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UNFPA’s View On Population: An Economic Analysis

Alejandro Cid1

Abstract

Recently, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) published “State of

World Population 2002” which holds a Malthusian view on demography: population
growth harms economic development. Based on that assumption, the UNFPA directs
funds to reduce the fertility of Third World women.
The purpose of this paper is to question the arguments and the underlying
assumptions of the UNFPA perspective on demography. The critiques of the
Malthusian view, from an economic point of view, include: a) statistical data have not
confirmed the Malthusians’ predictions; b) the difference between causation and
correlation is misunderstood; c) a fixed level of resources is assumed; d) it
underestimates the value of human capital; e) the problem of aging population is
ignored.
Since nowadays not only UNFPA but also many other institutions spent large
amounts of money on reducing fertility rates and controlling population growth in the
Third World, understanding the relationship between population and economic growth
could help improve policies. The conclusion of this paper is that there’s no strong
evidence, neither empirical nor theoretical, that population controls would solve
poverty and contribute to development. Moreover, some evidence suggest just the
contrary.

1Alejandro Cid is an economist and Professor of the History of Economics at the University of
Montevideo, Uruguay.

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I. Introduction

Some months ago, United Nations (UNFPA) published “State of World

Population 2002” (SWP shortened). One of the points that it holds, is that the
demographic growth harms economic development. Precisely, I will focus mi paper on
that statement. Why is it important to devote time on this? Because UNFPA not only
holds this Malthusian thesis but also directs huge amounts of money to population
control: “...since 1969, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has been the
largest multilateral source of population assistance, providing some 6 billion dollars for
population programs” (SWP, 2002, 8). “It is necessary to realize that policies have costs.
These costs include the direct costs of implementing and monitoring policies and the
distortionary costs introduced by policies that may encourage socially inefficient
behavior (including rent-seeking by both public and private entities). Often policy-
makers focus only on the direct costs and ignore the distortionary costs that may be
much greater...” (Behrman, 2003, 384). So, if the Malthusian thesis was wrong, UNFPA
could be playing really against economic development.

II. Malthus and Neo-malthusians

UNFPA’s thesis that demographic growth harms economic development is not

a new idea in the economic literature. For instance, Frank Furedi (1997)2 summarized
different points of view that have aroused on this topic (see Kelley, Allen. C. (2003), for
another summary):
“The Developmentalist Perspective… rapid population growth represents
a major obstacle to development, as valuable resources are diverted from productive
expenditure to the feeding of a growing population (…)”.
“The Redistributionist Perspective…interprets high fertility as not so
much the cause but the effect of poverty. Why? Because poverty, lack of economic
security, the high mortality rates of children, the low status of women and other
factors force people to have large families. They also believe that population is a
problem because it helps intensify the impoverishment of the masses (…)”.
“The Limited Resources Perspective:… population growth has a negative
and potentially destructive impact on the environment. Its proponents argue that
even if a growing population can be fed, the environment cannot sustain such large
numbers, population growth will lead to the explosion of pollution, which will have a
catastrophic effect on the environment (…)”.
“The Socio-Biological Perspective…Its proponents present population
growth as a threat not only to the environment but also to a way of life. They regard
people as polluters and often define population growth as a pathological problem. In
the West, the ruthless application of this variant of Malthusianism leads to demands
for immigration control (…)”

2Furedi, Frank. (1997). Population and Development: A Critical Introduction (cited in Wolfgram, Ann F.
“Population, Resources & Environment: a Survey of the Debate”,
http://arts-sciences.cua.edu/econ/faculty/aguirre/ )

