Demographic trap
This article needs to be updated.(October 2020) |
According to the Encyclopedia of International Development, the term demographic trap is used by
During
Results
One of the significant outcomes of the "demographic trap" is explosive population growth. This is currently seen throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, where death rates have dropped during the last half of the 20th century due to advanced health care. However, in subsequent decades most of those countries were unable to keep improving economic development to match their population's growth, by filling the education needs for more school age children, creating more jobs for the expanding workforce, and providing basic infrastructure and services, such as sewage, roads, bridges, water supplies, electricity, and stable food supplies.[2]
A possible result of a country remaining trapped in stage 2 is its government may reach a state of "demographic fatigue," writes
Environmentalist
- "It has developed far enough economically and socially to reduce mortality, but not far enough to quickly reduce fertility. As a result, women on average have four children, not including twins, which is double the two needed for replacement, and the population of 41 million is growing by over 2,000 per day. Under this pressure, Sudan—like scores of other countries—is breaking down."[4]
Examples of developing nations and territories that successfully went from stage 2 to stage 3 are South Korea and Taiwan, which were able to move toward smaller families, and thereby improved living standards. This resulted in further reduction in fertility rates.
It has been recently suggested that the emergence of major sociopolitical upheavals at the escape from the
Other viewpoints
The existence of the "trap" is controversial. Some demographers see it as only a temporary problem, which can be eliminated with better education and better family planning. Others consider the "trap" more of a longer-term symptom of the failure to educate children and provide safety nets against poverty, resulting in more families seeing children as a form of "securing incomes" for the future.[1] Nonetheless, many social scientists agree that family planning should be an important part of public health and economic development.[3]
Others argue that, while the combination of increasing fertility and decreasing mortality is a very real phenomenon, there is no reason to assume that this is harmful to developing countries. In The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argued that human ingenuity is a resource more important to economic growth than natural resources. Because population growth is accompanied by improvements in resource efficiency, new discoveries of natural resources, the development of substitutes, and changing consumer desires, a growing population will frequently support economic growth rather than hamper it.
Examples
See also
- Malthusian catastrophe
- Demographic transition
- Demographic dividend
- Demographic economics
- Demographic window
- Overpopulation
Notes
- ^ a b c Forsyth, Tim. Encyclopedia of International Development, Routledge (2005) p. 145
- ^ a b c Kaufman, Donald G. Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment, Kendall Hunt (2000) p. 157
- ^ a b Avery, John. Progress, Poverty, and Population, Frank Cass Publishers (1997) p. 107
- ^ Brown, Lester. World on the Edge, W.W. Norton (2010) p. 91
- ^ Korotayev A. et al. A Trap At The Escape From The Trap? Demographic-Structural Factors of Political Instability in Modern Africa and West Asia. Cliodynamics 2/2 (2011): 1-28.
- ^ Korotayev A., Zinkina J. Egyptian Revolution: A Demographic Structural Analysis. Entelequia. Revista Interdisciplinar 13 (2011): 139-169.
External links
- Lester Brown speaking at U.C. Berkeley, where he describes the "demographic trap" in the final 10 min. of a 1 hr. video