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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 521
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 521 – PASSAGE – 2
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 521
READING PASSAGE – 2
Effects of changes in world population
A. Human fertility rates around the world are dropping for a variety of complex reasons. While the population itself continues to increase, the rate of increase is slowing, and sometime in the next 80 years, world population will peak somewhere in the vicinity of nine billion before contracting. That raises an important question: is population contraction a bad thing? Some think not. There is a school of thought that argues that smaller populations are good.
Population control proponents claim variously that (1) we do not have the food to sustain higher populations; (2) our planet already suffers from overcrowding; (3) the environmental impact of increased populations will bring catastrophe either through pollution or consumption of finite natural resources; or in contrast, they argue decreased populations will lead to higher wages and a better quality of life as available supplies exceed reduced demands. These arguments seem reasonable at first, but do not withstand scrutiny.
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B. Let’s start with food. The worry about mass starvation is a remnant of Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb. Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University in California, wrote that in the face of expanding populations, ‘the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.’ As Ehrlich himself now admits, this prediction proved faulty. Instead, the availability of food has greatly increased, even with a growing population.
Demographer Philip Longman notes that food shortages have become ‘a political problem, related to fair distribution, not an issue of inadequate supply’. How did this happen? In 1965, Danish economist Ester Boserup proposed that population increase fosters agricultural innovation, which in turn increases production. Her theories have been borne out by events, which show that some areas of the world may lack sufficient supplies while the world has an overall surplus.
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C. What about overcrowding? Everywhere you go today, you find traffic jams and sprawl, with people packed into crowded places. But this is a problem of density, not population. There’s plenty of land available out there. The problem is that people who used to live in the rural areas have relocated to cities. This massive migration into cities has caused urbanization, which is different from overpopulation, and the problems associated with this include air pollution, lower wages, and limited access to healthcare and educational opportunities.
D. Environmental concerns are more interesting, but such end-of-the-world warnings are not new. Global warming and the fact that the Earth has only finite amounts of natural resources that we will surely deplete, are the two main concerns of environmentalists. This, too, is an argument we have heard before. As Massimo Livi-Bacci, Professor of Demography at the University of Florence, Italy, explains in his Concise History of World Population, more than 100 years ago economists ‘feared that coal supplies would he exhausted, and about 30 years ago the Club of Rome made similar predictions regarding other natural resources’.
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Instead, innovation stepped in to provide greater efficiency. For instance, in the America of 1850, you needed an average of 4.6 tons of petroleum equivalent to produce $1,000 of goods and services. By 1950, you needed only 1.8 tons, and by 1978, 1.5 tons.
E. This leaves us with the economy. In 1971, Simon Smith Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his theory of ‘tested knowledge’. Kuznets explained, ‘More population means more creators and producers, both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions.’ Kuznets was codifying what others had noticed before. Political economist Adam Smith remarked that ‘the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants.’
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As Livi-Bacci observes, ‘All things being equal, population increase is followed by increased per capita production.’ So the proposed ‘benefits’ of population decline are, at the very least, suspect. In addition, there are worrying potential costs of population decline. Of course, this worry is theoretical because we’ve never seen population decline on the massive scale that’s coming our way. Or rather, we’ve never seen it in the modem world.
F. There are, however, two historical examples. Between 400 BC and AD 1, world population increased from about 153 million to 252 million. For the next 200 years, growth slowed almost to a halt. Then, between AD 200 and AD 600, the population shrank from 257 million to 208 million. It took an additional 400 years for the population to recover to the level it had attained in AD 1. The other drop in population occurred between 1340 and 1400, when the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history, ravaged the world. Global population fell from 442 million to 375 million.
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Neither of these drops was a particularly pleasant period in human history. Or, as Canadian journalist Mark Steyn notes in America Alone, Them is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital.’ It is impossible to anticipate with certainty the effects of population decline. But there is good mason to believe it will be bad for us. Innovation will suffer as the demand for nearly everything slackens.
Instead of producing windfalls of excess supply, economies will probably contract. As Livi-Bacci observes, ‘Historically, areas depopulated or in the process of losing population have almost always been characterized by backward economies.’ The real question therefore is whether or not falling populations will lead to the demise of civilization as we know it.
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Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has six sections, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. Do we have sufficient resources to feed the human population?
ii. Will population increase pose disaster for our supply of raw materials?
iii. Would population decline benefit the world?
iv. Is disease a key factor?
v. Is population decrease good for productivity?
vi. What is the impact of population movement?
vii. What can past events tell us about the effects of population decline?
viii. What can our governments do to guarantee supplies of food and resources?
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14. Section A
15. Section B
16. Section C
17. Section D
18. Section E
19. Section F
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Questions 20 – 22
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
20. Boserup’s ideas explain why overall, the world can have a food…………………. while some areas do not have enough.
21. In the last 100 years or so,………………….. has led to a more efficient use of resources.
22. Adam Smith argued that a country’s ………………….. is caused by a growth In population.
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Questions 23 and 24
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO of the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?
A. The availability of food is greater now than previously.
B. A decrease in population will lead to a higher standard of education.
C. Smaller populations result in higher wages.
D. Cities will become overcrowded if they are unsuitably located.
E. People have moved from rural areas to urban centres.
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Questions 25 and 26
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO claims does the writer make about future population decline?
A. Recovery may take at least 400 years.
B. It may be caused by disease.
C. It might mean a decrease in the number of new ideas.
D. There may be an overabundance of food as a result.
E. It could result in economies becoming smaller.
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ANSWERS
14. III
15. I
16. VI
17. II
18. V
19. VII
20. SURPLUS
21. INNOVATION
22. PROSPERITY
23. A
24. E
25. C
26. E
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