Atlas of the World Economy

Michael Freeman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138637313
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351794367
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Originally published in 1991. The post-war period witnessed massive changes in the nature and operation of the world economy. This "Atlas" examines those changes under the headings of population, agriculture, energy, industry, national income, transport, trade, labour and multinationals. Not an atlas in the conventional sense of the term, this work is a heavily illustrated combination of diagram and description. Its approach is broad and consists of a sequence of self-contained modules which can be read independently or as part of a wider whole. One of the most prominent themes to emerge is the enormous force and influence of the capitalist economic system based in the West; a host of economic indicators demonstrates vividly the remarkable producing and consuming power of the capitalist world. Many parts of the developing world are tied in to the web of capitalist relations, but many fail to benefit adequately, as the statistics on food supply and national income demonstrate.

Burmese refugees in northern Thailand

1
Population

The world’s growing millions

The regional dimension

Population by state

Population structure

Asian population

African population

European population

Population ‘urban’

The world’s growing millions

Figure 1.1 World population growth, 1950–85

Figure 1.2 Percentage growth in population, 1950–85

The growth of the human population has been one of the most spectacular aspects of the world economy in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Between 1950 and 1985, in fact, the world’s population almost doubled, and this led many commentators to forecast a new Malthusian crisis in the twenty-first century. Phrases such as ‘teeming millions’, ‘standing room only’ and ‘ecocatastrophe’ pervaded the literature. But for some years now there have been clear indications of a slowing down in the rate of growth. Whereas over 1960–70 the level was 2.23 per cent, in 1970–80 it fell to 2.05 and in the half-decade 1980–5 to 1.74. The trends in vital rates, as depicted in Figure 1.3, afford some illustration of the pattern. None of this is to say that there are no population problems in the world. It is simply to place a question-mark over the ever-strengthening exponential curve upon which so many world forecasts have traditionally been made. In the 1980s, population forecasts for the twenty-first century have been distinguished for their continuing downward revisions.

Figure 1.3 Vital rates in the major regions of the world

The regional dimension

Easily the most startling feature of modern world population growth has been its spatial divergence. Annual rates of growth at a continental scale currently vary from 2.9 per cent in Africa to 0.3 per cent in Europe. At subcontinental scales, western and northern Europe show rates of 0.1 per cent, while western and eastern Africa show 3.1 per cent. The effect of such differentials over time has been to produce a remarkable shift in the geographical balance of the world’s population. In 1950, for instance, Africa had only 8.9 per cent of the world’s population; in 1985 it had 11.5 per cent. The corresponding figures for South Asia were 28.0 per cent and 32.4 per cent, giving that major world region one third of the entire world population by the mid-1980s. Europe, by contrast, has seen its share fall from 15.6 per cent to 10.2 per cent. The USSR and North America also recorded decreased shares.

Figure 1.4 Regional shares of the world population

Figure 1.5 World population in 1950

Figure 1.6 World population in 1985

Population by state

The dominating shares of East and South Asia in world population are yet more clearly highlighted when one examines the populations of individual states. Figure 1.7 depicts the estimated totals for the world’s states in mid-1986. The massive scale of the Chinese and Indian populations relative to those of other nation-states is immediately apparent. Naturally, one may argue that such a map produces a distorted picture of the geographical balance of world population because the areas of nation-states vary greatly in size: were there, for example, a ‘United States of Europe’, the western hemisphere would be much more prominent. However, the merits of such an approach to world population are many. In the case of the African continent, for instance, population is concentrated in a small number of states; and this is a feature which is little compromised by the particular geographical division of the continent: there are, so to speak, no ‘Chinas’ in Africa. The nation-state may also have importance for the dynamics of population: indirectly via economic structure or policy, or more directly through a society’s cultural values, including deliberate population control by the apparatus of the state. China made birth control a national policy from 1971 and by 1980 most municipalities and provinces had established incentives and disincentives to promote ‘one-child’ families.

Figure 1.7 The populations of the world’s states, mid-1986

The scale of absolute increases in national populations between 1960 and mid-1986 is shown in Figure 1.8. Over this 27-year period, the world’s population grew by some 2 billion. And the contribution of South and East Asia to that expansion is inescapably evident. The west, including Europe and North America, pales into insignificance by comparison. It remains true, though, that in much of South and East Asia, environments are capable of supporting high densities of population, notwithstanding the problems posed by climatic or other instabilities. In Africa, by contrast, optimum densities are exceptionally low in all but a limited number of areas, and the scale of population growth is fast approaching them, if not already in breach in certain cases. As later pages will show, it is in Africa, above all, that fears about Malthusian catastrophes are at their most real.

Figure 1.8 Population increase by state, 1960–86

Population structure

One of the primary reasons why continents like Africa and Asia show such high rates of population increase lies in population age structure. Most countries in these areas have what are called ‘youthful’ populations, with relatively high proportions in the reproductive age-group. In Africa in 1985, some 45 per cent of its population were under 15 years, presenting a formidable base for population expansion into the twenty-first century unless checked by moral or government-imposed restraint, or by ‘Malthusian’ controls. The contrast is with Europe, where only 21 per cent of the population were under 15 years in 1985 and where 25 per cent were 65 years or over. The ‘ageing’ structure of some European populations has meant that they have begun re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of plates
• Foreword
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Population
• 2 Agriculture
• 3 Energy
• 4 Industry
• 5 National income
• 6 Transport and trade
• 7 Labour
• 8 Multinationals
• References