CH 2: Population Growth and Economic Development: Causes, Consequences, and Controversies levels of family income.

levels of family income. Children in poor societies are seen partly as economic investment goods in that there is
The basic issue: population growth and quality of life an expected return in the form of both child labor and the provision of financial support for parents in old age.
Doubling time: Period that a given population or other quantity takes to increase by its present size. Implications for Development and Fertility
World Population Growth throughout History: When people first started to cultivate food through agriculture All of the foregoing can be summarized by saying that the effect of social and economic progress in lowering
some 12,000 years ago, the estimated world population was no more than 5 million. Two thousand years ago, fertility in developing countries will be the greatest when the majority of the population and especially the very
world population had grown to nearly 250 million and from beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1750 poor share in its benefits. Specifically, birth rates among the very poor are likely to fall where the following
it was about 728 million people. Now it has gone to 7.7 billion and it is expected to reach 9.2 billion in 2050. At socioeconomic changes come to pass: 1. An increase in the education of women and a consequent change in
first there was high mortality and also high fertility rate. In twentieth century due to rapid technological their role and status. 2. An increase in female nonagricultural wage employment opportunities, which raises the
advances in modern medicine and the spread of modern sanitation measures throughout the world, the price or cost of their traditional child-rearing activities. 3. A rise in family income levels through the increased
mortality has declined but the fertility rate has not declined or slowly declined that has resulted in the direct employment and earnings of a husband and wife or through the redistribution of income and assets from
unprecedented increases in world population growth, especially in developing countries. rich to poor. 4. A reduction in infant mortality through expanded public health programs and better nutritional
Structure of the World’s Population status for both mother and child and better medical care. 5. The development of old-age and other social
The world’s population is very unevenly distributed by geographic region, by fertility and mortality levels, and security systems outside the extended family network to lessen the economic dependence of parents,
by age structures. especially women, on their offspring. 6. Expanded schooling opportunities so that parents can better substitute
Geographic Region: More than three-quarters of the world’s people live in developing countries; less than one child “quality” for large numbers of children.
person in four lives in an economically developed nation. The most of the poor people are living in developing Seven Negative Consequences of Population Growth: According to the latest empirical research, the potential
countries such as in Asia and Africa or Latin America. negative consequences of population growth for economic development can be divided into seven categories:
Fertility and Mortality Trends: The rate of population increase is quantitatively measured as the percentage its impact on economic growth, poverty and inequality, education, health, food, the environment, and
yearly net relative increase (or decrease, in which case it is negative) in population size due to natural increase international migration.
and net international migration. Natural increase simply measures the excess of births over deaths or, in more 1. Economic Growth. Evidence shows that although it is not the culprit behind economic stagnation, rapid
technical terms, the difference between fertility and mortality. Population increases in developing countries population growth lowers per capita income growth in most developing countries, especially those that are
therefore depend almost entirely on the difference between their crude birth rates (or simply birth rates) and already poor, dependent on agriculture, and experiencing pressures on land and natural resources.
death rates. 2. Poverty and Inequality. Even though aggregate statistical correlations between measures of poverty and
Hidden momentum of population growth: The phenomenon whereby population continues to increase even population growth at the national level are often inconclusive, at the household level the evidence is strong and
after a fall in birth rates because the large existing youthful population expands the population’s base of compelling. The negative consequences of rapid population growth fall most heavily on the poor because they
potential parents. There are two basic reasons for this. First, high birth rates cannot be altered substantially are the ones who are made landless, suffer first from cuts in government health and education programs, and
overnight. The social, economic, and institutional forces that have influenced fertility rates over the course of bear the brunt of environmental damage. Poor women once again bear the greatest burden of government
centuries do not simply evaporate at the urging of national leaders. Reductions in birth rates can take many austerity programs, and another vicious circle ensues. To the extent that large families perpetuate poverty,
decades. they also exacerbate inequality.
