How Can Population Growth Affect Development?
How can population growth affect development?
When we refer to a country’s development, we mostly talk about economical development and use economical growth as an indicator. We will try to understand how a rapid population growth can influence economical and social development of a country.
The development of a country must also be defined by a modern industrialised and tertiary based economy with high technology industries, productive agriculture, very developed services, infrastructures and transport, general access to high level healthcare. The development is also based on the evolution of the society, progress in the mentalities and improvement in quality of life. Developed countries have a higher living standard, longer life expectancy and higher access to education, as well as more modern views and freedom.The developed countries are mostly located in the North (in exception of Australia), such as the United States, Japan and the European Union, while the developing countries are located in the South. Africa, for instance, is the continent with most of the developing countries. They lack access to education, hygiene, healthcare, and they suffer from malnutrition.
Now, if we are looking at the relationships between population and development, we see that
the growth of population is generally lower in developed countries and higher in developing countries as the births and fertility rates in developing countries are high. For example in Europe, North America, and Australia people have access to contraception and family planning while in Africa the culture and religious habits favours bigger families Each developed country has gone through a demographic phase called demographic transition during which the mortality decreases as well as birth.
In the case of rapid population growth in developing countries, if the increase of population happens in a country that has a small territory and few natural resources, this leads to overpopulation. It creates therefore the extension of agriculture surfaces, deforestation, pollution, environmental damages, lack of water and grounds degradations. For example in Niger, the birth rate is very high and when you compare it to the surface of the arable lands we see that this country is very close to saturation and the food resources are not enough to provide for this massive population. A Nigerien woman gives birth to an average of thirteen children. One out of five will die before reaching the age of five.
On the contrary, the countries that have a large territory and access to many natural resources, such as a river, access to the sea, oil, and that are located in a tempered climate region, are in a better position when the demography increases. In their case, a large population can be positive to create wealth : more people, more labor force and revenue created. To illustrate this later example we could think of countries such as Brasil, Argentina, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Some countries have understood the concept of controlled demography and development and tried to implement programs and policies to control birth. For example China has been having a very strict law stating that each family can only have a single child. This has significantly slowed the population growth and helped the development of the country. This rule was implemented since the 1978. China had a fast population growth in 1968, when it was up to 2.85% to 2.82% and in 2015, it has decreased to 0.48%.
India was the first country to adopt a policy to reduce birth in 1952: by offering family planning and money to women who would sterilise. On the other side, Japanese families came to the conclusion by themselves and without help of any law, that by having less children a family could give more opportunities and better education to each child. Therefore these children would participate in creating a better developed country.
In the case of countries with over ageing populations, such as France and Italy, the governments needed to apply a pro demographic policy in order to increase the labor force that will cover for the healthcare expenses and the pension of the elderly. For this reason France put in place a policy that gave a sum of money to families that had three children or over. This policy proved to be very successful in France who saw the amount of three children families increase drastically.