, islands, or cities, however, are rarely closed in the
same way. If the assumption of a closed population is relaxed, in- and out-migration can
increase and decrease population size in the same way as do births and deaths; thus, the
population (open) at the end of an interval equals the population at the beginning of the
interval, plus births during the interval, minus deaths, plus in-migrants, minus out-migrants.
Hence the study of demographic change requires knowledge of fertility (births), mortality
(deaths), and migration. These, in turn, affect not only population size and growth rates but
also the composition of the population in terms of such attributes as sex, age, ethnic or racial
composition, and geographic distribution.

BASICS FACTORS INFLUENCING POPULATION IN YOUR NIGERIA.

Why Nigeria Population is increasing rapidly, among many other factors causing unprecedented
growth of population in Nigeria is ;

1. BIRTH RATE: BIRTH rate and this has affected greatly the growth rate of the population.
According to 2006 Population Census, the growth rate was 3.02 . This shows that
Nigerian population will double in less than 22 years.
There are many factors that have generated increase in birth rate. One of them is
improved medical services and facilities. Compare to many decades ago, there are
better though not adequate medical services and facilities. Better drugs and
immunization services which have reduced greatly infant, child, maternal and other
forms of mortality and consequently high birth rate.
2. MARRIAGE: Another factor is early marriage most especially in the northern part of
Nigeria. Early marriage tend to lead to high birth rate because women will have
opportunity of having many children due to long child bearing/reproductive years while
postponement of marriage because of educational aspirations will reduce birth rate.
3. SOCAIL STATUS: Another factor though not significant is the increase in material well
being of some families. When people are materially well off, they give little thought to
the number of children to have. Wealth has encouraged many people to have large
families and thus result to high birth rate. Moreover, old age security also encourages
people to have large families. People want to have many children base on the fact that
these children would provide for them when they are old and cannot engage in
productive activities again. They believe the more the children the more the guarantee
 of better life at old ages. They strife and try to have more and more children. In Nigeria,
religions, superstitions and customs have encouraged population growth. All these
favour large families and discourage the practice of family planning. Many religions and
customs also allow polygyny. For instance, Islam favours polygyny and allows men to
have up to four wives each.
4. DEATH RATE: Death rate is also worth mentioning as a factor in population growth in
Nigeria. Many of the factors mentioned above can also be held responsible for low
death rate that is generating increase in population growth. Factors that affect death
rate include improvement in medicine, dietary standard, hygiene, increase in the levels
of standard of living and literacy etc. They are part of the reasons for the decline in
mortality or death rates of infant, child and adult in Nigeria and consequently continue
to generate rapid increase in population.
5. MIGRATION: Migration is clearly a strategy for economic emancipation. Young people
leave in order to get established and pave way for other family members in the cities.
This has far reaching consequences on the family, agriculture, rural communities and
urban centers. The tide will continue for as long as disparities exist in between the rural
and urban centers. An effective intervention can be arrived based on a proper
understanding of the development of the problem and the strategies that would
improve living standard in both places. This calls for a systems approach in studying the
trend and then offering solutions to it. migration is the window through which they can
improve their income, have educational opportunities and improve the prospects of
their future generation. As such people move both within the country and across
international borders with the expectation that they will have access to better
opportunities in the destination location in order to benefit themselves, their immediate
families and communities. The movement from one part of a country to another for
example from a hamlet to a village and later from a village to a town is the usually the
start and the characteristic patter of migrating. One moves to a place considered to be
better or to have more opportunities.
Other factors that influence the population of Nigeria includes the followings
 1. Political. The government doesn’t provide enough facilities to control the number of
people. The population keeps growing, even despite special programs that were
developed to make people aware about family planning.
2. Lack of knowledge about family planning. Illiteracy, strict customs and lack of knowledge
on how to prevent pregnancy or build the right family efficiently influence the
population.
3. Health. Nigeria belongs to those countries, for which problems of Malaria and AIDs are
rather common. In some way, families struggle to surviving. Read more:
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Reference

Cohen, Joel E. How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: Norton, 1995.

Mazur, Laurie, ed. Beyond the Numbers: A Reader on Population, Consumption, and the
Environment. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995.

Robey, Bryant, et al. "Fertility Decline in Developing Countries." Scientific American 269, no. 6
(December 1993): 60–67.

Read more: http://www.biologyreference.com/Ho-La/Human-Population.html#ixzz7IxgPsATU

Ebigbola, J. A. (1988). A Dilemma in National Population Policy: Evidence from

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