The Demographic Transition: The process by which fertility rates eventually decline to replacement levels has 3. Education. Although the data are sometimes ambiguous on this point, it is generally agreed that large family
been portrayed by a famous concept in economic demography called the demographic transition. The size and low incomes restrict the opportunities of parents to educate all their children. At the national level,
demographic transition attempts to explain why all contemporary developed nations have more or less passed rapid population growth causes educational expenditures to be spread more thinly, lowering quality for the
through the same three stages of modern population history. In first stage there were high birth rates and high sake of quantity. This in turn feeds back on economic growth because the stock of human capital is reduced by
death rates due to which the population increasing very slowly. rapid population growth.
The second stage began when modernization, associated with better public health methods, healthier diets, 4. Health. High fertility harms the health of mothers and children. It increases the health risks of pregnancy,
higher incomes, and other improvements, led to a marked reduction in mortality that gradually raised life and closely spaced births have been shown to reduce birth weight and increase child mortality rates.
expectancy from under 40 years to over 60 years. However, the decline in death rates was not immediately 5. Food. Feeding the world’s population is made more difficult by rapid population growth—a large fraction of
accompanied by a decline in fertility. As a result, the growing divergence between high birth rates and falling developing country food requirements are the result of population increases. New technologies of production
death rates led to sharp increases in population growth compared to past centuries. must be introduced more rapidly, as the best lands have already been cultivated. International food relief
Finally, stage three was entered when the forces and influences of modernization and development caused the programs become more widespread.
beginning of a decline in fertility; eventually, falling birth rates converged with lower death rates, leaving little 6. Environment. Rapid population growth contributes to environmental degradation in the form of forest
or no population growth. encroachment, deforestation, fuelwood depletion, soil erosion, declining fish and animal stocks, inadequate
The Causes of High Fertility in Developing Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models and unsafe water, air pollution, and urban congestion.
The Microeconomic Household Theory of Fertility: The theory that family formation has costs and benefits 7. International Migration. Many observers consider the increase in international migration, both legal and
that determine the size of families formed. If other factors are held constant, the desired number of children illegal, to be one of the major consequences of developing countries’ population growth. Though many factors
can be expected to vary directly with household income (this direct relationship may not hold for poor spur migration, an excess of job seekers (caused by rapid population growth) over job opportunities is surely
societies; it depends on the strength of demand for children relative to other consumer goods and to the one of them.
sources of increased income, such as female employment), inversely with the price (cost) of children, and Kuznets curve: A graph reflecting the relationship between a country’s income per capita and its equality of
inversely with the strength of tastes for other goods relative to children. Mathematically, these relationships income distribution. Simon Kuznets suggested that in the early stages of economic growth, the distribution of
can be expressed as follows: Cd = f(Y, Pc, Px, tx), x=1,…,n income will tend to worsen; only at later stages it will improve. This observation came to be characterized by
Where Cd, the demand for surviving children (an important consideration in low-income societies where infant the “inverted-U” Kuznets curve. Kuznets curve can also be applied to environmental phenomena, when the
mortality rates are high), is a function of the given level of household income (Y), the “net” price of children growth rate of a country increases the environmental pollution also increases but when a country reaches its
(the difference between anticipated costs, mostly the opportunity cost of a mother’s time, and benefits, higher growth rates the environmental pollution starts decreasing due technological efficiency and other
potential child income and old-age support, Pc), the prices of all other goods (Px), and the tastes for goods environmental friendly techniques in production process.
relative to children (tx). Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): A poverty measure that identifies the poor using dual cutoffs for levels
The Demand for Children in Developing Countries: The economic theory of fertility assumes that the and numbers of deprivations. It includes those standards that are related to health and living standards, and
household demand for children is determined by family preferences for a certain number of surviving (usually which particularly affect women, access to clean drinking water, access to improved sanitation, and the use of
male) children (i.e., in regions of high mortality, parents may produce more children than they actually desire in clean cooking fuel.
the expectation that some will not survive), by the price or “opportunity cost” of rearing these children, and by