Population growth and economic development are interdependent variables.

You cannot
have one without the other. Population has become a problem for many of the poorer countries in
the world. Countries would experience economic growth but the standard of living would be the
same as it was due to population out growing GDP. It is necessary for a country to reach
postindustrial, peripheral nation status, by limiting the population growth and increasing
key measurable economic variables indicative of stable progress.
There is often a discrepancy between economic growth and economic development. To
set the issue straight by economic development I am referring to the progress in an economy;
the adoption of new technologies, transition from agriculture-based to industry-based economy,
and general improvement in living standards. Economic development implies more, particularly
improvements in health, education and other aspects of human welfare. Countries that increase
their income but do not also raise life expectancy, reduce infant mortality, and increase literacy
rates are missing out of some important aspects of development and are experiencing only
economic growth. Economic development is aimed at the overall well-being of the citizens of a
country, as they are the ultimate beneficiaries of the development of the economy of their
country.
Population growth is one of the central problems of economic development. For example,
in the decade 1990- 2000 Cameroon, Kenya, and Zambia had growth rates of population of 2.7,
2.4, and 2.6 per cent per year alongside GDP growth rates of 1.7, 2.1, and 0.5 per cent,
respectively. This resulted in negative rates of growth of GDP per capita of -1.0, -0.3, and -2.1
per cent per year. Other countries in places like Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa have
rates of population growth that are nearly as large as their rates of growth of GDP. Because of
this, their standards of living are no higher than they were 100 years ago. If one were to look at
GDP alone it would appear that some of those countries are well on their way of getting out of
poverty. Most of those countries have made gains in spending, saving, consumption, and
income. Yet most of the gains do not show up in these statistics per capita. Essentially, the
progress they have been making has been absorbed by their respective increasing population.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on The
Principles of Population, which was a famous article during his time. He began telling of his
concerns when it came to the out of control population growth he was witnessing. More
specifically, he was worried about the disproportional growth in human population in relation to
food production. Malthus took the position that because the human populations ability to
produce food is surpassed by mans ability to reproduce there would be wide spread epidemics.
Malthus predicted that there would be outbreaks of famines, water shortages, and certain death
would occur Malthusian ideas are still relevant today. In 1968, Stanford biologist, Paul Ehrlich
wrote The Population Bomb, which expanded off of Malthusian concepts. Ehrlich predicted
that within a decade from when his writing was published, famines would strike Asia, Africa and
South America, killing off as many as one-fifth of the worlds population. Obviously, this never
occurred.
But both Malthus and Ehrlich werent completely wrong in what he wrote. In some poor
areas of the world the predictions he made did come true. For example, wide spread famines
consistently strike sub-Saharan Africa. In the developing world the agricultural methods are
fairly traditional. The food production increases at a slower rate than population does. The result
is subsistence living, with population held in check by low life-expectancies and periodic
famines just as Malthus hypothesized. The advanced industrialized countries do not have to
worry about Malthusian pressures nearly as much. The pressures only exist in countries that
survive on subsidence farming. Now the population problem is almost only a poor country
problem. About 97 per cent of the expected growth in the world's population between now and
2050 will be in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.