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 “The People-as-a-Source-of-Instability Perspective… the growth of
population has the potential to undermine global stability. Some see the rising
expectations of large numbers of frustrated people as the likely source of violent
protest and a stimulus for future wars and conflicts (…)”
“The People-as-Problem-Solvers Perspective. In contrast to the
approaches mentioned so far, this one does not believe that population growth
constitutes a problem. On the contrary, its advocates believe that the growth of
population has the potential to stimulate economic growth and innovation. From this
perspective, more people means more problem solvers, since human creativity has
the potential to overcome the limits of nature (…)”.
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1798) Essay on the Principle of Population is the
emblematic work in this topic. In the Essay..., he argues that the population growth rate
is higher than the food growth one. Why? Food supply is constraint by land scarcity
and by the existence of the law of diminishing returns. But just history has shown that
Malthusian prophecies have not been right: “technological developments, agricultural
developments, changes in societal organization, and changes in governmental policies,
among other things, enabled humanity to avoid a situation where the number of people
was greater than the capacity to sustain them” (Wolfgram, 2000).
“...the World Bank devoted a segment of its Development Report to refer to the
Green Revolution as a ‘paradigm’ for development and knowledge-sharing. It is
through human ingenuity, the World Bank argues, that food production has stayed
ahead of population growth; indeed, productivity gains in cereals such as rice, maize
and wheat have been dramatic” (Wolfgram, 2000).
In the term 1970-1980, Malthus’ thesis was revived in the popular debate.
Within this neo-Malthusian trend, we could find people such as Paul Elrich and his
Population Bomb (1968), Garrett Hardin and his Tragedy of the Commons (1968), Lester
Brown… These neo-Malthusians argue that the population growth not only will exceed
food growth rate but also will overcome mineral resources, oil, cultivable land, water
and environment. “With complete but unfounded confidence, Paul Ehrlich could claim
in 1968 that ‘hundreds of millions’ of people would die of starvation by the 1970s, that
65 million Americans would starve, that the population of the U.S. would decline by
22.6 million persons, and that England would cease to exist by 2000. More recently, Mr.
Ehrlich, writing with Anne Ehrlich, renewed his prediction in The Population Explosion
(1990)” (Wolfgram, 2000).
UNFPA’s “State of World Population 2002” seems to belong to this neo-
Malthusian trend. Let we cite some paragraphs as examples:
 “Population age structures have an impact on development: a high
proportion of young dependents holds back economic growth” (SWP,
2002, 7).
 “Slower population growth has encouraged overall economic growth in
developing countries” (SWP, 2002, 7).
 “Between 2000 and 2015 nearly 1.5 billion young men and women will
join the 20-24 age group. They, and hundreds of millions of teenagers,
will be looking for work. If they have jobs they will drive economic
growth; if not they will fuel political instability” (SWP, 2002, 9).

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 Who have criticized the neo-Malthusians’ prophecies? Firstly, let the statistical
data talk for itself.

III. Statistical data have not confirmed the Malthusians’ predictions

“…the famines, shortages and ecological disasters widely predicted in the 1960s
have not occurred, despite extraordinarily rapid population growth - world population
has approximately doubled from three to six billion. Rather, quality of life has generally
improved and per capita food production has increased. According to the 1998 Human
Development Report, infant mortality has decreased more than 50% since 1960,
malnutrition has been reduced by more than 25%, and the number of children
receiving vaccination has increased by 80%. Alphabetization among adults has
increased from 48% to 70% between 1970 and 1995. Primary education has increased
from 48% to 77% while secondary education has moved from 35% to 47% during the
same period. According to the 1999 Human Development Report “food production per
capita increased by nearly 25% during 1990-1997. The per capita daily supply of
calories rose from less than 2500 to 2750 and that of protein from 71 grams to 76”
(Aguirre et al, 2000, b).
FAO, in Agriculture to 2010 affirms that “it is technically possible to feed the
billions of inhabitants forecasted” ”(Cachán, 1995, 17). See also Pierre Le Roy (2003)
on agricultural production perspectives, who confirms this statement.
“Roger Revelle, Harvard Center for Population Studies ex-director, points out
that the current agricultural technologies would allow to feed 40.000 millions people,
seven times the world population of today”(Cachán, 1995, 24).
Ramón Llamas (2003), vice-president of Hydric Resources International
Association, states that the world does not face a problem of scarcity of water: the real
problem is its poor management.
“Simon Kuznets have collected data from 21 countries of Asia and Africa and
19 from Latin-America. The results of his research does not find negative correlation
between population and income per capita (…). Jean Claude Chesnais and Alfred Sauvy
arrived to the same conclusions in there research taking 76 developing countries during
1960-1970” ”(Cachán, 1995, 55).

