Optimal Economic Growth in a Demographically Divided World

Abstract

The economic consequences of a divergence in positive population growth rates seem to amount to a bleak future for the world as a whole: widespread poverty amidst negligible plenty. Many developing countries are expected to fall into the demographic trap of a return to the first phase of demographic development, with high birth and death rates, instead of completing the demographic transition to the phase of low birth and death rates. African countries in particular have gone well beyond the carrying capacity of their ecological system. Of course, one must not adopt the Malthusian stance that a positive rate of population growth is always ‘bad’ by ruling out technical progress and environmental resilience. However, the straightforward calculation of the interaction between population growth, ecological constraints and economic development¹ shows more than clearly the prospect for a number of developing countries is that the people must live on the subsistence level of consumption (see Brown and Jacobson [1986]). It has therefore been argued at various occasions that development planning and family planning should go hand in hand.