Population problems are diverse in different places of the world. For example, in many European countries the population is getting older and older. The birth rate is decreasing because lots of young people do not want to have children or prefer to have only one child. On the other side, people are living longer too. During the last ten years, it has been observed that old people are very lonely and often very poor. If people had expected to live so long, they would probably have saved more money for their retirement. In Africa, the problems they will face in the future would be different. There, the population is doubling every twenty-four years and many families continue to have large numbers of children to help on the land.

In contrast, the problem in Asia is not just population growth, but also overcrowding in a lot of cities. Cities are full of people. Traditionally, most people have lived in the countryside, but within the next 25 years, more than 65% will live in cities. Governments in Asia didn’t know this was going to happen, otherwise, they would have tried to provide more work and better education in the countryside so people did not need to move to the cities. This is starting to happen now, but it may be too late. In Latin America, overpopulation is another problem besides poverty and lack of education. Governors are working on birth control to help minimize the number of children and help build more educational facilities.