Nafziger Economic Development (4th ed)

during the period 1776 to 2176 as a special case of humankind’s history, which has generally been near 0 percent.

The Demographic Transition

In the ancient and medieval periods, famine, disease, and war were potent checks to population growth throughout the world. During the Black Death (1348–50), for example, Europe lost one-fourth to one-third of its population.

After 1650, the population of Western countries increased more rapidly and steadily. The rate increased first in England (especially from 1760 to about 1840), then in other parts of Western Europe, and later in several areas Europeans had settled – the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. However, between 1930 and the present, population growth rates declined in these Western countries in about the same order in which they had increased (Thompson and Lewis 1965:396–418). By contrast, except for China and Japan, non-Western countries did not experience initial rapid population growth until after 1930.

The demographic transition is a period of rapid population growth between a preindustrial, stable population characterized by high birth and death rates and a later, modern, stable population marked by low fertility and mortality. The rapid natural increase takes place in the early transitional stage when fertility is high and mortality is declining. Figure 8-5 illustrates the four-stage demographic transition theory.

STAGE 1: HIGH FERTILITY AND MORTALITY

We were in this stage throughout most of our history. Although annual population growth was only 5 per 10,000 between 1 and 1650 C.E., growth in 18thand 19thcentury Western Europe was about 5 per 1,000, and birth and death rates were high

←

FIGURE 8-5 (continued ).

Stage 3 – late expanding (Sweden, c1865–1980; Mexico, 1970–?). Death rates continue to decline. By the end of the period, average life expectancy is at least 70 years. Birth rates fall rapidly, reflecting not only more effective contraceptives and more vigorous family planning programs, but also the increased cost of children, enhanced mobility, higher aspirations, and changing values and social structure associated with urbanization, education, and economic development. Population growth is positive but decelerating. Except for such countries as Argentina, Chile, Cuba, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka (and recent members graduating from the middle income category, such as Taiwan and South Korea), which have birth rates of 25 per 1000 population or less, most developing countries (including Mexico) are at the early portion of stage 3. Developed countries are further along in stage 3, but only a few (noted later) have finished stage 3. Developed countries that have completed this stage have taken at least 50 years to do so. Stage 4 – late stable (Sweden, c. 1980–, Mexico?) Both death and birth rates are low and nearly equal. Birth rates however may fluctuate. Eventually the population is stationary. Only a few countries in Europe (Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Britain, Greece, Italy, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, and several East-Central European countries) are close to equality in birth and death rates. Source: Merrick 1986:9.

280 Part Three. Factors of Growth

TABLE 8-2. Life Expectancy at Birth, by Region, 1935–39, 1950–55, 1965–70, 1975–80, 1985–90, 1994, and 2003

a Not available.

Sources: Morawetz 1977:48; World Bank 1980b:442–447; Sewell, Tucker, and contributors 1988:246; Population Reference Bureau 1994; Population Reference Bureau 2003.

For earlier comparisons, Coale (2003:114) states

Prior to the seventeenth century, average durations of life in excess of 30 or 35 years were exceptional, and life expectancies of 20 to 30 years were the norm. Average length of life increased markedly during the nineteenth century in [Western countries]. By 1900, expectation of life in these countries was 45 to 50 years.

yellow fever, typhoid fever, smallpox, tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. Despite such improvements, Figure 8-7 shows that people still live longer in rich countries. The positive relationship between life expectancy and income per capita persists until income reaches a certain level, perhaps corresponding to some critical level of health practice and economic productivity. Beyond this level, there appears to be little, if any, positive relationship between average income and life expectancy. Accordingly, although developed, and a few developing, countries have a life expectancy figure of over 70 years, the only countries with a life expectancy between 35 and 70 years are developing countries.

