Population and Resources: An Exploration of Reproductive and Environmental Externalities
Author(s)
Dasgupta, Partha
Abstract
Population growth elicits widely different responses from various observers. Some believe it to be among the causes of the most urgent problems facing humankind today (e.g., Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), while others permute the elements of this causal chain, arguing, for example, that contemporary poverty and illiteracy in poor countries are the causes, rather than the consequences, of rapid population growth. Still others claim that even in the poorest countries population growth can be expected to provide a spur to economic progress. Among the many who remain, there is a wide spectrum of views, both on the determinants of population growth and on the effects of that growth on the natural-resource base and human welfare. It would seem not only that our attitudes toward population size and its growth differ, but that there is no settled view on how the matter should be studied. As with religion and politics, many people have opinions on population that they cling to with tenacity. In this article I bring together theoretical and empirical findings to argue that such divergence of opinion is unwarranted. In the first two sections I offer the conjecture that differences persist because the interface of population, resources, and welfare at a spatially localized level has been a relatively neglected subject. Neglect by experts is probably also the reason why the nexus has attracted much popular discourse, which, while often illuminating, is frequently descriptive rather than analytical
