Hi friends, in today’s article we are going to know about the relationship between population growth and economic development in India. So let’s discuss in details.
Table of Contents
Population Growth and Economic Development
Population growth is closely related with economic growth. Population influences economic growth and economic growth influences population. It is correctly stated that, “population is wealth to a nation or may be a liability.”
Population is an important source of economic development but under some circumstances it becomes a growth retarding factor supplying cheap labour it helps in producing commodities at low cost.
The large population also encourages division of labour and large scale production. It also boosts demand, enlarges the market size and provides much needed inducement to invest and provides sufficient manpower to exploit country’s natural resources.
This situation is specially where the majority of population depends upon agriculture for their livelihood. The supply of capital, level of technology, quality of manpower and urge for innovations also determine the nature of effect of population on economic growth.
In a technologically advance country with abundance of capital, rapidly growing population will be an economic necessity and will have growth promoting effect on the other hand, in capital poor and technologically backward country, rapidly growing population is a burden and it tends to neutralize the efforts on society towards its development.
All economic development has been eaten by population explosion’s and the economy will be dominated by poverty, crimes, and unemployment.
Positive effects of population growth on economic development
Population can accelerate economic growth of an economy in the following way –
- A growing population may enable a country to divert a larger portion of its labour force towards the capital creating projects.
- As a source of manpower supply, population growth is an essential factor for economic growth.
- A growing population provides a necessary incentive for economic development of a country by becoming both means as well as and end of economic activity.
- Population becomes source of economic growth in industrially developed countries.
- Trained and efficient labour force is regarded as human capital. Improvement in the quality of manpower can be major contribution to economic growth in a country.
- Increased population ads to the number of producers entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, educationalists, doctors and technologists etc. They can prove a boor to the economic development of a country.
- Growth of population would lead to division of labour, specialisation and would also bring faster technological progress.
Negative effects of Population growth on Economic development
Population can be a limiting factor to economic development because of the following reason –
(i) In developing countries, rapid growth of population diminished the availability of capital per head which reduces the productivity of labour force.
(ii) A rapidly growing population increases the requirements of demographic investment and reduces the capacity of the people to save and economic development stagnates.
(iii) The rapidly growing population makes it almost impossible for economically backward countries to solve their problem of unemployment.
(iv) Increased population means more mouth to feed which in turn, creates pressure upon available stock of food. Thus creates food problem.
(v) Rapid growth of population is largely responsible for the creation of vicious circle of poverty in underdeveloped countries.
(vi) A welfare oriented state is pledged to meet social needs of the people and for this, the government has to spend a lot an providing basic facilities like education, housing and medical aid which increase burden upon the economy.
Thus, the pattern of population growth and the environment in which the growth takes place are the important factors which decide whether population will be a growth promoting or growth retarding factor.
Conclusion
So friends, this was the concept of population growth and economic development. Hope you get the full details about it and hope you like this article.
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