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Population Growth and Economic Development

24 April, 2015 - 11:52

Learning Objectives

  • Explain the relationship between population growth and the rate of increase in per capita income.
  • Summarize Thomas Malthus’s reasoning that led to the concept of a Malthusian trap, and explain why his dire predictions have not occurred in many countries in modern times.
  • Explain what is meant by a demographic transition, and describe how it has proceeded in very different ways in developed versus developing countries.

It is easy to see why some people have become alarmists when it comes to population growth rates in developing nations. Looking at the world’s low-income countries, they see a population of more than 2 billion growing at a rate that suggests a doubling every 31 years. How will we cope with so many more people? The following statement captures the essence of widely expressed concerns:

“At the end of each day, the world now has over two hundred thousand more mouths to feed than it had the day before; at the end of each week, one and one-half million more; at the close of each year, an additional eighty million. … Humankind, now doubling its numbers every thirty-five years,has fallen into an ambush of its own making; economists call it the “Malthusian trap,” after the man who most forcefully stated our biological predicament: population growth tends to outstrip the supply of food.”

But what are we to make of such a statement? Certainly, if the world’s population continues to increase at the rate that it grew in the past 50 years, economic growth is less likely to be translated into an improvement in the average standard of living. But the rate of population growth is not a constant; it is affected by other economic forces. This section begins with a discussion of the relationship between population growth and income growth, then turns to an explanation of the sources of population growth in low-income countries, and closes with a discussion of the Malthusian warning suggested in the quote above.