IV. The difference between causation and correlation is misunderstood

One frequent mistake in the popular debate: two events that happen
simultaneously are attributed to the existence of a causal relationship between them.
The difference between causation and correlation is misunderstood. Let’s take the
example of India where two facts turn up simultaneously: poverty and population
growth. From these facts, could we conclude that poverty is caused by population
growth in India? Could we ignore another simultaneous facts such as the huge
inefficiencies and economic distortions that were introduced by different governments
along the time, or the problems that were caused by the criteria used for divide the
territory when the British empire left India, or the ethnic struggles, or the political
instability and corruption, or the assaults to the economic liberty and private property?

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As the reader could note, it is no so simple to hold that the cause of poverty in India is
the demographic expansion: a serious research could not ignore the other factors that
have been mentioned.
A recent research of World Bank, Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and
Development Policy (Collier, 2003) studies the relationship between 52 civil wars and
poverty and concludes that both are positive related: another idea to take into account
for the researchers on the real causes of poverty.
Srinivasan (1988) 3 argues that “many of the alleged deleterious consequences
result more from inappropriate policies and institutions than from rapid population
growth”. Take for example the case of Ethiopia and the analysis of Eleni Gabre-
Madhin (2003), from the International Food Policy Research Institute. He states that 14
millions of Ethiopians are in danger of famine the current year and this fact is not the
result of the population growth (among the causes, he emphasizes: economics agents
with asymmetric information, lack of an insurance and legal system that could protect
from bad crops and guarantee contracts, poor road infrastructure and
telecommunications, difficult access to credit). “The erroneous belief about the
population growth has introduced an expensive cost: it has diverted the attention from
a central topic in the development of a country: the economic and political
system”(Simon, 1993). Julian L. Simon (1989, 325) affirms: “the two variable studies
reveal nothing important because they do not indicate a causal connection. In contrast,
I argue that because the studies persuasively show an absence of association in these
data, they imply the absence of a negative causal relationship. In other words, the other
writers point to what the studies do not show, whereas I point to what they do show”.
UNFPA State of World Population 2002 points out: “Rapid growth of poor rural
populations puts enormous stress on local environments”(SWP, 2002, 9). Another issue
that makes Malthus disciples worried: degradation of land quality. Let’s take an
example: Imagine a developing country where take place two facts simultaneously: great
degradation of land quality and high demographic growth. Some neo-Malthusians could
suggest to impose population controls. But, is population the real cause of
degradation of land quality? Once more, isn’t it a problem of misunderstanding the
difference between causation and correlation? Why not assign resources to teach the
inhabitants of that region how to use the land in a more efficient and sustainable form?
John Pender (2003) recently made a theoretical and empirical review on the possible
causal relationship between rural population growth and natural resource management
and concluded that population growth is seldom the principal cause of environmental
degradation and seldom if ever the focal point for a solution. “The evidence on these
issues is mixed. For example, an often cited study of the Machakos district in Kenya
found that between the 1930s and the 1990s, per capita income had increased, erosion
was much better controlled, and trees were more prevalent in the landscape, despite a
fivefold increased in population…Numerous other studies have also found positive
associations between population growth, agricultural intensification, and investments in
land improvement and resource conservation… However, many studies have also
found population growth to be associated with various aspects of resource degradation,
including deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, soil nutrient depletion, and other

3Cited by Kelley, Allen C. 2003. The Population Debate in Historical Perspective: Revisionism Revised in
“Population Matters. Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing
World”, Oxford, Edited by Nancy Birdsall, Allen C. Kelley and Steven W. Sinding. Page 38.

5
problems…” (Pender, 2003, 326). Pender emphasizes that the results of population
growth on natural resources “are strongly conditioned by the nature of technology,
infrastructure, institutions, and organizations… Much of the challenge of empirical
policy research on these issues is to identify the factors that lead to different pathways
of institutional and technological change, and policy interventions that may help more
productive, welfare-enhancing and resource-improving pathways to evolve… The
impacts of population pressure, particularly on natural resource conditions, may be very
different in different contexts. Thus careful empirical work is required in different
contexts before general conclusions can be drawn” (Pender, 2003, 355, 363).

