Title: Does high population growth help or hurt economic development? Cases of China and Pakistan

Authors: Raziel Chaparro; Kishore G. Kulkarni

Addresses: Metropolitan State University of Denver, P.O. Box 173362, Denver, CO 80217-3362, USA ' Metropolitan State University of Denver, Campus Box 77, P.O. Box 173362, Denver, CO 80217-3362, USA

Abstract: In this paper a comparative analysis of China and Pakistan is conducted to see the relationship between large and growing populations and their effects on their economic development. We explore the popular Malthusian theory as well as the pro-natalists theory of Simon, in an effort to conclude whether these countries will fall into scenarios explained by them. We conclude that in China's case, large population proved beneficial to its economic development, once certain policies were correctly implemented to get the labour market working more efficiently. Pakistan, on the other hand did not adopt favourable policies to manage and educate the growing population, and therefore showed a different result. These policies, must then be explored, which are Gerald Scully's mechanisms for economic development, in order to properly account for other reasons. We conclude that it is mandatory for a country to correctly manage the increase in population. This paper is divided into four sections: Section 1 is an introductory section, it explains the population explosion, Section 2 discusses the traditional population theories of Malthus and Simon. Section 3 explains Gastill-Scully mechanisms for economic growth and applies them to the Chinese and Pakistani cases. Section 4 makes the summary and concludes our arguments.

Keywords: China; Pakistan; population growth; country studies; economic development; economic growth; population theories; Malthus; Simon; Gastill-Scully mechanisms.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEED.2015.070629

International Journal of Education Economics and Development, 2015 Vol.6 No.2, pp.162 - 282

Received: 04 Apr 2015
Accepted: 15 May 2015
Published online: 14 Jul 2015 *

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