Toward a Theory of Population-Development Interaction

Bibliographic Data

ID4122500
AuthorsNathan Keyfitz (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume16
Pages295
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopulation and Development Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0098-7921 • E-ISSN: 1728-4457
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2808078
OpenAlexW2334164255
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited9

THIS ARTICLE JUXTAPOSES THE DIVERGENT VIEWPOINTS of scholars on population and development, in the hope of contributing to a synthesis of what the several disciplines have to say about the effects of population increase. Economics has had the most to say. For its first 170 years of existence as a science, say from soon after Adam Smith to Myrdal, Coale, Lewis, and others writing up to the 1960s, it showed how large and growing populations handicap development. During this time there was no major disagreement by others who examined population. Sociologists took over the field after World War II, resting especially on the increasing mass of statistical data, and they also found rapid population increase a major handicap to development. Biologists had always been interested in the subject, seeing man as an element in the ecology of the planet and being familiar with instances of species, for instance locusts, that escape their natural checks and increase to the point of destroying their habitat. The several disciplines quoted one another approvingly, beginning with Darwin's report that Malthus had given him the idea with which he could start his work. This unanimity has been disturbed in recent decades, as some economists claim that after all development is not much hindered by rapid growth (Kuznets, 1967; Simon, 1981; NRC, 1986). In this view the case for birth control rests mostly on the right of individuals to decide how many children they wish to have, a moral rather than an economic argument, and as such necessarily without any relation to evidence (NRC, 1986). The administrator who asks a neoclassical economist whether he should give high priority to birth control programs is told no; he then asks a biologist and is told yes. He is left to resolve a clash between disciplines that is too difficult for the experts in those disciplines to resolve. A population, whether of humans or other species, exists in some kind of setting. Even a population of automobiles cannot be considered sep

Geography · Population · Sociology · Demography · Economic Growth and Productivity · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy

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