V. Malthusians seems to underestimates the value of human capital

Another fallacy that is used to be in underlying assumptions of the followers of

Malthus: If my country produces two apples and there is only one inhabitant, then this
inhabitant would be able to eat two apples. If my country still produces two apples but
the population has grown and now there are two inhabitants, then each person could
eat only one apple. So, demographic growth has caused famine. This fallacy (Buckley,
1982, 206) seems to be in the arguments of the State of World Population 2002 and
consists in identify one more person with only an additional stomach to feed. It is
forgotten that each person has hands and intelligence. Each human being is an
inexhaustible resource which includes: knowledge, imagination, insatiability. This is
precisely the foundation of the title selected for his book by the Maryland University
professor Julian L. Simon: The Ultimate Resource (1981) who holds that, eventually,
the real important resource is: the human being (Harvard professor, Gregory Mankiw,
also supports4 this thesis). Simon was influenced by the works of Gary Becker which
make emphasis on the roll of human capital in the economic development. Each
person is a source of invention, with the ability of overcome intellectual, scientific and
vital challenges. For instance, technological developments could help greater efficiency
in the use of resources. Moreover, these innovations could mean a less dependence on
some resources, causing a demand change. “I point out how the copper that we mine
is less and less rich per ton year after year, but despite this our inventive capacities have
been greater –that is, they have dominated the decreasing richness and the increasing
difficulty in getting this stuff out” (Buckley, 1982, 207).
In 1968, Garrett Hardin, in his Tragedy of the Commons, argued that the
consumers of a common resource (water, land, air) would end destroying that resource.
However, Hardin did not take into account the existence of human creativity which
would allow to invent new, better and sustainable ways to use those common resources,
in benefit of both human beings and environment. In this sense, Elinor Ostrom et al
(1999) argue:
“Although tragedies have undoubtedly occurred, it is also obvious that for
thousands of years people have self-organized to manage common-pool resources,
and users often do devise long-term, sustainable institutions for governing these
resources. It is time for a reassessment of the generality of the theory that has grown

4 Expansión , 25th. April 2003, cited by ACEPRENSA 66/03.

6
 out of Hardin’s original paper. … An important lesson from the empirical studies of
sustainable resources is that more solutions exist than Hardin proposed”.5
Also, Julian L. Simon (1996) argues:
“Trends in energy costs and scarcity have been downward over the entire
period for which we have data. And such trends are usually the most reliable bases
for forecasts. From these data we may conclude with considerable confidence that
energy will be less costly and more available in the future than in the past. The reason
that the cost of energy has declined in the long-run is the fundamental process of (1)
increased demand due to growth of population and income, which raises prices and
hence constitutes opportunity to entrepreneurs and inventors; (2) the search for new
ways of supplying the demand for energy; (3) the eventual discovery of methods
which leave us better off than if the original problem had not appeared”6.

VI. A fixed level of resources assumed

The report of the UNFPA State of World Population 2002 affirms: “Large families
dilute the assets of poorer households. Unwanted births deepen household poverty.
Smaller families allow more investment in each child’s health and education” (SWP,
2002, 9). What are the underlying assumptions of that statement?. The classical
Malthusian theories are usually based on the assumption that the available resources of
any society are fixed. Assuming a fixed level of food, money, public services, etc, these
theories state that: a) more people means more consumers and, then, less consumption
per capita; b) from the point of view of the labor market, with a fixed capital, average
production per worker will be lower with a larger labor force; c) each new child, from
this perspective, make problems deeper because he is one more to eat and does not
produce anything; moreover, this fact harms the possible salary of the mother: she
would not be able to work outside; d) finally, for all these reasons, population growth
will mean less save, investment (also human capital investment) and education per
capita. But, the central problem of these Malthusians prophecies is precisely that they
are based on the famous assumption known as “ceteris paribus”: in other words, it
considers that, while the population growths, all the other variables (education, food,
capital,…) remain constant.
Julian L. Simon (1989, 330) states that the conventional conclusions of Malthus
and his disciples are untenable when they are scientifically analyzed, both theoretical or
empirical. In Wolfgram (2000) there are specific references on the debate about the
“problematic” resources such as water, land, minerals, and Malthusian fallacies on this
topic.

