Population Chapter 3 PDF

3.1. How population affects development: Malthus and Boserup  Introduction Population growth restricts economic growth – The “pessimistic” Theory Population growth promotes economic growth – The “optimistic” theory Population growth is independent of economic...

3.1. How population affects development: Malthus and Boserup  Introduction Population growth restricts economic growth – The “pessimistic” Theory Population growth promotes economic growth – The “optimistic” theory Population growth is independent of economic growth – The “neutralist” theory  Cont… Structured ideas about how population affects development gained prominence in the 18th C, triggered in particular by the French Revolution of 1789. part of that broader history of the development of ideas of the second half of the 18th C, generally called the Enlightenment, – involving the systematic search for reason and order in society.  Cont… the economic and social impacts of population growth are strongly associated with the ideas of the Rev. T.R. Malthus (1766–1834). developing his ideas at the end of the 18th C in reply to more socialist ideas some decades earlier, – associated with discussion of the causes and effects of the French Revolution of 1789.  Cont… This stream of thought on how population growth affects development carried through the 19th and 20th c, and affected the thinking of such critical social theorists as Karl Marx and Charles Darwin. Into the late 20th c it had become the basis of what had come to be known as neo- Malthusianism Addresses issues of major contemporary concern, and particularly for international development and Developing Countries. Malthus and Malthusianism Argument: – population had the potential to grow exponentially, – the resource base to support that population with food and other essentials could only grow arithmetically assumed a relatively fixed r/ship b/n population and resources, – Ultimately PG must outstrip/exceed resources. Malthus (cont.) Population grows geometrically…. Population exceeds carrying capacity… Population is kept in “check”– preventative and/or positive checks  Cont… Dev’t is Achieved by preventive measures in society. – that controlled fertility, essentially through sexual restraint/limits outside and within marriage – the use of contraception – If not, the balance would inevitably be established by ‘positive checks’, that is, negative constraints affecting mortality, primarily by ‘natural’ factors, such as disease, famine and (not quite ‘natural’) warfare, which were generally beyond social control – increasing level of poverty– attributed largely to the effects of large families and population growth  Cont… The poor were poor as a result of having large families that they could not support The poor were ‘victims of their own passion/desire’! socialist or egalitarian arguments (French revolution) ---poverty was due to primarily inequalities in wealth.  Cont… Weakness: – Population and resources are in fixed proportions; those resources were largely given and could not be created beyond an arithmetic ratio. – the availability of land --- revolutionized the global food supply(land use and agricultural innovations) – Technology --- the levels and global geography of food production(like crop varieties, fertilizers, and irrigation techniques) – associated with Green Revolution technologies from the 1970s.  Cont… Famines and associated peaks of famine mortality had been recurrent and frequent in the densely populated and poor areas on India and China for many centuries. Right up to the 1960s India and Bangladesh were major food deficit Green Rev T. have become very widespread across the whole of the Indian subcontinent Malthusian attention in the food debate has now moved to Africa  Cont… Questions: – Do you think, food challenges over the past 50 years due to rapid population growth, as Malthus suggested, or to poor policies, insufficient resources, and neglect of agricultural development. – Is the contemporary African food crisis to be seen as Malthusian, a direct result of PG, or as a political/ economic crisis, a direct result of inadequate governance and development structures?  Neo-Malthusianism Coale and Hoover (1958) Their book “Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries”. The model identified, and the simulations quantified, three adverse impacts of Population growth: (1) capital-shallowing—a reduction in the ratio of capital to labour because there is nothing about population growth per se that increases the rate of saving; (2) age-dependency—an increase in youth-dependency, which raises the requirements for household consumption at the expense of saving, while diminishing the rate of saving; and (3) investment diversion—a shift of (mainly government) spending into areas such as health and education at the expense of (assumed-to-be) more productive, growth-oriented investments.  Cont… Neo Malthusian, came strongly into Development Studies thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, at a period of RPG globally, but especially in the Developing Countries. PG was a constraint on development poor countries were caught in a Malthusian trap – too many people, not enough resources ‘No single issue is more important to Africa today than PG ’ (World Bank 1990, p. 109).  Cont… very much associated with the American commentators Lester Brown (1998) and Paul Ehrlich. – author of The Population Bomb; – Ehrlich believed that the earth’s carrying capacity would quickly be exceeded, resulting in widespread famine and population reductions;  Cont… argued the case for the necessity for preventive population checks. Contributed to the family planning movement, and the implementation of family limitation programs coercion in their early examples, but ‘softened’ by the late 1980s and 1990s  Cont… All integrated into global thinking through declarations and objectives from the 1994 Cairo Conference the main problems were seen to be on the population side of the equation, and – solutions are to be sought in restricting PG rather than (but not instead of) expanding production. associated with the Club of Rome and its Limits to Growth  The Club of Rome a group of experts from 10 countries, including scientists, economists, and leaders, mostly from Europe. In 1972, they published a report called The Limits to Growth, noticing that rapid population growth (PG) and high use of resources, with pollution, could lead to a collapse in economic and social systems.  