Population growth and economic development in low income countries pdf

It was decidedly neo-Malthusian, arguing that only by bringing rapid population growth under control could countries hope to achieve improved economic performance and high standards of living. This movement took as a given fact that rapid population growth harmed the prospects for development and that strong policies to reduce population growth rates were an essential precondition of sustained economic development National Academy of Sciences This was a return to mainstream neo-classical economics, which had always viewed Malthus's views as one-dimensional and simplistic, and which generally expressed skepticism about the strength of the relationship between high fertility and economic growth.

In an important sense, the NRC report broke the back of the population movement and ushered in a period of uncertainty about the priority that should be given to population policies, as well as about what the content of policy should be.

The NRC report also reinforced the views of feminist and human rights critics of the population policies of the s—s who successfully lobbied for wholesale changes in orientation away from population control and towards a rights-based approach, culminating in the reproductive health and rights agenda that emerged from the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo in Singh An important conclusion to be drawn from the history recounted thus far is that the views of economists matter a great deal.

Indeed, notwithstanding Robert McNamara's deep commitment to population stabilization and his personal efforts to promote population policies during his presidency of the World Bank, the Bank's cadre of professional economists has for years succeeded in keeping population at a relatively low priority in terms of bank lending operations.

More often than not, the macroeconomic and sector analytic work of the Bank pays scant attention to population dynamics, even in such chronically high fertility regions as Sub-Saharan Africa.

This brings us to the third, and current, stage of economic thinking on population and economic development. They reasoned that rapidly declining fertility is accompanied by changes in the ratio between the economically active population and dependent population. As fertility falls, a larger proportion of the population is in the age range 15—65, compared with the under 15 and over 65 categories.

Thus, assuming countries also pursue sensible pro-growth economic policies, the demographic bonus ought to translate into a jump in income per capita.

Applying the model to the Asian Tigers Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand , these economists found that the data fit the model extremely well.

Countries that incorporated strong and effective population policies within the broader context of social and economic development policies were able to cash in very profitably on the demographic bonus. This latest chapter in the ongoing saga of macroeconomic thinking on population—economic interactions does not by any means represent a new consensus.

But as the research accumulates, more and more policymakers are paying attention to it and forming their own ideas in accordance with the findings. One might expect that economists interested in examining the impact of fertility on household income would pay more attention to the micro-level than to the macro-level, but this is not the case.

Much more research has been conducted at the macro-level than at the micro-level, probably because of the greater availability of appropriate datasets. The truth is, that only detailed household panel surveys or randomized interventions or actual or natural experiments are adequate to accurately estimate the impact of fertility at one point in time on household income at subsequent points.

Such datasets are comparatively rare because of the time and expense required to construct them. Fortunately, in just the last few years, datasets have become available or have been discovered by economists that permit sophisticated micro studies of the fertility—poverty relationship Merrick One of these is the Indonesian Family Life Survey, a panel study that covered several years and that permitted investigators to look at the effect of changes in desired and actual fertility at one point in time on subsequent household poverty.

This decline in women's contribution to household income, in turn, reduced expenditure per capita in the household, pushing a significant number of families into poverty and preventing the escape of a significant number from poverty. One of the economists who has been most demanding of a solid evidence base for conclusions about the effect of fertility on economic development or poverty is T.

Paul Schultz. Schultz, while willing to stipulate the plausibility that high fertility acts as a barrier to economic growth and poverty reduction, has nonetheless for many years remained skeptical that the relationship is as strong or as stable as many neo-Malthusians assert it to be. Within two decades many of these indicators of the welfare of women and their children improve significantly in conjunction with the programme induced decline in fertility and child mortality.

The question of whether or not high fertility leads to, or exacerbates, poverty and whether this in itself should be grounds for policy interventions ultimately revolves around the question of parental intentions with respect to childbearing.

If parents perceive children as good in and of themselves and are willing to forego other forms of consumption for the sake of having a large number of children, most economists would argue it is hard to make the case that they should be urged to have fewer of them.

If, on the other hand, many of the children very poor parents are bearing are the result of unintended pregnancies, the case for public policies to assist them in having fewer would seem to be stronger. Thanks to the remarkable series of surveys that began with the World Fertility Survey in the s and continues to this day as the Demographic and Health Surveys programme, we know a great deal about fertility intentions in a large number of countries around the world, and the inescapable conclusion is that a significant proportion of births in developing countries are the result of unintended pregnancies.

For example, an estimate by the Global Health Council in revealed that roughly one-quarter of the 1. The ever rising numbers of abortions and of maternal deaths that result from abortion are additional evidence of the incidence of unwanted pregnancy around the world.

It seems justified to conclude that the burden of evidence from micro-analysis is that high fertility reinforces poverty and makes an escape from poverty more difficult.

As Birdsall et al. They represent seven specific development goals adopted by the community of nations, as well as an eighth goal to work in harmonious partnership.

The seven quantitative MDGs and their targets are as follows:. Target 1a. Halve, between and , the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. Target 1b. Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people. Target 1c.

Halve, between and , the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Target 2a. Ensure that, by , children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Target 3a. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by and in all levels of education no later than Target 4a. Reduce by two-thirds, between and , the under-five mortality rate. Target 5a. Reduce by three-quarters, between and , the maternal mortality ratio. Target 6b. Target 6c. Have halted by and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Target 7a. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. Target 7b. Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by , a significant reduction in the rate of loss. Target 7c.

Halve, by , the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Target 7d. By , to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least million slum dwellers. In a very real sense, the MDGs represent today's consensus international development agenda. Nearly all developing countries, donor countries and international development agencies and institutions have embraced the MDGs and pursue them in their various development plans and agreements.

Elaborate monitoring systems have been put in place to track progress against the goals, and as recently as last September, the nations of the world convened at UN headquarters in New York to reaffirm their commitment to the MDGs. The MDGs themselves were derived from the remarkable series of sectoral international development conferences of the s, each of which produced an outcome document with one or more international goals.

Interestingly, only one conference of the s, the International Conference on Population and Development ICPD at Cairo, failed to have its outcome goal included in the MDGs: universal access to reproductive health. Knox A. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Cite Cite A. Select Format Select format.

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