5 Elinor Ostrom et al, Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges, Science 284 (9 April 1999):
278-282. (cited in Wolfgram, Ann F. “Population, Resources & Environment: a Survey of the
Debate”, http://arts-sciences.cua.edu/econ/faculty/aguirre/ )
6 Simon, J. 1996. The Ultimate Resource II. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pages 107-8. (cited

in Wolfgram, Ann F. “Population, Resources & Environment: a Survey of the Debate”,

http://arts-sciences.cua.edu/econ/faculty/aguirre/)

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 “It is quite true that the existing empirical studies do not in themselves show
that faster population growth in the more developed world as a whole increases the
income per person. But this is not inconsistent with the proposition that more people
raise the standard of living in the long run. As I noted above, the studies mentioned do
not refer to the very long run, but rather usually cover only a quarter of a century, or a
century at most. The main negative effects of population growth occur during perhaps
the first quarter or half a century so that, if these negative effects are important, the
empirical studies referred to should reveal them. These shorter term effects upon the
standard of living operate chiefly through capital dilution; they include the public costs
of raising children –largely schooling and secondarily health- and the costs of providing
production capital for the additional persons in the work force. But the most important
positive effects of additional people –improvement of productivity through the
contribution of new ideas and the learning-by-doing resulting from increased
production volume- happen in the long run and are cumulative” (Simon, 1989, 329). In
this way, Julian L. Simon shows that the empirical works that not take the long run into
account, have biased results and stress the negative correlation between demographic
growth and economic development.

VII. Problems of aging population

It is valuable to remind the economic problems that developed countries are

nowadays facing as a consequence of the fertility rate reduction with larger life
expectancy– with both trends accentuating7 -, meanwhile the mortality rate is declining:
“The “silent revolution” that an increasing number of older people (see Appendix) are
causing in the world brings with it many economic, cultural, and social issues among
others that must be addressed. Not only will this situation exacerbate weaknesses in
social security systems, but the suggested solutions to reform the systems will require
substantial budgetary changes. In addition, likely social side effects will involve
tensions between older generations and the younger generations who must support
them...” (Aguirre et al, 2000, a, 4), with consequences on public services, health care,
social security and fiscal budgets8. Two contemporary trends:
a) Increase of life expectancy: “The proportion of elderly in the world
increased by only 1 percentage point from 1955 to 1990. Compare this to a
3.5 percent growth in the next three decades, and a 6.3 percent increase in
developed countries”. 9 “The dependency ratio (typically defined as the
percentage of the population aged 65+ over the population aged 15-64) is
expected to increase from an average of 50% in 1995, to an average of 85%-
90% by the year 2050” (Aguirre et al, 2000, a, 7). Also UNFPA affirms: “The

7 Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson, and Sergei Scherbov, “World Population Scenarios for the 21st
Century,” The Future Population of the World: What Can We Assume Today?, ed. Wolfgang Lutz
(London: Earthscan, 1996) 382 (cited in Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine.
2000. “Putting a Price on Aging Population”).
8 Humanity’s Slowing Growth, 17th march 2003, The New York Times.

9 Samuel H. Preston and Linda G. Martin, eds., Demography of Aging (Washington, D.C.: National

Academy, 1994) 3 (cited in Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine. 2000.
“Putting a Price on Aging Population”).

