The Economics of Population Growth

Abstract

This chapter has to do both with the economic adjustments that a population makes when it is growing and with the manner in which a population’s reproductive behavior may respond to economic changes. It is made up of five parts which relate to three somewhat distinct problems. The first two parts deal with what may be called the supply aspect of population growth; in the first we inquire into the immediate disadvantages of population growth as such, and in the second we look at the economic advantages and disadvantages which are consequent upon a country’s population being larger rather than smaller. The second problem is treated in Part III which deals with what may be called the demand for population, or the manner in which fertility changes as a result of economic changes which bring about modifications in income, price-structure, tastes, etc. Parts IV and V deal with the economic policy implications of what has been set down in the earlier parts and with conflicts between individual and social interests in respect of marriage and family size that have emerged or may emerge in both developed and underdeveloped countries.

“It is never the question whether a country will produce any more but whether it may be made to produce a sufficiency to keep pace with a nearly unchecked increase of people.” T. R. Malthus, in Essay on the Principle of Population, Bk. 3, chap. 14.

This paper was written while I was the holder of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.