The Cosmopolite
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The paradox of population
Hello people, I am back, and you will notice a spurt of activity on the blog again before I disappear for a few more months.
The following link, combined with the lack activity in my office, prompted me to write a blog entry...
http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8909336
What never ceases to surprise me is the fact the population growth is always the highest in poor countries, where there is not enough food and money to feed the existing population. These countries keep increasing their population while the richer countries, where vast social security nets ensure a decent life, find their populations shrinking.
Some of the reasons are obvious - lower education levels (general and contraceptive related), the desire for social security (more children = more hands on the ground to earn) etc. But on digging deeper you discover that things are not as straightforward as they appear on the surface.
In the list of high population growth countries, there is significant churn. Every few years, a new list of high population growth countries emerges and on analyzing this churn the true picture emerges. In my view, what we can gather is that population in low income countries increases in times of turnaround or re-structuring of the country primarily for two reasons.
The first reason is economic and applies more the countries recovering from civil or cross border wars. During long years of war and economic downturn, millions of lives are lost. The lives lost include a large proportion of the working population, as able bodied men are chosen to fight the bigotic wars and peaceful able bodied men are killed by the opposite party aiming to strike at the economic base of the nation. Therefore, when the nation somehow gets out of this quagmire and is looking to grow again - it looks to reconstruct its human manpower. Therefore, a large number of refugees are lured back home and, more importantly, we notice a increase in birth rate.
The second reason is more related to human nature. Parents want their kids to have a bright future. And therefore, they think about having kids when they are optimistic about the future. No point in having kids in the middle of an African civil war, when they will likely either be killed in the war or kidnapped by one of the warring groups. Therefore, we notice the countries that are on the path of progress generally have higher population growth rates compared to the others. This also explains why a lot of European countries have low birth rates. Clearly, most of Western Europe (with the exception of maybe Britain and Ireland) is not very optimistic about the economic prospects of Europe!!
Combine the above two factors and you get Afghanistan, Eritrea, Burundi etc, some of the countries with very high population growth rates. ¶ 10:54 AM 0 comments
The following link, combined with the lack activity in my office, prompted me to write a blog entry...
http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8909336
What never ceases to surprise me is the fact the population growth is always the highest in poor countries, where there is not enough food and money to feed the existing population. These countries keep increasing their population while the richer countries, where vast social security nets ensure a decent life, find their populations shrinking.
Some of the reasons are obvious - lower education levels (general and contraceptive related), the desire for social security (more children = more hands on the ground to earn) etc. But on digging deeper you discover that things are not as straightforward as they appear on the surface.
In the list of high population growth countries, there is significant churn. Every few years, a new list of high population growth countries emerges and on analyzing this churn the true picture emerges. In my view, what we can gather is that population in low income countries increases in times of turnaround or re-structuring of the country primarily for two reasons.
The first reason is economic and applies more the countries recovering from civil or cross border wars. During long years of war and economic downturn, millions of lives are lost. The lives lost include a large proportion of the working population, as able bodied men are chosen to fight the bigotic wars and peaceful able bodied men are killed by the opposite party aiming to strike at the economic base of the nation. Therefore, when the nation somehow gets out of this quagmire and is looking to grow again - it looks to reconstruct its human manpower. Therefore, a large number of refugees are lured back home and, more importantly, we notice a increase in birth rate.
The second reason is more related to human nature. Parents want their kids to have a bright future. And therefore, they think about having kids when they are optimistic about the future. No point in having kids in the middle of an African civil war, when they will likely either be killed in the war or kidnapped by one of the warring groups. Therefore, we notice the countries that are on the path of progress generally have higher population growth rates compared to the others. This also explains why a lot of European countries have low birth rates. Clearly, most of Western Europe (with the exception of maybe Britain and Ireland) is not very optimistic about the economic prospects of Europe!!
Combine the above two factors and you get Afghanistan, Eritrea, Burundi etc, some of the countries with very high population growth rates. ¶ 10:54 AM 0 comments