8
 number of people aged 60 and older is projected to more than triple in the
next half century, from 593 million to 1.97 billion, increasing the share of
older people in the population from 10 to 22 per cent” (SWP, 2002, 10).
b) Fertility rate reduction: Wattenberg (2003) holds that this rate (“total
fertility rate”: number of children born per women) should be at least 2,110 to
stabilize the population during the time being. At this rate, the two children
could replace their fathers when they finally die (the 0,1 refers to the children
that die before they can reach the reproduction age). “In the United Nations'
most recent population report, the fertility rate is assumed to be 1.85, not 2.1.
This will lead, later in this century, to global population decline. (…) Every
developed nation is now below replacement level. In the early 1960's,
Europe's fertility rate was 2.6. Today the rate is 1.4, and has been sinking for
half a century. In Japan the rate is 1.3. (…) Nations with low fertility rates,
meanwhile, will face major fiscal and political problems. In a pay-as-you-go
pension system, for example, there will be fewer workers to finance the
pensions of retirees; people will either have to pay more in taxes or work
longer” (Wattenberg, 2003).
UNFPA’s report holds with proud that the population planning programs
accounted for almost one third of the global decline in fertility between 1972 and 1994
and more than two thirds of the decline in Asia (SWP, 2002, 8). However this report
does not take into account the problems that this fact has caused (and will cause in the
future) in the Asian health and pension systems (Aguirre et al, 2000, a, 18).

VIII. Conclusions

The purpose of this paper is to question the arguments and the underlying
assumptions of the UNFPA perspective on demography which are hold in State of
World Population 2002. As we can see, there are strong theoretical and empirical
arguments that weaken the UNFPA conclusions and its implications on the design of
political economy. In the last decades, institutions like UNFPA have spent large
amounts of money (Aguirre et al, 2000, b, 33-35) in promoting Malthusian
recommendations taking for granted that this would encourage economic development,
but the consequences could be just the opposite.
The State of World Population 2002 report points out that “The international
community has committed itself to an ambitious goal: cutting in half the number of
people living in absolute poverty by 2015”(SWP, 2002, 8). It is obviously a good target.
However, UNFPA focusing on the reduction of the fertility rate diverts attention and
resources of the real problems.
Instead of pursuing short run results wasting money on putting population
controls, why not devote the economic resources, which are scarce, in looking for real
solutions in the fundamentals of development: improve and expand education and

Bongaarts holds that this replacement fertility equals 2.36 births per woman in the developing
10

world. Bongaarts, John. Dependency Burdens in the Developing World in “Population Matters.
Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World”, Oxford, 2003,
Edited by Nancy Birdsall, Allen C. Kelley and Steven W. Sinding, page 57.

9
health, eliminate economic inefficiencies and corruption, guarantee suitable institutions
(governments and economic policies, markets, property rights…) …? It seems to be a
too easy solution reducing poverty just by imposing poor women to have less children,
without facing the real problems. In this sense, Allen C. Kelley (2003), recounting the
history of the population debate, states that the progress of economic research on
population has reached a particular approach that: “a) downgrades the relative
importance of population growth as a source of economic growth, placing it along with
several other factors of equal o greater importance; b) assesses the consequences over a
longer period of time; and c) takes indirect feedbacks within economic and political
systems into account.”
As we have seen, there’s no strong evidence11, neither empirical nor theoretical,
that population controls would solve poverty and contribute to development. Moreover,
some scientific evidence suggest just the contrary12. Then, why does UNFPA insist on
reducing fertility rate of third world women? For a later research, many hypothesis
could be made to ask this question. Are the laboratories firms, which offer instruments
to population control, supporting Malthusians recommendations just for selling more
of their products? Are the developed countries –which are facing fertility rate
reduction- worried about the geopolitical, strategic and sociological consequences for
them of the greater demographic growth in the Third World? “There are more people
living on the earth today than at any previous point in history. At the 6 billion mark,
there are twice as many of us as there were in 1960. Family planning has caused the
rate of growth to slow, but population is still increasing by about 78 million people
annually (O’Malley, 1999). The overwhelming majority of these births (97%) occur in
developing countries (O’Malley, 1999). Africa has the most quickly expanding
population; the United Nations Population Fund Activities (UNFPA) predicts a
doubling of the population there within half a century. As far as total number of births,
Asia has by far the most, with nearly 50 million people every year (O’Malley, 1999).
“Currently, two out of every five people live in China or India” (Aguirre et al, 2000, a)
“Still, it is the geopolitical implications of this change that may well be the most
important. There is not a one-to-one relationship between population and power. But
numbers matter. Big nations, or big groups of nations acting in concert, can become
major powers. China and India each have populations of more than a billion; their
power and influence will almost surely increase in the decades to come. Europe will
shrink and age, absolutely and relatively” (Wattemberg, 2003).

