This document contains lecture notes, together with literature from the study book (Population and Development). This course is given in the bachelor Human Geography and Planning and in the minor Development Studies.
Population and Development: lecture notes and summary book
Population and development book summary (W.T.S Gould, 2015)
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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG)
Human Geography and Planning
Population and Development (GEPOPDEV)
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Webinar 8 billion people
- Population growing with less than 1% per year
- Growth will continue in the near future
- Most growth in urban areas in sub Saharan and Asian countries (mostly in 8 countries)
Fertility rates are dropping rapidly in the world. There is still uncertainty about the pace and
magnitude of fertility declines in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this has a huge impact on the total
population in the future. So, the future in Sub-Saharan Africa is uncertain when it comes to the
population.
We just reached global peak child globally.
- Not all countries have reached own one (Central-Asia, central middle east, sub Saharan
- Child mortality decreased extremely (at the moment the worst rate in Somalia)
Lecture 1: introduction to the course
Population: the amount of births and deaths
Development: process of change
How do population and development interlink?
Population only one of a range of possible variables that affect and are affected by development
Development population (Demographic Transition Theory: development influences the
population): better living standards, food security, environmental conditions and better medical
practice and health care)
Population development (more hands, more productivity)
In 2050, around 86.5% of the world population will live in the Global South, whereas 13.5% will live in
the Global North.
,Malthus and Malthusianism:
- Whereas population can grow exponentially, resources can only grow arithmetically, thus
much more slowly
- Control of population growth is therefore necessary
Preventive checks controlling fertility
Positive checks negative constraints affecting mortality (famine, warfare)
- Poor people are poor because they have large families that they couldn’t support
Not true because there was an increase in availability of land in the nineteenth century, with the
increase of technology. Might be true in Africa.
Neo-Malthusianism (1960s and 1970s):
- Malthusianism trap technological and income improvements will normally encourage
population growth, but that population growth would consistently diminish these positive
income effects and keep levels of poverty high
- Growing populations will consume more than they can produce, so that the overall and per
capita level of resources are being reduced
Limits to Neo-Malthusianism:
- Empirical evidence
- The long-term perspective
- Global poverty and inequality
Alternative views on the population/resource balance:
- Godwin and others poverty is not caused by population growth, but by inequalities in the
distribution of income and inadequacies of technology
- Marx poverty had more to do with the nature and strength of the structures of the
capitalist economy than with the size or rate of growth of the population
Julian Simon and Population: The Ultimate Resource:
- People themselves are resources, creators and managers of natural producers of resources
- Population growth is not merely a consequence of economic change, but can be one of its
principal drivers
- People form the basis for wealth creation through education, training, knowledge transfer
and health
Ester Boserup and intensification of agricultural production:
- Population growth is seen to have the possibility of being a stimulus to agricultural output,
raising outputs per unit of input of land, labour and technology.
- This could release an upward spiral of development as a result of increasing per capita
resource productivity (whereas Malthus saw this as a downward spiral where people
consume more so that poverty will increase)
, Lecture 2: Amartya Sen’s innovations in Development
Studies
Critique of science of economics
Current criticisms:
- Fails to predict crises
- Fails to provide working advise
- Fails to locate systems failures
- Always advises more market (deregulation, private property)
Homo economicus
- Abstract view of human actors
- Formal models far away from actual practice
The rational agent is assumed to take full account of available information, and potential costs and
benefits (idea: maximize self-interest = ‘human nature’?).
The behaviour of individual actors conditions social outcomes.
Rational choice theory (also known as choice theory or rational cation theory) is a framework for
understanding and formally modelling social and economic behaviour.
Better: Welfare Economics
Public Economics: the study of how government might intervene to improve social welfare
= rank economically feasible allocations of resources in terms of the social welfare they entail
- Public choice matter! (institutions, policy etc.)
- Like John Rawls: a ‘just society’ requires a just distribution of material goods
Criticisms of focus on Wealth and Economic Growth
Economic growth does not measure:
- Distribution of wealth in the population
- Goods and services that are not marketed/priced (self-sufficiency by people)
- Prices can be imperfect and manipulated/’politicized’ (not always free-market prices)
But: wealth/opulence = intermediary good
The ultimate good = good living
Basic Needs – Pro-poor growth
For instance:
Basic income for the poorest: give them money and see what they do (the Brazilian Bolsa Familia
program 2004)
- Poverty in Brazil fell 27.7% during the first term in the Lula admin
- About 12 million Brazilian families received Bolsa funds
- By 2011, 26% of the Brazilian population
- World Bank report: people spend this money, in order of priority, on food, school supplies,
clothing, and shoes
, Human Development Index
- UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) 1990: to design a rough measure to
replace GDP
- “… development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and
creative lives”
1. Income (standard of living) e.g. GDP per capita; income equality
2. Education (knowledge) e.g. adult literacy; educational enrolment
3. Health e.g. life expectancy
Missing Women of Asia
The shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region or
country.
- Access to health
- Marital migration
- Government policies (e.g. one-child policy China)
Core idea: ‘agency’
See individuals not as ‘clients’ of services or ‘patients’.
Famines: ‘voice’ relation: never a famine in a multiparty democracy.
Agency of mothers = effects on birth rate + child survival:
- Work/earnings outside home; ownership/inheritance rights; education; divorce rights; equal
food sharing
- Education = reduced fertility; reduced mortality; reduced ‘missing women’
o Female literacy up from 22 to 75%
o Under-five mortality from 156 to 110 per 1000
The higher the female literacy rate, the higher the mean age at marriage for girls.
Substantial ‘Freedoms’
Negative freedom = freedom ‘from’ oppression, fear, discrimination etc. you’re not being stopped
Positive freedom = freedom ‘to’ achieve your aims, act, develop yourself etc.
Development as Freedom = the actual possibility to choose a life course
- Freedom to access food, work, health, the co-shaping of your society + culture)
But: desired ends may differ = plurality of development ends
- Freedom to access work you like etc.
Capabilities and functionings
Functionings (choice): actually achieved ‘doings’ and ‘beings’
Capabilities: actually available options
Capability needs Endowments (material inputs) + Conversion factors (possibilities to use the inputs)
- You have a car (endowment), but you still need to know how to drive it (conversion factor)
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