New research suggests that population growth is driving numerous global health crises, yet it’s rarely factored into the equation. The world’s population currently stands at 7.15 billion people and has the potential to double in the next 50 years. In the U.S., there’s one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. With an ever-growing population on a finite earth, the issue of overpopulation should be a major concern when evaluating how we’ll be able to feed and care for the masses. But it’s not. Camilo Mora, an assistant professor of geography in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, reviewed nearly 200 research articles and found that population is being “downplayed and trivialized,” despite its biological impact and its fundamental role in human welfare. In the U.S. alone, unintended pregnancies are responsible for $11 billion in public spending each year.

‘The Picture Isn’t Pretty’ Mora’s research, published in the journal Ecology and Society, suggests that major health crises won’t be fixed if researchers continue to ignore burgeoning birth rates and declining death rates. “In a planet with limited resources and a sensitive climate, with most of its natural resources being overexploited and its economic systems overstressed, meeting the additional demands of a growing human population without destroying the Earth and our social systems will be one of the greatest tests to humanity in the years to come,” Mora concluded. Doomsday scenarios aside, Mora said diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria will continue to spread, mainly through unsafe behaviors linked to overpopulation: high-risk sexual practices, a lack of access to contraception, and an increase in the number of sex workers. In Africa, extreme poverty has forced many women into the “sex for fish” trade, in which they have sex with local fishermen in exchange for a portion of the daily catch. Because these woman have inadequate access to contraceptives and safer-sex tools, this practice increases the spread of HIV and makes unwanted pregnancies more likely. “People are forced to do these things. There’s no way to dig people out of this kind of poverty,” Mora told Healthline. “When you get a perspective, the picture isn’t pretty.”