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. 2009 Oct 27;364(1532):3023-30.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0145.

Population, poverty and economic development

Steven W Sinding  1
Affiliations

Population, poverty and economic development

Steven W Sinding. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Economists, demographers and other social scientists have long debated the relationship between demographic change and economic outcomes. In recent years, general agreement has emerged to the effect that improving economic conditions for individuals generally lead to lower birth rates. But, there is much less agreement about the proposition that lower birth rates contribute to economic development and help individuals and families to escape from poverty. The paper examines recent evidence on this aspect of the debate, concludes that the burden of evidence now increasingly supports a positive conclusion, examines recent trends in demographic change and economic development and argues that the countries representing the last development frontier, those of Sub-Saharan Africa, would be well advised to incorporate policies and programmes to reduce high fertility in their economic development strategies.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Donor allocation of population assistance, 1996–2007. Purple, family planning services; magenta, basic reproductive health services; yellow, STD/HIV/AIDS; blue, basic research. Adapted from UNFPA/UNAIDS/NIDI. 2006 figures are preliminary; 2007 are projections.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
(a) Poverty levels over time world population (per cent). (b) Poverty levels over time excluding China. Dark blue, $1 a day; red, $1.25 a day; green, $1.45 a day; purple, $2 a day; light blue, $2.50 a day. Adapted from World Bank Development Indicators (2008).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Percentage living on less than $1 per day. Dark green, East Asia; dark blue, Eastern Europe and Central Asia; purple, Latin America; red, Middle East and North Africa; light green, South Asia; light blue, Sub-Saharan Africa; black line with filled square, World. Source: ‘How have the world's poorest fared since the early 1980s?’ by Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion. See http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Income distributions. Dark blue bar, poorest 20 per cent; light blue bar, richest 20 per cent. Adapted from World Bank Development Indicators (2008).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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