Cont… causing widespread problems such as resource shortages, environmental damage, and declining living standards.. They predicted that this could reverse economic development (ED) and make current growth patterns unsustainable.  Cont… For Developing Countries, by contrast, there was no general acceptance of the neo-Malthusian position. at the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, took a firmly developmentalist and redistributionist stance. Developmentalist; Emphasized the importance of economic and social development (e.g., improving education, healthcare, and living standards) to address population issues. Redistributionist: Argued that equitable distribution of wealth and resources reduces poverty and inequality, which were seen as root causes of high population growth.  Cont… It was poverty and not population growth that became critical problems in the medium term. High rates of PG were the result of poverty, not the major determinant, the symptom rather than the cause. – ‘Development is the best contraceptive For neo-Malthusians, – this argument remains dangerously complacent and short-term. – in the medium and long term, it has to be seen as inherently disruptive to the prevailing economic and social system.  Cont… This is a now familiar view in ‘deep green’ ecological circles associated with ecological pessimists – i.e. sustainable development and population growth are mutually incompatible  The limits to neo- Malthusianism The Neo-Malthusian discourse at the beginning of the 21stc does seem to have important limitations, and these are of four types. Empirical evidence – Only in some circumstances have high rates of PG been argued to be the major constraint on development.  Cont… Areas of severe environmental hazard, such as the Sahel belt in West Africa taken as a whole--- clearest exemplification of a Malthusian scenario. alternative development scenarios may be suggested concentrating on the resource side of the equation rather than the population It presents a multivariate problem that cannot be answered by considering the population factor independently. The long-term perspective There are indeed limits to technology, and so there must be limits to population growth. Technological advances have helped increase resource efficiency and sustain population growth, but this theory, there are inherent limits to what technology can achieve in solving resource scarcity. 2000 (6billion)---- 2100 (11billion) Environmentalist discourses The widely accepted need to strive towards ‘sustainable development’ does require a balance between population and resources. towards having more efficient and less polluting methods of resource use rather than lower consumption/PG. However, ‘deep Greens’… A solution must involve preventive checks on population growth as well as consumption changes if we are to avoid positive checks and system collapse Global poverty and inequality Neo-Malthusian scenarios is most common for Developing Countries, its direct relevance is not always apparent within these countries themselves. a view from the outside, and has to be seen in the broader context of global inequality The Malthusian threat has receded/go away in the North; indeed, its greater demographic threat may come from – Pop. ageing and below replacement fertility rather than from PG, even from excess consumption  Cont… in a globalizing world of increasing economic inequalities, PG appears to continue to be a problem in the South. Do the poor continue to be victims of their own passion? – As in Malthus’ time, a critical discourse for all of humankind continues to revolve around production and distribution, – the ownership and use of resources, human rights and environmental justice, as much as consumption, the number of consumers and their levels of living.  Alternative views on the population/resource balance there is not a strong and antagonistic< opposite> relationship between P and D. Godwin and others argued that poverty was not ‘caused’ by population growth, but by inequalities in the distribution of income and inadequacies of technology Proponents of social change, including a redistribution of wealth, clearly sought an alternative explanation.  Cont… Karl Marx: – people were producers as well as consumers, and were able to create wealth. – the poverty of the labour force was due to the inequality in the distribution of wealth rather than their large families. – poverty had more to do with the nature and strength of the structures of the capitalist economy than with the size or rate of growth of the population. development historically as a function of a range different of variables  Cont… Pop--- much less important than the type of social organization – the nature of the capitalist economy, and/or – the availability of natural resources, and/or – the quality of the environment (climate, soil, etc.) or the level of technology, – of governance (ability and willingness of governments to create security and provide services)  Cont… Development is a multifaceted issue that cannot be reduced to a single variable, as the Malthusian calculus had implied.(population) A direct, immediate, and dominant link between population growth and development cannot be realistically sustained. Certainly, population was not irrelevant in these expansions.  Cont… PG was probably a major stimulus for better food production and food security in the early hydraulic/early civilizations, and therefore – societies were forced to innovate, adopt new technologies, and better governance systems to meet their needs. in the 18th century, Western Europe experienced population growth and urbanization, which increased demand for food and other goods. – resources could not fully meet these demands, prompting the need for external trade and colonization to supply the growing population.  