World Population Trends and Their Impact on Economic Development

This volume brings together a group of renowned population specialists from the United Nations, the World Bank, the East-West Population Institute, and leading universities to explore the numerous interactions between levels of population growth and economic well-being in developing countries. The contributors challenge conventional theories that high population growth rates have unequivocally adverse consequences for economic development, demonstrating that the evidence is far from conclusive on this point. They similarly question those who argue for generally neutral or even beneficial effects of high population growth rates, showing that here, too, the evidence is less than unequivocal in either direction. Instead, they argue, the nature and direction of the relationship between population growth and economic development is most likely to be situation specific.