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Updated - Chapter 06

The document discusses the demographic transition in Western Europe and developing countries. [1] It describes how death rates initially fell in Western Europe in the 19th century due to improving economic conditions and medicine, followed later by falling birth rates, resulting in population growth rates under 0.5% annually. [2] In developing countries in the 1950s-60s, death rates plummeted much faster due to modern medicine, causing population growth over 2% annually with high birth rates unchanged. [3] Some developing countries like China have since experienced rapidly falling birth rates, entering the final stage of demographic transition and reducing population growth.

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8 views

Updated - Chapter 06

The document discusses the demographic transition in Western Europe and developing countries. [1] It describes how death rates initially fell in Western Europe in the 19th century due to improving economic conditions and medicine, followed later by falling birth rates, resulting in population growth rates under 0.5% annually. [2] In developing countries in the 1950s-60s, death rates plummeted much faster due to modern medicine, causing population growth over 2% annually with high birth rates unchanged. [3] Some developing countries like China have since experienced rapidly falling birth rates, entering the final stage of demographic transition and reducing population growth.

Uploaded by

ahasanjihad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 06

Population Growth and Economic


Development: Causes,
Consequences, and Controversies
Population Growth:
Past, Present, and Future
World Population Growth, 1750–2050
World Population Distribution by Region, 2010 and 2050
The Demographic Transition in Western Europe
The Demographic Transition in Western Europe

• The figure depicts the three historical stages of the demographic


transition in western Europe. Before the early nineteenth century,
birth rates hovered around 35 per 1,000 while death rates fluctuated
around 30 per 1,000. This resulted in population growth rates of
around 5 per 1,000, or less than 0.5% per year. Stage 2, the beginning
of western Europe’s demographic transition, was initiated around the
first quarter of the nineteenth century by slowly falling death rates as
a result of improving economic conditions and the gradual
development of disease and death control through modern medical
and public
health technologies.
The Demographic Transition in Developing Countries
The Demographic Transition in Developing
Countries
• The figure shows the population histories of contemporary
developing countries, which contrast with those of western
Europe and fall into two patterns.
• Birth rates in many developing countries today are
considerably higher than they were in preindustrial western
Europe. This is because women tend to marry at an earlier
age. As a result, there are both more families for a given
population size and more years in which to have children.
•
The Demographic Transition in Developing
Countries
• In the 1950s and 1960s, stage 2 of the demographic transition occurred

throughout most of the developing world. The application of highly effective

imported modern medical and public health technologies caused death rates

in developing countries to fall much more rapidly than in nineteenth-century

Europe. Given their historically high birth rates (over 40 per 1,000 in many

countries), this has meant that stage 2 of the demographic transition has

been characterized by population growth rates well in excess of 2.0% per

annum in most developing countries.


The Demographic Transition in Developing
Countries
• With regard to stage 3, we can distinguish between two
broad classes of developing countries. In case A in Figure
6.6, modern methods of death control combined with
rapid and widely distributed rises in levels of living have
resulted in death rates falling as low as 10 per 1,000 and
birth rates also falling rapidly, to levels between 12 and
25 per 1,000. These countries, including Taiwan, South
Korea, Costa Rica, China, Cuba, Chile, and Sri Lanka, have
thus entered stage 3 of their demographic transition and
have experienced rapidly falling rates of overall
population growth.
The Causes of High Fertility in Developing
Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

• The Malthusian Population Trap:


More than two centuries ago, the Reverend Thomas
Malthus put forward a theory of the relationship
between population growth and economic
development that is influential today. Writing in his
1798 Essay on the Principle of Population and drawing
on the concept of diminishing returns, Malthus
postulated a universal tendency for the population of a
country, unless checked by dwindling food supplies, to
grow at a geometric rate, doubling every 30 to 40 years.
The Causes of High Fertility in Developing
Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

• At the same time, because of diminishing returns


to the fixed factor, land, food supplies could
expand only at a roughly arithmetic rate. In fact,
as each member of the population would have
less land to work, his or her marginal
contribution to food production would actually
start to decline.
The Causes of High Fertility in Developing
Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

• Modern economists have given a name to the


Malthusian idea of a population inexorably
forced to live at subsistence levels of income.
They have called it the low-level equilibrium
population trap or, more simply, the Malthusian
population trap
The Malthusian Population Trap
Criticisms of the Malthusian Model
The Microeconomic Household Theory of
Fertility
• The conventional theory of consumer
behavior assumes that an individual with a
given set of tastes or preferences for a range
of goods (a “utility function”) tries to
maximize the satisfaction derived from
consuming these goods subject to his or her
own income constraint and the relative prices
of all goods.
The Microeconomic Household Theory of
Fertility
• Cd = f(Y, Pc, Px, tx), x = 1, . . . , n
where Cd, the demand for surviving children (an
important consideration in low-income societies
where infant mortality rates are high), is a function
of the given level of household income (Y), the “net”
price of children (the difference between anticipated
costs, mostly the opportunity cost of a mother’s
time, and benefits, potential child income and old-
age support, Pc), the prices of all other goods (Px),
and the tastes for goods relative to children (tx).
The Microeconomic Household Theory of
Fertility

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