Technological Prospects And Population Trends

Thomas J Espenshade, George J Stolnitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367289621
• eBook ISBN: 9781000314076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The world's population is now estimated at over 5 billion, and projections call for a continued high growth rate, predominantly in the less-developed countries. Concern over the consequences of this situation has led to numerous public policy debates, and the complex interrelationships between population and technology have become an important new topic in demographic research. The papers in this book are based on a symposium entitled "Technological Prospects and Population Trends†arranged for the 150th National Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New York City in May 1984. The book focuses on clarification of the impact that technological development and population change have on one another. For instance, how may population and related socioeconomic trends be conditioned by expected or foreseeable technological changes? What is the impact of population on technology in both the developed and newly industrializing areas of the world? Linking demography with developments in the major areas of agriculture, education, contraception, longevity, and health care, the distinguished contributors offer diverse yet integrated perspectives on what is fast becoming one of the major issues of our time.

1.
An Overview

Thomas J. Espenshade, George J. Stolnitz

World population continues to mount rapidly. With only limited and recent declines from an unprecedentedly high growth rate of 2 percent in the 1960s, the growth rate is now at a current level of about 1.65 percent. Global size in early 1987 surpassed 5 billion, fully double the 1950 number, and estimated increases exceed 80 million annually. (For perspective, it is worth noting that 80 million is equal to one-third of the U.S. population, the world’s fourth largest national aggregate.) It took less than 15 years for the most recent global billion to appear, and conservative (so-called “medium”) projections by both the United Nations and the World Bank indicate a further rise to between 6.0 and 6.25 billion inhabitants by the year 2000. Long-run projections suggest no lesser annual increments of global numbers to 2025 when the total may reach between 8.0 and 8.25 billion (United Nations, 1986; World Bank, 1984).

By far the largest part of such future growth, over 90 percent, will occur in today’s less developed countries (LDCs), which include Africa, Asia less Japan, all of Latin America, and all of Oceania less Australia and New Zealand. Only 10 percent of the growth, a fraction in steady decline, will occur in the industrially more developed countries (DCs), which include Canada and the United States in North America, Japan, very nearly all of Europe, and Australia plus New Zealand in Oceania. As a result, the LDC proportion of world population is projected to rise from approximately 75 percent in 1987, to 80 percent by 2000, and well over 80 percent by 2025.

Contrasts in LDC and DC fertility and mortality patterns — the main determinants of large-region growth trends — are stark.¹ United Nations estimates, approximate but indicative enough, point to current rates of childbearing in LDCs that are at least twice as high on average as those for DC populations (at least four children per LDC woman on average compared to under two per DC woman). Life expectancy (for combined sexes) is probably not higher than 60 years in the LDCs and close to or above 75 years in DCs (United Nations, 1986).²

Per capita national income comparisons, while often uncertain and especially tricky to attempt between widely differing economies, point to an average DC level some 10 to 20 times its LDC counterpart average. In numerous individual cases involving “most” and “least” developed areas, the corresponding multiplier may well range from 25 to 50 or even higher. Underlying and deriving from these basic comparative facts flow myriad contrasting causes and effects, including significant differences in: consumption and poverty levels, capacities to save and invest, state of domestic technological development and degrees of dependence on external technical assistance, extent and nature of foreign trade relations, industrial and occupational distributions of the labor force, urban-rural composition, and patterns of income or associated socioeconomic inequalities.

It follows that attention to fully global aggregates or relations are more likely to obscure than inform an analysis of population-development-technology interrelations. For adequate approaches to the issues, even as first approximations, a minimum requisite distinction among socioeconomic situations can be made between LDCs and DCs — the focus most typically singled out in this volume for reasons of space and simplicity. (Fuller attention to detail than is possible here would call for continental, subcontinental, and eventually country-level groupings of populations and economies.)

The complexities suggested above go far to explain why so many of the interrelational possibilities remain controversial some 200 years since Malthus first dramatized them and 150 years since Marx contemptuously dismissed all Malthusian interpretations out of hand. “Pessimists” and “optimists” on the consequences of population growth, for example, can still be found in abundance. Thus, many experts view rapid population growth as a major brake on economic development by diverting scarce resources otherwise available for sustaining developmental momentum and raising levels of living. Contrasting views, also numerous, argue that population growth may well stimulate rather than retard development by expanding markets, stimulating forceful incentives for technological innovation, and promoting large economies of scale and specialization. Despite their opposing views, experts on both sides are likely to agree that sorting out the merits of their respective positions is bound to have enormously significant policy implications, given the welfare, other socioeconomic, and political issues at stake.

