Economic Development & Population Growth
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Economic Development & Population Growth
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PS 0304 Int’l Pol Econ
Lec 18: Population Growth
Lec 18: Population Growth
I. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Our first topic—Topic 9—is on sustainability. What is “sustainable development”?
Following the 1983 UN Brundtland Commission, we’ll view sustainability quite broadly… “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Up to this point, we’ve only been considering the rights & interests of actors in the present. Taking sustainability seriously means including the rights and interests of future generations.
That makes some sense: who would suggest it were responsible to leave a wasteland for our grandchildren? But surely we must apply some kind of discount rate to these considerations. As we look further into the future, it becomes more likely that some unavoidable calamity—e.g. a meteorite—would wipe us all out anyway.
Also, how can we know where to invest our resources? Should we let SETI use our computers at night? Or Folding at Home? Or perhaps we should turn them off entirely to preserve the environment?
Here’s the key starting point: We know that we should include the interests of future generations in our present calculations, but it can be rather difficult to do this. Even assuming altruism, there are significant limits to our capacity to accurately predict the consequences of our actions.
I. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Three Facets of Sustainability
Population Growth & Sustainability
Our Environment & Sustainability
Our Financial Legacy
Also note the biblical allusions on the course schedule: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth…” -- Genesis 1:28
This highlights the religious and moral aspects of sustainability. As we engage this, be sure to consider the bearing of various normative perspectives on this issue.
Lec 18: Population Growth
II. MALTHUS’ CLASSIC VIEW
By the late eighteenth century, the consensus among political economists was that “populousness”—having high population density—was a good thing…
In 1798, TR Malthus turned this conventional wisdom on its head. Who was TR Malthus?
Thomas Robert Malthus
II. MALTHUS’ CLASSIC VIEW
The Principle of Population
Malthus’ point was simple… The earth has a limited carrying capacity. And our demands constantly exceed the Earth’s capacity to satisfy those demands.
II. MALTHUS’ CLASSIC VIEW
International economic interchange might indeed be zero-sum.
Political Implications of Scarcity
Malthus, for instance, had a very low discount rate—perhaps even an inverse discount rate. He was willing to inflict suffering in the present to minimize suffering in the future...
Malthus on the Evils of Charity
Lec 18: Population Growth
TR Malthus’ dire predictions led the historian Thomas Carlyle to brand political economy “the dismal science.” Many “Malthusians” have followed in this “[d]reary, stolid, dismal” tradition.
20th Century Pessimists
In fact, all of these dire predictions were wrong. Population growth has not exceeded the rate of increase in the means of subsistence.
Many commentators have suggested that Malthus forgot about the power of technology…
Market Solutions to Malthusian Pressures
The result is that the production possibilities frontier—the carrying capacity of the Earth—has been expanded. New technology—techniques and processes—have increased the number of people the Earth can support.
Malthus might have offered several responses…
(1) The preventative check. Population has only been growing arithmetically because we have done a good job of deliberately limiting our rate of increase.
(2) The constraint still exists. Just because we haven’t reached the ultimate limit yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Malthus would surely point to increasing environmental degradation as generating the potential final limit to population growth.
Lec 18: Population Growth
“If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from which nineteenth-century economics proceeded, what a much wiser and richer place the world would be to-day!” – Keynes on Malthus (1933)
Do you think Keynes was right? In what ways would our understanding of development benefit from the insights of TR Malthus and the modern Malthusians? What is the relevance of Malthus today?
IV. MALTHUSIANISM TODAY
One of the key questions centers on the relationship between economic development and population growth. Simply put, were Locke & Hume right or was Malthus? Does populousness bring riches or poverty?
Pop Growth in the World’s Richest Countries
Pop Growth in the World’s Poorest Countries
So, Locke & Hume may have been misguided: The poorest countries in the world have some of the fastest population growth rates. And the world’s richest countries have some of the slowest population growth rates.
But which is cause and which is effect?
IV. MALTHUSIANISM TODAY
If population growth rates are inversely related to development, then we might consider making more extensive use of Malthus’ preventative check.
But the politics here get very heated very quickly. And as it should be… This is an issue of reproductive rights, involving the “right to choose” how many children to have.
Across time and space, many states have sought to regulate the rate of population growth…
Eugenics in early 20th C
“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” -- Opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell (1927)
The Virginia law was upheld in an 8-1 opinion. That was in 1927. Within a decade, the Eugenics movement in the West had picked up a lot of steam…
The Nazis were fully committed to Eugenics.
Population control—although not necessarily eugenics—continues today…
China’s One Child Policy
IV. MALTHUSIANISM TODAY
Clearly, Malthus’ insight seems sharpest when viewed through the lens of environmental politics. “Indeed, in an era of global warming, Malthus may prove among the most-relevant philosophers of the Enlightenment.” – Robert D. Kaplan
This is where we’re headed next time…
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