Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World

by Nancy Birdsall, Allen C. Kelley, Steven Sinding

Overview

Does rapid population growth diminish countries' economic development prospects? Do policies aimed at reducing high fertility help families escape poverty? These questions have been at the heart of policy debates since the time of Malthus, and have been particularly heated during the last half-century of explosive Third World population growth. In this carefully constructed collection of recent studies and analyses, the authors offer a nuanced, yet clear and positive answer to these questions—-a refreshing step forward from the ambiguous conclusions of much of the literature of the 1970s and 1980s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199261864
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/03/2003
Series:	Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Deve
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	458
Product dimensions:	9.36(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Nancy Birdsall is Senior Associate and Director, Economic Reform Project, Global Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Allen C. Kelley is James B. Duke Professor of Economics, Duke University. Steven Sinding is Director, Population Sciences Division, Rockefeller Foundation.

Table of Contents

I. Setting the Stage1. How and Why Population Matters: New Findings, New Issues, Nancy Birdsall and Steven Sinding2. The Population Debate in Historical Perspective: Revisionism Revised, Allen C. Kelley3. Dependency Burdens in the Developing World, John BongaartsII. Population Change and the Economy4. Economic and Demographic Change: A Synthesis of Models, Findings, and Perspectives, Allen C. Kelley and Robert M. Schmidt5. Demographic Change, Economic Growth and Inequality, Jeffrey G. Williamson6. Saving, Wealth, and Population, Ronald D. Lee, Andrew Mason, and Tim Miller7. Cumulative Causality, Economic Growth and the Demographic Transition, David Bloom and David CanningIII. Fertility, Poverty and the Family8. Population and Poverty in Households: A Review of Reviews, Tom Merrick9. Demographic Transition and Poverty: Effects Via Economic Growth, Distribution, and Conversion, Robert Eastwood and Michael Lipton10. Inequality and the Family in Latin America, Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Székely11. Demographic Changes and Poverty in Brazil, Ricardo Paes de Barros, Sergio Firpo, Roberta Guedes Barreto, and Phillippe George Pereira LeiteIV. Population, Agriculture and Natural Resources12. Rural Population Growth, Agricultural Change and Natural Resource Management in Developing Countries: A Review of Hypotheses and Some Evidence from Honduras, John Pender13. V. Some Economics of Population Policy, Jere R. Behrman14. New Findings in Economics and Demography: Implications for Policies to Reduce Poverty, Nancy Birdsall

Editorial Reviews

"Edited by three leading scholars in economic demography (Nancy Birdsall, Allen Kelley, and Steven Sinding), the volume offers an important collection of original essays on the interrelation between demography and economic development...The authors provide excellent coverage of many methodological issues and of recent macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence linking fertility and population dynamics to economic performance. Anyone concerned with how population change affects the development prospects of poor countries will profit from reading the essays." — Jeffrey D. Sachs, Science

From the Publisher