Ausmumof3 Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 I was thinking about population of Australia versus US today and wondering what factors contribute to the US having a much higher population. settlement was earlier so that could be one factor. Openness to immigration? Resources available (water scarcity?). Distance to travel to get here? Birth rate? Anyway, that’s just my random question for the day. Will we have a population of 350 million in 100 years? Scary thought! When my Dad was born it was 9million and now it’s in the twenties so more than doubled over two/three generations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in Australia Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Habitability Most of the population here hugs the coastal areas.. The interior isn't so habitable 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 A lot of our population growth in the US comes from immigration. Australia isn't easily accessible. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Adding that accessibility was particularly low prior to travel innovations in the past century or so, and even now there are zero land routes and you don't have a lot of nearby neighbors even by sea. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa Louise Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Geography? We can't fill up our middle. Almost everyone (population speaking) is crammed in along the coast. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa Louise Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 But also yeah, an island. Immigration is tightly controlled. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in Australia Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Why have a huge population anyway. It is pretty good the way it is 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa Louise Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 We can't sustain a huge population. We don't have the physical resources (water/liveable land). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Or if we have the physical resources, they aren't managed well enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pam in CT Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 I think it is, overwhelmingly, water. 11 hours ago, maize said: A lot of our population growth in the US comes from immigration. Australia isn't easily accessible. This is true, but throughout the 1700s and 1800s (white) people came here from Europe, despite at-the-time similarly dire barriers to accessibility, because of the promise of free or nearly-free habitable land. Canada was similarly hard to get to from Europe, and similarly attractive in terms of political and religious freedom; but vastly fewer Europeans went there because (comparative to the US) much less of the land there was habitable. As climate change accelerates, which countries (and which regions within countries) has adequate water is going to determine a very.great.deal. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 I agree with others that this is down to resources and accessibility. Even if you look at pre-Western contact population estimates, the upper end of Australia's is about 1 million people while the upper end of North America's is more like 18 million people. These are just estimates based on data modeling and anthropologists, but again, resources. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Estimation of pre-1788 Indigenous Australian populations may still be based on the fallacy that they did not engage in agriculture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 The population growth rate in Australia has exceeded the population growth rate in the US in the past 60 years. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pam in CT Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 30 minutes ago, Bootsie said: The population growth rate in Australia has exceeded the population growth rate in the US in the past 60 years. That is interesting, TY. Comparatively high growth rates off of a comparatively much-lower base can sometimes amount just to noise. But that's a nice long sustained run of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 Resources are definitely a huge factor. We have portions of the US that are very arid and lack the resources to support large populations. They just don't make up as large a percentage of our landmass as do similar regions in Australia. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wintermom Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 19 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said: Habitability Most of the population here hugs the coastal areas.. The interior isn't so habitable Similar issue with Canada. We have lots of space, lots of water, lots of natural resources, and access to three oceans (though the arctic ocean is more limited access), BUT a lot of the space is very cold. Other countries that are as far north as Canada don't have the huge inland spaces that get very cold without the influence of the oceans to keep the temps moderate. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa Louise Posted September 11, 2023 Share Posted September 11, 2023 It's kind of weird that despite not having much of an interior for people to move to, we keep cramming people in along the coast. The big cities are at tipping point (already tipping over?) in terms of population/adequate infrastructure. I'd hate to add in competition for water. Idk. I don't understand enough about the topic to discuss. It just seems as if there should be a discussion at some point about how to balance pop growth with the available resources. Something is going wrong somewhere. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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