Begging in India: Barricading the Sustainable Financial Development

Economic growth followed by urbanization and food supply modernization in developing countries would lead to substantial changes in food demand. Global agri-food systems are undergoing a rapid transformation towards high-value and high-quality products. China would be a good and important example. The rapid economic growth has led substantial changes in food consumption. Chinese consumers substantially increased their consumption of meat, dairy products and fruits and pay more attention to food quality. In conjugation with economic growth, consumers are experiencing nutrition transition due to the changes in food consumption patterns, especially in the emerging countries. Those transformations in agri-food systems need to be understood with a view to agricultural and food policies. And an analysis of the changes in food consumption is the corner stone for demand projections and poverty demolishing.
\nHence, it is of great importance to deepen our understanding of dynamics in food demand and the consequences for nutrition transition with income growth. This dissertation carries out three studies on dynamic food demand and its consequences for nutrition transition. Specifically, there are three topics investigated in this dissertation as follows: to propose a dynamic demand system to capture the consumption behavior in dynamic food demand process; to evaluate the dynamics and heterogeneities in income elasticities, and then to project China’s food consumption in the future; to illustrate transitions of nutrition consumption as the economic growth and food consumption changes. 
\nIn a first step this dissertation aims at analyzing food demand in dynamic process. Consumers may not simultaneously adjust their behavior to changes in income in the short-run, confined by the adjusting costs, such as habit formation, switching cost, and learning cost etc. The existence of adjusting costs implies that static demand models in the current main stream literature might not correctly model consumer behaviors. Specifically, the income or expenditure elasticities estimated by these static models might be over-reported. It could lead to serious policy consequence if these elasticities are used for projection. The first case study investigates dynamic food demand in urban China herein. With an adoption of transitionary demand process, a new approach of complete demand system with a two-stage dynamic budgeting system (DLES- LA/DAIDS) is developed, including an additively separable dynamic linear expenditure system (DLES) in the first stage and a linear approximate dynamic almost ideal demand system (LA/DAIDS). Employing provincial aggregate data (1995-2010) from the China urban household surveys (UHS), the estimates of the demand elasticities for primary food products in urban China are carried out. 
\nThe results indicate that most primary food products, including grains, edible oils, meat, poultry and vegetables, are necessities and price-inelastic for urban households in China. In the dynamic model, the assumption of simultaneously full adjustments, which is adopted in static models, is abolished due to adjusting costs (e.g. consumer expectation, habit formation, and learning/switching costs). Therefore, the results from different models would vary from each other. Comparing with the results from some static models, the results indicate that the dynamic model tends to yield relatively smaller expenditure elasticities in magnitude than the static models do. As this research methodologically relaxes the restrictive assumption and allows consumers to make dynamic decisions in food consumption, it can be used for better projections in policy simulation models.
\nSince demand elasticity is critical for gauging the growth of food demand, its accuracy and credibility are very important. However, it is a tough job to evaluate the elasticities and demand projections from a large volume of empirical studies on food demand in China, as they usually vary widely from each other. In a second step, a meta-analysis of the income elasticity of food demand in China is preformed, using of 143 elasticities for cereals and 240 for meat collected from 36 primary studies. The further projections of demand elasticities and food consumption are estimated based on the results of meta-regressions. 
\nThe study finds that income elasticities vary across products in both the cereals and meat groups. The elasticities for all meat (general meat, pork, poultry, beef & mutton) and cereal products (general cereals, wheat, rice, coarse grain), except for wheat, tend to decline with income growth. The results also indicate that urban-rural differences do not have a statistically significant impact on income elasticities for cereals after controlling for the differences in income between rural and urban areas. Moreover, the type of data (cross section, pooled, panel), publication source, budgeting process, demand models and the use of household expenditure as the measure of income in a study have significant impacts on the reported income elasticities in China after controlling for product differences. 
\nWith the assumptions on urbanization rates projected by the DRC(China Development Research Center of the State Council), population growth rates indicated by the UN and per capita income growth rates of 6.6% per year from 2012 onward (OECD projection), the projections of income elasticities for main food products for a few selected years are also worked out. The income elasticities for cereals and meat are projected to be 0.40 and 0.48 respectively at the national level in 2000, and those elasticities slide to 0.12 and 0.36 in 2030. Taking the dynamics in elasticities into account, the projections based on constant income elasticities usually are higher than those time-varying projections except for wheat. Specifically, the dynamically projected demand for cereal and meat will reach to 623.82 and 121.98 million tons respectively in 2030 in China, and the consumption of cereal and meat grows at the speed of 1.45% and 3.05% respectively in 2012-2030. The static projections are about 45.9 million tons for general cereals and 5.4 million tons for general meat higher by 2030. Given the tight domestic food supply situation in China, models used to make long-term consumption projections should incorporate time-varying income elasticities.
\nIn conjugation with the income growth, the changes of food consumption pattern usually lead to a nutrition transition. In a third step, the impact of income growth on nutrition transition is investigated. When income is very low, consumers tend to buy the cheapest food such as cassava, wheat and rice which are also cheap sources of calories. As income grows, consumers usually pay more attention to non-calorie attributes, rather than merely pursuing additional calories. The third case study proposes a finite mixture model (FMM) to identify the behavioral transition of calorie consumption with an assumption that nutrition consumption is a mixture of different behaviors in two stages: a hunger stage and an affluent stage. 
\nBased on 381 calorie-income elasticities collected from 90 primary studies, the results indicate that the calorie-income elasticity generally moves downwards as income grows, but the relationship between calorie-income elasticity and income varies across different stages. The threshold income for calorie demand transition is 459.8 USD in 2012 prices (PPP), namely 1.26 dollar/day, which is consistent with the World Bank’s poverty line (1.25 dollar/day in 2005 PPP prices). In the poor stage, the income elasticity declines rapidly. The results indicate that when income increases by 10%, the calorie income elasticity would decrease by 0.012. Once consumers reach the affluence stage, food choice becomes more complicated and a further increase of income will have no significant impact on calorie-income elasticity as non-nutritional attributes play important roles.

