Society Debate:Is high population growth good for economic growth?

It leads to more productivity Day after day, the number of people everywhere increases, and this is in spite of the various population measures imposed by countries to counter population growth. As of yesterday, the world’s population is estimated to be 6.9 billion, meaning that only two months are left to prove the demographic projection of 7 billion people in 2011. Most discussions about population growth often concentrate on the benefits of limited family size and reduced populations. Governments do everything to sensitize people on the need for smaller families, despite this, demographic statistics indicate that population growth isn’t planning on stalling anytime soon. The more we learn about family planning, the more medicinal advances are made and the more agricultural productivity increases; although people impose artificial methods to control population growth, the reality is that most factors which bring about population explosion are out of our control. There is a general belief that countries with high population growth are susceptible to poverty and hunger, because under normal circumstances, the resources are fixed and are bound to be exhausted. Although that may be factual, it isn’t a characteristic of only those countries with high populations but even ones with seemingly lower populations. In other words, poor people are found in every corner of the world. Since man is known for his adaptive nature to natural changes, people can as well adapt to the fact that population growth is an unavoidable constant; therefore, we must look for ways to exploit this natural phenomenon for our own good. To benefit from a high population, let us employ a pinch of economics. In economics, a high population growth rate simply means that production of goods and services is also increasing; that is to say, the more the people, the more the productivity. It also means that whatever is produced in the industries and grown in the fields will have a steadily high demand. This will eventually bring about healthy competition in the production sector as businesses look to benefit from a hyperactive market. This will inevitably make farmers richer; industrialists more innovative and most importantly, the economy will grow faster and benefit the country and the region as a whole. But one may argue; the world’s population is already high but how come productivity and demand are still low? And how come people are still poor and dying of hunger in various parts of the world? The simplest answer I can give is that, the world and subsequently the earth have their own methods to check and balance the growth of population. Regardless of what is done to improve people’s lives, death will always pick us out one by one, regardless of how rich or poor we are. We shall then be replaced by newly born babies and the cycle will repeat itself. Family planning methods are arguably good for a developing country like Rwanda, but they are just not enough to confine the wave of population growth- it will grow naturally. Therefore, it is only wise to concentrate on the positives of a big population because either way, whether we like it or not, population is bound to increase. mugishaivan@yahoo.com@RushAfrican on Twitter