Population growth is one of the major barriers to development in developing countries. Nearly all developing countries are struggling with these phenomena. The population growth rate in some developing countries has been more than 4 percent and the average growth rate has been about 3 percent; meaning that the population of these countries increases nearly 100 percent in each 23 years period. Afghanistan as a developing country, more or less, faces the same challenges of population growth.
Causes of Population Growth
Population growth in developing countries is a new phenomenon that started from the second half of 2oth century. Reduction in death rate is the main cause of population growth in developing countries. Improvements of health care and using the new health science have played a critical role in population growth in these countries. As a result, the coincidence an old method (high rate of birth) with a new process (reduction in mortality rate) has contributed to high population growth rate.
Consequences of Population Growth
Population growth has economic and socio-political consequences. The negative economic impacts include shortage of goods and services. In addition to this, it has negative impacts on investment too. However, less developed countries face tough challenges in attracting new investment opportunities. Continuation of wide spread poverty and deepening it include the negative impacts of population growth in these countries. Unemployment is one of the other negative impacts of the population growth. Unemployment it contributes to poverty growth in developing countries in two ways; firstly, it affects those who live in absolute poverty and secondly, it increases the poverty level of those who are employed through negative impacts on their salary scales.
The economists from the world have often neglected the impact of population dynamics on economic growth in the developing and developed countries. Economists argue that it is possible that the interaction of economic growth with population dynamics can result in a poverty trap. Developing countries have not been able to achieve the predetermined development goals or have not been able to balance the achievement of development that has been done caused by the population problems or high population growth. It is also an uneven distribution of population high poverty and unemployment and has caused high burden of burden and low per capital income and dominance of primary goods.
The relationship between population growth and economic development in developing countries has been a recurrent theme in economic analysis. The high population growth creates pressures on limited natural resources, reduces private and public capital formation, and diverts additions to capital resources to maintaining rather than increasing the stock of capital per worker. Much of the motivation for human capital policies in developing countries is the possibility of providing economic growth that will raise the levels of incomes in these countries. The focus on alleviating poverty in developing countries relates directly to economic growth because of the realization that simply redistributing incomes and resources will not lead to long run solutions to poverty.