Population Growth and the System Dynamics Approach: A Comprehensive Review

Population growth, which directly affects social structures, economic growth, resource use, and environmental sustainability, is one of the major global challenges of the twentyfirst century. Traditional demographic models, such as exponential, logistic, and cohortcomponent approaches, often fail to capture the complex relationships between human populations, resource constraints, and environmental dynamics, despite offering insightful information about fertility and mortality patterns. The system dynamics (SD) technique, which was created by Jay W. Forrester in the 1960s, allows researchers to simulate population development within complete socio-economic and ecological frameworks by incorporating feedback mechanisms, temporal delays, and non-linear interactions. This article provides a comprehensive assessment of the use of system dynamics in population studies, emphasizing its theoretical foundations, key models, empirical applications, benefits, drawbacks, and possible directions for future research.