Fertility, Population and Development

Question 1

World Population Growth

Answer 1

-> population growth interia - cataclysm -

-> wealth - > aspirations -> want more things -> have less children

Question 2

For exam, often asked a long answer question. include argument, theory, evidence, personal opinion is ok.

Question 3

World Population Growth

Answer 3

recent paper argues that censuses systematically undercounted rural populations

Examined instances of dam construction projects

“Even the 2010 datasets still missed between one- third (32 per cent) and three-quarters (77 per cent) of rural residents”

Question 4

Basic Concepts: Migration

Answer 4

Rate of population increase:
The growth rate of a population, calculated as the natural increase after adjusting for immigration and emigration.

Natural increase:
The difference between the birth rate and the death rate of a given population.

Net international migration:
The excess of persons migrating into a country over those who emigrate from that country.
-> Minor importance, population increase in developing countries almost entirely driven by difference in birth/death rates.

Question 5

Basic Concepts: Birth and Fertility

Answer 5

Crude birth rate:
The number of children born alive each year per 1,000 population (often shortened to birth rate).
Crude Death rate:
The number of deaths each year per 1,000 population.
-> Fallen significantly in recent years.

Total fertility rate (TFR):
Number of children that would be born to a woman IF she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates.
-> Fallen dramatically around the world (esp. since 1970), but high rates persist in certain regions of the world.
-> note this is TOTAL, better to look at different categories/demograhpics

Question 6

Basic Concepts

Answer 6

Life expectancy at birth: The number of years a newborn child would live if subjected to the mortality risks prevailing for the population at the time of the child’s birth.
* About 12 years greater in developed countries.
* Gap fallen significantly in recent years.
Under-5 mortality rate: Deaths among children between birth and 5 years of age per 1,000 live births.
* Significant progress made.
Youth dependency ratio: The proportion of young people under age 15 to the working population aged 16 to 64 in a country.

Question 7

Momentum of Population Growth

Answer 7

The phenomenon whereby population continues to increase even after a fall in birth rates because the large existing youthful population expands the population’s base of potential parents.

Two reasons:
(a) High birth rates cannot be altered overnight.
(b) Age structure of developing countries’ population.

Question 8

Population Pyramids

Question 9

Demographic Transitions

Answer 9

Process: fertility rates go from high to low, and importantly, very stable levels.
1. Pre-industrialsociety:
-> ‘HighGrowthPotentialStage’:
-> stable/slow-growing populations since high birth rates but also similarly high death rates.

2. Modernisation
   -> ‘transitional growth stage’:
   -> Better public health, diets, incomes etc. Reductions in mortality and rising life expectancies.

-> But, fall in death rates NOT immediately accompanied by falling fertility rates. Leads to rapid population growth - demographic dividend. (The curve in the bottom line of dem trans graph at stage 3).

– (a) high (even increasing) fertility and declining mortality
– (b) medium fertility and declining mortality

3. Falling fertility rates ‘Incipient Decline Stage’: falling birth rates, falling death rates leading to little or no population growth.

TLDR: all countries start with high birth rates, and then when developed they lower birth rates and they never go back once past that point.

Demographic accounting: you need enough people to provide for your young and old

Define: Demographic dividend.
Memorise Graph: dem tran in western europe and developing worlds

Question 10

Dem. Tran. in Western Europe

Answer 10

Birth rate goes across straight (35/1000) then falls at 1901 to around 14 in 2010.

Death rate goes straght around 30 and then falls at 1845, dips to 7 and then rises to 10.

Question 11

Dem. Tran. in Developing World

Answer 11

Rates can fall more or less quickly depending not he situation, but they do fall.

Question 12

Demographic Transitions: Differences between Western Europe and todays developing world

Answer 12

-> Birth rates in developing world considerably higher
- women tend to marry earlier
- more families for given population size
- more years in which to have children

-> 50’s/60’s death rates fell much more quickly since inported effective modern medicine
Eg(A): South Korea, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica
eg(B): Due to absolute poverty, AIDS etc (africa, M.East)

Question 13

Demographic Transitions: France

Answer 13

Frances pop fell far earlier than the rest of europe … this decline kept fracne from being a modern-day superpower.