Africa’s fall in life expectancy from the 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century is an anomaly among LDCs. The explanation for this fall is deaths from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Sub-Saharan Africa had an adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 9.0 percent in 2001. Indeed, Botswana, a neighbor of South Africa touted as a development success in 1990, is expected to have a life expectancy of 26.7 years in 2010 compared to what would have been 74.4 years without HIV/AIDS. (Lampley, Wigley, Carr, and Collymore 2002:10–17; see Chapter 10). Still, Africa and other LDC regions will not experience mortality rates matched by fertility rates for a few decades.

One element in this decades-long process – values and institutions supporting high fertility rates – is quite resistant to change. It is much easier in the contemporary world to lower a mortality rate than to change a value system that promotes fertility. The technology needed to increase life expectancy is widely available to all developing

FIGURE 8-7. Life Expectancy in Developed and Developing Countries. Among LDCs, life expectancy increases with average income. Beyond a certain income level, there is little relationship between average income and life expectancy. Data from World Bank 2002i:18–20, 122–124.

countries. They have access to the accumulated improvements in health, medicine, agriculture, and industry of the 19th century and the much more radical innovations of the 20th century – immunization, pesticides, high-yielding grain varieties, and so on. To illustrate our thesis, the Allied powers (in the 1940s) and the World Health Organization (in the 1950s) sprayed a new insecticide, DDT, over large areas of Sri Lanka to destroy malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The cost was less than $2 per head. Malaria was largely eradicated, contributing in part to a steep decline in Sri Lanka’s death rate from 21.7 per 1,000 in 1945 to 14.6 in 1948 to 9.1 in 1959 (see

282Part Three. Factors of Growth

Figure 8-6). Because most people desire health and long life, new life extension methods are easily and quickly adopted (Teitelbaum 1975:420–425).

STAGE 3: DECLINING FERTILITY

Stage 3, declining fertility, of the demographic transition did not begin in Europe for several decades, and in some instances, a century, after the beginning of declining mortality in stage 2. However, in developing countries, stage 3 has followed much more rapidly stage 2. Nevertheless, stage 2 was more explosive, as the initial birth rate was higher and the drop in death rate steeper.

What are the most important determinants of fertility decline? There are two competing answers. Organized family-planning programs, which provide propaganda and contraceptives to reduce the number of births, is one answer. The other is motivating birth control through the more complicated processes of education, urbanization, modernization, and economic development. This view is expressed in the slogan of the 1974 World Population Conference held in Bucharest, “Development is the best contraceptive.”

Those who support family-planning programs point to the substantial decline in the world’s total fertility rate (TFR) – the number of children born to the average woman during her reproductive years – from the 1960s to the 1990s, even in the poorest developing countries. To the surprise of many demographers, the TFR of most of 113 developing countries, and all 35 developed countries, decreased, so that the world’s TFR dropped from 4.6 births per woman in 1968 to 4.1 in 1975 to 3.6 in 1987 to 3.1 in 1995 to 2.8 in 2003 (World Bank 1988i:276–277; Hendry 1988:14; Population Reference Bureau 1995; Population Reference Bureau 2003). In the early 1960s, a number of developing countries began major family-planning programs. Amy Ong Tsui and Donald J. Bogue (1978:1–55) suggest that declines in crude birth rates in developing countries were strongly associated with substantial, organized, family-planning efforts.

However, other evidence indicates that fertility also decreases with economic development, modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. For example, Figure 8-8 indicates that among developing countries (those with a 2000 GNI per capita of less than $15,000), average income and fertility are negatively related; that is, low income is associated with high fertility rates. The relative importance of family-planning programs versus economic development for population control is discussed in a later section on strategies for reducing fertility.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY

In the first decade of the 21st century, most countries were still in stage 3 of the demographic transition. Except for sub-Saharan Africa’s recent experience, virtually all countries experienced some decline in mortality. Outside of war-disrupted Afghanistan, no country outside Africa had a death rate more than 15, substantially below mortality in stage 1. We cannot always identify precisely what stage a country is

FIGURE 8-8. Fertility Rates in Developed and Developing Countries. Fertility rates decline as average income rises. Source: World Bank 2002h:110–112.

in. However, even the most demographically backward countries of Asia and Latin America are in the latter part of stage 2, if not in the earlier part of stage 3. By contrast, only Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Britain, Greece, Italy, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria were in stage 4 – low, stable population growth – with virtually equal fertility and mortality rates.