Cont… Problem--- the new wealth was not well distributed, not ‘trickling down’ to the mass of the population Earlier neo-Malthusian predictions— famine and poverty due to population growth—did not happen on a large scale. The world at the beginning to 21st C was much richer than it had been 30 years previously  Cont... Global agreements (for example, Kyoto Protocol on GHGs) are promulgated to control pollution, and new technologies have brought new resources into the economic system. Population growth rates are falling there is now much greater global awareness of the need to balance population and resources at all scales. there was a world surplus of oil in the 1990s, and not the imminent fuel crisis that the Club of Rome had forecast.  Cont… technologies are changing(though not rapidly and new resources are being used. As Julian Simon argued in his polemic/out-spoken on population, – Population: The Ultimate Resource (1981), the long-term prices for food, energy and mineral resources. Julian Simon and ‘Population: The Ultimate Resource’ totally opposed to that of Malthus people are themselves resources, creators and managers of natural producers of resources, hands to work. – His idea was developed in the 1970s and associated with neo-liberal, free-trade economics, – was developed from the perspectives of economic theory and – with United States’ historic and current dependence on immigrants and PG for its development.  Cont… does not argue for no constraints on fertility low population growth is preferable to high population growth. Low PG may be preferable to zero PG. PG is not merely a consequence of economic change, but can also be one of its principal drivers  Cont… the force of the population variable is generally positive rather than negative. People are themselves resources that constitute the basis for wealth creation. This is developed through education, training and knowledge transfer, or with better health, that is, investing In people. People have hands and minds to work.  Cont… Thus, arguments against Malthus and the neo-Malthusians have come – from the political right (Simon and neo- liberal economists) as well as – from the political left (socialists like Godwin and Marx, and those advocating the primacy of redistributive ideologies).  Ester Boserup and intensification of agricultural production population can be both direct cause and effect of development is a presumption that Malthus shares with the Danish agricultural economist, Ester Boserup. Boserup is the most prominent advocate of the view that PG can act in some circumstances as a stimulus/drive rather than an impediment/obstacle to economic change. population growth can be a critical factor in food supply (as for Malthus)  Cont… PG is seen to have the possibility of being a stimulus to agricultural output, raising outputs per unit of input of land, labour and technology. – for Malthus, PG imposed additional pressures on available resources and resulted in falling per capita outputs. For Malthus, PG initiated a downward spiral, a pessimistic, and scenario of increasing poverty as a result of additional consumption;  Cont… Only at times of PG would additional production be needed. in Asia this would more likely be as a result of intensification of agricultural production than from bringing new land into cultivation. Intensification would require a successive reduction in the fallow/unplanted period, for long periods of fallow have been an integral feature of shifting cultivation in subsistence and peasant economies.  Cont… by increasing inputs of labour and technology to sustain the productivity of that land under cultivation. Low population density and low PG societies with low levels of technology were kept at low levels of development by low outputs per unit of land or of labour. Where there is PG , societies have a clear incentive to innovate in their food supply system by intensifying production from existing land where this is possible..  Cont… The possibilities for intensification of the agricultural system seem to be strongly related to population pressure. the major innovations in agriculture have occurred at times of additional population pressure on land resources. – the Neolithic Revolution – the agricultural innovations associated with the agricultural revolution in early modern Europe – the Green Revolution in Asia from the 1960s  Cont… sustained by major changes in the social organization of society, notably in the position of women. it was no accident that the success of Green Revolution technologies has been most evident and long-lasting in land scarce, high population density South and East Asia in the 1970s. In these areas population pressure was greatest and had been for several centuries in some cases.  Cont… In SSA, however, the conditions for adopting these new technologies were not, and in many areas still are not, in place. – First, population densities and rapid PG, still are much lower in Africa than they are in Asia Increases in production can still be achieved in the short term by extensification in most areas, by bringing new land into cultivation or by shortening the fallow period.  Cont… – Secondly, since levels of wealth, development of a commercial infrastructure are much less than in Asia, the commercial impulses for increased production are less strongly felt. abundant land relative to a low-density population, and little surplus resource for farmers’ investment and innovation there are exceptions – best-known example of intensification in Africa has been in West Africa, in the Kano Close Settled Zone in Northern Nigeria, but also more generally in West Africa  Cont… – More recently attention has turned to the case of Machakos District in Kenya. where there has been ‘more people, less erosion’: PG and high population densities are a key factor in agricultural intensification. the Boserupian model and its basic assumptions must be central to contemporary population/development debates. – Under what conditions might that PG stimulate increasing prodn? Will it stimulate a Boserupian (i.e., positive or upward) response or a Malthusian (i.e., negative or downward) response?  Cont… The Boserupian response is clearly the antithesis of the neo- Malthusian view. Summary: – Malthus and currently by neo- Malthusians, who view PG as intrinsically detrimental/harmful-- pessimists – ‘developmentalists’ and ‘human resource development analysts’, such as Boserup, who view moderate PG as intrinsically ‘beneficial’ in most circumstances-- Optimists