If its birth rate had tracked that of the UK, France would have over 250 million citizens today.

Question 14

Demographic Dividend

Answer 14

1. (+) high growth potential from (+) working age pop
2. Occurs at end of modernisation where (-) b,d rates -> temporary shift in age structure. Here, the dependency ratio (fraction of dependent to working age pop) decreases first before increasing.
3. Essentially, this is a temporary period of opportunity for a country to accelerate economic growth as it has a larger, more productive labour force.

To maximise the resulting growth potential, institutional frameworks must have the capacity to absorb these demographic changes efficiently, and cultural norms must be malleable to avoid negative externalities from potential increased social fractionalisation.

Eg. Emergence of rebel groups.

Question 15

Where are the workers from? Dependency Ratio

Answer 15

Dependency Ratio: The ratio of n(economic dependent population) (typically children and elderly) to the economically productive population (the working age population)

Overtime, the ratio is increase then decrease (dip for OECD) for SA_ratio and OECD ratio (highest to lowest). A potential solution to plug the impending gap in the resources to support a low dependency ratio in OECD is to facilitate high migration from south asia (with a high working age population) into OECD countries.

Question 16

Malthusian Population Trap

Answer 16

The idea that rising population and diminishing returns to fixed factors (land) result in a low levels of living (population trap).
* Population rising geometrically
* Food rising arithmetically
* As population increases each person has less land to work with
* Marginal contribution to food production falls
* Food supplies outstripped by population growth
* Per capita incomes fall, so low in fact that population stable at or slightly above subsistence
* Therefore people should engage in ‘moral constraint’!

Question 17

Malthusian Population Trap: Graph

Answer 17

per cap inc rising before s
-> ppl aren’t coordinating to break out of subsistence
-> stable eq at s
-> known as subsistence
-> but, IT IS BAD, youre just poor
-> if you move a bit to the right youre pushed back, and al little to the left youre pushed up

after T, is unstable but GOOD eq.

and after t

Question 18

Malthusian Checks

Answer 18

Mechanisms that limit population growth when resources are scarce.

However, strictly malthusian checks are rooted in evangelical christian doctrine, yet the principle of checks can be applied in a modern economic context.

Preventative:
Measures that reduce birth rate (delayed marriage, celibacy, contraception (not malthusian approved).

Positive: Events that increase death rate (famine, disease, and war). A “check” on population growth.

Question 19

Malthus Critique

Answer 19

-> Assumes that agriculture production (grows arithematically) will not be able to sustain population (grows geometrically). It ignores the role and impact of tech. An example in food production now, where tech has accelerated the agricultural production capacity where there is a surplus of food to feed the global population.

Some rebut that for all of human history up until recent, it was likely a good fit, and population was growing faster than food production. Only after the introduction of technology do these principles lose their application.

Little empirical evidence to support relationship
between population growth and levels per capita income.

Per capita income is not the principal determinant
of population
* Microeconomics of the household provides far better explanations.

Question 20

Household Theory of Fertility

Answer 20

Not worth assessing, but will be in tutorial question

Fertility as a rational response
-> maximise utility
-> inc/sub effects such that changes in inc/prices/preferences result in varying number of children

Demand for children in developing countries
-> first 2 or 3 as ‘consumers’
-> additional children as ‘investment goods’
-> work on family farm / microenterprise/old age security motivation

Question 21

Household Theory of Fertility: Graph

Answer 21

budget constraints constraints and utility curves Y(goods consumed by parents) and X(# children desired)

Question 22

The ‘demand’ for children

Question 23

Lessons HH Models

Answer 23

Is valuable but slightly immoral maybe?

policy applications have been based around important things
* Improved women’s education, role, and status
* Female nonagricultural wage employment
* Rise in family income levels through shared growth
* Reduction in infant mortality, better health care
* Development of old-age and social security plans
* Expanded schooling opportunities, lowered real costs
* Lowered prices and better information on contraceptives
* Direct incentives such as subsidy benefits
* Policies that have the effect of reducing boy preference
Policy responses thus follow directly from these.