Such implications and issues are especially pressing with respect to the countries that are often called “least developed,” primarily (but not exclusively) sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia. Black Africa’s national rates of increase, though hard to determine precisely, are very probably in the 2.5 to 3.0 percent range as a rule and sometimes considerably more, as in the case of the 4 percent rate in Kenya. A 2.5 to 3.0 percent interval is again characteristic of Bangladesh and Pakistan in South Asia. Such rates, if continued, would imply population doubling times equaling roughly a quarter century.³

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

During the past decade, concern over the developmental consequences of rapid population growth has swiftly moved beyond the halls of academe into the realm of public policy debate at the highest political levels (United Nations Fund for Population Activities, 1985). Stirrings were first heard in Bucharest in 1974 at a UN World Population Conference for governments. Leaders of Third World countries, arguing that economic development rather than family planning was the essential key to lowered fertility, cited the historical experience of today’s industrial nations as sufficient cause for expecting that economic growth and modernization would in due time lead to reduced childbearing and smaller families. Family planning of itself would not or could not be effective. Viewing the 1974 debate with benefit of hindsight, most western scholars today would probably agree that demographic trends must be interpreted and assessed for policy purposes in light of their developmental underpinnings and implications. From this vantage point, both development and family planning could reciprocally contribute to lowering Third World fertility and thereby rates of population growth.

The world population and policy communities again focused attention on these issues at a 1984 UN International Population Conference, also for governments, in Mexico City. As preparation for the conference, the Reagan administration drafted a policy statement contending that population growth was a neutral factor, i.e., one not necessarily good or bad so far as economic development was concerned. The report argued that “the relationship between population growth and economic development is not necessarily a negative one. More people do not necessarily mean less [economic] growth. Indeed, in the economic history of many nations, population growth has been an essential element in economic progress” (U.S. Policy Statement, 1984).

A more recent contribution to our understanding of population and development interrelations in Third World areas was an extensive review and synthesis of the existing literature by the National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council, 1986). The Academy’s review was organized around eight specific mechanisms through which population has been believed to have significant consequences for economic development, including effects on exhaustible and renewable natural resources, environmental pollution, capital per worker, per capita income, the pace of technological innovation, Individual levels of schooling and health, degrees of income inequality, and problems of urban growth and urban unemployment.

The overall conclusion reached in the Academy’s review took a middle-of-the-road position. It offered neither a ringing endorsement of the view that high rates of population growth are universally inimical to economic development, nor widespread support for the proposition that rapid population growth is good for development because it stimulates technological change. Instead, the report found some elements of truth in both extremes. Although many short-run effects of population growth may be negative, such initial impacts can sometimes be offset or even reversed through population-induced adaptations in human behavior or in human institutions. More specifically:

The effects of rapid population growth are likely to be conditioned by the quality of markets, the nature of government policies, and features of the natural environment . … However, the market-induced adjustments to higher growth do not appear to be large enough to offset the negative effects on per capita income of higher ratios of labor to other factors of production . … On balance, we reach the qualitative conclusion that slower population growth would be beneficial to economic development for most developing countries. A rigorous quantitative assessment of these benefits is difficult and context dependent (pp. 89–90).

Finally, the seventy-first American Assembly met in April of 1986 to discuss issues related to the general theme of “International Population Policy: Issues and Choices Facing the United States.” The participants, led by a group of prominent demographers and including men and women from the federal government, Congress, business, the law, trade unions, and not-for-profit organizations, convened to discuss relationships of population growth to economic development and individual welfare, international consequences of population growth, and policies that the United States should follow in addressing such consequences.

In general, the conferees ended by endorsing the U.S. position at the 1974 Bucharest meeting (Menken, 1986). They concluded that rapid population growth in the least developed countries has important negative consequences for economic and social welfare and that fertility reduction in these areas can help bring about related benefits. Although fertility reduction is not a substitute for sound economic and social policies, lower rates of childbearing could reduce constraints on human capital formation, bring labor force growth into closer balance with numbers of available new jobs, reduce stresses on social and economic institutions, and contribute to more equal distributions of income and socioeconomic opportunities. Significantly, the participants also reviewed arguments on behalf of continued high fertility including the proposition that rapid population growth could help promote both technological innovation and infrastructural development. They concluded that such benefits in the few developing countries where they might exist would probably be more than offset on balance by the negative consequences of high fertility.

