Poverty and population c.2 IB
- Geneva International Labour Office 1984
- 213p.
For many observers, population growth is either a primary cause of poverty or a major obstacle to its elimination. For others, population growth contributes to progress. Yet others would argue that population growth is a result of poverty, rather than the reverse. This monograph reviews some of the evidence for and against these different stances. There are many dimensions of poverty, involving not only basic consumption needs but also broader issues such as security, status and job access, and relative deprivation and inequality. The interactions with demographic change vary greatly from one aspect of poverty to another. Some demographic factors enter into poverty by definition - mortality, of course, but also life-cycle factors and patterns of house hold size and structure. Many other relevant issues affect behaviour and welfare at the household level; family size, mortality, and migration can all have an incidence on poverty, but poverty in turn generates distinct patterns of demographic behaviour. The evidence on all these issues is reviewed. At the level of the economy or of society, other broader relation ships can be identified: interactions between population growth and labour markets, technological change, access to public services. income distribution. Evidence from national, historical and inter national sources is reviewed, and some simulations with a new inter national cross-section model are presented and discussed. The balance of the empirical evidence suggests that high rates of population growth often have some adverse effects on poverty, but that these effects are small; many mechanisms exist for absorbing population increases, and high fertility frequently provides some defence against poverty. And in many situations, high fertility and extensive poverty appear to have common social and economic causes, rather than being directly related. There is more evidence for the adverse effects of very close child-spacing than of large family size as such. At the policy level, it is argued that there will be an important role for family welfare policies aimed at helping individuals and families to meet their own objectives through control over fertility and migration. Mortality control and the promotion of education can also make major contributions to the reduction of poverty. But attempts to focus on reductions in population growth as such, and especially attempts to reduce fertility below levels desired by parents, are unlikely to contribute greatly to the reduction of poverty.