AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF POPULATION GROWTH

There has been remarkably little theoretical or empirical analysis of the effects of economic development upon population change.' While the existence of an interaction between the economic and the demographic evolution of a society has long been acknowledged by authorities in both fields, only the impact of population growth on economic development has received any significant amount of attention in the economic literature. The present paper attempts to illuminate the other side of the coin. Specifically, this manuscript constitutes an economic analysis of fertility and mortality patterns as they are affected by economic and social forces. First, age specific birth and death rates in various countries are correlated with several economic and sociocultural indicators. As a partial test of the validity of this approach, the derived relations are then used to estimate crude birth and death rates in 1953 in the various continents. Finally, a quantitative feeling for the relative impact of changes in economic and social variables upon the demographic features of a society is obtained by calculating the changes in the equilibrium age distribution and in the equilibrium rate of population growth which would result (ceteris paribus) from a permanent change in each of the socioeconomic variables.