Abstract. New interpretation of the Anthropocene is presented, the interpretation based on the rigorous analysis of the growth of human population and of economic growth in the past 2,000,000 years, which are found to have been hyperbolic. The Anthropocene appears to transcends the geological epochs of Pleistocene and Holocene. Anthropogenic impacts evolved over a long time on the canvas of hyperbolic growth of population. There were probably various stages of the Anthropocene in the past 2,000,000 years or even over a longer time. The current stage is distinctly different because now, for the first time in human existence, we are shaping our global future and even the future of our planet. This modern stage of the Anthropocene is characterised by the rapid growth of population, rapid economic growth, rapid consumption of natural resources and rapidly increasing impacts on the environment. All these features can be easily explained by characteristic properties of hyperbolic growth. Hyperbolic distributions are slow over a long time and fast over a short time. The origin of the Anthropocene can be explained as the natural consequence of hyperbolic growth of population. The mechanism of the Anthropocene can be also explained by referring to the mechanism of the growth of population. The beginning of the current stage of the Anthropocene is difficult or maybe even impossible to determine because anthropogenic impacts are likely to have been increasing monotonically. The future of the Anthropocene, which is also our future, is uncertain because it is dictated by many critical anthropogenic trends, but notably because the size of the world population is predicted to continue to increase at least until the end of the current century to a possibly unsustainable level and because the world economic growth follows now an unsustainable trajectory. Effects of the current human activities might affect global ecosystems for a long time into the future but we might not be there to see them. Keywords. The Anthropocene, Economic growth, Population growth, Mechanism of growth, Hyperbolic growth, Exponential growth, Future of the Anthropocene. JEL. A12, F01,Y80.

