Consequences of rapid population growth : an overview

World Bank staff working papers number 691.
Population and development series number 16.

This paper presents a systematic discussion of the consequences of rapid population growth for economies and social systems. It is concerned principally with growth resulting from mortality decline in the absence of comparable fertility decline, but growth resulting from net migration is also treated. The demography of rapid population growth is first reviewed: in addition to its obvious effects on population size, the onset of rapid growth gives rise to changes in age structure, in kinship frequencies, and in the relative weights of ethnic and other social groupings in the population. These "proximate" growth consequences, channelled by particular institutional configurations in the society, in turn influence individual economic and demographic behavior; they can also modify those configurations. This complexity of response and its institutional contingency defeat formal. modeling of the effects of rapid population growth and allow contradictory assessments to persist.
The subsequent analysis of the economic consequences of rapid population growth--chiefly, effects on technological change, capital formation, and labor absorption--seeks to identify generalizations broadly valid across institutional settings. The negative impact of population growth in slowing the transition out of technological dualism is the main such effect. Consequences for social and political organization are briefly explored: rapid population growth may impel changes in the nature and role of the family and local community in forms of government administration; it may generate new political responses; and over the long term its differential impact seems likely to induce large shifts in international relations. Both economic and social organizational responses contribute to determining net individual-level and distributional consequences of population growth.
A final section of the paper considers some of the issues involved in valuing alternative population growth trajectories, given agreement on the factual implications of growth for the economy and society in a particular setting.