The world population reached 7 billion people in either 2011 or early 2012 (according to which stats you look at). Either way, that's a lot of people on this planet. Right now there is enough food to feed all of those people -- if the planet's governments could work together. But how much longer can that be done -- especially with the changing climate (which bring with it both food and water problems).
The truth is that the exploding population is a problem for the world (including this country). And as the charts above show, the people of the United States know that. Note that they believe both the world's and the United States' population is growing too fast.
But while they see this huge population growth as a problem, it seems to be a problem they don't want to solve (or think it will magically solve itself). As the chart below shows, they don't want the government to encourage people to have smaller families.
Any reasonable person knows this problem is not going to magically solve itself. That makes it strange that people don't want the government to encourage smaller families -- especially since the word used was "encourage" and not "force". The government could easily come up with policies to encourage people to have smaller families, without forcing them to do that.
What do you readers think? Is population a problem? Should the U.S. (and the world) enact policies to encourage smaller families?
These charts were made using information from a new YouGov Poll -- done between October 29th and November 2nd of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4.3 point margin of error.