Agricultural productivity is expected to decrease under changing climate conditions that correspond to the stability of West African food systems. Although numerous studies have evaluated impacts of climate variability on crop yields, many uncertainties are still associated with climate extremes as well as the rapid population growth and corresponding dietary lifestyle. Here, we present a food supply and demand analysis based on the relationship between climate change, crop production, and population growth in three sites from southwestern Burkina Faso to southwestern Ghana. Climate and agricultural time series were analyzed by using boxplots mixed with a Mann–Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope. Food balance sheets were calculated by estimating the demand using a population growth model linked to food supply with local consumption patterns. We found almost insignificant rainfall and temperature trends for both sites in the Sudano-Guinean savannah. Conversely, the climate regime of southwestern Ghana revealed a strong significant increasing temperature over time. Crop yield trends demonstrated that maize and sorghum were significantly enhanced in both study areas of the Sudano-Guinean savannah. Southwestern Ghana depicted a different crop pattern where cassava and plantain showed a strong upward yield trend. The grouped food balance sheets across the regions illustrated a surplus for the Sudano-Guinean savannah while southwestern Ghana exhibited a deficit. Despite the growing yield of various crops, food demand is outpacing regional production.

Increasing Demand on Human Capital and Resource Utilization in Radiation Therapy: The Past Decade

The United Nations Millennium Declaration involved member nations in seeking to reduce extreme hunger and poverty measured against targets set for 2015. There may have been some success to date, 1 with the estimated total number of undernourished people falling by 17 per cent since 1990 -1992 (FAO 2013)). But there remained around one in eight people in the world who suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-2013. While the measured progress shows marked regional differences, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment. Progress has been slow in South Asia although the experience appears more positive in East and South-East Asia and Latin America.

Sustainable diets: Harnessing the nutrition agenda

Population and economic development

The world population was 4.5 billion in 1981; it will be 6.1 billion in the year 2000 and probably over 9 billion by 2050; most of the worlds population will be concentrated in Africa Latin America and Asia. Even if the overall worlds growth rate is probably as low as 1.7% due to fertility decrease in all developing countries the yearly absolute increase in population is continuing to rise. The worlds birth rate is currently around 28/1000 and death rate around 11/1000 or a life expectancy at birth of 58 years. Under the conditions existing in most poor countries rapid population growth slows the absorption of the population into the modern high-productivity economy hinders a countrys capacity to cope effectively with changes in natural or economic environments and generally constricts development. Rapid population growth imposes obvious costs in investment needed to maintain capital per head at the expense of labor productivity; in addition to draining off investment to train the expanding labor force rapid population growth imposes considerable new organizational demands on society. Brazil and China offer clear examples of extremes of economic-demographic strategy the 1st achieving substantial fertility decline by vigorous promotion of state and private capitalism and pronatalist or laissez-faire attitudes toward population growth the 2nd by direct government pressures through antinatalist campaigns facilitated by an effective health care system. Between the 2 extremes are the examples of South Korea and Taiwan which were able to continue rapid economic growth with a pattern of social organization promoting mortality and fertility declines the growth of manufactured exports and a well trained labor force; or the example of Sri Lanka and Kerala which were able to reach low rates of mortality and fertility without any apparent stimulus from an economy and without a strong political and administrative system. The conclusions are that rapid economic growth generates fertility decline irrespective of population policy and that there are combinations of patterns of social organization and government programs that foster lower fertility even without much economic growth. Whenever population policies are to be made they demand a strategy based on thorough local analysis.

