taken to doctors (Chen et al., 1981; Alderman and Gertler, 1997) and to be immu-
nized (Arnold et al.,1998; Hazarika, 2000; Mishra et al.,2004; Koolwal, 2007).
Numerous scholars, such as Caldwell and Caldwell (1987), have placed
cultural factors at the centre of their explanations for demographic change and
have underestimated the role of economic incentives. Governments and donors
have in consequence rather naively considered the supply of (rather than
demand for) modern contraception to be a constraint on reducing fertility.
William Easterly’s recommendation that ‘investing in people’ is enough is
equally mistaken. The case of India shows that aspects of the fertility decision
and consequent human welfare can be strongly influenced by cultural norms.
Key points
- Population growth, by increasing the labour force, is a proximate determi-
nant of growth. Higher fertility may increase (with a lag) entrants to the
labour force or lower mortality and reduce exits from it. - Empirical studies show that population growth has both positive and nega-
tive impacts on economic growth. - Growth of the labour force has a strong positive impact on economic growth
(the demographic dividend),but is insufficient on its own to boost growth. - Growth affects fertility and mortality through the demographic transition.
- Three stages of demographic transition are relevant to developing coun-
tries. During the first stage there is high mortality, high fertility and slow
population growth. In the second stage mortality declines, fertility remains
high and population growth accelerates. In the third stage mortality contin-
ues to decline, but at a slower rate, and fertility begins to fall rapidly, lead-
ing to slower population growth. - Since 1945 direct government (and donor) interventionist policy related to
demography has expanded greatly. Differing policies have sought either to
increase or reduce fertility rates. - Missing women is a catastrophic form of mortality. The demographic tran-
sition theorizes that mortality should reduce with income and GDP growth,
but the phenomenon of missing women has worsened with rising incomes. - Missing women are ‘the additional number of females who would be alive
if there had been equal treatment of the sexes among the cohorts that are
alive today’. - Global estimates of missing women range from 60 million to 101 million
for the mid-1990s. The total estimated figure for missing women is larger
than the combined death tolls of both world wars. - The phenomenon of missing women shows how the relative life chance of
women can worsen even with rising incomes, urbanization, and education.
Investing in people is not enough to achieve favourable demographic
outcomes. Longstanding policies related to demography may have
perverse outcomes in certain cultural contexts.
Population and Economic Growth/Development 97