Population Growth and Economic Development:

Causes, Consequences, and Controversies (Conceptual Focus)

 The Basic Issue: Population Growth and the Quality of Life

• In 2009, the world’s population was estimated to be 6.8 billion

people.

• Projections by the United Nations placed the figure at more than

9.2 billion by the year 2050 (another widely cited projection is
higher, at 9.5 billion).
• The overwhelming majority of that population will inhabit the
• What will be the economic and social implications for
development if such projections are realized?

• Is this scenario inevitable, or will it depend on the success or

failure of development efforts?

• Finally, even more significant, is rapid population growth per se

as serious a problem as many people believe?
• or is it a manifestation of more fundamental problems of
underdevelopment, and the unequal utilization of global
resources between rich and poor nations, as others argue?
Every year, more than 75 million people are being added to the
world’s population. Almost all this net population increase—
97% — is in developing countries.

But the problem of population growth is not simply a problem

of numbers. It is a problem of human welfare and of
development.

Rapid population growth can have serious consequences for the

well-being of all of humanity.
If development entails the improvement in people’s levels of
living—their incomes, health, education, and general well-being
—

and if it also encompasses their capabilities, self-esteem, respect,

dignity, and freedom to choose,
then the important question about population growth is:

How does the contemporary population situation in many

developing countries contribute to or detract from their chances
of realizing the goals of development,
not only for the current generation but also for future generations.
Conversely, how does development affect population growth?

Among the major issues relating to this basic question are the
following:

1. Will developing countries be capable of improving the levels of

living for their people with the current and anticipated levels of
population growth?
To what extent does rapid population increase make it more
difficult to provide essential social services, including housing,
transport, sanitation, and security?
2. How will the developing countries be able to cope with the vast
increases in their labor forces over the coming decades?

Will employment opportunities be plentiful, or will

unemployment levels soar?

3. What are the implications of higher population growth rates

among the world’s poor,
for their chances of overcoming the human misery of absolute
poverty?
Will world food supply and its distribution be sufficient,
not only to meet the anticipated population increase in the coming
decades,
but also to improve nutritional levels to the point where all
humans can have an adequate diet?

4. Will developing countries be able to extend the coverage and

improve the quality of their health and educational systems,

so that everyone can have access to adequate health care and basic
education?
5. Is there a relationship between poverty and family size?

6. Is the inexorable pursuit of increasing affluence among the

rich
more detrimental to the global environment and to rising living
standards among the poor
than the absolute increase in their numbers?
Population Growth: Past, Present, and Future

 World Population Growth throughout History

Turning from absolute numbers to percentage growth rates,

for almost the whole of human existence on earth until

approximately 300 years ago,

population grew at an annual rate not much greater than zero

(0.002%, or 20 per million).
Naturally, this overall rate was not steady; there were many ups
and downs as a result of natural catastrophes and variations in
growth rates among regions.

By 1750, the population growth rate had accelerated to 0.3% per
year.

By the 1950s, the rate had again accelerated, tripling to about
1.0% per year.
It continued to accelerate until around 1970, when it peaked at
2.35%.
Today the world’s population growth rate remains at a
historically high rate of about 1.1% per year, but the rate of
increase is slowing.

However, the population growth rate in Africa is still an

extremely high 2.3% per year.
(Note that estimates of population numbers and growth rates differ
according to research methods, but the broad trends are similar
across major studies.)
The reason for the sudden change in overall population trends is
that for almost all recorded history,

the rate of population change, whether up or down, had been

strongly influenced by,

the combined effects of famine, disease, malnutrition, plague,

and war—conditions that resulted in high and fluctuating death
rates.

In the twentieth century, such conditions came increasingly

under technological and economic control.
As a result, human mortality (the death rate) is now lower than
at any other point in human existence.

It is this decline in mortality resulting from

rapid technological advances in modern medicine and the
spread of modern sanitation measures throughout the world,
particularly within the past half century,

that has resulted in the unprecedented increases in world

population growth, especially in developing countries.
In short, population growth today is primarily the result of,

a rapid transition from a long historical era characterized by high

birth and death rates to

- one in which death rates have fallen sharply

- but birth rates, especially in developing countries, have fallen
more slowly from their historically high levels.
 Structure of the World’s Population

The world’s population is very unevenly distributed by

geographic region, by fertility and mortality levels, and by age
structures.

1. Geographic Region:

More than three-quarters of the world’s people live in

developing countries;
fewer than one in four person lives in an economically developed
nation.
2. Fertility and Mortality Trends:

The rate of population increase is quantitatively measured as

the percentage yearly net relative increase (or decrease, in which
case it is negative) in population size due to natural increase and
net international migration.

Natural increase simply measures the excess of births over

deaths
or, in more technical terms, the difference between fertility and
mortality.
Net international migration is of very limited, though growing,
importance today

(although in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was an

extremely important source of population increase in North
America, Australia, and New Zealand and corresponding relative
decrease in Western Europe).