Food wedges: Framing the global food demand and supply challenge towards 2050

PurposePopulation growth has remained a key issue facing developing economies in the world. While developed countries are experiencing diminished or negative population growth, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria are having population growth above the economic growth rate. With the deadline for the sustainable development goals approaching, attention is increasingly being focused on population growth and human capital development. Extant literature focused on population growth, human resource utilization and economic growth but this study aims to examine the effect of population growth on human resource utilization.Design/methodology/approachUsing secondary data for the period 1990-2018, the study conducted unit root test and co-integration analyses to determine the stationarity and correlation in the long-run in the variables. The study used the error correction model to ascertain the speed at which shocks can be corrected in the long-run. Granger causality test was also carried out to ascertain the direction of causality among the variables.FindingsThe empirical results revealed that population growth has a negative and significant effect on human resource utilization. The study also revealed that unidirectional causality runs from employment rate to population growth rate and a unidirectional causality runs from employment growth rate to expected years of schooling. The Nigerian Government needs to not only control population growth but also focus on the quality of education.Originality/valueThe paper provides insights into the relationship between population growth and human capital utilization in Nigeria focusing on the 1986-2018 period.

Economic development and growth of population in Asia have caused an increase in the demand for food. On the other hand, disappearing the cultivation area and global warming have caused a decrease in the supply for food. In 1995, China imported cereals from U. S. A for the first time.To understand the future of Asia, it is required to make a model which concerns about reciprocal action among demand for food, supply for food, environment, economic development. This study proposes a model based on ecology and economics.For example, this study includes a model based on income producing processes. Income is obtained from a calculation involving capital and labor using the Cobb-Douglas function. These data for income is then used to calculate the demand for food.

Background: Rapid population growth and its impact on the environment is a major problem facing the world today, in addition to other issues that also require serious handling and attention. Rapid population growth, especially in cities and urban areas, puts pressure on the fulfillment of population needs that must be provided to ensure the survival of the population. Population growth has an impact on the increasing needs of the population for affordable housing, food needs, transportation. Method: This research uses a qualitative approach based on case studies and literature reviews. This approach involves a critical and in-depth evaluation of previous research, focusing on data collected from various sources related to the impact of population growth on affordable housing, food needs, and sustainable transportation. Findings: The rate of population growth has an impact on environmental sustainability, as a result of the exploitation of natural resources to fulfill various needs, including food needs. Population growth has a linear effect on the demand for food, such as rice and tubers, through the provision of agricultural land. This increase in consumption value occurs in an increasingly limited stock of natural resources, therefore a food fulfillment strategy is needed to achieve national food security and sovereignty, to meet the needs of the population and for food stocks to anticipate undesirable things, such as natural disasters and crop failures. Some of the efforts that can be made are food diversification, intensification, and extensification of agriculture accompanied by the active role of the government in providing infrastructure and supporting policies. Population growth also affects the level of population mobility. Each individual carries out daily activities such as school, work and other activities. This population mobility greatly affects the use of transportation modes to reach certain destinations. The mode of transportation consists of private vehicles and public vehicles. Conclusion: If the use of private vehicles is more than public vehicles, there is the potential for traffic congestion. In addition, the more vehicles used, the greater the carbon emissions produced so that it can cause greenhouse gas effects. One of the efforts that can be made is to implement sustainable transportation management through Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the provision of transportation modes. TOD is expected to make private vehicle users switch to using public transportation. Novelty/Originality of this study: This research proposes a holistic approach to address the impacts of urban population growth, combining strategies for food diversification, transit-based development, and affordable housing. This framework is expected to be a practical innovation for sustainable urban development in countries with rapid population growth.

