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

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.