Some have argued that the most important human population problem for the world is not the high rate of population increase in certain Third World countries, but rather the "increase in total human impact". The per-capita impact – the resources consumed and the wastes created by each person – is varied globally; the highest in the First World and the lowest in the Third World: inhabitants of the U.S., Western Europe and Japan consume 32 times as many resources and put out 32 times as much waste as those in the Third World.