China has been undergoing significant social and economic structural changes since launching its policy of economic reform and opening up in 1978. This has involved a transformation from a centrally planned economy, where there is no role for the market, to a market-oriented economy in which market principles play a major role. During the last four decades, great achievements have been made in terms of economic growth and social well-being. To name a few indicators: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country increased from USD 189.65 billion in 1980 to USD 10.866 trillion in 2015, positioning China as the second largest economy in the world, with an average annual growth rate over 10%. Meanwhile, poverty levels have greatly improved. The poverty headcount ratio at USD 1.90 a day (2011 PPP) has decreased dramatically, from 42.15% in 1981 to 10.68% in 2013. The rapid economic growth, combined with the reform of the Hukou registration system, has also accelerated the migration flow from rural areas to urban areas. The population living in urban China in 2015 reached 763 million, making the urbanisation level of 55.61%, almost three times that in 1980. With the rapid growth of the urban population, the welfare-based public housing provision system founded in the central planning era could no longer meet the increasing housing demand of urban residents. Thus, in 1994, comprehensive housing reforms were implemented, aiming to privatize the public housing sector and promote a housing allocation system based on market principles. The milestone of housing reform occurred in 1998, when the government completely suspended the traditional housing allocation system, making the housing market the only way to access housing services (Wang et al. 2012). The emergence of the private urban housing market spurred both housing transactions and prices. In 1998, the housing area traded on the market was approximately 108 million square metres on an average transaction price of 1854 yuan/m2. These two figures were nearly ten and three times higher in 2014, soaring to 1.05 billion square metres and 5933 yuan/m2, respectively. At the regional level, rapid economic development has been accompanied by increasing inequality. Soon after the launch of the economic reforms, some coastal regions, Guangdong and Zhejiang in Eastern China, for example, grew quickly, due to the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI), advanced technologies and equipment, and favourable policies of the central government. The ‘core’ position of these regions in the national economy was further enhanced through a self-reinforcing process (Anderson 2012, p.127), shaping a core-periphery economic structure in China. In 1980, the regional gross product of Eastern China accounted for 43.69% of total GDP in China, while in 2014 this ratio increased to 51.16%, reflecting the polarization of economic activities. Reflecting the distribution of economic activities, the inequality in the cost of housing between regions is also striking. In 2014, the average sale price in 35 main cities in mainland China was approximately 8599 yuan/m2, with the standard error also high, at 4651 yuan/m2, making the coefficient of variance 0.54, thus indicating a high degree of heterogeneity across this city-level housing market. The left panel of Figure 1.1 shows the spatial distribution of average house prices. It is apparent that the prices in the coastal cities of Eastern China are generally greater than the prices of inland cities. However, the picture of house price dynamics is a little different. From 2002 to 2014, the rapid growth in house prices, on average 11.38% per year, seems to be anational phenomenon and there is very little variance between the annual growth rates in different cities; the coefficient of variance is only 0.18, much lower than that of the house price level. Perhaps the most prominent spatial pattern of house price growth rate is that the northeastern cities experienced the lowest price appreciation during the period 2002-2014. This dissertation is fundamentally concerned with the spatial patterns of house prices and their dynamics across cities in China. Although literature on the Chinese housing market has been emerging in recent years, little is known about the spatial interaction of regional housing markets. The following four chapters will be dedicated to responding to questions concerning the emerging market: Why is there a core-periphery structure in the distribution of interurban house prices? To what extent are the house price developments across cities similar? How do house price dynamics in one city affect the house price changes in other cities? The investigation of the spatial dimension of the Chinese housing market has been always hampered by the quality of the data, especially when analysing house price dynamics. This situation has inspired the pursuit of research to construct house price indexes that reflect the house price changes as accurately as possible. In line with a key theme of this study, particular a

In 1961 South Africa introduced a new currency, the Rand, at the rate of two Rands to the South African pound. At the same time a decimal system was introduced. In the years that followed this change the economy experienced rapid economic and population growth. This continued throughout the 1960s, but gave way to a slower period of growth in the 1970s and 1980s.

Resource development in the western United States of America offers the prospect of rapid population and economic growth which may dramatically alter the traditional social bases of these rural communities. Reports from other western boomtowns suggests that such rapid growth can lead to substantial community disruption with a disproportionate increase in social problems and an eventual lowered productivity in the synthetic fuels industry. Changes related to population growth need not produce such disruptive results. Cooperation among industry, government, and community and well planned and coordinated human services and programs designed to relieve the stresses of change, to provide a sense of community, and to integrate newcomers into the community can reduce or prevent many of the negative impacts as well as reduce overall costs by building on existing resources.