 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about the causes of overpopulation in Pakistan. As you know, one of the major issues nowadays being discussed even on national scale is the population of Pakistan. We are globally considered one of the major populations and with this pace of growth we are considered to be a threat to the overall resources of the world because the pace of growth of our population is pretty much higher as compared to the other countries. So growing continuously since the end of the black death, the world population has been considered to be grown very significantly and there has been significant increase in the last 50 years and due to the medical advancements and other technological advancements as well as increase in agriculture productivity, our world population has increased significantly. If we talk about Pakistan particularly, there are several causes of overpopulation that we need to discuss in order to solve this issue. The first one is the low standard of living. It is widely assumed that people with low income have more children. So they consider that we need to have more earning hands to increase our livelihood. So by that ideology, they tend to rely on the number of children rather the number of earning hands. So poor persons are not afraid of further fall in the standard of living as the result of large number of children. Then as you know that we have high population growth rate. It means that the birth rate in Pakistan is pretty high as compared to the other countries. The rapid growth rate of population in Pakistan is 2.1. We need to understand that if we are growing with this pace, we will soon be surpassing the other giants including the Indonesia and United States. So we need to keep this pace as low as possible. And then the tropical climate is considered another cause of overpopulation. It means that poverty is attained at early age in the warmer climate. So we in Pakistan have relatively warmer climate and Pakistan has a considerably warmer climate. So that's why it is considered one of the reasons for the overpopulation. And we also have the significant drop in the death rate in Pakistan, which means that death rate in 1951 was 2.8% while it is just 0.73% in 2011. So this significant drop in the death rate is also producing the problem. Although it's a good indicator from the life expectancy's point of view, however it is significantly contributing in increasing the population. Influx of refugees from other countries, especially the war-affected areas of Afghanistan, has also produced a lot more population burden on Pakistan. And Pakistan is currently the home of millions of Afghan refugees. If we talk about the cultural values, the sun is preferred more as compared to daughter. So sun preference is one of the causes of overpopulation. In order to have a son, a couple keeps trying on producing the children until they get their desired objective of having the sun. So sun preference is accepted as a standard norm in Pakistani society. Single parent cannot support the larger family in the developing countries. So that's why a son is considered one of the support during their old ages. So the thing that when they have more children, they have more earning hands to support them and while the male is considered the principle breadwinner, so that's why they consider that during their old age, their son would be able to support them economically, financially as well as morally. The absence of family planning is considered another contributing factor. It is not the complete absence but we do not have a reliable advocate may use of family planning. Effective family planning is not encouraged in Pakistan and people are not sufficiently familiar with the methods of family planning. So the childbirth is considered a natural process and human intervention is considered the fighting with the nature. And then we have early marriages although this trend is significantly changing especially in the urban areas. But yet early marriages are the common feature in the rural areas of Pakistan. Marriages take place usually between 16 to 22 years of age in the rural areas. So that is also making a female's fecundity period much more longer as compared to the females in the other countries. Greater socioeconomic factors also cause the early marriages and exchange marriage is also one of the factors in that. So it means that the earlier the marriage, the more would be the productive period of a female and more would be the population. And last but not the least, electricity is considered one of the causes of our population. 43% of the population of Pakistan is considered illiterate so electricity gives way to dogmatic narratives in the society and the lack of research on family planning and overpopulation further adds fuel to fire.