Nonlinear Effect of Economic Indicators on Population Growth

Abstract

The Iranian population has gone through drastic changes in the last two decades with population crisis manifested in a few manners. The Iranian population has tripped in the last 30 years and now stands at 75 million. Drastic growth and population explosion in its consequences impelled the countries and governments to seek solutions for forward plan. Various dynamism in Iranian population changes were considered for this study, and patterns in growth and development were the main focus. The study period was post revolutions in Iran, from 1978 onwards with the economic indicators are among the factors that could indirectly affect population growth rates. This paper analyzed the correlation between the variable of population growth and the main macroeconomic indicators such as Human Development Index (HDI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as well as Inflation Rate in Iran. In this study, fixed effect models are used for collecting panel data for a time period between 2000 and 2009 (ten years) which allows a different intercept term serving for each cross-sectional unit as an unobserved random variable which is potentially interrelated with the observed regressors. The methodology employed cross sectional data over time. The study result indicates that the inflation rate would be the main effective and significant factor on population growth and development. The resulted findings would be advantageous if they were used in decision-making tasks performed in governmental and economic sectors by the relevant specialists and managers.