284Part Three. Factors of Growth

BEYOND STAGE 4: A STATIONARY POPULATION

World Bank projections indicate that most developing countries will not reach an exact replacement rate before 2020 to 2040. At this rate, the average woman of child-bearing age bears only one daughter – her replacement in the population. However, population momentum or growth continues after replacement-level fertility has been reached because previous fertility rates have produced an age structure with a relatively high percentage of women in or below reproductive age. Thus, most developing countries will not have a stationary population (where growth is zero) until 2075 to 2175, about 5 to 14 decades after attaining exact replacement level.

Let us examine this process more fully. Take as an example China, a country with a population of 1,117 million and a total fertility rate of 5–6 in the early 1970s that dropped precipitously to 1.9 in 2000, just below replacement level.

China’s population in 2000 was 1,262 million. If China maintains the same fertility level, population will grow to 1,508 million by 2050, and 1,570 million by 2105, the year a stationary population level is reached. The LDCs can expect substantial future population growth even if measures are undertaken immediately to reduce fertility rates (Merrick 1986:6; World Bank 1980i:142–143, 162–163; World Bank 1988i:274–275; Frejka 1973:15–23).

Is Population Growth an Obstacle to Economic Development?

Does population growth hamper economic development, as the classical economist Thomas Robert Malthus contends, or does population spur innovation and development, as Julian L. Simon argues? This section examines some possible costs of high fertility rates and rapid population growth, including (1) diminishing returns to natural resources, with an adverse impact on average food consumption; (2) increased urbanization and congestion; (3) a higher labor force growth rate and higher unemployment; and (4) a working population that must support a larger number of dependents.

POPULATION AND FOOD

The Malthusian view. The best-known work on the food and population balance is Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798, 1803). The essay, written in reaction to the utopian views of his father’s friends, was one reason economics came to be referred to as the dismal science. Malthus’s theory was that population, which increased geometrically – 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and so on – outstripped food supply, which grew arithmetically: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. For Malthus, a clergyman as well as an economist, the only check to population growth would be wars, epidemics, infanticide, abortion, and sexual perversion, unless people practiced moral restraint, that is, later marriages and abstention. Even then he believed living standards would remain at a subsistence level in the long run (Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population, 1963).

FIGURE 8-9. World Grain Production per Person, 1960–2001 (kg). Source: FAO.

However, Malthus failed to envision the capital accumulation and technical progress that would overcome diminishing returns on land. Rough estimates are that between 1650 and 2005, the world’s food production multiplied 14 to 16 times, whereas population increased only 9 times. The world’s cultivated land probably doubled or tripled during this period, largely from increases in cultivation in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Output per hectare probably increased at least fourfold during these 355 years (most during the last 100 years) through irrigation, multiple cropping, improved seeds, increased use of commercial fertilizer, better farm implements, and other agricultural innovations. Malthus also underestimated the extent to which education, economic modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and improved contraception would reduce fertility rates.

Present and future population–food balance. Some scientists believe the Malthusian population and food relationship is applicable to the contemporary world. For them, the rapid population growth of LDCs since World War II confirms Malthus’s thesis. Few economists saw statistical evidence of a return of the Malthusian specter before the 1990s, but then many economists were startled by the line, similar to Figure 8-9, that suggested that the long-term increase in foodgrain (rice, wheat, and coarse grains) output per person, especially prominent since World War II, was beginning to fall in the mid-1980s. The optimist Tim Dyson (1994:398) and the pessimist Lester R. Brown agree on what happened to foodgrain output per person during the late 1980s and 1990s but disagree on how to interpret it. Brown notes the reduced effective demand for foodgrain in developing areas such as Africa and Latin America, which faced falling average incomes in the 1980s, as well as the earth’s rapid population