Population increases in developing countries therefore depend

almost entirely on the difference between their crude birth rates
(or simply birth rates) and death rates.
Moreover, developing country birth rates today are still often
higher than they were in pre-industrial Western Europe.

But there has been a substantial decline in fertility over the past three
decades,

Nevertheless, the total fertility rate (TFR)

—[(the average number of children a woman would have
assuming current age-specific birth rates remain constant throughout
her child-bearing years (15 to 49 years of age)]—
remains very high in Sub-Saharan Africa (5.3) and Western Asia
(3.1)
Modern Vaccination Campaigns
against malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera as well as the
proliferation of public health facilities, clean water supplies,
improved nutrition, and public education,

have all worked together over the past three decades to lower
death rates,
by as much as 50% in parts of Asia and Latin America and
by over 30% in much of Africa and the Middle East.

Death rates have fallen for all age groups.

Nevertheless, the average life span remains about 12 years
greater in the developed countries. This gap has been sharply
reduced in recent decades.

For example, in 1950, life expectancy at birth

for people in developing countries averaged 35 to 40 years,
compared with 62 to 65 years in the developed world.

 Considerable progress has been made on reducing the under-5

mortality rate.
In 2009, because of still relatively
high under-5 mortality rates
and the AIDS epidemic,
Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest life expectancy, 51 years,

while in the high-income countries, life expectancy at birth

averaged nearly 78 years.

In East Asia and Latin America, life expectancies have now an
impressive 74 and 73 years, respectively.
3. Age Structure and Dependency Burdens:

Population is relatively more of young people in the developing

world.
Children under the age of 15 constitute
- more than 30% of the total population of developing countries
- but just 17% of developed nations.

In fact, at least 10 developing nations have over 44% of their

population under the age of 15;
as of 2009, 43% of Ethiopia’s population, 45% of Nigeria’s, and 38%
of Pakistan’s was under 15;
for both India and Mexico, the comparable figure is 32%.
In countries with such an age structure, the youth dependency
ratio—the proportion of youths (under age 15) to economically
active adults (ages 15 to 64)— is very high.

Thus, the workforce in developing countries must support

almost twice as many children as it does in the wealthier
countries.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the economically active workforce

makes up about 54% of the total population (just 3% of the
population is over age 65).
In general,
the more rapid the population growth rate, the greater the
proportion of dependent children in the total population,

and the more difficult it is for people who are working to support
those who are not.

This phenomenon of youth dependency also leads to an

important concept,
the hidden momentum of population growth.
***The Hidden Momentum of Population Growth

Perhaps the least understood aspect of population growth is its

tendency to continue even after birth rates have declined
substantially.

There are two basic reasons for this:

First, high birth rates cannot be altered substantially overnight.

The social, economic, and institutional forces that have influenced

fertility rates over the course of centuries do not simply evaporate at
the urging of national leaders.
We know from the experience of European nations that such
reductions in birth rates can take many decades.

Consequently, even if developing countries assign top priority to

the limitation of population growth,
it will still take many years to lower national fertility to desired
levels.

The second and less obvious reason for the hidden momentum of
population growth relates to,
the age structure of many developing countries’ populations.
For developed countries, in the contemporary period the
population in middle cohorts is typically greater than that of
young cohorts;

this is partly but certainly, not exclusively viewed as a

transitional feature of a period in which women have been
delaying births until later in life.
 The Demographic Transition

The process by which fertility rates eventually decline to

replacement levels has been portrayed by a famous concept in
economic demography called the demographic transition.

The demographic transition attempts to explain why all

contemporary developed nations have passed through the same
three stages of modern population history.
Demographic transition is the phasing-out process of
population growth rates
- from a virtually stagnant growth stage characterized by high birth rates
and high death rates,
- through a rapid-growth stage with high birth rates and low death rates
- to a stable, low- growth stage in which both birth and death rates are low.

Stage 1:
Before their economic modernization, developed countries for centuries
had stable or very slow-growing populations as a result of a combination
of high birth rates and almost equally high death rates.
Stage 2:
began when modernization, associated with better public health
methods, healthier diets, higher incomes, and other improvements,
led to a marked reduction in mortality that gradually raised life
expectancy from under 40 to over 60 years.

However, the decline in death rates was not immediately

accompanied by a decline in fertility.

As a result, the growing divergence between high birth rates and

falling death rates led to sharp increases in population growth
compared to past centuries.
Stage 2 thus marks the beginning of the demographic transition
(the transition from stable or slow-growing populations first to
rapidly increasing numbers and then to declining rates).

Stage 3:
Finally, stage 3 was entered when the forces and influences of
modernization and development caused the beginning of a decline
in fertility; eventually, falling birth rates converged with lower
death rates, leaving little or no population growth.