ABOUT THIS VOLUME

Technological change and its linkage with population-development interrelations continues to be a stepchild of demographic research. Not that sweeping generalizations have been lacking from both professional and public sources. However, the broad issues typically remain in analytic limbo, as noted earlier, for want of detailed and convincing specific demonstrations. Are the high population growth rates that are still typical of the less developed regions likely or certain to abort or negate technological potentials for sustained economic growth? Or is an opposing assessment more nearly predictive in that technological change possibilities are likely to effect long-run socioeconomic advance despite unfavorable “takeoff” demographic conditions? Posed as a barely qualified universal forecast by Malthus, the former prospect has been repeatedly hypothesized for most parts of the globe. It continues to be viewed as a high probability by many social analysts and is increasingly feared by national leaders in less developed regions. The empirical evidence so far on record seems to be highly mixed. On the one hand, as anticipated since Marx (by both Marxian and decidedly non-Marxian successors), major socioeconomic advances have been registered and appear irreversible not only throughout the more developed regions, but also in a growing list of recently developing national contexts. On the other hand, the absence of such advances can be observed no less readily, notably throughout sub-Sahara Africa, most of South Asia and, to date at least, in large parts of Latin America.

Both sets of experiences, even with benefit of hindsight, indicate that the broad demographic-development-technology interrelational issues posed earlier are highly resistant to solution. When, and perhaps above all, how have population size, growth, and structure ever acted decisively to foster technological advances sufficient for assured development in response to demographically induced growth of markets or transport networks? Or conversely, when and how have the same population factors been decisively antagonistic to major technological and developmental progress due to pressures on agrarian resources, savings and investment capacities, or public sector services that have been pushed beyond expansible limits? In either case, how may favorable demographic impacts on technology and development be most encouraged and unfavorable effects best be neutralized or eliminated? Answers to such general questions are still far from available even as approximate formulations.

Irresolution is also widespread with respect to much more narrowly posed issues surrounding the population-development-technology triad of interrelations for which judgments should presumably lend themselves to closer analysis and determinations. With respect to mortality, for example, existing state-of-the-art research is still far from identifying which realistic combinations of development advances (affecting food intake, for example), choices of appropriate death or disease control technologies (sanitation programs or vaccination campaigns are examples), and adjusted lifestyle (dietary, exercise, or smoking) patterns could suffice for achieving a targeted gain in life expectancy or infant survival levels. Estimates of such combinations could suggest numerous ways by which deficiencies in one component element could be effectively offset by policy emphasis on other components. For example, how agricultural deficiencies could be offset by oral rehydration therapy or special dietary adaptations. Yet, despite its importance, systematic or cumulative evidence on such questions is rarely encountered. Or again with respect to the more widely researched area of reproductive behavior, the comparative contributions to fertility change that can be attributed to more easily accessed birth control methods, on the one hand, and traditional socioeconomic or cultural causal factors (for example, educational levels, rural-urban residence, female labor force patterns or religion), on the other, have rarely been attempted, much less been established, by demographic analysts. Internal migration, though likely to be sensitively interrelated with changing industrial location patterns or innovations in productivity technologies, has been even less explored from developmental viewpoints. “Spatial distribution” imbalances are cited more often than any other when governments are asked to identify their main policy concerns with population trends (United Nations, 1979).

This volume, based on a symposium on “Technological Prospects and Population Trends” at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, seeks to provide some clarification of this enormously complex subject area. Necessarily selective, it focuses on technological factors most directly related to agriculture, education, prospective new contraceptive methods, and demographic linkages to emerging death and disease control technologies.

The following chapter by Yujiro Hayami and Vernon Ruttan on agricultural productivity — the main focus of traditional pro-Malthusian versus anti-Malthusian debates — indicates how some demographic expansions in the past may have been conducive to net positive, rather than negative, effects on food supply capacities to accommodate rising numbers. Technological innovations responsive to rising demographic needs may, for extended periods, offset diminishing returns tendencies even in long-settled areas of already high agrarian density and still rapid rates of population growth.

Mary Jean Bowman’s wide-ranging review of educational, demographic, and technological trend interrelations underscores how extensive and mutually interacting such linkages are likely to be. Whatever the source of national technological change — whether autonomous or induced, indigenous or imported — its consequences in application must depend on factors deeply embedded in host social structures. Few such factors are as pervasively influential as education if considered in its full rather than formally defined (schooling) terms. Few long-run consequences have been as cumulative and irreversible as its eventual effects on fertility decisions, household responses to mortality risks, and resulting demographic transitions from high to low vital rates.

Geoffrey McNicoll, in his review of the chapter by Hayami and Ruttan, focuses on his hypothesized expectation that local institutional factors, though often neglected or misinterpreted by development analysts, may have major causal significance for explaining the highly variable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Book
• About the Series
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 AN OVERVIEW
• 2 POPULATION GROWTH AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
• 3 EDUCATION, POPULATION TRENDS, AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
• 4 AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL FUTURES: COMMENTS ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS
• 5 CONTRACEPTIVES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
• 6 PROSPECTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF EXTENDING LIFE EXPECTANCY
• 7 THE POPULATION IMPLICATIONS OF BREAKTHROUGHS IN BIOMEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR CONTROLLING MORTALITY AND FERTILITY
• 8 CONCLUSIONS