What if demographers are wrong?

11/30/2011

As I continue to think about population growth and natural resources for my Tanzania project, the role of development keeps appearing as a variable. But how much can we count on development to catalyze demographic transitions? An article from Carl Haub at Yale:

Leading demographers, including those at the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau, are projecting that world population will peak at 9.5 billion to 10 billion later this century and then gradually decline as poorer countries develop.... Forecasts that population is going to level off or decline this century have been based on the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world. That is far from a sure bet.

Additionally, they point to the challenges of reducing fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa:the logistical task of providing reproductive health services to women; informing them of their ability to limit their number of children and to space births over at least two years; low levels of literacy; the value husbands place on large families; and securing funding for family planning programs.

Sounds like someone should implement a community health worker program...

3 Comments

ironmonkey285

12/4/2011 03:11:39 am

Doesn't a huge population growth rate depend on, effectively, industrialization [or some other provision of health and income improvements, which would usually set off a demographic transition] WITHOUT a response of people?

First, are we sufficiently optimistic about aid efforts to think this is industrialization, or a comparable welfare improvement, is likely to result (largely) from aid efforts? The pessimist would say that, not only is this unlikely to happen soon, but given the trajectory of improvement.. its not obvious that it will happen in the long term..

It would be interesting to think about the effect of aid here, actually.. if people see aid, and the results of aid, as being temporary.. then maybe all else held equal, there would be a longer lag in the demographic shift (people wouldn't 'believe' the improvements to allow it to influence their reproductive decisions.. and/or the information wouldn't spread as fast.. etc etc)... BUT all else is not held equal.. as you noted, community health workers are likely to affect this. Depending on the 'developer,' it is unlikely that a strategy is totally absent of family planning info. Thus there might be plenty of reason that aid would minimize the lagged effects of birth (ie people could adjust much more quickly... and family sizes would shrink, so that they matched with expected family size, given income/quality of life)

I see the transition as logical.. for example, kids are costly in earlier years.. and beneficial in the older years.. and this is even more the case (one must wait longer to receive benefits) as education rises. This depends on how your country industrializes i guess..

Perhaps the shift is not strictly an indication of the child-income effect, but more so of the effect of complementary social institutions (safety nets) [as we of course talked about in class], which often accompany industrialization (but wouldn't necessarily accompany growth that was largely the result of aid, depending on the sort of aid).. So maybe if these systems don't rise up, then you would have a slower transition.

Note, as other countries' population growth rates dwindle (as Asia industrializes), and as they age rapidly, more people will likely be 'a resource' (as it has been, I'd say, for Asia). While there will surely be growing pains, I expect this to be an asset in the long run.

if they do indeed grow a lot WITHOUT huge [eventual] economic growth and social improvements etc, the world could probably get big, though the resources SSA has may not be enough to accommodate huge population growth.

Dot.Nerdfriend

12/11/2011 02:26:59 am

This is so classic Iron Monkey!!!

Bazik link

7/12/2012 03:06:27 pm

nice post

What if demographers are wrong?

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