11 Another example: Kelley and Schmidt found that “the effect of population growth, which
showed little or no effect on economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s, is negative, statistically
significant, and large in the 1980s. The coefficient varies with level of economic development –
negative in developing countries; positive for many developed countries”. They “also found that
population density is consistently positively associated with economic growth across time and
across all coutnries; that population size is positively associated with economic growth during some
time periods; and that the net impact of demography over the 1980s was negative”. But pay
attention on this!: “The authors urge readers not to make too much of these results; they are based
on data and models which are still far from perfect”. From: “Population Matters. Demographic
Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World”, Oxford, 2003, Edited by
Nancy Birdsall, Allen C. Kelley and Steven W. Sinding, p. 65.
12 Simon, Julian L. 1981. The Ultimate Resource; Kelley, Allen C. 1988. “Economic Consequences of

Population Change in the Third World” Journal of Economic Literature. (all of them cited by Kelley,
Allen C. 2003. “The Population Debate in Historical Perspective: Revisionism Revised”, p. 36, 38)

10
 To conclude, I would like to cite a recent paper of Sofía Aguirre (2000, 2), who
writes: “the policies used are mistaken ever since it aims at hampering the growth of a
key element of economic development: human capital, and thus renders it
unsustainable…” (…). “It is time to acknowledge that the problem with development,
poverty, and pollution is a consequence of political and economic factors, not of
population”.
“Our world does not depend on the amount of resources: It depends on
our freedom and imagination to optimize them” (Simon, 1998).

11
References

Aguirre, Maria Sophia. 2000. Sustainable Development: Why the Focus on Population? Paper
presented in International Health Congress Harvard-MIT, 10-12th march 2000,
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Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine. 2000. a. Putting a Price on
Aging Population. http://arts-sciences.cua.edu/econ/faculty/aguirre/

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Appendix – On Aging Population

Table I
Countries Projections of Population over the Next Fifty Years
1998-2050
(in Millions)

COUNTRY 1998 2050

Austria 8.1 7.1
Belarus 10.3 8.3
Belgium 10.1 8.9
Bulgaria 8.3 5.7
Croatia 4.5 3.7
Ciba 11.1 11.1
Czech Rep. 10.3 7.8
Denmark 5.3 4.8
Estonia 1.4 0.9
Finland 5.2 4.9
Germany 82.1 73.3
Greece 10.6 8.2
Hungary 10.1 7.5
Italy 57.4 41.2
Japan 126.3 104.9
Latvia 2.4 1.6
Lithuania 3.7 3
Netherlands 15.7 14.2
Poland 38.7 36.3
Portugal 9.9 8.1
Romania 22.5 16.4
Russian Fed. 147.4 121.3
Slovakia 5.4 4.8
Slovenia 2 1.5
Spain 39.6 30.2
Sweden 8.9 8.7
Switzerland 7.3 6.7
Ukraine 50.9 39.3
U.K. 58.6 56.7
Yugoslavia 10.6 10.5
Total 784.8 657.7
Source: United Nations (1998)

Table extracted from: Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine. 2000.
“Putting a Price on Aging Population”

14
 Figure I
Fertility Rates in Developed Countries
1960-1965 vs. 1995-2000

5
4.5
4 3.6
3.3
3.5
Fertility Rates

2.8 2.9
3 2.5 2.6
2.5 2 2
2 1.7 1.6 1.6
1.4 1.3
1.5 1.2
1
0.5
0
U.S. U.K France Canada Japan Germany Italy

1960-1965 1995-2000
Source: United Nations (1998)
Figure extracted from: Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine. 2000.
“Putting a Price on Aging Population”

Figure II
Elderly as a Percentage of the Developed World Population
1960-2030
Elderly/Developed World Population

25
20.2 23.8
20
16.7
14.7
15 13.3

9.2
10

0
1960 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030

Source: United Nations (1998).

Figure extracted from: Aguirre, Maria Sophia; Dardys, Lynne; Motus, Catherine. 2000.
“Putting a Price on Aging Population”

* Elderly is defined as aged 65 and older

15