Question 24

Consequences of High Fertility: Argument A

Answer 24

Population growth: “It’s Not a Real Problem”:
* The real problem is not population growth but rather:
* Underdevelopment
* World resource depletion and environmental destruction
* Population Distribution
* Subordination of women
* “Overpopulation is a Deliberately Contrived False Issue”
* “Population Growth is a Desirable Phenomenon”

Question 25

Consequences of High Fertility: Argument B

Answer 25

“Population Growth Is a Real Problem” * Extremist arguments * Theoretical arguments * Empirical arguments – Lower economic growth – Poverty – Adverse impact on education – Adverse impact on health – Food constraints – Impact on the environment – Frictions over international migration

Question 26

Toward a Consensus

Answer 26

Despite the conflicting opinions, some common ground: *rapid pop growth usually/can lead to poor policy solutions * Population is not the primary cause of lower living levels * Population growth more a consequence than cause of underdevelopment * It’s not numbers but quality of life that matters * Nevertheless rapid population increases likely to exacerbate various issues and thus. * Voluntary decreases in fertility is generally desirable for most developing countries with still-expanding populations

Question 27

Policy Approaches

Answer 27

Attend to underlying socioeconomic conditions that impact development Family planning programs should provide education and technological means to regulate fertility Developed countries have responsibilities too Address gender bias, causes of boy preference

Question 28

Policy Approaches: What can developing countries do?

Answer 28

* Persuasion through education * Family planning programs * Address incentives and disincentives for having children through the principal variables influencing the demand for children * Raise the socioeconomic status of women * Increase employment opportunities for women (increases opportunity cost of having more children, as in microeconomic household theory) * Help facilitate genuine and faster development of developing countries that still have high fertility rates

Question 29

Policy Approaches: What can developed countries and do generally?

Question 30

Policy Approaches: How can developed countries help developing countries with their population programs?

Answer 30

What the Developed Countries Can Do Generally * Address resource use inequities * More open migration policies How Developed Countries Can Help Developing Countries with their Population Programs * Research into technology of fertility control * Financial assistance for family planning programs

Question 31

Unified Growth Theory: Background

Answer 31

Seeks to explain growth process since the Neolithic revolution (first agricultural revolution) * Neolithic revolution (10,000 BC): Favorable biogeographic initial conditions – in particular the prevalence of plants and animals suited to domestication – expedited the transition from hunter–gatherer to sedentary agriculture in advantaged areas, leading to the rise of early “civilization” (J Diamond, 1997, Guns, Germs and Steel). Amodel that attempts to explain the long-run evolution of human economies, encompassing the transition from stagnation to growth and the emergence of global inequality. It suggests that growth is an inevitable outcome of development, driven by technological progress, demographic transitions, and the accumulation of human capital. First Agricultural Revolution, marks the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled, agricultural societies in the Neolithic period, roughly 12,000 years age

Question 32

Unified Growth Theory: Background

Answer 32

The unified growth theory attmepts to explain teh long run development of human economies, encom[assing the transition from stagnation to growth, and the emergence of global inequality. It suggests growth is an inevitable consequence of human development, driven by technological change, demographic transitions, and capital accumulation. It posits 3 eras of growth 1. Malthusian Era -> high fertility and mortality -> broad subsistence production as the income effects of technological progress were offset by a growing population that was outpacing food supply -> temporary shifts in population were from positive malthusian checks that affected the adjustment of a population towards its steady state. 2. Post - Malthusian era - 1820 -1890: -> decreasing mortality rates -> increased technological progress gained momentum as a result of industrialisation, and Y/N increased. This increased the return to investment on human capital (education), and most importantly, -> TRIGGERED THE FERTILITY TRANSITION (irreversible) 3. Modern Era - 1890 to now -> technological progress outpaces population growth and eases the budget constraint, causing 2 opposing effects: 1. more resources are available to allocate towards having children 2. Induced a resource allocation shift towards quality of the child - this effect dominated the first in terms of influence on productivity in the modern era Remember: (+) technological progress -> (+) return to investment on human capital/eductation -> decreases fertility rates and increases emand for education -> more educated people demand more education Thus inciting an irreversible incipient decline of fertility rates.