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With land held fixed, increased population (labor) eventually leads to diminishing output food, per capita, hunger and famine Growing population leads to capital or resource shallowing lower capital/labor ratios, thus, reduced per capita output and lower economic growth rates Age-dependency high pop growth rate raises requirements for household consumption, reduces savings, postpones demographic transition Growing population leads to investment diversion from physical infrastructure to basic needs education, health, shelter.. lowering economic growth rates
Optimists Between 1970 and 2000, World Population doubled from 3 to 6 billion and per capita incomes increased by 2/3 Why? Population growth, labor abundance and relative land or capital scarcity lead to: Increase stock of human ingenuity/human capital Technological progress (Boserup agricultural intensification, Hayami & Ruttan - Induced Innovation Model)
IIM Changes in factor scarcities induce changes in factor prices that lead to innovations to reduce costs; innovations reduce scarcities; e.g. tractors scarce factor?, improved seeds, soil fertility scarce factor?, gas efficient cars scarce factor?, precision irrigation scarce factor?
Neutralists or Revisionists 1980s Worldwide, over long spans of time, and over recent decades, diminishing returns have been more than offset by countervailing forces. Allen Kelley No statistically significant clear relationship between population growth and economic growth. Neutralists or Revisionists current thinking Empirical studies from 1980s, published in 1990s, conclude: We arrive at the qualified judgment: rapid population growth, and its associated demographic components, appears to have exerted a fairly strong, adverse effect on the pace of economic growth over the period 1960-1995. Kelley and Schmidt, Population Matters - 2001
Economic Consequences of Population Change: Focus on Developing Countries Current Thinking Bottom Line High/rapid population growth rates will adversely affect economic growth, per capita income, poverty and health and education of children, where: Livelihoods depend on fragile or degraded natural resources (e.g. Sahel, Nepal, Philippines); Property rights are poorly defined Tragedy of the Commons; skewed land distribution; Government policies are biased against labor such as low investment in education, public health, family planning, agriculture and job creation. Population growth - particularly the demographic opportunity presented by low mortality, high initial but curtailing fertility, and high proportion of workers to dependents [name this!] will accelerate economic growth given functioning markets and enabling policies. Examples of East Asia vs. Latin America Enabling policies..?
As
such, while population growth exacerbates some problems, it may not be their most important cause. It therefore represents misplaced emphasis to confront such problems with population policies because without a change in economic policies, slower population growth simply postpones the day of reckoning, when the adverse consequences of ill-advised economic policies are tallied.
What are the effects of high fertility (delayed demographic transition) on poverty? Empirical analysis across 45 developing and transitional countries: 1. Large negative impact on economic growth; 2. Large negative impact on distribution/equity (disproportionately reduced purchasing power + higher dependency ratio for poor households); Together, large negative impact on poverty; Plus negative impact on capabilities and well-being of poor via reduced access to education, health, nutrition.
3. 4.
Are economies of scale in consumption more, or less, important than sib crowding in their effects on poor households conversion efficiency. (e.g. conversion of given income into capabilities and welfare).
Reasons the poor rationally attach high value to the benefits from many children:
1. 2. 3. 4. Infant/child mortality remains high; Sources of child labor & remittance income later on; Social security/safety net for elderly poor; Low child-rearing cost, esp. low opportunity cost of womens time.
Fertility decline
High fertility
Mutual causation means that rapid population growth with its usual accompaniments of early first births, large families, high child-adult ratios and near spacing of siblings may be not only a cause of poverty through the above mechanisms, but also a consequence of poverty probably due largely to constraints on, and rational behavior by, the poor. - Eastwood and Lipton
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More than any factor, the strength and nature of feedbacks attenuating or overturning initial impacts of population growth represents a major remaining area of contention in the population debate. - Allen Kelley, 2001
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.Declining population growth, fertility and mortality as well as larger populations and higher densities have all spurred growth. Kelley and
Schmidt, Population Matters, 2001
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there is a problem is that individual decisions with respect to demographic acts do not add up to the recognized common good; that choices at the individual level are not congruent with the collective interest. (Demeny 1986, from Kelley)
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Do the population-agricultural development links in poor countries offer good grounds for population optimism?
-Nadia Cuffaro, p. 1152 -Population pressure on land
-IIM, Boserup/ Agricultural intensification works for increasing land productivity (except for some countries in SSA) but not for labor productivity. Figure 1 on labor/land ratios vs. land productivity. Figure 2 on labor/land ratios vs. labor productivity.
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