Population and Economic Growth
Essay by Zomby • December 13, 2011 • Essay • 1,267 Words (6 Pages) • 2,156 Views
The population grows. The total births per second are 4.17 meanwhile the total deaths are 1.80. It does not require any special math ability to come to the result that the population as whole grows bigger. At this moment there are nearly 6.94 bilion people living on the Earth. With the space being limited there is no doubt that Earth as we know it now will not stay the same. There is also another important impact of the steadily increasing number of people inhabitating this planet. It is the impact that affect more or less each one of us - the economic impact.
World economy consist of economies of each country which are created by the people living in those countries. The pople are the economy. Without any population there would be no reason to have economy. The question is how people affect the economy. There could be reasons to believe that the more pople there are on this planet the greater the world economy should be. But is this really thruth? I would like to explain how the population of one country affects its economy.
From the 18th to the beginning of 20th century people such as Thomas Malthus, who wrote An Essay On The Principle Of Population in 1798, believed that if the population grows exponentialy and the food sources grow only aritmeticaly there would be a vast shortcut of food supplies for all the population. His speculations affected the economy of his time and even survived and are believed to be true now. However in my opinion this proved to be wrong. The progress of new technology has made it possible to rise the supplies of food according to the needs of population. What more there was surplus of food even during the financial crisis in the 30s of 20th century. The only reason why people believe that more people on this Earth means less food far all of us is because of the situation in poor countries. In countires such as Spain, Japan or Chile there have never been shortage of food supplies simply because these countries are capable of following the latest technology inventions.
I would like to look more closely the the main demographic factores of population and how they affect the economy. First of all I am well aware of the fact that wealth on the Earth is definitely not equally distributed. Second of all I cannot compare countries such as Germany to countries as Ethiopia even though the number of population is about the same.
If I take into account the size of population of a country and compare it with its level of development I do not see any connection. I do not believe that size of population has a big impact on the speed of development of a country. I also share this opinion in regard with the density of population. I believe the density does not have direct impact on country's economy.
The selection of population is in my beliefs more important and has a crucial role in economics of some countries. There are two group of populations: one living in big cities and the other living in rural areas. In countries such as Singapour or Hong Kong the urbanization is almost 99% and therefore hugely affect its economy.
As for the population growth the fact is that the population grows rapidely only in less developed countries such as Bangladesh, India or China. The population growth in fully developed countries such as USA or Japan is not as rapid at all. Therefore I believe that poppulation growth does not affect the economy but the economy affects the population of these countries. Especialy in poor countries poeple do not increase in number due to the good life conditions but rather due to the fact that bigger family can take care of itself easily then smaller family.
The aging of population has in my opinion
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